Although it has an older meaning, when we think of the “nocturne” we think of Frederic Chopin. He took his inspiration from the Irish composer John Field whose works were the first to take the title to the piano. A

Joseph Stalin was not a particularly nice man! Once he had consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930’s, he ruthlessly eliminated any opposition. That meant banishing “counter-revolutionary infiltrators” to the Gulag labour camps, deported nonconformists to the furthest regions of the

We associate Wagner with gloriously large orchestral sounds, with complex stories, and magnificent singing. It’s interesting, however, when we hear Wagner’s operatic writing from the viewpoint of the keyboard and in this recording by French pianist Wilhem Latchoumia, he shapes

When we think of a musical piece called a ‘Prelude,’ we think of the monumental series of Preludes and Fugues by J.S. Bach, or, more adventurously, Chopin’s 1838 series of 24 Preludes, Op. 28. When the French composer Claude Debussy

Playing an audition for Johannes Brahms, who single-handedly controlled much of Vienna’s musical establishment—must have been an unbelievably frightening experience. Just ask Hans Rott, who showed his symphony to the old master in 1880. Rott was told, “you have no

Producing a doctoral thesis in the humanities, especially when it involved archival research, used to be a lot of work. It frequently involved lengthy travel from library to library in order to research original materials related to the subject at

Johann Sebastian Bach started his work on The Art of the Fugue, one of the most celebrated and extensively studied collection of contrapuntal movements, in 1743. At the time of his death, on 28 July 1750, the collection remained unfinished

Emperor Napoleon I of France was small in stature, reaching a mere 157 centimeters in height. It is commonly assumed that he compensated for his lack of height by aggressively seeking out power, war and conquest. “Short man syndrome,” which