“I wish to be honest,” wrote Jean Françaix (1912-1997), “When I am composing, the finest theories are the last things that come to mind. My interest is not primarily attracted by the motorways of thought, but more the paths through

Play always as if the presence of a master– Robert Schumann The ability to self-critique, evaluate and reflect on one’s playing during practicing is a crucial skill for musicians, and is a component of the skillset of “deliberate practice”, which

Sergei Prokofiev was still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when he took the stage on 7 August 1912 to premier his 1st Piano Concerto. Since it was his first appearance with an orchestra, and expecting a rather large

When Joseph Haydn was putting the finishing touches on a symphony during the later stages of his career, he dejectedly wrote. “The piece on which I am now working would have been already finished if it were not that my

The psychological and emotional reasons why musicians perform and why we feel a need to connect and communicate with audiences is a broad and complex subject. For many musicians, performing is their raison d’être – the need, the will to

What do you get if one of classical music’s most beloved performers teams up with one of today’s most popular composers? It really is a no brainer, as Azul (the title means blue in Spanish) combines the collective imagination of

Rossini’s last opera, the four-act Guillaume Tell, with a composite French libretto based on Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, was produced at the Paris Opéra on 3 August 1829. However, within three performances the opera’s length of roughly four hours and