I remember a few years ago being at a summer academy in the south of France, with Dominique Merlet. The whole atmosphere was great there, as we were a group of like-minded people, keen to learn, work and share ideas in the gorgeous setting of a little medieval French village. The concert at the end, […]

Having spent five days recording five Beethoven sonatas and two concertos, Schnabel wrote to his wife: This week was an ordeal, a torture chamber. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” says Nietzsche. Hopefully (probably) this is true. I had no idea of how outrageous a process the recording on discs could be. Like […]

“The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.” —Agnes de Mille (1905-1993), American dancer and choreographer. Gardner, Kara Anne. Agnes de Mille: Telling Stories in Broadway Dance. United States, Oxford University Press, 2016.

Title: Sleepy Bear Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE: Your browser does not support the audio element.

One of Tchaikovsky’s favorite anecdotes resulted from his nearly losing the sketches for the Little Russian on the way back to Moscow. To persuade a recalcitrant postmaster to hitch the horses to the coach in which he and his brother Modest had been travelling, Tchaikovsky presented himself as “Prince Volkonsky, gentleman of the Emperor’s bedchamber.” […]

Ravel was very particular about how his works were performed.  Ravel always insisted that the tempo for Boléro should be moderate and rigorously maintained throughout.  He made a recording of that, too establishing his requirement.  Toscanini took it much faster and made an accelerando towards the end.  Ravel, who was in the audience, objected.  He […]

“All I have left is a long nose and a fourth finger out of practice.” Chopin, in Scotland, unable to visit his friend Julian in London because of ill health. Cited in: Zaluski, Iweo & Pamela (1993) The Scottish Autumn of Frederick Chopin. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, p.23.

American composer Aaron Copland discusses the influence of Jazz on his musical style: was a very important influence at one time. I wrote a Piano Concerto in 1927 which was largely based on jazz materials. Jazz, of course, is for us a very typical American musical expression, which we have not so successfully been able […]

“There is hardly any treatise which could be too learned for me. I have not the slightest pretension to what is properly called erudition. Yet from my childhood I have striven to understand what the better and wiser people of every age were driving at in their works. Shame on an artist who does not […]

“The best music is the music that persuades us that there is no other music in the world.” – Alex Ross, music critic  Cited in: Ross, Alex, “From Classical to punk”, Limelight, January 2011, p.29.