In classical music, the Romantic Era lasted from around 1810 to around 1910. That century gave us some of the most famous symphonies in the repertoire. Nineteenth-century composers like Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvořák, Schubert, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and others elevated the symphony
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Forgotten Pianists: Samuil Feinberg January 9th, 2017 The pianist Samuil Feinberg (1890-1962) was a contemporary of Heinrich Neuhaus and they both taught at the Moscow Conservatory. He’s now largely remembered for being the first pianist to play the complete Well-Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach in Russia. -
Musical Giants of the 20th Century: Spinto Tenor January 8th, 2017 The spinto is a tenor with a larger, slightly pressed voice (from spingere, Italian for push). While it is distinctly different from a light lyric tenor in a standard Mozart opera (for example a Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni), a -
Seeing the Inner Person: The Art of Carl Köhler January 8th, 2017 Swedish artist Carl Köhler (1919-2006) has left a body of art in the neo-modernist style that was virtually ignored at the time of his death. His son, Henry, has taken up his father’s legacy and over the past decade has -
Composers and Their Poets: Wolf III January 6th, 2017 In his great spate of lieder writing, the last great collection Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) took on was the Italienisches Liederbuch, translated by Heyse and Geibel, the same translators of the Spanisches Liederbuch. This collection of poetry is translations into German -
Claude Debussy: La Flûte de Pan/ Syrinx
Melodrama and Flute Solo January 5th, 2017Claude Debussy composed very little music for the theatre. Although he conceived a substantial number of theatrical projects with the playwright, novelist, poet and translator Gabriel Mourey, they somehow never fully materialized. The notable exception is the three-act dramatic poem -
Unsung Concertos
Francesco Petrini: Harp Concerto No. 1, Op. 25 January 4th, 2017Before she ingloriously lost her head, Marie-Antoinette reigned over music in France in the Age of Enlightenment for nearly twenty years. She invited and actively supported foreign composers, and simultaneously fostered the great tragédie lyrique of Gluck alongside the opéa -
“The Miracle of Bach and Heinrich”
Heinrich Schiff (1951-2016) January 3rd, 2017When the cellist and conductor Heinrich Schiff suffered a devastating stroke in 2008, he was in serious danger of loosing all mobility on his left side. As soon as he got to the hospital he almost instinctively started to go -
Rewiring turns “I Can’t” into “I Can” January 3rd, 2017 Whenever we have a thought or physical sensation thousands of neurons are triggered and get together to form a neural network in the brain. “Experience-dependent neuroplasticity” is the scientific term for this activity of continual creation and grouping of neuron