Added to our list of ancient instruments, starting with percussion and the harp, we have to add the flute. Starting from blowing on a hollow reed and then hollowed-out bones, the flute became an extension of the voice. The flute,

Global classical music audiences love music from Russia. It’s bold, it’s imaginative, it’s romantic. Consequently, composers like Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich, and others are beloved fixtures on concert programs, generations after their deaths. But those household names haven’t been the

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 7 May 1840 in Votkinsk, a town almost eight hundred miles east of Moscow. Nowadays he is remembered as music’s quintessential Russian Romantic, and a forebear to giants like Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich. Today

Once you get beyond banging two rocks together (percussion), one of the oldest instruments next invented was the harp. It’s a very simple concept of a frame with differing lengths of strings stretched across to create the pitches. This may

Let’s continue to explore more contemporary Chinese music. Xu Zhenmin: “A Tone Picture of Border Village” (Shanghai Orchestra; Peng Cao, cond.) The contemporary Chinese composer Xu Zhenmin uses a variety of modern compositional techniques while simultaneously imagining the unique color