With his widely recognised achievements as a pianist, composer and conductor, Brahms had succeeded in amassing a considerable fortune: 4000.000 marks from his compositions, earnings wisely invested by his publisher. It was also due to a frugal life: he dined

A recent exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York paired one of Caravaggio’s paintings, ‘The Musicians’ (1595) with two other paintings, ‘Allegory of Music’ by Laurent de la Hyre (1606 -1656) and ‘The Lute Player’ (c.1626) by Valentin de

“Giacomo Puccini and Elvira Gemignani” Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) (in)famously described himself as “a mighty hunter of wild fowl, operatic librettos and attractive women.” Bravado self-assessment aside, his entire musical career hinged on the success of his second opera Edgar, began

We all know what a violin looks like – a beautiful instrument with a warm wood body and an elegant black fingerboard, finished off with a perfect wooden scroll. Ah, but that’s so last century. The modern violin can be

When the Gotham Chamber Opera and the Jarvis & Constance Doctorow Family Foundation presented up-and-coming composer David Hertzberg with the inaugural Catherine Doctorow Prize for Music last year, they called his music “an extraordinarily beautiful sound world with a unique

CNN: Top 10 greatest orchestras in the world Every day we are presented with lists and rankings that purport to be the ultimate authority on a given subject. From establishing credit worthiness for various nations to slugging percentages of somebody

How do we really know what a composer looked like? Do we trust paintings and etchings? Do we believe people’s images as mediated through another’s hand? Before photography came into widespread use in the mid-19th century, the only way of

We don’t generally think of music as belonging to a certain time of day, although the next time my local classical station plays The Grand March from Aida at 6 am, I shall throw the radio across the room…but I