Talk to a classical music lover about Baroque composers, and you’ll likely be talking about men like Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. But how many French Baroque composers do you know? One of the leading Baroque composers of France – male

If you’re a classical music lover and you hear the name Schubert, you probably think of Franz: composer of the Trout Quintet, a number of famous symphonies, and, of course, Ave Maria. But did you know he had an older

Minimalism in painting and in music relates to two very different artistic aspects and approaches. The Tate defines minimalism in painting as “an extreme form of abstract art developed in the USA in the 1960s and typified by artworks composed

Most orchestra lovers know who Harriet Smithson was, even if they don’t know her name. She was the inspiration behind Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique: a brilliant, era-defining actress who rose from obscurity in Ireland to bewitch the sophisticated Parisian audiences

Pianist Adelina de Lara’s name has largely been forgotten today. However, there’s no reason it should be. She spent over seven decades on the concert platform, made dozens of wonderful recordings, hobnobbed with many of the greatest musicians of multiple

Over the centuries, classical composers have used their fame and fortune to support various philanthropic causes. Whether raising funds for wounded soldiers, supporting abandoned children, or helping fellow musicians in need, all of these composers felt compelled to give back

Making an inspired mixture of the virtuosic and the picturesque, Spanish composer Joaquín Turina (1882–1949) composed the piano sonata Sanlúcar de Barrameda in the spring of 1921. He defined it as a ‘picturesque sonata’, but that innocent title hides the

When Paul McNulty first set foot in Prague in the winter of 1994, he didn’t know that a chance encounter with a piano from Amadeus would change the course of his life. The piano, identical to the one featured in Miloš Forman’s