On taking risks and the piano’s limits Performing the ‘Mount Everest of piano pieces’ (Brahms’ mighty Second Piano Concerto) in Hong Kong this October, Joseph Moog talks with me about lesser-known composers, and how far the piano repertoire can be

For many countries, their National Anthems are symbols of their place in the world. They may reflect many different aspects of a country, sometimes listing nature’s bountiful beauties, sometimes giving an encapsulated history of a country, or reflecting a particularly

“All great music is contemporary” On 18 January 1973, Michael Tilson Thomas introduced Four Organs, scored for four Hammond organs and maracas by aspiring composer Steve Reich to New York audiences. Scheduled alongside music by Mozart, Bartók and Liszt, audience

In the summer of 1936, the French composer Oliver Messiaen (1908-1992) was on holiday on the shores of Lac de Laffrey. He had a summer home here and it would be the place where he wrote the majority of his

The English poet A.E. Housman (1859-1936) is best known for his collection of poems about the countryside: A Shropshire Lad (1896). Houseman’s poems sold slowly at first but after the Second Boer War (1899-1902), its poems about life in the

It is not an enviable job to create a list of great players of an instrument that is so versatile, one that has changed so much even in the last 100 years. These Musical Giants of the clarinet have been

The Essential Debussy’s Piano Music As a composer in the late 19th century, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) worked on the cusp of the new directions taking place around him in France: salon music mixed with the new art styles of impressionism