You close the door to the practice room behind you. You are alone with your instrument. You take it out of the case, lift it up and… now what? Should I start with some scales? What was that bit that

On 15 January 1622, one of the greatest writers in the French language was baptized in Paris. His name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, but everybody immediately recognizes him by his stage name Molière. It is thought that Molière adopted his stage

Playground without a bully, or plane without a pilot? Depending on the situation, eliminating one element of the equation can bring either joy or disaster. Where do conductors sit along this spectrum? While many orchestral musicians joke about the ineptitude

Don’t laugh, but my favorite quote on music is spoken by Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter series. Listening to the school orchestra he says, “Ah, Music… a magic beyond all

Danish composer and pianist Friedrich Kuhlau (1786 –1832) was one of the key figures of the Danish Golden Age, and his music represented Danish romanticism. Most of his compositions were either for the flute or piano and to this day,

How much do we really know about classical music? I have recently read about how success happens to only a very small number of people. How everything that is successful is a tiny portion of the whole. How the law

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2022 was “characterized by strength, vitality, and growth, underpinned by the dynamism of the tiger.” It was a year designated as yang, the active principle of the universe in ancient Chinese philosophy. As such, in

We should never forget that performing artists are essentially entertainers. And one of the biggest entertainers of his time was described as follows by the British magazine Belgravia in 1880: “In the years 1847 the management of the Drury Lane