Ralph Vaughan Williams remained creatively active into old age. Between 1954 and 1958, he composed four songs to poems by his second wife, Ursula Vaughan Williams. Possibly intended as two separate song cycles, they were assembled and published posthumously under

Can you name the longest-running series of family concerts of classical music in the world? If you grew up in the second half of the 20th century, this is probably not a really difficult question. The answer, of course, is

George Li, born on 24 August 1995 in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in a family of music lovers. His parents had immigrated from China, and the family frequently attended concerts in the Boston area. Classical music has been part of

Conductor Karina Canellakis was born and raised in New York City in a family of musicians. She entered the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied both violin and conducting. She later studied conducting at the Juilliard School. She spent

In a career lasting the better part of forty years, Claude Debussy composed nearly ninety art songs, also known as mélodies. He was not especially well educated in literature, but his mélodies became a vehicle for the development of a

Dame Janet Baker was born on 21 August 1933 in Hatfield, Yorkshire, England. One of the most distinguished mezzo-sopranos of the 20th century, her radiant expressiveness and total absorption in her singing provided the foundation for subsequent generations of female

Some commentators hail Maxim Vengerov, born on 20 August 1974 in Novosibirsk, as “the greatest living string player in the world today.” While such claims must be approached with caution, Vengerov constantly seeks new means of creative expression. He freely

George Enescu (1881-1955) and Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) shared one of the most profound teacher-student relationships in twentieth- century classical music. In fact, Enescu’s mentorship continued for decades, guiding Menuhin’s entire approach to music and to life. As Menuhin said about