I have recently been listening to a lot of Frédéric Chopin’s music, and I am constantly in awe of the unbelievable and imaginative sound world he was able to create. It is a world of incredible passion and of poetry,

Musicians’ Communicating Tricks During Performance When you glance out at an orchestra during a concert, what do you see? Bows moving up and down in (hopefully) perfect unison? Eyes moving between music stand and conductor? Wind players breathing and moving

Fanfares are a way of stating the obvious: a short ceremonial tune or a flourish on trumpets or brass instruments to introduce something or someone important. What happens when the fanfare becomes something else? Tobias Picker: Old and Lost Rivers

We were looking at a book of musical quotations the other day and found some things that make one so glad to have a sense of perspective. Here, John Gregory, writing in 1766 in his A Comparative View of the

A Musician’s View on the Differences Between Recording Music and Performing in a Live Concert Recordings are, by nature, performances in quite an unnatural environment. Microphones squat beneath you and leer over your shoulders, wires and cables snake around the

For audience members, it’s difficult to imagine musicians anywhere other than on the stage wearing their tails or long gowns, looking serious, playing music with utmost concentration. I remember walking to my car after an evening concert, in my lumpy,

I am always fascinated with the sounds of Latin American music, and as a pianist, I enjoy discovering more works from Latin America. We have explored four-hand piano music by Méndez, Guastavino, Villa-Lobos and Lacerda last time. Let’s continue to

The previous article (Einaudi: The Saviour of Classical Music) was a provocation designed to explore the relationship of a new generation of people to a flourishing genre of music based around relaxing solo piano. Because of the requirements of word