The Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra recently performed a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City under the baton of Maestro Daniel Barenboim — nine programs devoted to the nine Bruckner symphonies, which on two evenings were preceded by

The two big song cycles the Gurre-Lieder and the Book of the Hanging Gardens are actually even larger than normal. Gurre-Lieder is actually a cantata. The title means “Songs of Gurre,” referring to Gurre Castle in Denmark and the songs

If you live and work in the Asia-Pacific region you surely are familiar with THAAD. The acronym actually stands for “Terminal High Altitude Area Defense,” and represents an anti-ballistic missile system designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles. The missile carries

The Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels hosted a rather special performance on 25 August 1830. William I, Prince of Orange and King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg was celebrating the 15th year of his reign, and

We don’t generally think of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) as a song composer but he wrote them from his earliest days as a composer in the early 1890s until the early 1930s. The poets that he set were some of the

Did you ever wonder why the Chinese character for Music (“樂”) shares the exact same character for happiness (“樂”), and why the Chinese character for medicine (“藥”) is simply the same character with the symbol for plants placed on top?

In his delicately titled, Ariettes oubliées (Forgotten Little Songs), Claude Debussy (1862-1918) took the poetry of Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) and created a song cycle to match the stylistic subtleties of his poems. Debussy met the older poet via his mother-in-law.

The project was delayed by 7 years, and overran its projected budget by 700 Million Euros! But finally, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg—tenderly referred to as “Elphie” has landed! Placing a wave of glass on top of several refurbished old harbor