Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri is a fantastic exploration of the nature of artistic creation. This short blank verse drama, written in 1830, has been re-told many times (notably by Rimsky-Korsakov in his 1898 opera of the same name and by

He is the youngest person to have his US number 1 hit at the age of 13. He has had over 100 million albums sold, over 30 U.S top-ten hits, 25 Grammies, 10 US number-one hits on the pop charts,

Geneva, 27th November 2010. A year so dominated by the economic downturn in the West and the rise of China epitomized by the Shanghai Expo in the East, few may have noticed that this year marks the 170th birthday of

The musical genius of Beethoven, though witnessed over 200 years ago, is still deeply admired by many because Ludwig van Beethoven once described his talent saying, “I keep a thought in my mind for a very long time. I am

Bach, the composer as intellectual by Marco Moraes   But all at once it dawned on me that this Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme; Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream But topsy-turvical coincidence, Not flimsy

A tale of two cities. I have no idea when this handy name came about, but it is now used by the literati to compare pairs of cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, Suzhou and Hangzhou, and

A crazy 2010 has come to an end. It was the year of the Shanghai Expo and vuvuzelas, of positive events and negative happenings, and not least, lots and lots of music festivals. Apart from the countless music events and

For years, my New Year’s resolutions have looked like this: Get better grades; Find a handsome boyfriend; Increase revenues in my business; Lose some weight; Get married; Have a baby; Lose more weight; More babies; You get the idea. As