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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The Musician’s Honesty July 18th, 2021 A great deal is said and written about “integrity” and “honesty” in musical performance. For most people, this means respecting the score by following the composer’s markings and attempting, as far as possible, to interpret the composer’s intentions in the -
Forgotten Cellists: Pál Hermann July 17th, 2021 Let Forbidden Music Sound Again Another cellist and composer whose name we should not forget is Pál Hermann. Born into a middle-class family in Budapest, Hungary in March of 1902, he showed great talent and audacity even as a child. - Wait Until the End: Haydn’s Joke Quartet July 17th, 2021 As the ‘Father of the String Quartet,’ Haydn did a great deal to standardize the quartet form that we love so well. And yet, while giving him this comfortable title, we always have to recognize his sense of humour in
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Enchanted by Dante Alighieri July 16th, 2021 Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” contains 14, 233 lines of text divided into three main sections, “Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.” As we might well imagine, there isn’t much music in Hell. It reverberates with “sighs, screams and lamentations, and different tongues -
Great Performers: Sir András Schiff July 15th, 2021 A consummate musician, with a ferocious intellect, András Schiff is one of the greatest pianists of our time – indeed of all time – acclaimed in particular for his interpretations of the keyboard music of J.S. Bach and the Viennese - The Transfigured Night
Richard Dehmel, Arnold Schoenberg and Oskar Fried July 14th, 2021In his breakthrough instrumental piece, written in 1899 and given its premiere in 1902, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) set aside all the vocal music he’d been writing to produce a work of true beauty. Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) was based on - Albinoni and Bach
“What I Have Achieved by Industry Anyone Else Can Also Achieve” July 13th, 2021Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1750) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) were contemporaries, but they never actually met. While Albinoni was at home on various Italian and international operatic stages, Bach never traveled far away from his native community in North-Germany. We do -
Perceiving Music July 12th, 2021 This article addresses the elephant in the room; music genres. And questions the whole concept of labelling art and music. For starters, let’s stop talking about classical music, jazz music, popular music, folk music, and let’s try to perceive music,
