Hardly a month goes by without yet another international music festival rolling down the shutters and closing its doors forever. Festival d’Ile-de-France, City of London Festival or Lugano, the message is always the same. “Despite new directions and initiatives, the

Some years ago I read a fascinating book by French psychoanalyst and University of Paris literature professor Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, in which the author makes a very good case for freeing ourselves from

Today I accidentally stumbled over another rarity from the vault of unusual and singular instruments! The instrument in question—variously called “Tangent piano” in English, “Tangentenflügel” in German, “cembalo angelico” in Italian, and “clavecin harmonieux et celeste” in French—sounds like a

Olivier Messiaen’s monumental and profound work Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus (Twenty Gazes on the Infant Jesus) surely ranks amongst the “greats” of the piano repertoire, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with such titans as Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas

Monique Haas (1909-1987) received the Premier Prix in 1927 from the Paris Conservatoire before going on to study privately with Rudolf Serkin, Georges Enescu and Robert Casadesus. As was common with most French pianists of her generation, she was an

Two of the world’s most outstanding talents – Daniil Trifonov and Rafal Blechacz were featured earlier this month in the South China Morning Post. The article was meant to alert Hong Kong audience to their imminent recitals in late September

If you have been reading my miniseries on the shenanigans of abusive parents beating their children to musical stardom, this little story will probably restore your faith in humankind. I am talking about the pianist, violinist and composer Alma Elizabeth

We gather music along the way and it forms a personal soundtrack to our lives, evoking memories of times past, and a few bars of a significant song or piece of music can create an instant reaction, a ‘tingle’.