As we celebrate the birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven on 17 December, we are once again reminded that the composer and thinker elevated musical expression to a new level of consciousness. From his early days, it was clear that Beethoven

Uruguayan-American composer Miguel del Águila (b. 1957) was commissioned by Buffalo Philharmonic principal cellist Roman Mekinulov for a cello concerto. Specifically a ‘concerto in tango form that would explore the less classical sound and technique of the cello’. Mr. Águila

In 1932, Mexican composer Carlos Chávez wrote incidental music for a staged performance of Jean Cocteau’s version of Sophicles’ Antigone. Cocteau had created the play a decade earlier and called it a ‘contraction’ of the original. The original, one of

Truth be told, I am almost apprehensive when watching or reading the morning news these days. Front pages and screens are full of yet more atrocities against humanity, and the death of innocent people from around the world is treated

Anna Bolena (Donizetti) MusicaViva Hong Kong City Hall, Concert Hall 8,9, 10 Dec 2023 Drawing inspiration from the shadowy corridors of power and passion, Donizetti’s wildly popular Anna Bolena shines a spotlight on the queen of England who met a

When Camille Saint-Saëns died of a heart attack on 16 December 1921 in Algiers, his body was taken back to Paris for a state funeral at the Madeleine. His career had spanned 70 years and five continents. He performed as

The early to mid-19th century was more than just a time of waltzes, it was also the polka and the galop that held the floor. The most important dancemen came from Vienna: Johann Strauss I and Joseph Lanner. A group

Clarinet superstar Martin Fröst has been described as having “a virtuosity and a musicianship unsurpassed by any clarinettist, perhaps any instrumentalist, in recent memory.” In 2014 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, one of the world’s highest musical honours,