Are you threatened by the music you like? We’ve seen it all too often, a composer or popular musician is found out to have a dark side. Does this change how much their music once meant to you? For most

I should have known better than to attempt the fast octaves at the beginning of Schubert‘s first Klavierstück, D946, with incorrect (or rather non-existent) technique (this was some years after I had returned to the piano seriously after an absence

Music seems to be everywhere these days, from cafés, bars and restaurants to shops, hotels, stations and airports, leaking out of other people’s headphones and earbuds, and more recently in banks and even the waiting room of my doctors’ surgery.

As someone who has spent most of his life inside music, I value what music has taught me. The things music has given me and the beauty and pleasure I get from listening to and creating music are beyond almost

Many people, who are not “in the know” – and even some who are! – regard classical music as elitist and its practitioners as either formal and old-fashioned or pretentious so-and-so’s who have set themselves up as demi-gods, garnering praise

What is music? And what is noise? These questions have always been lingering in my mind – without any absolute solution. As one of our contributors, Rob, eloquently discussed, there is no consensual agreement on a singular definition of music.

Most students probably expect their teacher to be able to play anything, and indeed the best teachers will have a comprehensive repertoire coupled with extensive knowledge. One need not have played all the Beethoven Piano Sonatas or Chopin’s Etudes in

The 16th edition of the Tchaikovsky International Competition has finished (and not without controversy, but that’s another story….) and another crop of prize winners have been crowned and launched onto the international music scene. French pianist Alexandre Kantorow was awarded