The solo violin has long been acknowledged as the perfect instrument to express emotions like love, longing, heartbreak, rapture, and romance. The Romantic era lasted from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century and produced numerous works that
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Piano Music for Autumn November 9th, 2020 The turning of the season sees some composers of piano music in reflective mood, while others portray meteorological conditions – misty mornings and autumn gales which blow the gold and red leaves from the trees and toss them around in -
The Music of Poetry
Goethe: “The Book of Suleika” November 8th, 2020Throughout the 19th century, the Orient raised scholarly interest and provided subjects for lyric poetry, fantasies and novels. Embodying everything that was exotic, erotic, and decadent, the orientalising fetish as it has been called, was fueled by two important sources -
Animals and Birds in Music November 8th, 2020 Most of us are familiar with ‘Saint-Saens’ ‘Carnival of the Animals’ or Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and The Wolf’, two works in which animals are brought to life and characterised through imaginative instrumentation, melody and rhythm – from the shimmering, darting fish -
Famous Composers as Subjects of Opera November 7th, 2020 Recently, I had a chat with a young colleague who suggested that the writing of biographies of great composers was a boring myth-making exercise practiced in a cultural galaxy far away and two centuries removed. She had a point about -
How Can Music Help to Relax Migraine Headaches? November 7th, 2020 Migraines are excruciating headaches that affect people in various ways. However, no matter what type of side effects they cause, they can be very painful and difficult to deal with. Thankfully, there are many ways to help relieve them, including -
Musicians and Artists: Fuchs and Wyeth November 6th, 2020 It’s one of the most dramatic of American paintings. On a large grassy field, a woman sits on the ground, turned with her back to the viewer, facing a rolling hill. Her body is twisted, her left hand in front -
Interview with Pierre Tran November 5th, 2020 Long regarded as the most serious and ambitious work for keyboard, Bach’s Goldberg Variations represent one of the highest Himalayan peaks of the standard keyboard repertoire, a mountain that few musicians are prepared to scale. Yet in spite of this, -
Lawrence Power and Ryan Wigglesworth at Wigmore Hall November 5th, 2020 9 November 2020: Dowland, Britten, Wigglesworth, Brahms This concert will be live streamed on the Wigmore Hall website in HD, and all concerts in the Autumn Series will be available on demand for 30 days after the date of the