What if Mozart had lived to teach Beethoven? What if Gershwin had written his “American symphony”? What if Debussy had finished his mysterious Poe operas? Classical music history is filled with “what-ifs,” but few are as haunting as the early

There were a few years left of Ravel’s most productive compositional spurt before the havoc of the First World War – let’s see what he made of them… Maurice Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé – Part III: Lever du jour (Spirito;

On 18 April 1936, Ottorino Respighi died from an inflammation of the inner layer of the heart in Rome. Respighi lived and worked during tumultuous political times, and his historicist interest in Italian music and the arts made him and

The French Horns are much loved for their warm, velvety, and powerful sound. Hornists are thought of as disciplined perfectionists who have to deal with the pressure of managing this complex instrument with its high technical demands. But we audience

The early Romantic Era, which roughly corresponds to the first half of the nineteenth century, brought an explosion of emotional depth and individuality to classical music. The stories we usually hear about the composers of the time focus almost entirely

In recent years, one of the most encouraging shifts in the classical music world has been a growing willingness to acknowledge its historical blind spots — and to actively work towards a more inclusive and diverse future. The statistics, however,

Peter Tranchell’s Twice a Kiss (1955) is not a work many of us will know. Composed for a performance during Cambridge University’s annual May Week celebrations – where Tranchell served as Precentor of Gonville and Caius College and Lecturer in

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) and his older sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805–1847) shared an extraordinary musical bond. Trained together in childhood by the same teachers, the two prodigies developed strikingly similar foundations. As musicologist Angela Mace Christian told smithsonian.com in 2017,