The solo violin has long been acknowledged as the perfect instrument to express emotions like love, longing, heartbreak, rapture, and romance. The Romantic era lasted from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century and produced numerous works that
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Modern Done Right June 5th, 2014 When you look at the output of composer and conductor Carl Davis, you get a wonderful overview of the many ways that a classical orchestra can take on the pop repertoire. There are orchestral renderings of the music from the -
Richard Strauss and his Leading Ladies June 3rd, 2014 Throughout his life, Richard Strauss surrounded himself with beautiful women! -
Music for Obscure Instruments June 2nd, 2014 We think of instruments as being so well-established (look at any orchestra), that we don’t think about the instruments that were there and are now gone, or have been replaced with something else, or just changed into something else. -
Quatuor Hermès June 1st, 2014 This month, our Artists of the Month are the Quatour Hermès, a young string quartet moving from strength to strength. I caught up quickly with Elise Liu, their second fiddle, ahead of their upcoming tour to China. -
Intimacy in Strauss
The Cello Sonata May 31st, 2014Yo-yo Ma, cello Emanuel Ax, piano Richard Strauss: Cello Sonata in F Major, Op. 6, TrV 115 Richard Strauss was controversial as a person and as a composer, despite being one of the more prominent composers of the 20th Century. -
The Supernatural in Music
XII. Gothic Visuals: Musical Horror in the Cinema May 31st, 2014Slowly, behind the heroine, the shadow rises….the audience shrinks back in their cinema seats, helped with a hearty push from the music, generally starting in the cellos, which signal the terror that awaits. Then the violins take over, strident in -
Monkeying around the Edges May 30th, 2014 In the fifteenth century, when manuscript book production really took off, the problem of blank space in the margins had some unique solutions. When these were music books, even the initial letters of songs were decorated. -
‘Spirit, Strength and Sorrow’
Stabat Mater May 29th, 2014The image of Jesus on the cross has inspired artists of many kinds for centuries. There are of course many striking paintings of the scene by artists from Veláquez’s Cristo crucificado to Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the