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Big Pieces for Small Hands
A New Collection for Young Pianists by Béla Hartmann
As I have written before on this site, pianists with small hands often struggle with more virtuosic repertoire because of the physical demands it puts on the hands, mostly big, awkward stretches for which a larger hand span and greater
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A Tale of Two Pianists
Lifschitz & Volodin Perform Rachmaninoff’s Complete Preludes
Rachmaninoff’s Preludes have been a cornerstone of the piano repertoire, showcasing the composer’s wealth of emotions, propensity for lyricism and technical virtuosity. As part of HKU MUSE’s Russian Piano Classics series, Russian pianists Konstantin Lifschitz and Alexei Volodin took turns
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Garrick Ohlsson Schubert Piano Sonatas D537 & D959
Ten years separate the composition of these two piano sonatas by Franz Schubert. The earlier one, in A minor, was completed in 1817 when Schubert was just twenty but had already written some 250 lieder. Having left several incomplete piano
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Música callada – Federico Mompou
Stephen Hough, piano
‘the music of evaporation’ Federico Mompou‘s piano work Musica Callada is a set of twenty-eight short pieces that were written between 1959 and 1967. It was the last piece of piano music published in the composer’s lifetime The title, borrowed
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Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov at the HK Arts Festival
The 51st edition of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the first after several years of muted and mostly virtual performances, featured Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov among the headline artists. There is little argument that Russian-born Anna Netrebko is the
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Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier Book II
Daniel Martyn Lewis, piano
J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is regarded as one of the most significant cornerstones of the keyboard repertoire and is one of the greatest edifices of Baroque repertoire, beloved by musicians, students and audiences alike. Often referred to simply as “the
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Jonathan Dove: “In Exile”
Statelessness and the plight of refugees are still very much here with us. A new album with a work that is based “on the universal experience of refugees being exiled from their homeland” was released on March 3, 2023, on
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Alpha Cast in Alphabet Soup
Jaume Plensa’s Macbeth at Barcelona’s Liceu
Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth at Barcelona’s prestigious Gran Teatre del Liceu was hard to ignore. Jaume Plensa is not only a globally admired sculptor, but he is also something of a Catalan hero. This new production was bound to be the
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