It was during the summer of 1858 that Brahms met Agathe von Seibold.  He had gone to visit Ise Grimm at Göttingenm the university town where Joachim spent his holidays.  Ise had recently married, and his home was a meeting place for the younger musicians. I have invited some people in this evening,” he told […]

“I think that one way toward a more intelligent and involved appraisal is through a connection with the pieces, and that one way to develop that connection is to talk about what the pieces mean to people who have spent a lot of time with them: the content, if you will. This approach can also […]

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 […]

“I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.” – William Yeats, Deirdre

Early phonograph recordings were a little rough.  In 1889, pianist Hans von Bülow was asked to play into a phonograph in America: After playing upon a pianoforte, from which issued sounds compared to the soft and dreamy gurgle of a brook, the far-off sighign of the night wind and the roar of the cataract, he […]

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“Of the three prerequisites of genius; the first is soul; the second is soul; and the third is soul.” – Edwin Whipple, American essayist and critic Cited at: QuotationsBook

“Tchaikovsky reminded me, in more ways than one, of his countryman Tourgéniew, whom I once met at Madame Viardot’s. He had none of the Northern roughness, was as polished as a Frenchman in his manner, and had something of the Italian in his temperament… For all the belief which he had in himself, he was […]

[Barbara Streisand’s] early voice training amounted to one lesson with a voice teacher. At that session Ms. Streisand sang “A Sleepin’ Bee,” the Harold Arlen song that she performed in her first television appearance, on “The Jack Paar Show” in 1961, just before turning 19. During the lesson Ms. Streisand got as far as the […]

Burt Bacharach was a student of Darius Milhaud, Bohusalv Martinu, and Henry Cowell. Bacharach’s hits included Magic Moments, Walk on by, The Look of Love, and Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head.