What is it about Ludovico Einaudi and his music which provokes such strong reactions from so-called “serious” classical music people? His music is regularly criticized by these people for being “bland”, “unchallenging”, “unsophisticated”, or simply “bad”… Einaudi’s musical language is

The miracle of an aristocratic performance lies in its capacity to vaporize everything that surrounds it…Mark Mitchell, ‘Virtuosi’ (Indiana University Press, 2000) Earlier this year I was privileged to hear two performers who are the living embodiment of superlatives like

Social media has become a necessary way of reaching audiences. Today’s artists have to make the decision to ‘beat them or join them’ and take on Instagram and Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and blogs, and choose whether to manage them

If you don’t live in a museum and you love music, you may have heard of the music of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen – born 1952. If you do live in Bach’s time and only ever expose your ears to

“Gaspard has been a devil in coming, but that is only logical since it was he who is the author of the poems.” – Maurice Ravel Considered to be one of the most fearsomely difficult pieces in the pianist’s repertoire

Some of the greatest gems of music are written for small ensemble. But in chamber music you don’t have a conductor to tell you what to do, nor are you entirely on your own to make musical decisions. How does

This is the Italian composer Giovanni Sollima playing one of his creations. What is it about music that moves us so? Where else can you see a person react to anything like this, except through music? Look at how this

There’s a special poignancy to Schumann’s Geistervariationen (“Ghost Variations”). Dedicated to his beloved wife Clara, they were written just a few weeks before he was committed to a lunatic asylum at Endenich, and were the last piece of music he