December’s Artist of the Month is Icelandic-American cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir. Currently based in Seattle, she has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester. Sæunn also teaches cello at the

Heart and Home American soprano Jacquelyn Wagner is getting ready for her first opera appearance since the Coronavirus pandemic, singing Alice in Verdi’s Falstaff in Malmö, Sweden. After a long enforced break she is excited to be back, and talks

American violinist Stefan Jackiw catches up with me after a whirlwind summer of music festivals, with some rare downtime in New York before his next set of travels around the US, Slovenia and Helsinki. You’ve played in three different continents

Chopin of the Créoles Louisiana-born Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) spent most of his life as a touring concert pianist. Son of a Jewish businessman and a Créole mother, the boy was quickly recognized as a musical prodigy and departed for

‘Music Communicates Without Words’ Taiwanese-born violinist Paul Huang is now based in New York, having moved there aged 12 to study at the Juilliard School’s pre-college programme. Now at the age of 28, having picked up awards including an Avery

“Five Lines, Four Spaces” As a composer and teacher George Rochberg (1918-2005) strongly believed that “music should express the passions of the human heart.” A robust proponent of serial techniques in the mid-1960s, Rochberg eventually sought new expressions by returning

‘Be open to those surprises’ Having just starred in the world premiere of Nico Mulhy’s new opera Marnie at English National Opera, American soprano Sasha Cooke speaks to me on one of her rare days off.

“My music creed is the inspired idea” Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) might have been the most phenomenal musical prodigy of all time! At the age of 9, he played his cantata Gold to Gustav Mahler, who pronounced him a genius.