Classical music has an image problem. Depending on where you hail from in the western world, society as a generalised group will probably have a fairly stark concept of this artistic medium we all hold dear.

Piano playing shouldn’t be a competitive activity, yet players are regularly pitted against one another in international music competitions. Alongside this is an ongoing argument about what are the hardest pieces in the pianist’s repertoire.

The key point raised in part-one of this article for musicians wanting to make it in the music worlds is to never give up. Many other salient points can be added to your list of requirements to maintain a lifelong

“amazing skill, personality and vigor” – Harold C Schonberg Percy Grainger (1882-1961), Australian pianist, composer and noted eccentric, is most famous for ‘Country Gardens’, his transcription of an English folksong, with its frolicking rustic lilt. But Grainger was much more

Eleven days (June 17th to 27th) of complete immersion in the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition, enduring palm-sweating, heart-racing, and adrenalin-pumping conditions, while witnessing an array of ultra demanding repertoire mastered by especially fine musicians all day – that is my

My version of Bach’s C major Prelude will not be the same as yours. Sure, we’ve been working from the same score, processing the same notes, we may even play the piece on the same instrument, but it won’t be

If you have been playing and practicing music for most of your life, you probably see those who have made it in concert halls and onto the world stage as amazing beings that transcend most mortal humans. You may be

A peaceful ostinato figure, grounded and tranquil, opens the work. After a few bars, a serenely beautiful yet simple melody is heard in the treble which melts into a series of increasingly complex variations, the initial theme dissolving into trills