Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein (1762-1823) was Beethoven’s first great patron in Bonn. Originally he hailed from Vienna, and after receiving the knighthood of the Order by its Grand Master Archduke Maximilian Francis of Austria, he was sent on

It might not be a complete surprise, but Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn really didn’t like each other! Mendelssohn first heard a Liszt performance at a concert in Paris in 1825. In his opinion “Liszt had many fingers but few

A common nature drama in the equatorial region of Africa, possibly in what is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, unleashed a global pandemic that is still one of the world’s most serious public health challenges. A troop

Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze (1925–1991) started his music studies in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, studying the cello with a private tutor and then continued onto the Tbilisi State Conservatory. He completed his studies in Moscow at the Moscow

Science tells us, that we all got a lot of common with pigs. Since we are both mammals, we certainly share a good amount of genetic material, and we are both susceptible to catch the flu. Pigs are unusual in

The horn has a long history, dating from the first time one of our ancestors took a cow horn and, holding it to his lips, found it could make a sound. Moving on from the simple cow horn to the

King Philip V ruled Spain from 1 November 1700 until his son Ferdinand VI eventually succeeded him in 1746. Historians have not been kind to his legacy, suggesting that he only marginally advanced the government of his predecessors and that

In September 2012, health officials in Saudi Arabia reported a mystery illness. Patients developed severe respiratory illness with symptoms of fever, cough and shortness of breath. Alarmingly, 3 to 4 out of every 10 patients died. It was originally assumed