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Encouraging evaluation, reflection and self-critique in practicing
Play always as if the presence of a master– Robert Schumann The ability to self-critique, evaluate and reflect on one’s playing during practicing is a crucial skill for musicians, and is a component of the skillset of “deliberate practice”, which
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Test your Grade 5 Theory
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Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1
Premiered Today in 1912
Sergei Prokofiev was still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when he took the stage on 7 August 1912 to premier his 1st Piano Concerto. Since it was his first appearance with an orchestra, and expecting a rather large
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The Music Typewriter of Charles Spiro
When Joseph Haydn was putting the finishing touches on a symphony during the later stages of his career, he dejectedly wrote. “The piece on which I am now working would have been already finished if it were not that my
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Why Perform?
The psychological and emotional reasons why musicians perform and why we feel a need to connect and communicate with audiences is a broad and complex subject. For many musicians, performing is their raison d’être – the need, the will to
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Osvaldo Golijov: Azul
Premiered Today in 2006
What do you get if one of classical music’s most beloved performers teams up with one of today’s most popular composers? It really is a no brainer, as Azul (the title means blue in Spanish) combines the collective imagination of
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Rossini: Guillaume Tell
Premiered Today in 1829
Rossini’s last opera, the four-act Guillaume Tell, with a composite French libretto based on Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, was produced at the Paris Opéra on 3 August 1829. However, within three performances the opera’s length of roughly four hours and
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A special relationship: pianists and their composers
Say “Glenn Gould”, and most people will respond with “Bach”, such is the late great Canadian pianist’s special relationship with the music of J S Bach, and specifically the Goldberg Variations, which Gould recorded at the beginning and the end
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