In May 2015, Argentinian-born pianist Daniel Barenboim unveiled a new piano bearing his name. From the audience’s perspective, it looked just like any other modern grand piano. However, once you actually open the lid and peer inside, you’ll immediately notice

Founded on 13 October 1924, the Curtis Institute of Music has since become one of the leading classical music conservatories. It educates and trains exceptionally gifted young musicians for careers as performing artists on the highest professional level. And that,

In music, nobody felt the anxiety of the past—specifically the looming shadow of Ludwig van Beethoven—more acutely than Johannes Brahms. Brahms told his friends that it was “horribly difficult to compose anything with Beethoven standing on his shoulders.” Over a

Now that we’ve had a complete tour of the orchestra with a look at all the principal instruments, we can do one last look at the rarely-used instruments that are called for by composers. In the strings, we have the

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) wrote his orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra in 1946 as a commission for an educational film on the instruments of the orchestra. Britten used a theme from the Baroque British composer Henry Purcell

20-year old Romanian cellist Andrei Ioniță was awarded the Gold Medal in the cello section of the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition. A laureate of many other competitions, he also took first prize at the Aram Khachaturian International Competition in 2013, and

Sweden’s best Romantic composer Franz Berwald (1796-1868) holds the dubious distinction of being one of the most neglected composers in music history. In fact, he was so obscure that in 1946 the Swedish postal service, given the choice between putting