The Central Library of the Masovian Voivodeship, one of the largest public libraries in Poland, has just announced a sensational music find! This library was burned to the ground in January 1945 by retreating Nazi German soldiers, and roughly 300,000

Happy Birthday to Johann Sebastian Bach, again! As we discovered last time, Bach’s birthday falls on either 21 March according to the Julian calendar, or 31 March if you prefer the Gregorian calendar. Bach probably celebrated his birthday on 21

In all, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) composed 106 symphonies. Of these, 104 have numbers associated with them, while two additional symphonies were discovered later. Have you noticed that, when Haydn symphonies get programmed these days, if at all, it’s always the

Born on 30 March 1959 in the rolling hills of southern Germany, Sabine Meyer grew up in a family dedicated to the clarinet. Her grandfather, her father, and her older brother all played the clarinet, and by the age of

Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) was one of the most celebrated pianists of the nineteenth century. It was said that he played faster than Liszt and louder than Chopin. In addition, he was also a highly original composer comparable to Hector Berlioz.

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) had a rather limited involvement with opera. However, he did complete three one-act operas between 1892 and 1905. Aleko was written as a graduation piece at the Moscow Conservatory in 1892, and it earned him high honours

Did you know that Ludwig van Beethoven composed 722 works, but only 138 of them carry opus numbers? Opus numbers are actually work numbers assigned by Beethoven’s publishers during his lifetime. The basic question is, why on earth did Beethoven

Over the course of his life, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) contemplated over 50 theatrical projects, yet in the end, he only completed two: Pelléas et Mélisande occupied him between 1893 and 1902, and the ballet Jeux, for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, dates