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
Latest article
Spotlight
-
Big Music for Small-Handed Pianists April 22nd, 2018 For years I told myself I couldn’t play Liszt – or Rachmaninoff for that matter – because of the relatively small size of my hands. I can stretch a ninth, just about. Any more and it’s painful – and a -
Puccini: Edgar
Premiered Today in 1889 April 21st, 2018Here is the trivia question for today. Can you name the Puccini opera that the composer himself desperately wanted to forget? The answer is Edgar, and despite revising it repeatedly, Puccini eventually declared the work irredeemable. Edgar was Puccini’s second -
Forgotten Cellists: Enrico Mainardi April 21st, 2018 Born in 1897 in Milan, the Italian cellist Enrico Mainardi had a small cello in his hands at the age of three. He astonished everyone by performing one of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas flawlessly just a few years later. Hailed -
Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye
Premiered Today in 1910 April 20th, 2018Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) loved children. Although he was not married and did not have children of his own, he always seemed to spend more time with children than with adults. In fact, he never outgrew his ability to see the -
Piano Trios – When Fame Brings Forth Art April 20th, 2018 The idea of a trio is simple. Three people, three performers, and so on. But the musical trio is something special. We’ll start with the piano trio. At first piano trios were groups that got together and then just as -
Berg: Violin Concerto
Premiered Today in 1936 April 19th, 2018When Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto premiered at the Palau de la Música Catalana, in Barcelona on 19 April 1936, the composer was no longer alive. Shortly after he had finished the composition he was stung by an insect at the -
Katharina Cibbini-Koželuch: Friends with Beethoven April 19th, 2018 When Leopold Koželuch arrived in Vienna to follow his musical calling, he immediately understood that being a capable musician and composer was not enough to really get ahead. -
Mapping the Musical Genome
The Stamitz Family April 18th, 2018When families migrate across linguistic borders, their names frequently undergo a number of significant changes. Just take the Stamitz family, an extended and highly active Bohemian group of musicians, as an example. The spelling of their family name in contemporary