Iván Erőd was born the son of a businessman in Budapest in 1936 amidst the brewing catastrophe of World War II. In fact, his brother and his grandparents were murdered in Buchenwald and Auschwitz in 1944, and his parents barely

Museums aren’t always interesting or exciting places to visit. Some are boring, some are too informative, some simply don’t appeal to us. Stepping into the Pianola Museum in Amsterdam with an exceptionally ordinary entrance, I didn’t expect much, but it

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.” The more I compose and create, the more I agree with this well-known Picasso quote—or Stravinsky for the same matter, as the ambiguity on the ownership persists. Actually, thanks to Cage and his writings,

Classical music has an image problem. Depending on where you hail from in the western world, society as a generalised group will probably have a fairly stark concept of this artistic medium we all hold dear.

Piano playing shouldn’t be a competitive activity, yet players are regularly pitted against one another in international music competitions. Alongside this is an ongoing argument about what are the hardest pieces in the pianist’s repertoire.

The key point raised in part-one of this article for musicians wanting to make it in the music worlds is to never give up. Many other salient points can be added to your list of requirements to maintain a lifelong

“amazing skill, personality and vigor” – Harold C Schonberg Percy Grainger (1882-1961), Australian pianist, composer and noted eccentric, is most famous for ‘Country Gardens’, his transcription of an English folksong, with its frolicking rustic lilt. But Grainger was much more

Eleven days (June 17th to 27th) of complete immersion in the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition, enduring palm-sweating, heart-racing, and adrenalin-pumping conditions, while witnessing an array of ultra demanding repertoire mastered by especially fine musicians all day – that is my