For most in the world, it is Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov’s 1888 symphonic suite Scheherazade that brings the stories of The Arabian Nights tales (collected as One Thousand and One Nights folktales) to the musical stage. The framing device for the

Why is it that some musical works remain forever, while others slowly fade away? When we look back at the repertoire of Western classical music, what is most striking is how a relatively small selection of pieces has passed the

Every legendary music career has a “Year Zero”—that precise moment when a raw talent transforms into an international superstar. For George Frideric Handel, that year was 1707. He was just twenty-two years old, bursting with ambition, and ready to conquer

Few composers have generated as many myths and misunderstandings as Richard Wagner. Depending on who you ask, Wagner either invented modern music – or ruined it. The man redefined what opera was. He wrote some of the most harmonically radical

The history of classical music is filled with extraordinary lives – and, in some cases, extraordinarily unsettling deaths. In Part 2 of our series on strange composer deaths, we move into the twentieth century – an era shaped by modern

Classical music history is often viewed with reverence, but behind many of its most celebrated scores lie some very messy stories of real life – and death. Across the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, a surprising number of composers met

When you’re working from home and on deadline, not all classical music is created equal. Today, we’re looking at the best classical music to listen to while working from home, organised by the kind of work you’re trying to do.

Over the centuries, nocturnes – from the French word nocturnal – have been many things to composers: social entertainment, private confession, dreamscapes, and more. Nocturnes were initially written as outdoor serenades for aristocrats. But during the Romantic era, the nocturne’s