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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9 March: Samuel Barber Was Born March 9th, 2022Samuel Osmond Barber, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on 9 March 1910, went on to become one of the most celebrated, honored and most frequently performed American composer of the 20th century. A critic writes, “Probably no other American composer -
Joachim Raff March 8th, 2022 “The Pressure Which Liszt Has Put On My Personality Is Insufferable” In his lifetime the composer and teacher Joachim Raff (1822-1882) was greatly celebrated and admired. His music was valued, with some reservations, by Mendelssohn, Liszt, von Bülow, and Clara -
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8 March: Mark Padmore Was Born March 8th, 2022Tenor Mark Padmore, born in London on 8 March 1961, came of age singing in choirs oriented toward Renaissance and Baroque music, and as a soloist he specialized in Baroque opera and choral music. Padmore grew up in Canterbury, and -
Piano Practice
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, -
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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. -
On This Day
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