Cellist Walter Joachim spend some time in Calcutta, India. He recalled: “I bought a monkey with which to amuse myself. We played. He was sitting on my shoulders for hours when I was practising.” Joachim practised at least one or two movements of a Bach suite. “I started my day usually with Bach or a […]

“The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?” – Stephen Sondheim, composer. Cited at: QuotationsBook

During a rehearsal of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony: Stokowski had inserted a gratuitous part for bass clarinet. “It so happens,” wrote O’Connell, “that the player of this instrument was a quite temperamental gentleman as well as a composer, and when he saw Stokowski’s addition to Schubert’s score, he was possessed by fury.”  When he expressed his […]

Schumann once attended a masquerade during the carnival of 1830, in company with his friend Rosen, for the purpose of paying some attention to a pretty but otherwise insignificant girl.He knew that she would be present at the ball, and, as a pretext for approaching her, put a poem in his pocket.Fortune favored him: he […]

While the Century Theatre in Broadmeadow (Australia) primarily operated as a cinema, it was also hosted concerts, including by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. On one occasion, Claudio Arrau performed in the theatre, as recalled by Harry Armstrong: With only a few minutes to go before the famous pianist was scheduled to commence his performance, which […]

There is a story that Igor Stravinsky went to the New York jazz club Birdland one evening in 1951. Whispers went round that the great composer was in the house. When Charlie Parker came on with his quintet, he didn’t acknowledge Stravinsky in person, but seamlessly quoted The Firebird in his first number, the furiously […]

Composer: Greg Smith Title: I’ll Softly Sigh Instrumentation: Piano Performer: Greg Smith (2010) Your browser does not support the audio element. Sheet music

“His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without forseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk when he was impatient to play it to himself. But then he began the most heart-rending labor I ever saw. It was a […]

Title: In Memory of  Those in Paradise   Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE:

“Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each […]