Why is chess such a popular game? For one, this ancient game of strategy is easy to learn but almost impossible to master. No matter how far you progress, chess reveals ever-new subtleties and intricacies of increasing complexity. It is

Welcome on board! Let’s continue our musical journey in the second largest metropolitan area in South America and the capital of Argentina – Buenos Aires. I talked of the “big four” in the Golden Age of tango music between the

Alex Cobbe’s piano collection at Hatchlands Park has one massive square piano that was immensely practical to its two composer owners. How do composers compose? We’re familiar with the images from movies, the composer with one hand on the keyboard

“Jan Ladislav Dussek and Sophia Giustina Corri” As soon as the pianist and composer Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) left his native Bohemia for Paris, his fortunes increased manifold. He performed for Marie Antoinette and was a regular guest at the

The Alex Cobbe Collection of composer’s pianos is a collection that can give us a feeling for how pianos developed, often in response to the demands of composers. The square piano, called that despite the fact that they’re actually rectangles,

For Erik Satie, dance, theatre and cabaret music run as virtually continuous threads throughout his life. And every single composition adheres to the virtues of his musical craft; simplicity, brevity and precision. Many of Satie’s early compositional efforts rely on

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the undisputed pop star of the 18th century! Numerous composers and musicians arranged his music, and profited handsomely from this indirect association with a superstar. But Mozart himself was also a rather active arranger of works

The Alex Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, near Guilford, Surry, holds an interesting variety of pianos, most with composer connections. When we look at a composer’s piano, for the most part, we can only imagine what works were created on it.