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Oblique Strategies in Practice
Oblique Strategies (subtitled Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas) is a deck of 7 by 9 centimetres (2.8 in × 3.5 in) printed cards in a black container box, created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt and first published in 1975.
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Living With the Music
A busy professional pianist will need to have several programmes of music “in the fingers” at any given time, which can be made ready for some kind of performance at any given time. Alongside that there is new repertoire to
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In Memoriam
Claudio Scimone (1934-2018)
On 6 September 2018, we sadly lost another pioneer of the early music movement. Claudio Scimone, a student of Dimitri Mitropoulos and Franco Ferrara, was primarily known as the founder of the string ensemble “I Solisti Veneti.” Together with Neville
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Villa-Lobos: Bachiana Brasileira No. 1
Premiered Today in 1932
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) has been described as “the single most significant creative figure in 20th century Brazilian art music.” His quest to develop musical compositions using indigenous Brazilian elements fueled a number of ethno-musicological excursions into the northeastern states of
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Music in the Air and on the Street
They all seem to start the same way – a public location – a mall, a public square, an airport, a few people wandering through with purpose, and then it all snaps into focus. The music starts, or the bass
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Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini
Premiered Today in 1838
For all his dislike of Italian music, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) kept returning to Italian subjects. We only need to think of Romeo and Juliette, Harold in Italy, and the opera loosely adapted from the memoirs of the 16th century Florentine
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China and Opera: Discovery and Sublimation
Before the harpsichord was introduced into China in 1601 by Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), during the Ming Dynasty, no Chinese had heard Western music. We could say that Matteo Ricci and his successors drew royal attention merely by using these Western
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Chets: Inside Europe’s Biggest Summer School for Pianists
A shiny black Schimmel grand piano is stretched across the corner of a classroom normally reserved for French lessons. A small group of people sit in a semi-circle around the piano, some with musical scores opened on their laps, others
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