For a good number of commentators and experts, Carlos Kleiber, born on 3 July 1930 in Berlin, is regarded as among the greatest conductors of all time. “His gifts are musical and dramatic insight, analytical abilities, technique, and his methods

Ludwig van Beethoven has gone down in classical music history as a great, defiant, wild-haired composer genius. However, being a genius doesn’t always pay the bills. So throughout his life, Beethoven often took on piano students to supplement his income…at

Christoph Willibald Gluck was born on 2 July 1714 in Erasbach, near Berching, in Upper Palatinate. His father Alexander “was an enterprising and energetic man, who was in charge of the forestry and the toll of several wealthy monasteries.” Alexander

One of the most prevalent musical genres for over 500 years, the motet has virtually vanished from the performing repertoire. Throughout history, the motet changed with every new musical period. Beginning around 1220, the motet was a secular polyphonic composition

During the mid-1920s, Béla Bartók experienced a compositional fork in the road. His violin sonatas had represented him as a musician on the international stage, while the “Dance Suite” was a national composition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the unification

Czech composer Vítězslav Novák (1870–1949) initially studied law at Prague University before taking up music as a student of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) at the Prague Conservatory. His early interest was folk songs, particularly from the Slovak and Moravian areas, and

Born in Helsinki, Finland on 10 June 1958 to a businessman father and a homemaker mother, Esa-Pekka Salonen knew from an early age that music was his destiny. His mother tried to get him to play the piano at four,

The American lyric baritone Thomas Walter Hampson has appeared in all the major opera houses and concert halls around the world, and he has made well over 170 recordings. His enormous operatic repertoire spans more than 80 roles, and as