Explore

archive-post-image
Why Writing a First Symphony Terrified Even the Greatest Composers
Writing a first symphony has never been a casual undertaking. Throughout the history of classical music, the symphony has stood as the ultimate achievement: a genre tied to ambition, talent, and legitimacy, leading to inevitable comparisons to the past. A
Read more
archive-post-image
The Best Concertmaster Solos in Classical Music History
The role of the concertmaster has been continually evolving for over three centuries. Nowadays, a concertmaster’s role is to sit at the front of the first violin section, play solos, and communicate feedback from the string section to the conductor
Read more
archive-post-image
Cho-Panic Attack!
Credit: NPR Classical on Facebook
Read more
archive-post-image
If You Love Film Music, Start With These Classical Masterpieces
If you love film music, you probably love classical music – even if you don’t know it yet. The soaring strings, the ominous brass, the sparkling harp glissandos, the pounding rhythms accompanying war scenes… None of these were invented in
Read more
archive-post-image
10 Best Short Works by the Great Composers
Some masterpieces reshape music history over the course of an hour. Others can do it in a few minutes. The greatest composers have an uncanny ability to compress entire worlds into small spaces: a prelude that feels like a cathedral,
Read more
archive-post-image
The Best 60 Minutes of Mozart
Mozart’s music is often described as light, frothy, effortless, elegant, or even decorative. That lightweight reputation does him a disservice. Beneath the beauty lies one of the sharpest dramatic minds in music history: a composer inspired by human psychology, social
Read more
archive-post-image
An Americana Review
As we come up on the American national holiday of the 4th of July, we’ve been reflecting on the vast number of pieces of music with ‘America’ or ‘American’ in the title. Visitors to the US are always astonished at
Read more
archive-post-image
The 2026 La Maestra Competition
Breaking the Baton Ceiling: Part 2
The Philharmonie de Paris and the Paris Mozart Orchestra joined forces in 2019 to create an International Competition for Women Conductors. The La Maestra Competition and Academy aims to give greater visibility to women conductors and support them during the
Read more