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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Classical Music Beyond the Concert Stage: Ten Classical Pieces Used in Commercials May 17th, 2021 Have you ever heard any advertisement music on the radio and TV that sounds familiar to you? A lot of them are excerpts or adaptations from classical music. I am going to share with you ten pieces that have been -
Encouraging Engagement With Classical Music May 16th, 2021 Encouraging people to engage with and listen to classical music is an ongoing preoccupation for musicians, concert promoters, venue managers, critics and others. The perennial anxiety is that classical music is ‘dying’ (it’s not) and that it needs to attract -
Art and Music: Klee and Schuller May 16th, 2021 American composer Gunther Schuller (1925-2015) took the Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) as his inspirational source for his 1959 orchestral work 7 Studies on Themes of Paul Klee. The seven works he chose were created between 1912 and 1933 and -
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
National Poet of Scotland May 15th, 2021In 2021 we celebrate the 225th passing of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. He died on the morning of 21 July 1796 at the age of 37, and he had been a practicing poet throughout his life. Famous for his -
Opera Wars
Gluck vs. Piccinni May 14th, 2021When Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) set out to reform opera, he knowingly provided the spark for a full-out culture war. Gluck believed that the principal Italian operatic genres—opera buffa and opera seria—had become unnatural. Characters seemed nothing more than empty -
On My Music Desk……
Franz Schubert – Impromptu in G-flat, D899/3 May 13th, 2021Schubert’s first set of Impromptus (D899) are amongst my most favourite pieces of piano music, ever since my mother, who admired the pianist Alfred Brendel, bought me the score of the Impromptus and Moments Musicaux after hearing Brendel perform them -
Dedicated to Ysaÿe
“Ysaÿe Plays the Fiddle as the Birds Sing” May 12th, 2021Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was not only one of the greatest violinists of his time, but he was also a composer, conductor, and teacher. And what is more, great composers inspired him, and in turn, his exceptional artistry inspired them to -
How to Prepare for Rehearsals May 11th, 2021 As a classical musician, we are often faced (in more normal times, at least) with the dilemma of having too many notes to learn and not enough time to learn them in. Concerts and opportunities come in at the last