In classical music, the Romantic Era lasted from around 1810 to around 1910. That century gave us some of the most famous symphonies in the repertoire. Nineteenth-century composers like Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvořák, Schubert, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and others elevated the symphony
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Presenting the Possibilities: The Life of VP Music Production Queenie Li May 13th, 2022 Hong Kong–born Queenie Li has taken her music training forward into a field that very few venture into with such success. She is VP of Music Production for 14th Street Music in Los Angeles, working on the post-production end for -
The Dead Are Sad Enough
Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin May 12th, 2022The Great War, as World War I was known at the time, inspired many works of music, often set to poetry. Maurice Ravel took inspiration from his many dead friends to create a piano work, Le tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917), -
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12 May: Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore Was Premiered May 12th, 2022L’Elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) is one of the most beloved of all Donizetti’s operas. It combines touching romance and hilarious comedy with beautiful music. Donizetti composed the opera in a six-week period, and it went into rehearsal around -
The Post-Covid Opera May 11th, 2022 We were thinking about what post-COVID opera might be like. Can we really go back to operas with parties with women coughing themselves to death in the corner (La Traviata), with false doctors (any number of operas from 1730 forward)? -
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11 May: Busoni’s Turandot Was Premiered May 11th, 2022Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) famously claimed that Schiller’s translation of Carlo Gozzi’s dramatic fairy-tale Turandot in conjunction with Carl Maria von Weber’s incidental music “ruined a masterpiece of Italian literature.” Gozzi’s play, supposedly based on a Persian story from the collection -
Women Composers You Should Know V May 10th, 2022 In the 19th century, we have women composers with famous brothers, such as Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847) and women composers from famous musical families, such as Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) and Maria Malibran (1808-1836). In Clara Schumann (1819-1896), we have woman composer -
On This Day
10 May: Gabriela Montero Was Born May 10th, 2022Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, born on 10 May 1970, has garnered critical acclaim and a devoted following on the world stage for her visionary interpretations and unique compositional gift. She has come to be known in particular for her real-time -
Fine-Tuning Vladimir Horowitz
Franz Mohr May 9th, 2022One very special person has played more in Carnegie Hall than all pianist superstars put together. His name was Franz Mohr, and he was the piano tuner to the stars. You see, he was the chief concert technician for Steinway