A while ago, I read an interesting story about the evolution of the performance dress code for musicians. It stated that the tradition of black-tie formal wear in classical music harks back to the Victorian era, where manservants and butlers

7 December 2020: Mozart, Britten This concert will be live streamed on the Wigmore Hall website in HD, and all concerts in the Autumn Series will be available on demand for 30 days after the date of the concert. This

Unlike others, I often find it difficult to recall my first encounter with a certain composer. So, for Beethoven, it could have been his Für Elise, Symphony No.5 (ta-ta-ta duh) or something else – I don’t know. But anyways, as

How often a listener returning from a recital by an important performer remains unsatisfied. Not because of the imperfection of the artist’s playing but because of lack of penetration into the composer’s ideas – ideas that the amateur has cultivated

Chopin was inspired by the antics of a small dog chasing its tail to write his Waltz No. 6 in D-Flat Major, Op. 64, No. 1. His publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, added a title on it to let people know

The saying goes this way, quality over quantity. But what if the saying was: quantity creates quality? What if instead of focusing on one or the other, one would lead to the other? In order to grow, a composer —

Composers, especially from the Romantic period onward, have sought to evoke places, real or imagined, in their music – from the awe-inspiring grandeur of the Alps in Liszt‘s Vallée d’Obermann to Debussy‘s shimmering pagodas, the heady sounds, scents and scenes

We did a survey of Beethoven monuments and it turns out that there are basically two kinds. The most traditional is Beethoven in full glower, standing or sitting and thinking of things far beyond the knowledge of mere mortals. The