Although our knowledge of Nordic composers seems now to circle around Nielsen, Grieg, and Sibelius, the latter two who trained in the German and Austrian tradition, there were also other composers, such as the Finnish composer Selim Palmgren (1878-1951), who
My music
The Cretan princess Ariadne appears across a number of the Greek myths. She first appears as the daughter of King Minos of Crete and his wife Pasiphaë, mother of the Minotaur. She helped Theseus escape the yearly sacrifice of 7
At the turn of the 20th century and past the end of WWI, Paris was the bright and shining light of culture for the world. Everything happened in Paris – new music, new art, new dances, new everything. Cafés were
The French composer Louis Vierne (1870-1937) had a life of great potential that was thwarted by circumstances. He was born nearly blind and his musical abilities were developed at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for the Young
The country gentleman as composer sounds like the stuff of romance novels, but for Right Honourable Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, later 14th Baron Berners in the peerage of England, and a baronet, that was his life. On the surface a
Bulgaria’s history of occupation by the Thracians, the Slavs, and the Proto-Bulgarians has given them a music background unlike any other in Europe. One of the relics of these old civilizations is the music where an asymmetry and unfamiliar rhythmic
From its very beginning, Erich Korngold’s light symphonic suite Baby Serenade shows us the chaos and celebration that a new baby can bring. Written in 1928, it was a very definite musical response to the birth of either young Ernest
Not quite an opera, the intermezzo Il segreto di Susanna, The Secret of Susanna, presents what appears to be a classic case of the jealous husband and the invisible lover… or does it? In the hands of the Italian composer