The love story between Robert and Clara Schumann is often regarded as one of the most romantic in classical music history. Happily for historians, many of their love letters survive. They document their inner thoughts and emotions, as well as
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Getting Lost in the Hyphenation and Accents May 5th, 2015 The death of the bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk in April 2014 and the story in Times obituary about the problems caused by his name got us to think of other mistaken performers and composers. The New York Times obit gave us -
János Starker Remembrance Week: Starker’s Two Grandchildren Remember Grandpa May 4th, 2015 By Alexandra Preucil Assistant Concertmaster Cleveland Orchestra For as long as I can remember, family gatherings have been synonymous with music making. Sometimes this took place in fancy concert halls, but more often than not, my family would simply come -
Cadenzas and Creativity II: Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 May 4th, 2015 One of the essential things about music is how it’s so hard to pin down, so hard to fix in time, and so hard to be definitive about. In looking at cadenzas, those virtuosic flourishes that appear in concertos, we -
When West is East
The Cowboy Music of Ennio Morricone May 3rd, 2015It’s odd, when we think about it, that when we think of music for cowboy movies, we think of movies made in Spain by an Italian director with an Italian avant-garde trumpet player as composer. Ennio Morricone’s film music written -
Instruments of the Orchestra VII: The Clarinet May 3rd, 2015 If we think of the flutes as the air above the woodwind section and the oboes as the kind of nasal-sounding brain, then the heart of the section has to be the clarinet. Unlike the oboe, which is a double-reed -
The New Sound of Old Music: The Berlin Baroque Soloists May 2nd, 2015 The Berlin Barock Solisten (The Berlin Baroque Soloists) are coming to Hong Kong and this very interesting offshoot of the Berlin Philharmonic brings a top-level Baroque ensemble that also carries a modern top-level orchestral sensibility. -
Hidden meanings May 2nd, 2015 Many composers Used special ways of organising Sounds that, when played on Instruments, spell out Cryptic messages! -
Debussy – Watteau – Baudelaire : Invitation to a Voyage May 2nd, 2015 After finally achieving success with his opera ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ in 1902, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) wrote ‘L’Isle Joyeuse’ (‘The Joyous Island’), while working hard on his new composition, ‘La Mer’. His very successful artistic achievements were in stark opposition to