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“I Played It Better at Home!”
If I had a pound for every time a student said this in a lesson, I’d be a rich woman by now! We’ve all heard it, and I know I’ve been guilty of saying it myself occasionally at piano lessons
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Musicians’ Summer Festival Survival Guide
Music students, amateurs, and professionals, love to attend summer festivals. We look forward all year to the challenging and diverse repertoire, playing with different colleagues, for new teachers, or playing chamber music, in picturesque settings. Think Verbier, Aspen, Tanglewood, Ljubljana.
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An orchestra from Lang Lang’s hometown
In spite of their huge age gap, Chinese pianist Lang Lang and Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa share one thing in common — they were both born in Shenyang, China. Maestro Ozawa was born in September 1935, his parents being merchants
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Ginastera: Concierto Argentino
Premiered Today in 1941
In the wide world of music, it is not always easy to determine what actually constitutes the premier performance. The process of introducing works to a wider audience is by definition a complicated one, and rather frequently a composition disappears
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Music for the Eyes
From the Music Catalogue of Auguste Durand
Music publishing in France is intricately and unbreakably linked with the name Durand! It all started with Marie-Auguste Massacrié-Durand (1830-1909), a capable composer and organist. In fact, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and was a classmate of César Franck
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Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail K. 384
Premiered Today in 1782
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 16 July 1782. The Austrian Emperor Joseph II was in the audience and famously said, “Too many notes my dear
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Returning to the studio
The late great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould made two significant and highly-acclaimed recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the first in 1955 when he was just 22, the second a quarter of a century later in 1981 when he was nearing
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Khachaturian: Piano Concerto in d-flat major, Op. 38
Premiered Today in 1937
Aram Khachaturian might easily be considered the poster child of Soviet realism in music. Joseph Stalin decreed that a composer in Soviet society had to be “an engineer of the human soul by writing music that communicates directly with the
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