The classical bilingual poet in Azerbaijani and Persian, Mirza Shafi Vazeh (1796-1852) was widely known as the “sage of Ganja,” the town of his birth. He initially studied Arabic and Persian but got expelled from school for questioning the arrogance

The traditional image of Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) as a simple Czech fellow with a flair for composing symphonic and chamber music has recently given way to “one of a complex figure writing works filled with hidden drama and secret programs.”

Victor Hugo’s 1829 poetry collection, Les Orientales, was inspired by the Greek War of Independence, where, between 1821 and 1829, the Greeks worked to overthrow the Ottoman Empire. Assisted by the British, the French, and the Russians, the Greeks overthrew

Charles-Valentin Alkan In our exploration of musical double takes—composers who wrote multiple sets of preludes and/or fugues in all major and minor keys—we have to honour one of the most enigmatic composers in the history of music. Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)

Mendelssohn was only 26 when he took up his appointment as Director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1835. Mendelssohn was internationally famous, and Schumann, who had just founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, was still struggling to find his way

The Russian–Italian–French composer Igor Markevitch (1912-1983) was a discovery of the choreographer-impresario Serge Diaghilev who commissioned a piano concerto from him when he was only 17. Markevitch had studied in Paris with Alfred Cortot for piano and with Nadia Boulanger

“A Gentleman Is Someone Who Knows How to Play the Banjo and Doesn’t” Considered the “greatest humorist the United States has produced,” Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835-1910), had an uneasy relationship with classical music. He wrote

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and his sister Fanny were born into a prosperous and prominent Jewish family. Extraordinarily talented, they grew up in a highly intellectual environment. Visitors to the salon organized by their parents included the poets Heinrich Heine and