Have you ever taken a Buzzfeed personality quiz? You know the kind I’m talking about. Which trending TV character are you? What cookie do you embody? What season are you, based on your bedroom design preferences? Obviously, those personality quizzes

He was affectionately known as “Dima” to his family and closest friends, and he commanded the operatic stage with his smouldering good looks and one of the most distinctive voices of his time. Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s voice is intoxicated with luxury,

Born on 15 October 1932 in Tartu, Jaan Rääts was one of the reformers of Estonian music. Rääts was part of a new generation of composers that brought Estonian music into the modern mainstream. Embracing the styles, philosophies and techniques

French cellist Anne Gastinel early on established a reputation as one of the finest cellists of her generation. Winning several major international competitions, including Scheveningen, Prague, and Rostropovich, she represented France in the Eurovision Competition in Vienna. Her recordings have

Throughout the history of music and particularly Western classical music, the piano has taken its position as the mother of all instruments. For many decades, it was common for households to have a piano in their living rooms, and many

For American composer George Antheil, the mechanisms of the modern age were the future of the world. He thought that ‘The environment of the machine has already become a spiritual thing…’ and wrote music that tried to capture both the

In his Goldberg Variations, Musical Offering, and the canonic variations on “Vom Himmel hoch,” Bach pursued canonic procedure to its absolute limits. The use of canon no longer merely serves to lend emphasis or cogency to the composer’s part-writing, but

Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow) became the third full operatic collaboration between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Premiered on 10 October 1919 at the Vienna State Opera, the work is a complex mixture of operatic