We heard, the other day, a new disc by Aldo Chiccolini, simply entitled 13 Waltzes and it got us thinking about the waltz. The waltz was one of several similar dances that came out of southern Germany, Bavaria and Austria

It’s always a surprise when Pop and Classical music overlap. We already looked at Pop singers taking on the Classical repertoire, often with a lamentable result. But, if we look at the influence moving in the other direction, where Pop

Richard Strauss first met Francesca Gaetana Cosima Liszt-Bülow Wagner in March 1889. Of all his acquaintances and friendships during this period of his life, this one was to have the most important consequences for his immediate future. Alexander Ritter had

In the Romantic era, the Fairy was a lovely creature – rarely seen but with sometimes beneficial charms. In no work was Fairy music better expressed than by Mendelssohn in his incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In

After grooming his conducting career under Hans von Bülow in Meiningen between October 1885 and April 1886, Richard Strauss was offered the post as third conductor at the Munich Hofoper. Before he took up his post in Munich, Strauss —

In 1950, singer Theresa Brewer had a top 10 hit with ‘Music! Music! Music!,’ also known as ‘Put Another Nickel In’ and for one classical composer the song was so prevalent and so annoying that he turned into a piece

There can be no doubt that Lotti Speyer had seriously enflamed the romantic passions of the young Richard Strauss. After a short ten days at the little spa of Heilbrunn, however, the two lovebirds had to return to their respective

The murderous composer lies abed, dreaming fevered dreams about the love that he lost and the evils that he did….or was it all just an opium-induced nightmare? In his 1830 work, the French composer Hector Berlioz wrote a symphony that