An old proverb states, “Traveling leaves you speechless, and then turns you into a storyteller. And that’s what happened to Aaron Copland after his first visit to Mexico City in 1932. His friend Carlos Chávez took him to a colorful

The Birmingham Music Festival was founded in 1768 as a charitable event to raise funds for the city’s recently founded General Hospital. Renamed the “Birmingham Triennial Music Festival” in 1784, it subsequently commissioned works by Arthur Sullivan, Max Bruch, Charles

Franz Schreker (1878-1934) is largely forgotten today, but in his time he was Richard Strauss’ main rival for the title of Germany’s leading composer of opera. Schreker wrote complex harmonic scores using advanced chromatic harmonies and large orchestras, yet his

In his day, Franz Strauss was recognized as an important artistic personality. Foremost, he was a celebrated horn virtuoso, “breathing soul into the unthankful instrument.” Even Richard Wagner, against whom the musically conservative Strauss took literally every opportunity to make

“I wish to be honest,” wrote Jean Françaix (1912-1997), “When I am composing, the finest theories are the last things that come to mind. My interest is not primarily attracted by the motorways of thought, but more the paths through

Sergei Prokofiev was still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when he took the stage on 7 August 1912 to premier his 1st Piano Concerto. Since it was his first appearance with an orchestra, and expecting a rather large

What do you get if one of classical music’s most beloved performers teams up with one of today’s most popular composers? It really is a no brainer, as Azul (the title means blue in Spanish) combines the collective imagination of

Rossini’s last opera, the four-act Guillaume Tell, with a composite French libretto based on Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, was produced at the Paris Opéra on 3 August 1829. However, within three performances the opera’s length of roughly four hours and