You know that Prokofiev wrote some of the greatest music ever. You know that his ballet scores have become some of the most performed dance music ever; on and off stage. You know that he was a child prodigy. You

Argentine-born Pianist Martha Argerich Liszt: Funerailles I’ve been fortunate to hear Argentine-born pianist Martha Argerich live in concert in London twice in recent years, first in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto and then in Schumann’s Piano Concerto. On both occasions I

Louis Gottschalk & Cuba by Antonio Iturrioz “Give me your hand, my child; I predict that you will become the king of pianists.” So said Frédéric Chopin to American pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, after hearing him perform at

“Every day of my life that I am allowed to play Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and the music of our own time too……this, to me, is a gift from somewhere. If heaven existed, it’s heaven.” – Mitsuko Uchida Slightly built and

Indie classical—as I define it—is a sub-genre of contemporary classical music. Born in the early 2010s, it is slowly evolving from a niche genre to a contemporary musical trend. Its unofficial founders—including the German composer and pianist Nils Frahm—have gone

The expression “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” does a great disservice to teachers everywhere. In the sphere of music, teaching is often regarded as a “second best” option for those who have trained as performers, yet for

The diabolical pianist—that’s what I called Jon Kimura Parker in 2013. During the last six years Parker has become a force in many genres of music, and, as an entrepreneur, he has blossomed into what one can only call a

You might think that this is a crazy question. To quote Wikipedia, Hip Hop is a “stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted”. That doesn’t sound like classical music does it? Of