British composer George Lloyd had one of the most striking biographies of any classical musician of the twentieth century. He began his career as a promising up-and-coming English composer. But when Britain went to war in 1939, Lloyd put that

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) is often painted as the polite and well-mannered Romantic. We certainly know him as the composer of fairy wings, sparkling scherzos, and elegant melodies. But as soon as you spend a little time at the piano with

Nineteenth-century piano giant Jan Paderewski called her “the most wonderful musician in the world.” Helen Keller called her “the most accomplished deaf and blind person in the world.” She was, to our knowledge, the first blind-deaf person to make a

Robert Schumann, one of the quintessential composers of the Romantic era, is renowned for his deeply expressive piano music, lieder, and orchestral works that embody the emotional intensity, poetic sensibility, and structural innovation of the 19th century. His compositions are

In classical music, it’s rare enough for one composer to become famous, let alone an entire family. However, there have been a handful of families over the past few centuries who together have had major impacts on the art. Today,

Listening to 20th-century music can be hard work. For audiences raised on tonal harmony, flowing melodies, and familiar formal signposts, the sounds of modernism often arrive without warning. Dense dissonance, fragmented gestures, and violent contrast seemingly confront the listener, leading

What happens when the greatest English composers sit down for a chat in front of a microphone? The answer: expressions of dry British wit, surprising candour, and a long list of insights into the wider world of classical music. In

Franz Liszt spent several years creating piano versions of Franz Schubert’s songs. Crafted between 1833 and 1846, he made around fifty-six transcriptions that carefully kept many details of the original music. By removing the words, these pieces become purely instrumental.