The year 2026 marks both the 120th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich‘s birth and the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the British composer Benjamin Britten. Today, the two composers, who lived on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, are not

As a dedicated champion of contemporary music, Gérard Caussé served as principal violist of the Ensemble Intercontemporain under Pierre Boulez. Caussé has greatly expanded the viola repertoire through close collaborations with living composers, and to celebrate his birthday on 26

Some years in classical music history are transitional, but 1826 was seismic. In a single twelve-month span two hundred years ago, the final pillars of the Classical era were falling, while the Romantic era was being built up by a

Few composers loom larger in Western music history than Johann Sebastian Bach – and few are surrounded by as many myths. Over the centuries, Bach has been described as everything from a neglected genius labouring in obscurity to a joyless

100 years ago, the Chinese film composer Huang Zhun was born in Huangyan, Zhejiang province, China. She composed music for more than 40 films and helped to create the musical language of early Chinese socialist cinema. To commemorate her centenary,

In 1960, Columbia Pictures released the romantic biopic Song Without End, tracing the love affair between pianist/composer Franz Liszt and the married Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. One would assume that this real-life story of forbidden love would make a great

This article is a continuation of Episode 1 | The Venice of the North: A Republic’s Musical Startup, Episode 2 | The Business Animal of Opera House: Reinhard Keiser’s Baroque Empire and Episode 3 | The Baroque Silicon Valley: Christoph

The Swiss-German composer, pedagogue, and pianist Joachim Raff suffered a fatal heart attack in the night from 24 to 25 June 1882. That’s about as precise as we can be in terms of his passing. However, we do know that