“Ideas lie everywhere like apples fallen and melting in the grass for lack of wayfaring strangers with an eye and a tongue for beauty, whether absurd, horrific, or genteel.” – Ray Bradbury, writer

In 1952, one year before his death, Sergei Prokofiev was financially broke. The Soviet government had condemned his Symphony No. 6 a couple of years earlier, and the composer was stripped of his reputation and of his state pension. Trying

Russian folklore and literature is incredibly rich in colorful tales of supernatural magic with decidedly down to earth morals. And the fairy tale of the “Golden Cockerel,” written by the great Alexander Pushkin in 1834 is no exception. For Rimsky-Korsakov,

“Today, much more than in the past, no one can hope to play well who does not use his fingers correctly,”C. P. E. Bach. From our earliest time at the piano, we are taught a “5-finger position”, which follows the

The legendary violinist Paweł Kochański maintained a lifelong personal friendship and working relationship with the composer Karol Szymanowski. Both were active in a movement known as “Young Poland,” which sought to promote modernist attitudes in Warsaw. Originating during a period

Following my earlier article about respect between the teacher, student and parent of the student, I would now like to celebrate the “virtuoso parent”.

The 1970s were not short of operatic talent. The Met and Covent Garden regularly boasted extraordinary singers such as Luciano Pavarotti, Carlo Bergonzi, Renata Scotto; even Birgit Nilsson was still active. But then Spain exported a string of singers of

In his memoirs—supposedly related to Solomon Volkov—Dmitri Shostakovich suggests, “Fear of death may be the most intense emotion of all. I sometimes think that there is no deeper feeling. The irony lies in the fact that under the influence of