Composers know only too well the difficulty of maintaining the highest quality of craftsmanship and expression across genres. Beethoven wrote some real clunkers, as did Schumann and Rachmaninoff. Because Brahms very carefully controlled his output—we know that he mercilessly burned

Do you ever think you might be practicing in your sleep? Yesterday I went to practice Debussy‘s prelude La cathédrale engloutie, which I’m preparing for a performance later in the year. The second section, when the waves start to roll

Before you run screaming into the night, stop. New classical music has changed, it’s now listenable, and not just squawky. Cynics will be in a rage if I tell them that old classical music is just a bunch of stuff

She’s stood in for Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia, and performs with some of the greatest orchestras and conductors, who praise her playfulness and unpretentiousness, coupled with artistic maturity, commitment, excellent preparation and professionalism. Ravel: Piano

“My Moral Duty Is to Write About the Horrors That Befell Mankind in Our Century” Mieczysław Weinberg, variously spelled Wajnberg, Vaynberg or Vainberg, encountered almost unbearable obstacles and suffering during his life. As a result he composed music with profound

The power of music extends to the capability of opening the wise musician to reflective states and philosophical meditations. In the following ones, I reflect on the virtues that the musician applies to his own life. He is in constant

William Jones first translated Hafez into English in 1771. It quickly fired the imagination of writers and poets such as Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who referred to him as “a poet’s poet.” Friedrich Engels, who together with Karl Marx

J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould) Piano a large keyboard musical instrument with a wooden case enclosing a soundboard and metal strings, which are struck by hammers when the keys are depressed The pianist Ivo Pogorelich is right: the piano