“Memoirs of an Amnesiac” When eccentricity and classical music are used in the same sentence, Erik Satie (1866-1925) immediately comes to mind. Irreverent, disrespectful, contemptuous of tradition, forcefully direct and brutally honest, Satie famously wrote underneath his self-portrait, “I have

‘I read a lot of interviews and find people don’t ever say anything,’ I am told. ‘I just think that to make something worth reading there’s got to be something more than ‘Opera’s great. I love it, and everything’s going

Pianist, Scholar and Composer When Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev (1856-1915) attended the funeral of his student Alexander Scriabin in 1915, he caught a rather severe flu. Instead of taking proper medicine and rest, he continued to resist the virus and persisted

Sophie Dartigalongue personifies the fact that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The bassoon often becomes the butt of many of the orchestra’s jokes, and the comical contrabassoon only sees a double serving of this teasing, but the

Agonies and Ecstasy! What happens when new neural connections within your brain break down the boundaries that normally exist between the senses? For one, hearing a particular musical note might cause you to see a particular color, or you may

Bach… on the Bass? DaXun Zhang playing what he wants to play Making an appearance at the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival is bassist DaXun Zhang. After completing his studies at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, he moved to America,

I can empathise with Roxanna Panufnik. She, too, is a morning person. ‘Anything difficult that I have to do I schedule for Monday morning; it’s when I’m at my complete and utter freshest!’ I catch her after a stint of

The Light From Heaven ‘Tis the season for new choral music recordings for Christmas, and, newly arrived is Lux de caelo, The Light From Heaven, from the Choir of Clare College Cambridge, directed by Graham Ross.