English composer William Busch (1901-1945) started his music career as a concert pianist, performing mostly in the UK, Europe, and the US, and then turned to composition. In 1915, he was sent to the US because of the war, and

Bad Wildbad is one of the least probable stations on the European summer festival circuit. Small, relatively nondescript and poorly accessible, the spa town in the Black Forest once welcomed Gioachino Rossini when he was seeking cures for his many

After his sparkling C P E Bach disc, released on the Hyperion label in January 2022, Marc-André Hamelin, that fearless master of the piano who seems to be able to play anything (and I mean anything!) moves seamlessly from the

The title of pianist Jeremy Denk‘s recently published memoir, will be familiar to anyone who had piano lessons as a child. It’s a mnemonic of the notes e, g, b, d and f which sit on the lines of the

Music lovers often wonder how a 19th century audience would experience an opera during its absolute first performance, without the benefit of extensive written plot summaries, YouTube videos and CDs to prepare for the music, or Wikipedia guides to pinpoint

When I had sufficiently advanced in my piano studies, my teacher introduced me to the “French Suites” by Johann Sebastian Bach. I was told that “Suites” generally consisted of a series of stylized dance movements, with the name of the

For the music obsessed, no visit to la Serenissima would be complete without an evening at the opera. Venice’s legendary Teatro La Fenice opera house, reopened in 2004 after the catastrophic fire of 1996, was resplendent with its riotously colourful

“Uchida has breathed new life into this work[Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations] with immense passion and focus” Well known for her interpretations of the Austro-German repertoire, Mitsuko Uchida recorded Beethoven Diabelli Variations in the studio for the first time, although it has