“I may not be a first-rate composer, but I AM a first-class second-rate composer!” Born on 11 June 1864 in Munich, Germany, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) almost exclusively expressed his life and thoughts through music and the arts. From his glorious

“The time we pass on earth is not worth the effort” The Italian violinist and composer Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755-1824), born on 12 May 1755 at Fontanetto da Po in Piedmont, Italy, was probably the most influential violinist between Tartini

“My fatherland means more to me than anything else” Bedřich Smetana (1824-84) is widely considered the father of Czech music, and his music posthumously became synonymous with a Czech national musical style. Establishing a Czech classical music canon, Smetana became

“Teach girls the same things that are taught to boys” Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927) was regarded by major critics of her time as the first woman to compose large-scale vocal and orchestral works. However, throughout her professional career, she

“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music” On 28 March 2023 we commemorate the 80th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s death. After a concert career as a pianist that lasted fifty years, Sergei Rachmaninoff

120 years ago, on 22 February 1903, Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) died in an insane asylum after trying to drown himself in October 1898. He had last appeared in concert on February 1897, but the impending paralysis of tertiary syphilis was

“Be yourself, because everyone else is taken” “The glory of Édouard Lalo (1823-1892),” wrote a scholar in 1925, “was that he cast a shaft of sunlight into French music, expressing joy, life, and chaste tenderness free of sentimentality, and burning

“I dared much, but the next time, I will dare even more” Born in the city of Liège on 10 December 1822, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, César Franck (1822-1890) composed in a rich and luxurious