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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Mapping the Musical Genome
The Merikanto Family August 6th, 2018When a professional musician from Helsinki toured the Finnish countryside in the last years of the 19th century, a member of the audience asked him, “Are there other great composers in Helsinki besides Merikanto?” This delightful anecdote certainly tells us -
The Music Typewriter of Charles Spiro August 5th, 2018 When Joseph Haydn was putting the finishing touches on a symphony during the later stages of his career, he dejectedly wrote. “The piece on which I am now working would have been already finished if it were not that my -
Why Perform? August 5th, 2018 The psychological and emotional reasons why musicians perform and why we feel a need to connect and communicate with audiences is a broad and complex subject. For many musicians, performing is their raison d’être – the need, the will to -
He Had the Kind of Male Beauty That Could Cause Havoc – Albert Einstein August 4th, 2018 We’ve seen him with this tongue sticking out… we’ve seen him concerned with the implications of nuclear energy… and we’ve seen him behind the bow on the violin. But, as an inspiration, we have to take the words of one -
Osvaldo Golijov: Azul
Premiered Today in 2006 August 4th, 2018What do you get if one of classical music’s most beloved performers teams up with one of today’s most popular composers? It really is a no brainer, as Azul (the title means blue in Spanish) combines the collective imagination of -
Rossini: Guillaume Tell
Premiered Today in 1829 August 3rd, 2018Rossini’s last opera, the four-act Guillaume Tell, with a composite French libretto based on Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, was produced at the Paris Opéra on 3 August 1829. However, within three performances the opera’s length of roughly four hours and -
Franz Berwald August 3rd, 2018 Violinist, Composer and Orthopedic Surgeon When the Swedish composer and violinist Franz Berwald (1796-1868) died 150 years ago in Stockholm, hardly anybody noticed. At times he had made a living as an orthopedic surgeon and later as a manager of -
A special relationship: pianists and their composers August 2nd, 2018 Say “Glenn Gould”, and most people will respond with “Bach”, such is the late great Canadian pianist’s special relationship with the music of J S Bach, and specifically the Goldberg Variations, which Gould recorded at the beginning and the end