The word “masterclass” can, for some, conjure up a terrifying scenario: the “private lesson in public”, with a formidable “master” teacher and a trembling student, their every error and slip heard and duly noted by teacher and audience. I remember

Maria Szymanowska was an artist ahead of her time. Although her name is unfamiliar to many of us, she was one of the first professional piano virtuosos and a respected composer in 19th-century Europe. Her career foreshadowed that of fellow

In our earlier series on C major and minor and G major and minor, we listed Ernst Pauer’s suggestions from 1876 of pieces that fit the particular affect he assigned for a key. For the rest of the major and

The “Great Depression” was the immediate result of the sudden devastating collapse of the US stock market on 29 October 1929. Known as “Black Tuesday,” it plunged the world into a severe economic downturn in the 1930’s. Construction virtually halted

Like an enormous surgeon’s scalpel, the Second World War indiscriminately severed musical and cultural arteries. A new world order was gradually taking shape, and music became a pretty adornment to our busy little lives. Coming of age in the years

I’ve been playing and listening to Schubert’s Opus 90 Impromptus since I was about 14, when my mother fell in love with Alfred Brendel playing the fourth of the set, in A flat, and insisted that I learn it. So,

The Austrian composer and pianist Ernst Pauer (1826-1905) was a student of Mozart’s son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, before moving to London in 1851. He was one of the first piano professors at the Royal College of Music and also

Recently I gave a concert in a local church. The audience was small, but they listened attentively and seemed genuinely engaged by the music. All except one person (someone who is connected to me through marriage – but not, I