Encouraging people to engage with and listen to classical music is an ongoing preoccupation for musicians, concert promoters, venue managers, critics and others. The perennial anxiety is that classical music is ‘dying’ (it’s not) and that it needs to attract

Schubert’s first set of Impromptus (D899) are amongst my most favourite pieces of piano music, ever since my mother, who admired the pianist Alfred Brendel, bought me the score of the Impromptus and Moments Musicaux after hearing Brendel perform them

As a classical musician, we are often faced (in more normal times, at least) with the dilemma of having too many notes to learn and not enough time to learn them in. Concerts and opportunities come in at the last

If there is one opera I love above all others, it has to be Georges Bizet’s Carmen. It contains beautiful and ethnic melodies, plenty of action and great drama. But the reason I personally rate it above others in the

Some years ago, when I was working on two of Rachmaninoff’s Opus 33 Etudes-Tableaux for a performance diploma, I posted on Facebook a screen shot of a passage which was giving me some issues and asked if anyone had some

Ottavia’s Torment (Christa Ludwig) I never had the privilege of experiencing Christa Ludwig perform live. But I saw her year after year in the audience of the Salzburg Festival. Statuesque, elegant, attractive and humble, this true operatic diva was content

Musical quotation is the art of integrating one’s musical words and sentences into another one’s work. It is quite similar to how quoting works in spoken languages, but differs in the capacity in which the quote can adapt and almost

Few people would dispute that the last year has been difficult. Many of us have lived under extraordinary restrictions for months, unable to see family and friends. Largely confined to our homes, we have had to adapt to new ways