When Darius Milhaud immortalized his favorite Brazilian tavern in a brilliant ballet work, Le Boeuf sur le toit, he was joining in a long line of composers who brought the common cow into music. To take a look at the

One of the first flute soloists to grace worldwide stages was Marcel Moyse (1889-1984), paving the way for many great flute players of the twentieth century. Born in the east of France at the turn of the century, he moved

A Look at Debussy Piano Music — Preludes Following the model of Bach and his 24 Preludes and Fugues from 1722, Debussy also wrote his own set of Préludes for the piano. Debussy began Book 1 in December 1909, finishing

Maurice Ravel’s piano piece, Gaspard de la Nuit (1908), hides in its deceptively childlike title a radical piano work of great imagination. The pianist Alfred Cortot called it “one of the most astonishing examples of instrumental ingenuity ever contrived.

French harpist Anaïs Gaudemard started to play at age 8. Actually, she started on the piano but shortly after starting on keyboards, she met a harp teacher and started to study both instruments. By age 21, she had been awarded

My grandfather played the piano, mostly Methodist hymns and his favourite bits of Bach, Beethoven and Haydn. I suppose I was always aware of it and recall sitting next to him when he played when I was very small. It