The German town of Donaueschingen is picturesquely located in the Black Forest in the State of Baden-Württemberg. It stands near the two sources of the river Danube, and it started to host a festival for contemporary classical music in 1921.

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) wrote over 600 vocal works, one of the oddest and yet most powerful of which is a ballad about a Queen, her dwarf, and a fatal encounter. The story opens in the middle of the night: we

For its 25th year, the Oxford Piano Festival has put together a splendid array of world-class pianists, vibrant, varied programmes, and inspirational teaching. Founded by the renowned pianist and conductor Marios Papadopoulos in 1998, and hosted by the Oxford Philharmonic

Francisca Edwiges Neves Gonzaga (1847-1935), known as Chiquinha Gonzaga, is considered one of the most important female figures in Brazilian music history. She was a feminist and abolitionist, and she was the first of many things: the first Choro composer,

Russian pianist Alexei Volodin, born on 17 July 1977 in St Petersburg, is highly lauded for his sensitive touch and the technical brilliance of his playing. A highly virtuoso and deeply philosophical musician, Volodin has no time for superficial effects.

The Gallica digital library at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is one of the great research treasuries of the world. It was established in 1997 and now holds more than 10 million documents accessible online: books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, cartoons,

To watch Pinchas Zukerman perform, a scholar writes, “Gives the deceptive impression that violin playing is not really all that difficult. There is nothing labored, nothing studied about the way he handles the instrument, though, this inborn ability had to

In the summer of 1945, Kurt Weill received a commission for a series of short radio operas. Olin Downes, the music critic of The New York Times, and a businessman named Charles McArthur, envisioned a combination of the old English