At a concert in London in December 1911, Rachmaninoff was received to great acclaim: perhaps a little too much from the orchestra's view point, who wanted to play the rest of their program: The London Philharmonic Concert given on November 7, provided an object lesson in this study of the relation of applause to encores.  […]

“I do not choose my listeners. What I mean is, I never write for my listeners. I think about my audience, but I am not writing for them. I have something to tell them, but the audience must also put a certain effort into it. But I never wrote for an audience and never will […]

I believe one shouldn’t be too comfortable when listening to really great music.  To appreciate good music, one must be mentally alert, and emotionally receptive.  You can’t be that when you are sitting at home with your feet on a chair. No, listening to  music is more strenuous than that.  Music is like the poetry;  […]

Robert Schumann aspired to be awarded a doctorate degree. On January 31 1840, Robert Schumann asked a friend to appeal to the University of Jena to give him an honorary degree, or set him a degree to pass, on the grounds of: “My sphere of action as an editor on a high-class paper, which has […]

Title: Golliwog’s Cakewalk (from Children’s Corner Suite) Composer: Claude Debussy Arranger: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello quartet Product medium: PDF score and parts Sample:

Bassoon

Bach, a master of harmony and counterpoint, would not settle for imperfect sounds, no matter where he was.  Johann Reichardt recalled: Johann Sebastian Bach once came into a large company while a musical amateur was sitting and improvising at a harpsichord.  The moment the latter became aware of the presence of the great master, he […]

Conductor James Levine on Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin: Eugene Onegin is very special, an incredibly successful piece; there is nothing quite like it. The character of Tatyana is so extraordinary. Tchaikovsky absorbed certain things from Pushkin’s original poem, and then composed his own opera, which of course angered some other great Russian artists, like Stanislavsky […]

Feeling creates thought, men willingly agree; but they will not so willingly agree that thought creates feeling, though this is scarcely less true. — Nicolas Chamfort (Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort) S. Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations of Chamfort, Volume 2, Trans. E. Mathers, Golden Cockerel Press, 1926, p. 22.  

“I would like to see the emphasis in teaching shift from the performer to the three elements necessary for satisfying music-making: the composer/ improviser, audience and player. I would also like to see the intelligent, inspired exploration of the question of interpretation – in Indian classical music, for instance, it is the opening up of […]