“Music is natural law as related to the sense of hearing” Throughout his short life—having been accidentally shot by an American soldier in 1945—the music of Anton Webern (1883-1945) was almost totally unknown. With the end of WWII, however, the

My first encounter with Beethoven was through the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music aural tests back when I was a little kid. One part of the test was to clap the rhythm of a short excerpt and

Repertoire for Two Piano Players Performance by two piano players simultaneously sharing a single piano requires not only a level of intimacy unique to chamber music, it also presents its own set of technical challenges. Despite a number of notable

Practicing is the musician’s day-to-day work and when done well it is undertaken with the focus and concentration of an elite athlete to achieve the necessary technical and artistic facility to perform complex repertoire. As a child, learning the piano

At what must be regarded as one of the most well-known painting exhibitions in music, Modest Mussorgsky’s 1874 piano work Pictures at an Exhibition takes the listener around a gallery of his late friend Viktor Hartmann’s paintings. Hartman died in

Catherine the Great (1729-1796), born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, ushered in what many considered to be the “Golden Age of Russia.” She freed Russian nobles from compulsory military service and enthusiastically supported the ideas of the Enlightenment. She established a