As you make your way around the musical world, you start with the easy ones – a bit of Haydn, some Mozart, a venture into Beethoven. Then what? As your tastes mature and you desire something more, there’s Mahler. Each

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) was one of the first women artists who changed the role of women in art. She illustrated concepts and ideas rarely explored by male artists to the foreground in her work, including chronic pain,

Wanda Aleksandra Landowska, born to Jewish parents in Warsaw on 5 July 1879, was the first person to record Bach‘s Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord in 1933. Her decision to revive harpsichord music was by no means uncontested. To celebrate

Stephen Foster, born on July 4th (1826–1864), was an American Romantic-era composer who, almost exclusively, wrote songs and even today, when we celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth, those songs live on. Stephen Collins Foster was born in Lawrenceville,

The compositions of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) draw on the melodic and rhythmic irregularities of folk music, particularly from Moravian and other Eastern European traditions, which he collected, edited, arranged, and used as the basis of his own

Working from the Habsburg court in Vienna, Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck, born on this day, 2 July (1714–1787), freed opera from the stranglehold of opera-series practices that had been accruing over time and created a new opera style that

The Russian pianist Alexandra Dovgan had already collected five competition victories by the age of thirteen, receiving her technical and musical training under Mira Marchenko at Moscow’s Central Music School. Beyond prizes and accolades, Dovgan has also attracted the attention

I love concertos in any shape or form, and the wonderful Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen has essentially written four such compositions. It’s difficult to keep up with all his accolades and appointments, but to celebrate his birthday on