Blogs

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A Portrait of the Young Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould’s iconic stature as one of the great if not the greatest pianists has not diminished since he passed in 1982 shortly after his 50th birthday. Many of us know him for his recordings of Bach, especially the Goldberg
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The Lost Now Found
Peter Arnold Heise’s String Quartets
Peter Arnold Heise (1830–1879) was an active composer in mid–19th-century Denmark. A student of A.P. Berggren, who was also the teacher of Niels W. Gade (1817–1890), the leading Danish musician of the day, Heise started his composing career at age
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Jane Stirling: Why Did This Piano Student Pay for Chopin’s Funeral?
Jane Stirling – Frédéric Chopin’s student, patroness, caretaker, manager, and legacy-builder – has always lived in the shadows of her piano teacher. And yet she was an integral part of Chopin’s later life and one of the reasons why his
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The Dwarf of Death
Schubert’s Der Zwerg
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) wrote over 600 vocal works, one of the oddest and yet most powerful of which is a ballad about a Queen, her dwarf, and a fatal encounter. The story opens in the middle of the night: we
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Celebrating the Piano and Those Who Play It
The 25th Oxford Piano Festival
For its 25th year, the Oxford Piano Festival has put together a splendid array of world-class pianists, vibrant, varied programmes, and inspirational teaching. Founded by the renowned pianist and conductor Marios Papadopoulos in 1998, and hosted by the Oxford Philharmonic
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Brazilian First Conductor and First Choro Composer
Chiquinha Gonzaga (1847-1935)
Francisca Edwiges Neves Gonzaga (1847-1935), known as Chiquinha Gonzaga, is considered one of the most important female figures in Brazilian music history. She was a feminist and abolitionist, and she was the first of many things: the first Choro composer,
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Costumes for Paris Opera
Jacques Drésa’s Designs
The Gallica digital library at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is one of the great research treasuries of the world. It was established in 1997 and now holds more than 10 million documents accessible online: books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, cartoons,
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Music of the Past and the Future
Dohnányi’s Sextet in C Major, Op. 37
As a solo pianist, Ernő Dohnányi (1877–1960) was usually compared to Liszt and was seen as the successor to that 19th-century virtuoso. As a composer of chamber music, however, he was usually associated with following the Brahmsian tradition. As a
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