The love story between Robert and Clara Schumann is often regarded as one of the most romantic in classical music history. Happily for historians, many of their love letters survive. They document their inner thoughts and emotions, as well as
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Etudes from Planet Impossible March 7th, 2022Virtuosity is totally intoxicating. To me, there is nothing ambivalent in a performance of a piece of music of such complexity that only the most exceptional artists can tackle it. It’s like an athletic event of the most demanding physicality, -
On This Day
7 March: Maurice Ravel Was Born March 7th, 2022Maurice Ravel was born on 7 March 1875 in the Basque town Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées located in France, situated close to the Spanish border near Biarritz. It was the village where his Basque mother, Marie Ravel, née Delouart, was born and -
The Horrors of War: Composers and Picasso’s Guernica March 6th, 2022 Picasso’s 1937 oil painting Guernica is considered one of the ‘most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history.’ The work is enormous, standing 3.49 meters (11 ft 5 in) tall and 7.76 meters (25 ft 6 in) across. The picture -
Ukrainian Voices for Independence March 6th, 2022 On 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with 283 passengers and 15 crew on board was shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine. Everybody on that flight was killed by a surface-to-air-missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine. -
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6 March: Verdi’s La Traviata Was Premiered March 6th, 2022Marie Duplessis (1824-1847) was one of the most famous and sought-after French courtesans of her time. Born on 15 January 1824, her father wasn’t a particularly pleasant man, and early on sold his daughter to a variety of men. It -
Shanghai Sonatas: Hope Not Hate March 5th, 2022 The pianists Yuja Wang, Lang-Lang, and Ji Liu, cellist Yo Yo Ma, composers Chen Yi and Tan Dun, and pipa player Wu Man are household names in the world of music. There are an astounding number of Chinese people joining -
Prokofiev: Old Grandmother’s Tales March 5th, 2022 In 1914, Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, having entered there ten years earlier at age 14 as the youngest-ever student to enter the Conservatoire. His teachers were the finest in Russia: Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Lyadov. He -
On This Day
5 March: Heitor Villa-Lobos Was Born March 5th, 2022Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) has been described as “the single most significant creative figure in 20th century Brazilian art music.” His quest to develop musical compositions using indigenous Brazilian elements fueled a number of ethno-musicological excursions into the northeastern states of