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On This Day
28 May: Seong-Jin Cho Was Born
By winning First Prize at the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw in 2015, Seong-Jin Cho immediately rose to international prominence. Signing an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2016, Cho has established himself as one of the leading pianists of
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Starting Over Again
I haven’t touched the piano for six months. I have a beautiful early 20th-century Bechstein model A grand piano which has been sitting, untouched, in my piano room/office. There is music open on the stand – Schubert’s Piano Sonata in
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On This Day
26 May: Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol (The Nightingale) Was Premiered
Igor Stravinsky’s first opera The Nightingale, to his own libretto in collaboration with Stepan Mitusov and based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale, premiered at the Opéra in Paris on 26 May 1914. The marvellously colourful production was commissioned by
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Folk Instruments on the Pop Stage: Eurovision 2024
If you saw the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final in May, then you saw two different groups with instruments far out of the norm. The Norwegian group Gåte played Ulveham (Wolf Pelt), which is based on a medieval Norwegian
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On This Day
24 May 1974: Duke Ellington’s 50th Anniversary of Death
50 years ago to the day, on 24 May 1974, America mourned the passing of its arguably greatest composers. Without doubt, Duke (Edward Kennedy) Ellington was the greatest jazz composer and bandleader of his time. One of the originators of
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Pen & Paper: Different Approaches of Composing Music
There is an exclusivity to the approaches to composing music, as opposed to all other artistic forms. It is that music can be created through at least two different mediums. The one of the instrument or the one of the
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Lost in Time and Now Found
Maria Herz’s Orchestra Suite, Op. 13
Maria Herz (née Bing) (1878–1950) came from Cologne where her family ran a successful textile business. The youngest daughter, Maria, played cello in the family string quartet but actually loved the piano more. It was said that her performance of
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Indiana Jones and the Missing Donizetti Songs
Indiana Jones Jr. is probably one of cinema’s most famous characters. Portrayed by actor Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones Jr. is a professor of archaeology who finds numerous famous mythological relics, such as the Sankara Stones, the Ark of the Covenant,
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