Recently, in Sao Paulo, I lived through a perfect example of the surreal music scene in Brazil. It was a wintry Sunday afternoon. We went to Sala Sao Paulo, the concert hall home to the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra

If Joao Carlos Martins’s life has been pretty eventful, as I mentioned in my last article, the same can be said of his music, and the hallmark of his piano playing as well as of his conducting work is his

BBC Music Magazine asked ten critics to name the masterpieces they found most boring – a good trick to create buzz and drive forum discussions. How then do you qualify a boring masterpiece? For that matter, if the piece is

The opening scenes of the Irene Langemann’s documentary Die Martins-Passion (Martins’ Passion, 2004) are exquisitely adequate in presenting the life of Brazilian pianist Joao Carlos Martins: a grand piano is hoisted up dozens of floors outside an apartment building in

There is an illuminating – if difficult to verify – account that, during the French Revolution, the harpsichords of the Paris Conservatoire were dismantled and used for firewood. Such stories are, sadly, recurring themes in times of instability: proud intellectuals

Johann Sebastian Bach passed away 326 years ago, in July, so I thought what could have been better than starting my column here with the ‘Father of Music’, a composer with whom I have had a love-hate relationship. When I

Well, writing about the royal wedding – yes, the one with Will and Kate – seems a bit passé now, but I’m here to talk about the music, not the wedding itself. The day of the royal wedding, I was

I have been thinking more about the relationship between music and memory (which I first explored in my previous article) in two different areas, which has led me to two brief comments. Firstly, the role that forgetting plays in improvisation,