The Giuliani family produced two influential figures in the history of guitar music. Mauro Giuliani and his daughter Emilia Giuliani-Guglielmi were both Italian composers and guitarists. Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) played a crucial role in transforming the guitar from a mere

Daisy Bell is a song that lives in popular culture. Don’t recognize the title? You might know it better by the final line of the chorus: ‘….a bicycle built for two.’ English composer Frank Dean (1857–1922) immortalized the tandem bicycle,

Music directors of the major orchestras in the world do not typically come and go. A case in point, Eugene Ormandy was principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1938-1980 a total of 42 years. Not to be outdone, Zubin

Ruth Slenczysnka must be one of the most interesting pianists alive today. She certainly has a story unlike any other: she studied piano with Rachmaninoff as a little girl – became an international musical sensation – abandoned her performing career

Pianist Hans von Bülow was called upon on 25 October 1875 to play the first performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Music Hall in Boston. Tchaikovsky wrote to Bülow, “Thank you for the sympathetic attention you have

We were looking at some music title pages from a collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale and found some interesting representations of music as part of the title page designs. In this title page for a book of keyboard music from

With his operetta The Merry Widow, the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár crafted one of the most popular and enduring works in the genre. In fact, it was the favourite work of Adolf Hitler, who called it “equal to the best

Pianist Kirill Gerstein was the youngest student ever to enter the Berklee College of Music in Boston at the age of 14. Several decades later, he is considered one of the most distinguished classical artists of his generation, engaging in