Few pianists in history have embodied artistic courage quite like Maria Yudina. A deeply religious musician living in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century, Yudina was both revered – and feared – for her uncompromising moral and musical vision.

What if Mozart had lived to teach Beethoven? What if Gershwin had written his “American symphony”? What if Debussy had finished his mysterious Poe operas? Classical music history is filled with “what-ifs,” but few are as haunting as the early

There were a few years left of Ravel’s most productive compositional spurt before the havoc of the First World War – let’s see what he made of them… Maurice Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé – Part III: Lever du jour (Spirito;

The French Horns are much loved for their warm, velvety, and powerful sound. Hornists are thought of as disciplined perfectionists who have to deal with the pressure of managing this complex instrument with its high technical demands. But we audience

The early Romantic Era, which roughly corresponds to the first half of the nineteenth century, brought an explosion of emotional depth and individuality to classical music. The stories we usually hear about the composers of the time focus almost entirely

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) and his older sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805–1847) shared an extraordinary musical bond. Trained together in childhood by the same teachers, the two prodigies developed strikingly similar foundations. As musicologist Angela Mace Christian told smithsonian.com in 2017,

In 1580, luthier John Rose created a new instrument that he named after the allegorical musicians Orpheus and Arion. Together, they personify the power of music, and in his new instrument, the orpharion, Rose created a rival for the lute.

Why do classical musicians play from memory, and when did the tradition begin? Believe it or not, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, playing from memory was actually considered bad manners. Most performers read from sheet music, and even