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Hope for Peace
Refugee Composers and Performers
With some notable exceptions, the vast majority of the civilized world is currently in deep shock by the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine. Once again, millions of innocent civilians are made to suffer by a totalitarian dictator, and once again,
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On This Day
4 April: Bedřich Smetana’s Vltava (The Moldau) Was Premiered
The conductor Adolf Čech (1841-1903) premiered a number of significant works by Antonín Dvořák, Zdeněk Fibich, and Bedřich Smetana. Such was the case on 4 April 1875, when he took the podium with the Orchestra of the Prague Provisional Theatre
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On This Day
3 April: Johannes Brahms Died
Johannes Brahms was certainly open to life’s pleasures, and he would never decline a good meal. He once told a friend, “I live in Vienna as if I were in the country,” and he ate his lunch at the same
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On This Day
1 April: Sergei Rachmaninoff Was Born
Throughout the history of music, a good many composers had been able to claim aristocratic lineage. Such is certainly the case with Sergei Rachmaninoff, born on 1 April 1873. His father Vassili Rachmaninoff, son of the landowner Arkadi Rachmaninoff and
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On This Day
31 March: Joseph Haydn Was Born
The village of Rohrau steadily grew from a Roman road and river crossing to support a castle built in the Middle Ages. When the village was attacked in the early 18th century by “a peasant army of the anti-Habsburg Hungarian
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On This Day
30 March: Sabine Meyer Was Born
Critics have written, “Few clarinetists today show such technical perfection as Sabine Meyer.” In fact, she has quietly achieved superstardom “through a combination of effortless but unmistakable accomplishment, well-honed technical skills, a varied palette of sound and an irresistible musicality.
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Ukrainian Choral Art
“A thousand years of musical and cultural Identity” Choral music has always held special significance in Ukrainian national culture. A good many features of what might be called an indigenous Ukrainian musical style formed and evolved from its choral music.
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Women Composers You Should Know II
Our history of women composers drops off in between the late 14th century and the mid-16th century. Too much was destroyed across Europe, and too much was lost to be able to construct a rational history. Fortunately, one of the
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