Museums aren’t always interesting or exciting places to visit. Some are boring, some are too informative, some simply don’t appeal to us. Stepping into the Pianola Museum in Amsterdam with an exceptionally ordinary entrance, I didn’t expect much, but it

“amazing skill, personality and vigor” – Harold C Schonberg Percy Grainger (1882-1961), Australian pianist, composer and noted eccentric, is most famous for ‘Country Gardens’, his transcription of an English folksong, with its frolicking rustic lilt. But Grainger was much more

A peaceful ostinato figure, grounded and tranquil, opens the work. After a few bars, a serenely beautiful yet simple melody is heard in the treble which melts into a series of increasingly complex variations, the initial theme dissolving into trills

For over three centuries, Bach’s music has fascinated both musicians, composers and performers, and listeners. It seems like his music never ages and finds context in each century, generation after generation. Musicians from all genres—from classical to popular music—learn from

What is Ravel’s La Valse about? Is it a portrait of the disintegration of decadent pre-First War Europe, the dying embers of the Belle Epoque? Or simply a rollicking dance, a sensuous hommage to the Viennese Waltz?

Familiar to performers, piano students and audiences alike, Mozart’s Fantasy in D minor is one of his most popular and much-loved works, and it offers intriguing insights not only into his piano music but also his compositional output in general.

To coincide with the bicentenary of Queen Victoria’s birth, this year’s BBC Proms, the world’s largest classical music festival, will include a performance on a beautifully decorated gilded Erard piano. Many illustrious pianists played Erard instruments, including Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn

Richard Farrell (1926-1958) was, literally, one of those musical geniuses who came out of nowhere. Well, not really nowhere, but certainly far away from the usual centers of musical supply. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, and spending most of his