While Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss have received the highest accolades in the historiography of classical music, the contemporary musical world of Paul Wittgenstein was numerously populated by a host of highly talented composers and performers. And a commission from

The American composer Henry Cowell took a mid-18th century musical style and brought it forward to the modern world in his set of 18 Hymn and Fuguing Tunes, written between 1943 and 1964. A fuguing tune (not to be confused

The Polish pianist Theodore Leschetizky (1830-1915) gave his public debut at age 9. He performed a Concertino by Czerny in the city of Lemberg, with the orchestra directed by Franz Xaver Mozart, the youngest surviving son of Wolfgang Amadeus. After

The new city of the new century, Beijing has grasped the future and has taken its history with it. Its literary background, its Forbidden City, its love for its traditions, and its desire to lead the future give us a

The undisputed masterwork to emerge from the Wittgenstein commissions was the Concerto pour la main gauche by Maurice Ravel. Yet the collaboration between composer and interpreter was decidedly acrimonious. Composed between 1929 and 1930, Ravel was intrigued by the challenge

Starting in 1848, Anton Rubinstein was in great shape musically. He had an attentive patron in the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, sister-in-law to Tsar Nicholas I. In addition to his teaching and performing careers, he also composed 3 symphonies, 5

Completed in April 1893, the 18 Morceaux, Op. 72 were Tchaikovsky’s last works for solo piano. Putting together the relevant musical materials for a series of piano pieces he told his brother, “in order to earn some money, I will

More so than any other city in China, Hong Kong has long been a symbol of the exotic other. As an English colony, it was a good place for the Westerner to visit because you knew that someone, somewhere would