Legendary violinist Lea Luboshutz, was one of the first female soloists to be internationally recognized, and yet her name is not well-known. In 2019 Thomas Wolf, Ms Luboshuz’s grandson, illuminated her place in history in his book The Nightingale’s Sonata—The

We do know that Richard Wagner died on 13 February 1883 after suffering his final, fatal heart attack. However, there is still much debate as to what triggered that fatal attack. The leading English-language dictionary asserts, “the attack followed an

The son of poor Jewish immigrants, George Gershwin (1898-1937), could hardly have dreamt that his Rhapsody in Blue would single-handedly propel him to world fame. The work was originally titled “American Rhapsody,” but when his brother Ira saw a painting

With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan began to modernize. Western systems and Western technology were adopted and Western music was allowed to return after a 250-year absence. The Tokyo Academy of Music opened in 1887 and one of its

Kirill Petrenko, currently chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, was born on 11 February in Omsk, a city in Siberia “that made its living from the arms industry and petrochemicals.” Petrenko recalls that it was a closed city for foreigners,

Combining phenomenal technical brilliance and dramatic outfits, Yuja Wang is one of the hottest tickets on the classical music stage. Born in Beijing, China, on 10 February 1987, Yuja Wang comes from an artistic family. Her mother, Zhai Jieming, is

He was born in 1845 in Vezprém, Hungary, and in the 85 years of his life, was one of the most important violin teachers of the late 19th and early 20th century. He taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory for

I started piano lessons at the age of six, and it was a lot of fun. There were so many exciting things to explore, and thankfully I had a very nice and knowledgably teacher. At that age, I didn’t get