Shortly after Tchaikovsky joined the staff of the Moscow Conservatoire in September 1866, a young boy was admitted to study piano. He was only 9-years old, and after a brief interruption, he resumed his studies in composition with Tchaikovsky. That

Becoming joint winner of the Silver Medal at the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition, with no Gold Medal awarded that year, propelled Peter Donohoe to international stardom. Renowned as one of the foremost pianists of our time, his performances radiate mature

The German classical pianist and violinist Julia Fischer was born on 15 June 1983 in Munich. Her parents Viera Krenková and Frank-Michael Fischer, a mathematician from East Germany, met as students in Prague. Julia started playing the violin around the

Giuseppe Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes premiered at the Paris Opéra on 13 June 1855. It was well received, and even the notoriously difficult Hector Berlioz found much to admire, praising “the penetrating intensity of the melodic expressiveness, the sumptuous, wise

When a marital disagreement between the king and queen of fairies spills into the human realm, it creates a tangle of misdirected spells and misplaced love affairs. With the fairies spreading accidental chaos far and wide, nothing is what it

By 1928, Frederick Delius was going blind and had lost the use of his limbs due to syphilis. His mental acuity, however, remained unimpaired until his death. But one thing for sure, he could no longer compose. Having learned of

“Fyn,” also known as “Funen” is the third-largest island of Denmark. Sometimes known as the “Garden of Denmark,” this predominantly flat island hosts a mainly mild climate. It is also the birthplace of pop singer MØ, a footballer named Christian

Set on the Greek isle of Lesbos, the ancient Greek novel Daphnis et Chloe is a pastoral tale of shepherds and shepherdesses authored by the Greek writer Longus. It tells the story of a boy and a girl, each abandoned