Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was already considered the greatest living composer when the impresario Johann Peter Salomon invited him to compose and conduct first six, and later six more symphonies for the cosmopolitan audiences in London. The British press hailed him

Once Giuseppe Tartini returned to Padua from his two-year stay in Prague, he quickly set up his famous violin school “La scuola delle nazioni” in 1728. By that time he already had an international reputation, which brought students from all

Enrico Caruso, born on 25 February 1873 in Naples, was considered the greatest tenor of the century. For one, that assessment is based on the exceptional appeal of his voice, “fusing the full burnished timbre of a baritone with a

For many critics, Arcadi Volodos is the next legendary pianist. “He has everything; imagination, color, passion, and a phenomenal technique to carry out his ideas.” A San Francisco critic raves, “his fingers fly around the keyboard, faster and more accurately

The Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Fame is nothing but the sum total of misunderstandings that cling to a name.” George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) is almost universally acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of his age,

By his mid-20s, Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was already an international musical superstar. His musical direction was well established early on, as he writes, “My musical education was influenced exclusively by the Latin-Mediterranean cultural milieu, which is readily explained by the

An old Chinese Proverb reads, “Giving your son a skill is better than giving him one thousand pieces of gold.” Such was certainly the case with Riccardo Chailly, born on 20 February 1953 into a highly musical family of Romagnol

Popular music is full of “one-hit wonders,” with a singer or group experiencing real mainstream success with a single hit song. The same might be said of classical music, as we only need to think of Pachelbel and his famous