If you hope to have a career in music sooner or later you’ll have to participate in some sort of competition. Although they can be life-changing for a young person’s career, the preparation is arduous, and an audition or contest

It’s always pleasing to meet people who play the piano as adults (I am of course referring to amateur pianists as opposed to professionals who play for a living). Some have played all their life; some return to the piano

When Richard Wagner died on 23 February 1883, his first complete opera Die Feen (The Fairies) had still not been performed in public. That premier had to wait until 29 June 1888, yet regardless, the work never established itself in

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) was a married man of 63 and Kamila Stösslová a married woman of 25 when they met in a Moravian spa in the summer of 1917. What might have turned into an innocent and transient infatuation became

Richard Strauss’ Die Schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman) might be the only opera in the entire oeuvre with a central character who dislikes music. Sir Morosus, a retired British naval officer is allergic to noise of any kind. He disinherits

Most of us tend to focus on the things that didn’t go so well in a performance – the misplaced notes, the smudged runs, the memory slips. Analysing why these things happened and exploring solutions to problems or finding ways

NASA launched the twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in the summer of 1977. The primary mission was the exploration of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, and since everything went splendidly well, included extended visits to Uranus, Neptune and

Working as an artist within the Soviet political and cultural system was always a tightrope act. Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018), one of the great conductors of the last half-century explains, “I lived with communism for more than 50 years, and I