Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Born on October 16, 1962) Singing with Death

2026-10-22T22:21:29.525-07:00

by Georg Predota October 16th, 2026

The Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky was born in the industrial city of Krasnoyarsk, in Soviet-era Siberia, on 16 October 1962. He surprised the world by winning the Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff in 1989, and he stormed from success to success on the operatic stages of Europe and America.

His beautiful, cultivated voice was moderate in size but projected strongly, while his dramatic involvement grew steadily with experience. Always self-critical and highly empathic with the psychological dilemmas of his characters, Hvorostovsky announced in 2015 that he was suffering from a brain tumour. This illness took his life in 2017.

Hvorostovsky retained a strong musical and personal connection with Russia, performing as a celebrated recitalist in every corner of the globe. To celebrate his birthday, let’s turn to one of his most compelling Russian recordings, the Songs and Dances of Death by Modest Mussorgsky.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky (2011)

Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings Mussorgsky: Songs and Dances of Death, “Lullaby”

In a 2014 interview about his Russian-song recording “From Russia with Love”, Hvorostovsky commented on a Borodin composition, calling it typically Russian and offering a wonderful variety of Russian lyricism.

He also spoke of his Siberian upbringing and Russian cultural environment in 2005, suggesting that he didn’t have to travel to Moscow or St. Petersburg to study music, as the cultural background in any part of the country is very rich and profound, including the town he grew up in.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Valery Gergiev

Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881) had no academic training as a composer and worked as a civil servant. His Songs and Dances of Death set poems by his friend and relative Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov. Originally written for voice and piano, they are often performed in orchestrations by Dmitri Shostakovich or Kalevi Aho.

Many of Mussorgsky’s songs have a strong satirical undertone; however, the Songs and Dances of Death are strikingly different. They are described as dramatic and realistic scenes from real life, revolving around dying and death.

“Lullaby” provides a vivid portrayal of a child’s gradual death, and the mother’s desperate struggle for her child. Death becomes a bridegroom in “Serenade,” and “Trepak” describes a drunken peasant who is overtaken by death in a snowstorm. In the “Field-Marshal,” death appears in the flesh amidst the tumult of war, eventually declaring victory.

Hvorostovsky recorded the cycle twice, first in January 1993 with the Kirov Orchestra and Valery Gergiev. Hvorostovsky was only 30, yet he places this deeply Russian repertoire at the centre of one of his early recordings.

This cycle does not need a singer with a beautiful lyric baritone, but an artist capable of dramatic declamation and wide tonal variety. This recording wasn’t an isolated Mussorgsky project, as it was surrounded by art-song selections from his Russian cultural heritage.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Lieder recital

Hvorostovsky returned to the Mussorgsky cycle again eleven years later. In 2004, he performed it at the BBC Proms and subsequently recorded it again for Warner. A contemporary BBC Music Magazine declared that Hvorostovsky’s interpretation had changed surprisingly little over the decade.

Mussorgsky has always been part of Hvorostovsky’s Russian musical fabric. Explaining why he included Songs and Dances of Death in a recital programme, he said that “death is an unavoidable factor for human, life is its opposition, and love. Life, love, and death are fundamental elements of art.”

And he makes his Russian connection even more explicit when asked what Russian music meant to him. He stated, “This is what belongs to me. How can I describe what is part of my nature?”

Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Between Rooms, Between Worlds Marina Baranova on Music, Collaboration, and Curiosity

2026-10-22T22:10:19.282-07:00

by Fanny Po Sim Head January 25th, 2026

Pianist and composer Marina Baranova grew up in Ukraine in a household where music was constant and diverse. Both of her parents were pianists and teachers. Her mother taught classical piano, while her father specialised in jazz and improvisation. Their small apartment contained several pianos, often played at the same time.

“As a child, I loved moving from room to room,” Baranova says. One space was dominated by classical repertoire, where she listened to her mother and her students work through pieces. “That music always turned into a kind of film in my head, full of depth and emotional intensity.” Classical music, she explains, shaped her early understanding of musical structure, storytelling, and emotional expression.

Marina Baranova

In another room, her father was immersed in jazz. “It expressed freedom, rebellion, and creativity without borders,” Baranova recalls. Jazz was forbidden in the Soviet Union, and her father’s involvement with it carried personal and political significance. “The fact that my father played it was, in itself, an act of resistance. You could feel that defiance directly in the sound.”

Growing up with these contrasting musical languages shaped Baranova’s view of genre. “Music has many faces, yet everything can exist under the same roof,” she says. “I like to think of musical genres as different rooms in one house. Each has its own atmosphere, but there is always a door connecting them.”

Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, M. 19

Baranova’s recent recording projects reflect her interest in connection and contrast. Last year, she released Salon de Ravel and The Star of Mendelssohn, two albums with distinctly different conceptual frameworks. “They may appear very different at first glance,” she notes, “yet both come from my musical curiosity.”

Marina Baranova’s Prélude a la manière de Ravel

Salon de Ravel was inspired by an imagined artistic environment in Paris around 1900. “I pictured Ravel surrounded by musicians, painters, and poets, sharing ideas and new works,” Baranova explains. The album reflects her interest in artistic exchange and influence, particularly the composers Ravel admired, including Borodin, Chabrier, Debussy, and Fauré.

The Star of Mendelssohn, by contrast, has a more personal foundation. The album intertwines Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words with traditional Christmas carols. “It was conceived as a bridge between worlds,” Baranova says, drawing on her experience of growing up with a Jewish background and later embracing Christian holiday traditions. She also sees parallels in Mendelssohn’s own life. “It mirrors the dualities shaped by multiple traditions.”

That idea of openness and exchange also defines her collaboration with her husband, composer and visual artist Damian Marhulets. The two met when they were twenty and have shared an ongoing artistic dialogue ever since. “We’ve never stopped talking about what it means to be an artist,” Baranova says, describing conversations that range from aesthetics to creative process.

Felix Mendelssohn/Marina Baranova’s Drinking Song, Op. 75 No. 3

She often plays new piano works for Marhulets, using their discussions as a way to test and refine ideas. “Those conversations are incredibly inspiring and often open doors I didn’t even know were there.” After a recording is completed, Marhulets frequently creates visual artwork in response to the music. “He approaches the music from a different angle, and his visual interpretation uncovers layers I hadn’t seen before,” she says.

Marina Baranova’s The Sense of Cohesion

In recent years, Baranova has expanded her role beyond performing and recording by curating her own music salon at Villa Seligmann in Hannover, a center dedicated to Jewish music and culture. After renting a studio in the building, she began organising intimate concerts for small audiences. “From the very beginning, I dreamed of creating a music salon,” she says.

The project quickly grew into the ImproVision Festival, developed in collaboration with Villa Seligmann. The festival brings together international musicians to improvise, perform repertoire, and present original works. One highlight was an improvised twelve-hands performance on two pianos shaped by audience suggestions. “It was full of spontaneity and connection,” Baranova recalls.

When Baranova sits at the piano today, she describes the creative impulse as constantly changing. “Each time, the approach feels different,” she says. Sometimes she begins with improvisation, while at other times a connection emerges through sight-reading. “It can feel like a dialogue across time.”

Music also serves a personal function. “Sometimes music feels like a kind of embrace,” she says. “I often feel that new music already exists somewhere, waiting to be given sound.” Honesty, she emphasises, is central to her work. “I only create when the impulse comes from the deepest place within me. I cannot lie in front of music.”

Currently, her piano showcases her diverse interests. Beethoven scores sit next to handwritten sketches for a reworking of Sweeney Todd, originally by Stephen Sondheim. As she says, it’s “a very unlikely house share: Beethoven on one side, Sondheim on the other.” To learn more about Marina Baranova, visit her website at www.marinabaranova.com.

A Debut of Note: Himari

2026-10-16T19:36:53.264-07:00

by Maureen Buja October 7th, 2026

The young Japanese violinist Himari (b. 2011 as Himari Yoshimura) made her American concert debut with Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor with the Santa Fe Symphony in 2023, aged 11, and then made her European debut with the work in 2025, age 13. That debut with the Berlin Philharmonic is captured on her debut recording on Decca Classics, appropriately called Debut.

Himari © himari-info.com

Himari started her violin study at age 3, working with Koichiro Harada and Machie Oguri. She made her debut with a professional orchestra at age 6, and at age 11 she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with Ida Kavafian. At age 13, she signed an exclusive contract with Decca Classics, becoming the label’s youngest female artist.

In competition, Himari has been awarded grand prizes at the Arthur Grumiaux Competition in Belgium (2019) and the International Competition for Young Violinists in Honour of Karol Lipinski and Henryk Wieniawski, Lublin, Poland (2021), as well as the 26th Andrea Postacchini International Violin Competition in Italy and the Kogan International Violin Competition in Belgium. She plays the 1717 ‘Hamma’ Stradivari on loan from Mr Yusaku Maezawa. Her bow is on loan from the Munetsugu Collection.

Henryk Wieniawski (1835–1880) wrote his first violin concerto in 1851 while on tour in Russia with his brother. After returning to give concerts in Leipzig, Paris, and London, he returned to Russia in 1860 at the invitation of Anton Rubinstein. He spent the next 12 years there, variously as solo violinist to the Tsar, leader of the opera Orchestra, and professor of violin at Rubinstein’s conservatory. When he returned to his touring career in 1872, he extended his travels to North America with Rubinstein. When he returned to Europe in 1875, he was appointed professor of violin at the Brussels Conservatory. His health was increasingly frail, and he had to leave the stage during a performance of his Violin Concerto No. 2 in Berlin. Joseph Joachim was in the audience and took his place on stage, replacing the concerto with a performance of the Bach Chaconne on Wieniawski’s violin. Despite this setback, Wieniawski continued his tour out of financial need, but he was often forced to leave the stage, unable to perform. Wieniawski died on 31 March 1880 in the house of Tchaikovsky’s patroness, Nadezhda von Meck.

In the first movement, after a first subject in the clarinet and a more lyrical second subject, the violin enters in a technically demanding solo entry in 10ths. The first subject follows, played only on the G string. The rest of the movement includes a brief cadenza, followed by a lyrical passage that gives the violinist a chance to display technique, complete with triple-stopped chords and difficult but dazzling arpeggios. The final coda brings back the first subject.

Henryk Wieniawski: Violin Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 14 – I. Allegro moderato

Himari plays with authority and assurance, and even her own teacher remarks on her maturity: ‘If you’re listening to Himari and you close your eyes, you wouldn’t realise her age. Inside Himari, there is an older person and a wise musician… she’s immensely talented.’

After this brilliant orchestra debut, Himari fills the rest of the album with recital material of the highest quality, including Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne No. 16 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55, No. 2 (transcribed by Jascha Heifetz); Leopold Godowsky’s Triakontameron: XI. Alt Wien (transcribed by Jascha Heifetz); Jean Sibelius’ Mazurka, Op. 81, No. 1; and Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor (transcribed by Nathan Milstein). These are works by the virtuosos of their day, and even Sibelius’ Mazurka is technically demanding, with a cadenza-like opening, double stopping, and huge leaps in the melodic line, requiring a virtuoso hand.

She closes the album with more Henryk Wieniawski, with his Fantasia on Themes from Gounod’s ‘Faust’, Op. 20.

With its mix of orchestral and recital material, Himari’s debut recording gives us an exceptional view of her skills. Sometimes, as happens on live recordings, her leaps may fall a hair short, but that’s the excitement of live performance. In the piano and violin works, where Chelsea Wang, who made her own orchestral debut at age 6, ably accompanies her, we have a more traditional format. Still, again, Himari’s choice of works distinguishes her. In Wieniawski’s Faust Fantasia, she has the vision to create a coherent storyline amid all the virtuoso fireworks.

Himari: Debut (Wieniawski, Chopin, Sibelius, and Godowsky)

Himari, violin; Berlin Philharmonic with Sebastian Weigle, conductor; Chelsea Wang, piano
Decca Classics 00028948722099
Release date: 25 September 2026

Vienna Soundscapes: The Quatuor Hermès

2026-10-16T19:30:26.800-07:00

by Maureen Buja October 12th, 2026

The Quatuor Hermès (Omer Bouchez, violin 1; Elise Liu, violin 2; Lou Yung-Hsin Chang, viola; and Yan Levionnois, cello) have brought together three musical emblems of Vienna on their new album Echoes of Vienna. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), Anton Webern (1883–1945), and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957). They view Korngold as the source of these echoes, signalling through his 1933 String Quartet the end of the brilliant ‘music school of Vienna’ created by Mozart and which Webern had ushered ‘into modernity’. Through his farewell, Korngold, who was to leave the city in 1934 for Hollywood, acknowledge the twilight of the once-great city of music.

In choosing their works for this album, the Quartet looked at both Beethoven and Haydn before settling on Mozart. As the starting cornerstone, Mozart’s 1783 quartet (Quartet No. 15 in D minor) opens the discussion. The Quartet sees Webern and Korngold as further embodiments of the Viennese soul.

The invisible body in the middle of these works is Romanticism, and by jumping from Mozart’s Classical quartet, which they view as ‘pre-Romantic’, to Webern’s and Korngold’s definitive post-Romantic works, we’re asked to imagine what lies between them. Mozart’s dramatic quartet and its use of D minor as its key only emphasises the work’s ‘post-Classical’ position in this context.

Webern’s Langsamer Satz, written in 1905, transcends Romanticism on the edge of atonality. Webern sets a love story in a man’s walk with his beloved, but at the same time finds traditional atonality unable to fully convey the emotions he wants to express. In the same idea of intimacy and anxiety that can be found in Mozart’s Quartet No. 15, said to have been written while he awaited the birth of his first child, Webern carries us with a sense of emotional restraint.

The album ends with Erich Korngold’s String Quartet No. 2. The precocious Korngold was often compared to the equally precocious Mozart, and one of the strengths of his music from the beginning was its ability to conjure up stories and images. The Quartet first met Korngold through his Piano Quintet, and they found the same sense of farewell in this String Quartet. They are protagonists in an epic tale, and the music seems to have cinematic qualities, as will so much of his future Hollywood material.

The recording is an imaginative and creative look at the string quartet as it moves from tradition to the future. Emotions give way to emotional stories that lead to cinematic ones.

Quatuor Hermès (photo by Lyodoh Kaneko)

They play with skill and authority, and their extensive work with late Romantic and Early Modern quartets and quintets gives them a unique modern viewpoint. They note that this recording is their first to include Mozart.

This album joins an extensive list on La Dolce Volta by the Quartet, including Schumann’s Three Quartets, Op. 41 (LDV 17), String quartets by Ravel, Dutilleux, and Debussy (LDV 33), Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, with Geoffroy Couteau (LDV 61), and his Piano Quartets nos. 1–3 (LDV 62.3), and Schubert’s Rosamunde and Der Tod und das Mädchen (LDV 85).

Echoes of Vienna: Mozart, Webern, Korngold

Quatuor Hermès
La Dolce Volta LDV 134

Official Website

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Chopin’s Final Year: A Month-By-Month Guide to 1849

2026-10-16T19:08:09.687-07:00

Emily E. Hogstad October 15th, 2026

Frédéric Chopin’s death on 17 October 1849 was not sudden. It was the end of a long, slow, painful decline.

During the final year of his life, he gave his last public concert, signed his will, and stopped taking new pupils. His famous relationship with author George Sand was over, and the two would never reconcile. He was 39, weighed 99 pounds, and spent months unable to compose.

What followed was one of the most romanticised and mythologised deaths in classical music history. Former students, celebrated artists, and the Parisian elite attended and mourned across Europe.

Here is how Chopin’s final year unfolded, month by month.

October 1848: Chopin Draws Up a Will

Maria Wodzińska: Chopin, 1836 (National Museum in Warsaw)

In October 1848, Chopin was finishing his final concert tour through Scotland and England, accompanied by his student Jane Stirling.

At the time, he was battling late-stage tuberculosis. His health deteriorated so much that, later in the month, while he was staying in Edinburgh, he signed a last will.

He described his choice to his friend Wojciech Grzymała as “a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere.”

On 31 October, he arrived in London on his way back home.

November 1848: Chopin’s Final Concert

In November, Chopin’s health continued to go downhill. His doctors began acknowledging that his diagnosis was almost certainly a terminal one. He lost weight until he was just 99 pounds (45 kilograms).

Chopin gave his final public concert at London’s Guildhall on 16 November 1848. It was a benefit show for Polish refugees. Unfortunately, the English crowd was more interested in socialising and dancing than in listening to Chopin’s playing.

Chopin understood then that the end was nearing. He wrote to his friend, writer Stanisław Koźmian, that “I have ended my public career.”

A week later, on 23 November, he left London by rail and crossed the English Channel. He wrote to Grzymała, asking him to leave out flowers so his apartment would smell good when he arrived. He returned to his Parisian home on the 24th.

December 1848: Chopin’s Final Compositions

It is believed that sometime before the year ended, or in very early 1849, Chopin wrote some of his last music: a Waltz in A minor (WN 63) and a Mazurka in G minor (WN 64).

January 1849: Chopin’s Final Picture

On New Year’s Day, they took Chopin’s last picture. Looking at it, it’s clear that he wasn’t feeling well.

He spent the rest of January resting, playing privately, and teaching.

Sadly, his condition deteriorated enough during the month that he stopped accepting new pupils, despite the financial hit.

February 1849: Visiting With Friends

Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand by Eugène Delacroix

In February, artist Eugène Delacroix visited Chopin. He would visit eight times throughout the year.

Delacroix wrote that one of the things they discussed was Chopin’s legendary ex, the author George Sand.

Sand was writing her memoirs at the time, and the two men wondered what she would write about. Chopin would not live to see the book: she only finished and published it in the mid-1850s, years after his death.

We wrote about Chopin and Sand’s tumultuous relationship here: https://interlude.hk/frederic-chopin-and-george-sand-the-real-story-behind-their-relationship/.

March 1849: Visiting With Former Students

His health continued to deteriorate. Friends continued to come by.

In late March, Chopin’s friend and former student Countess Delfina Potocka visited to perform for him. Fellow student Maria Kalergis also dropped in to play piano.

April 1849: “Boredom is for him the cruellest torment”

Although he had broken up with her mother, George Sand, Chopin continued to correspond with Solange Clésinger, whom he viewed as a kind of daughter figure. Solange was about to give birth to her first child.

On 5 April, Chopin reported to her, “I am at a loss what to do. I have a fourth successive doctor; they take from me 10 fr. a visit – they come sometimes twice a day but bring me little relief.”

On 7 April, Delacroix swung by again, and the two went on a ride down the Champs-Élysées. Wanting to distract Chopin from his pain, Delacroix asked him about the logic of music.

Delacroix returned a week later, but by that time, Chopin was in no shape to go riding again. He reported that Chopin was “distressed” and “breathless.” “Boredom is for him the cruellest torment,” Delacroix wrote.

May 1849: Corresponding With George Sand’s Daughter

In May, Solange Clésinger wrote to Chopin to let him know that she had given birth to a daughter. She asked if he would consider encouraging her husband, sculptor Auguste Clésinger, to work in London.

A few months later, Auguste Clésinger would create Chopin’s death mask.

June 1849: Summering in the Suburbs

It was common in aristocratic Parisian circles to leave the city for the summer. Accordingly, Chopin’s friends banded together to find him summer housing in the suburb of Chaillot.

On 18 June, he wrote to Grzymała, painting a vivid picture of life in the Parisian capital in the summer of 1849: “Everyone is leaving – some from fear of cholera, others from fear of revolution.”

In the same letter, he reported, “I am stronger, as I have caught up on eating and thrown up my medicine – but I am panting and coughing the same, just that I am bearing it better – I have not yet started to play – I cannot compose – I do not know what kind of straw I shall soon be eating.”

Four days later, he wrote, “Violent attacks of illness. Two haemorrhages during the night.”

A week later, he wrote to his sister Ludwika, asking if she could come to Paris to be with him in his final months. “If you can, then come. I am weak, and no doctor can help me like you.”

July 1849: The Door Closes on a George Sand Reconciliation

In July, Amélie Grille de Beuzelin wrote to George Sand, “He painfully feels your absence.”

George Sand replied with exasperation, making it clear that their legendary relationship was over: “His sentiment died long ago, and if my memory still oppresses him, it is because he feels pangs of conscience.”

The couple would never reconcile – and a few months later, she’d choose not to attend his funeral.

August 1849: Chopin’s Sister Ludwika Arrives to Caretake

Ludwika Chopin

After a few weeks of preparing and travelling, Chopin’s sister Ludwika arrived in Paris on 9 August with her husband and their daughter.

She would stay with her brother until the end.

September 1849: Final Visits

In September, it was time to return to Paris proper.

It had been months since he could teach or make money, so Jane Stirling paid for his lodgings at the Hôtel Baudard de Saint-James on the Place Vendôme. He moved there on 9 September.

Pauline Viardot as Orphée, 1860

His colleague, singer and composer Pauline Viardot, reported that during this time, as the city paid its respects, “All the grande dames of Paris considered it their duty to faint in his room.”

October 1849: Chopin’s Death

Time was rapidly running out, and Chopin knew it. He informed his sister Ludwika that he wanted his unpublished work thrown into the fire. (She ended up disobeying his wishes, which is why we have so many posthumous Chopin works.)

His condition deteriorated badly on 15 October. By then, only his closest loved ones remained, waiting with him for the end. We wrote about those final days here: https://interlude.hk/on-this-day-17-october-frederic-chopin-died/.

Soon after midnight on 17 October, his physician asked him if he was suffering. “No longer,” Chopin replied. He died about an hour later.

His sister Ludwika and George Sand’s daughter, Solange Clésinger, were present for his death.

After Ludwika liquidated her brother’s estate, she returned to Poland. She carried her brother’s heart with her so that it could be buried in Polish soil, as per his wishes.

Solange Clésinger-Sand

Conclusion

Chopin’s death at 39 cut short one of the most singular careers in Western music history.

Even at the end, he was surrounded by an extraordinary web of loyalty and love. His student Jane Stirling funded his final months. His friend Delacroix visited eight times. His sister Ludwika crossed Europe to be with him, stayed until the last breath, and then carried his heart home to Poland.

The works he wanted burned survived because the people closest to him ignored his wishes. We’ve been grateful ever since.

From Witches’ Sabbath to Dance of Death: Four Related Pieces for October

2026-10-16T18:42:02.326-07:00

by Bruce Robinson October 12th, 2026

Orchestras love to program Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre around Halloween. But you can celebrate the season all month with other dances of death—no candy corn required. From Berlioz’ hallucinatory Sabbath to Saint-Saëns’ skeletal waltz—by way of Liszt and Mussorgsky—here are four works that summon the spirits.

Looking at just the Romantic era, it all starts with Hector Berlioz’ 1830 Symphonie fantastique. Has there ever been a work of such startling originality? Berlioz’ program for the last movement states, “He sees himself at the Witches’ Sabbath, amidst a hideous throng of shades, sorcerers, and monsters of every kind, gathered for his funeral.” The idea of a witches’ sabbath—a nighttime gathering with Satan—dates from the Middle Ages.

Berlioz recasts his idée fixe—the recurring theme of the symphony—as a mocking dance tune for the clarinet. Bells announce the introduction of two other themes. In a blaze of imagination, he introduces the plainchant Dies Irae with its evocation of the Last Judgment: “Day of wrath—that day—shall dissolve the world into ash.” And a new, energetic melody piles a “witches’ round” on top of the madness.

Hear the Witches’ Sabbath, the fifth movement of Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique, played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.

From the first performance, audiences responded with passion. Yet repeat performances didn’t materialise, and Berlioz remained poor. Franz Liszt, who was present at the premiere, transcribed the piece for piano solo and performed it frequently—a remarkable achievement for a 21-year-old.

A decade later, Liszt appropriated parts of Berlioz’ concept as he began composing his Totentanz (Dance of Death) for piano and orchestra; the first version was completed in 1849. Rather than the witches’ sabbath, Liszt drew on the tradition of the Dance of Death, particularly the woodcuts of Hans Holbein the Younger and the Triumph of Death fresco at Pisa’s Campo Santo. In Holbein’s woodcuts, the agent of death—a skeleton—drags people away from all walks of life, in all conditions, often while playing an instrument. In his single-movement showpiece, Liszt transforms the Dies Irae melody through a series of dazzling variations. Liszt has the strings play col legno—“with the wood,” using the back of the bow—to signify the bones of the skeleton.

The Noblewoman, by Hans Holbein

Hear pianist Nelson Freire with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Michel Plasson.

Liszt made three tours of Russia in the 1840s, including his last as a virtuoso. Partly because of the personal connections he made, Liszt exerted a profound influence on the direction of Russian music in the decades that followed. In 1867, Modest Mussorgsky knew of Liszt’s Totentanz as he wrote his tone poem, St. John’s Night on Bald Mountain. Mussorgsky wrote, “The form and character of my composition are Russian and original. Its tone is ardent and chaotic.” While Mussorgsky didn’t incorporate the Dies Irae in its original form, several of its themes echo the chant.

St. John’s Night refers to the Eve of St. John the Baptist’s birth, traditionally observed on June 23—six months before Christmas. Russian folk traditions include bonfires and other means of warding off evil spirits and witches. With this background, Nikolai Gogol wrote a short story, St. John’s Eve, about which Mussorgsky composed his music.

Bald Mountain was neither published nor performed during his lifetime. Mily Balakirev, who often imposed his views on his circle—Mussorgsky, César Cui, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov—didn’t approve of the work. It fell to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov to tighten and redesign the piece into the version most often played now. You can read how Rimsky-Korsakov’s version differs from Mussorgsky’s in Maureen Buja’s Interlude story.

Hear Paavo Järvi conduct the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Rimsky-Korsakov’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain

Saint-Saëns drew on yet another legend for his brief tone poem Danse Macabre: Death playing the violin at midnight on Halloween, with skeletons leaving their graves to dance. Incredibly, the piece began in 1872 as an art song to a delicious text by Henri Cazalis, who wrote under the pseudonym Jean Lahor. The song is rarely performed, perhaps because of the difficulty of the rapid-fire text. The violin plays open strings as if tuning—but the E string is tuned to E Flat in a technique called scordatura. The interval from A to E-flat is a tritone—the devil’s interval.

Hear Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre for voice, Markus Poschner conducting the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana with Tassis Christoyannis, baritone.

Zig et zig et zig, la mort en cadence
Frappant une tombe avec son talon,
La mort à minuit joue un air de danse,
Zig et zig et zag, sur son violon.

Le vent d’hiver souffle, et la nuit est sombre,
Des gémissements sortent des tilleuls;
Les squelettes blancs vont à travers l’ombre
Courant et sautant sous leurs grands linceuls.

Zig et zig et zig, chacun se trémousse.
On entend claquer les os des danseurs,
Un couple lascif s’assoit sur la mousse
Comme pour goûter d’anciennes douceurs.

Zig et zig et zag, la mort continue
De racler sans fin son aigre instrument.
Un voile est tombé! La danseuse est nue!
Son danseur la serre amoureusement.

La dame est, dit-on, marquise ou baronne.
Et le vert galant un pauvre charron—
Horreur! Et voilà qu’elle s’abandonne
Comme si le rustre était un baron.

Zig et zig et zig, quelle sarabande!
Quels cercles de morts se donnant la main!
Zig et zig et zag, on voit dans la bande
Le roi gambader auprès du vilain!

Zig and zig and zig, Death keeps the beat,
Striking a tomb with a bony heel;
At midnight, Death plays a dance-tune sweet—
Zig and zig and zag—on the fiddle’s steel.

The winter wind blows, and the night is deep;
Moans rise up from the linden trees;
White skeletons through the shadows sweep,
Leaping and running in shrouds like these.

Zig and zig and zig, how they sway and spin!
One hears the clatter of dancing bones;
A lustful pair sits where mosses begin,
Savoring pleasures of old, in tones.

Zig and zig and zag, Death plays on and on,
Scraping the strings of that shrill instrument.
The veil has fallen! The dancer is nude,
Stripped bare! Her partner holds her, all intent.

The lady, they say, is a marchioness—
Her gallant, a lowly wheelwright—oh, dread!
Yet she yields to his amorous, bold caress,
As if the boor were a baron bred.

Zig and zig and zag, what a wild saraband!
What circles of dead, hand clasped in hand!
Zig and zig and zag, in the throng we see
The king capering near the peasant—glee!

In 1874, Saint-Saëns reworked the song as a tone poem, giving the vocal part to the violin. A single harp note is struck twelve times, marking the twelve strokes of midnight, before the violin’s satanic dance begins. The xylophone depicts the dancing skeletons. Saint-Saëns inserts a fugato, then the woodwinds play the Dies Irae—but in a major key, so listen carefully! The madness fully blossoms into a brilliant showpiece before the oboe imitates a rooster at dawn.

Hear Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, Daniel Harding conducting the Bremen Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie with Renaud Capuçon, violin.

Almost a half-century after transcribing Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique, Liszt transcribed Danse Macabre for piano. Today, Liszt’s transcription is most often heard in Vladimir Horowitz’s 1942 reworking.

Hear Vladimir Horowitz, piano, play his version of Liszt’s transcription of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre.

Each of these four works offers a different answer to the same question: what does death sound like? The Dies Irae—that ancient warning of judgment—becomes, in their hands, a source of wonder. Death, for all its terror, can be made to dance.

A Bear Called Winnie-the-Pooh (Published on October 14, 1926)

2026-10-13T22:16:27.002-07:00

On 14 October 2026, we celebrate a very special 100th birthday. Our birthday bear is friendly and steadfast, and though he is a little slow and naïve, he often comes up with clever ideas.

Our celebrity is also a talented poet and storyteller, and occasionally he even composes a song. Have I given you enough clues to guess our birthday bear’s identity?

Enough suspense already! Today, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh, the lovable fictional teddy bear created by the English author A. A. Milne and brought to life by illustrator E. H. Shepard.

From Winnipeg to the Hundred Acre Wood

Winnie-the-Pooh is actually a collection of stories about a good-natured honey-loving bear who lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, a fictional place modelled on Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England.

The lovable bear was inspired by a stuffed toy Milne bought for his son Christopher Robin, and by a bear named Winnie they visited at the London Zoo. Thus, Winnie-the-Pooh was essentially inspired by a real bear.

The bear story begins in Canada, where an officer of the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps named Harry Colebourn adopted an orphaned female bear cub in White River, Ontario. He named the cub Winnipeg, or Winnie for short, after the Canadian city of Winnipeg, where he was based.

Harry Colebourn and Winnie

Lopez/Lopez: “The Tummy Song”

From Zoo to Literary Fame

When Colebourn’s regiment came to England, he brought Winnie with him, and she soon became the regiment’s unofficial mascot. When Colebourn left for the front, he placed Winnie at the London Zoo, and she quickly became a crowd favourite.

One of those visitors was Christopher Robin Milne, who was so taken with Winnie that he renamed his teddy bear after her. Originally, the name Pooh belonged to a swan that Christopher Robin visited and fed. And thus the fictional Winnie-the-Pooh was born.

A. A. Milne, 1920

The first collection of stories under the title “Winnie-the-Pooh” was published in 1926, and the sequel “The House at Pooh Corner” appeared in 1928. Since we have already met Winnie-the-Pooh, it’s now time to introduce Pooh’s companions in the forest.

Winnie-the-Pooh, Evening News

Lopez/Lopez: “A Very Important Thing to Do”

Meet the Gang

Of course, Christopher Robin is the boy who shares his name with Milne’s son. He is the benign master of the forest, and the animals turn to him when a problem gets too big for them.

He leads their expedition to the North Pole, and when Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s doorway, Christopher reads to him for over a week until Pooh has grown thin enough to escape through the doorway.

And then there is the old and grey donkey “Eeyore,” a kind but always self-deprecating creature. Odd mishaps seem to follow him around, as his missing tail is found at the Owl’s house, and Pooh and Piglet accidentally dismantle his stick house.

The original Winnie-the-Pooh toys

One of Pooh’s closest friends is “Piglet,” a small and often nervous creature who is fiercely loyal. One day, he sets out to give Eeyore a balloon for his birthday but accidentally pops it. Never mind, he still brings the remains as a gift. “Piglet” is very brave and even stands up to such creatures as a Heffalump, a creature resembling an elephant.

Sherman/Sherman: “Like a Rather Blustery

Wisdom, Bounce & Trouble

“Owl,” predictably, is an expert on almost everything, and always ready with a story or piece of advice. “Owl” lives in a splendid house at the Chestnuts, and even has a doorbell that rings inside.

The exuberant tiger bounding around on his tail first appeared in the 1928 book. Called “Tigger,” he joins many adventures and boasts that he can climb trees. Amusingly, he discovers that getting down is much harder than getting up.

Pooh (Shepard, 1928)

“Roo” is a baby kangaroo riding in his mother’s pouch, and it’s all fun and games. When “Roo” falls into a stream, he discovers that he can swim, and he even gets stuck up a tree with Tigger.

His mother “Kanga” is the fastest animal in the woods and is known for keeping track of every detail. She certainly is very practical and attentive, and later looks after Tigger as well.

“Rabbit” is an expert thinker who is convinced that he can solve almost any problem. When he gets annoyed at Tigger bouncing around, he leads him deep into the forest to disorient him, but in the end, it is “Rabbit” who loses his way.

A Few Simple Lines

And thus, the stage is set for “Winnie-the-Pooh” to get himself into all kinds of sticky situations. The 1926 book contains 10 chapters that recount his various adventures. Milne insisted that Ernest H. Shepard illustrate these stories.

Shepard had long been working as a book illustrator, and he was also a full-time cartoonist at Punch, focusing on political cartoons. He also collaborated with Milne on the publication of When We Were Very Young in 1924.

His illustrations were always inspired by life itself. He often carried a sketchbook and observed everything from landscapes to children’s toys. As such, his drawings for “Winnie-the-Pooh” are delightfully light and natural, with a few simple lines suggesting personality and environment.

Pooh Goes to Hollywood

Milne quickly understood that Shepard’s contribution made the books a great success, and Shepard received a share of the royalties. As a result, “Winnie-the-Pooh” became a huge success and the book was translated into countless languages.

Walt Disney acquired the screen rights to Milne’s Pooh stories in 1961, and the character made his Disney animated debut in the 1966 featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. Originally, the screen characters were based on Shepard’s illustrations, but were subsequently adapted. Interestingly, Shepard called the Disney animation a travesty in 1966.

Two more short features followed, and all three were later combined into a feature-length animation titled The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1977. Yet, living with the resounding success of Winnie-the-Pooh proved difficult for the people behind it. A. A. Milne was frustrated that his bear story overshadowed his plays, novels, and essays.

May His Songs Never End

Illustrator Ernest H. Shepard developed a similar resentment as his Pooh drawings became more famous than the rest of his work. And Christopher Robin Milne was mercilessly teased by his classmates over his fictional counterpart. As an adult, he tried to distance himself completely from the character.

Of course, “Winnie-the-Pooh” is a rather musical bear, so the original Disney productions featured songs by the Sherman brothers. For the 2011 “Winnie the Pooh” film, Henry Jackman composed the background score, while new songs were written by the songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.

Winnie the Pooh

A hundred years after Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared in print, he still gets stuck in doorways and stumbles into wild adventures with his friends. This jolly bear has made children and adults smile for 100 years and may his honey pots always be full and his songs never end.

All by Yourself

2026-10-12T20:39:11.744-07:00

All by Yourself.

A phrase that sounds simple… until it becomes personal.

We live in a world full of noise, motion, and connection—yet many of us feel like a small boat on an unpredictable sea.

Doing life.
Facing storms.
Searching for direction…
all by yourself.

This new series begins with one honest question:
What happens when your strength, your certainty, and your self-reliance aren’t enough?

Let’s talk about the reality behind the phrase so many quietly live with.

Have you ever felt “all by yourself”?
Share it with us — we’re listening.

#AllByYourself #LifeRocks #faithInTheStorm #godiswithyou #ChristianInspiration #YouAreNotAlone #HopeInHardTimes #FaithOverFear
#StormsOfLife 

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Look and sound grand

2026-10-12T20:32:46.668-07:00

Yamaha grand pianos in colors you don’t usually find anywhere else, now with even more reasons to bring one home. Enjoy Handog Sale offers all October long at Yupangco Music, home of the biggest piano showroom in the Philippines.

 Handog Sale: October 1-31, 2026
 PM us for special deals!

Visit our showroom or message us to find out which offers fit your dream piano.

 0917-500-6060 |  (02) 8899-9595

#YupangcoMusic#HandogSale#Yamaha#YamahaGrandPiano#LookAndSoundGrandSee less

Look and sound grand

FORM

Look and sound grand

2026-10-12T17:16:50.507-07:00

Five Women Composers Who Studied at the Paris Conservatoire

2026-10-09T18:54:13.546-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad September 20th, 2026

The Paris Conservatoire was founded in 1795 after the French Revolution. Since then, many of classical music’s greatest figures have passed through its doors.

Initially, women weren’t allowed to benefit from the Conservatoire’s rigorous education. In fact, women weren’t admitted outside vocal classes until 1849, when French violin prodigy Camilla Urso broke that glass ceiling at the age of nine.

Urso proved to the institution that women could be extraordinary students, and hundreds of women followed in her footsteps.

Today we’re looking at five largely forgotten women composers who studied at the Paris Conservatoire.

Grace Becker Vamos

Grace Vamos

Fontainebleau Suite

Grace Becker was born in 1898 in California to a violinist father and pianist mother. The musical couple had a spare cello that Grace started playing as a child.

As a young woman, she studied at the Paris Conservatoire and the Fontainebleau School of Music.

In 1937, she moved to Hungary to study with composer Zoltán Kodály, then returned to America when World War II broke out in the summer of 1939.

She spent most of the rest of her career in California, interspersed with frequent visits to Mexico.

Her piano concerto was the first orchestral piece ever written by a woman to be performed in California.

In addition to composing, she also founded a trio called the Trio Moderne, an all-woman ensemble featuring Becker Vamos, flautist Christine Howells Pfund, and harpist Marie Hughes Marguarrie.

In 1946, she married Ernest Vamos, a dentist and an amateur cellist. They never had any children. Instead, she focused on her career, teaching countless students and endowing multiple scholarships and competitions.

Today, the scores of Grace Becker Vamos’s works are available through Vamos Publishing.

Koharik Alis Gazarossian

Koharik Alis Gazarossian was born to Armenian parents in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in 1907.

As a child, she took piano lessons from a former student of Franz Liszt.

In 1926, at nineteen, she moved to Paris and began studying at the Conservatoire.

Her piano teacher was Lazare Lévy, whose other pupils included John Cage, Clara Haskil, and Monique Haas.

She also studied composition with Paul Dukas, composer of the tone poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Her own work often drew upon Armenian folk influences. Among her fans was fellow Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian.

Her set of 24 Etudes, finished in 1958, covered the twelve major and minor keys. Each one is dedicated to a friend or pupil. Listeners can hear influences of pianists like Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev.

These works were recorded in 2022 by Armenian pianist Naré Karoyan.

Jeanne Demessieux

Jeanne Demessieux In 1933, at twelve, she began studying at the Paris Conservatoire. Three years later, she began studying organ with Marcel Dupré. The organ soon became her primary instrument.

In 1941, at the age of twenty, she earned a first prize in organ performance and improvisation at the Conservatoire.

In 1947, she became the first female concert organist to sign a record deal.

She was especially famous for her memory. Apparently, she memorised 2,500 pieces over her career, including the entire organ output of J.S. Bach.

She was also a composer, writing works for solo organ, piano, and vocal music.

She died in November 1968 of throat cancer. She was only 47 years old.

Sylvia Soublette

Pequeña Suite para Violín y Piano

Sylvia Soublette was born in 1924 in Viña del Mar, Chile. Music ran in the family: both of her parents were musical, and her paternal grandmother was a composer.

In 1941, as a teenager in college, she founded the Coro Femenino Viña del Mar (the Viña del Mar Women’s Choir). She also began composing.

In 1951, she earned a scholarship from the French government to study at the Paris Conservatoire. While there, she studied under Milhaud and Messiaen.

After her studies in Paris, she returned to Chile. In 1960, she founded the Ancient Music Ensemble and led it until the 1973 military coup.

She married politician Gabriel Valdés in 1945, and he served as Chile’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1964 to 1970. After Pinochet came to power, Valdés, Soublette, and their four children travelled to the United States and Venezuela.

The family returned to Chile in 1981, and Soublette resumed her musical career there.

In 1991, she founded the Santiago Music Institute and toured internationally.

Toward the end of her long life, she said, “I am a composer, but from another time. Not from the 21st century, but from the 20th century. However, at this point, what I feel most like is an educator.”

She died in January 2020 at the age of 95.

Édith Canat de Chizy

Édith Canat de Chizy was born in Lyon, France, in 1950.

As a college student, she studied at the Sorbonne and the Paris Conservatoire. She won half a dozen first prizes in analysis, composition, counterpoint, fugue, harmony, and orchestration.

In 2006, she began teaching at the Regional Conservatory of Paris. She has published over a hundred opus numbers’ worth of music.

In 2005, she became the first female composer to be elected to the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts.

The violin is her main instrument. Here’s her fourth quartet, “En noir et or” (In black and gold).

A Debut of Note: Himari

2026-10-09T18:45:25.773-07:00

by Maureen Buja October 7th, 2026

Himari © himari-info.com

Henryk Wieniawski: Violin Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 14 – I. Allegro moderato

Himari: Debut (Wieniawski, Chopin, Sibelius, and Godowsky)

Himari, violin; Berlin Philharmonic with Sebastian Weigle, conductor; Chelsea Wang, piano
Decca Classics 00028948722099

Why We Don’t Hear Them: Tim van Beveren on Women Composers and DORA

2026-10-09T18:22:36.085-07:00

by Fanny Po Sim Head October 9th, 2026

Filmmaker and journalist Tim van Beveren’s documentaries Women Composers and DORA – Escape into Music explore the lives and music of composers whose work has largely disappeared from the standard classical repertoire. Made in collaboration with pianist Kyra Steckeweh, the films focus on composers including Fanny Hensel, Emilie Mayer, Mel Bonis, Lili Boulanger, and Dora Pejačević. The films have also received international recognition, with Women Composers winning several documentary awards and the 2020 Opus Klassik for audiovisual music production, while DORA – Escape into Music received awards including Best Documentary at the Florence Film Awards and Filmtage Oberschwaben, as well as the 2024 Opus Klassik. In a conversation with Interlude, van Beveren reflects on how making these films changed his understanding of musical history, the challenges of bringing overlooked composers to audiences, and the role performers, conductors, programmers, and record labels play in determining what music gets heard.

DORA – Escape into Music

Around 2016, Steckeweh asked van Beveren to make a few short films to accompany her concert program of music by women composers. She had already been researching their lives and works and bringing their music back to the concert stage. Van Beveren, by contrast, knew next to nothing about the subject then. “I had never heard of female composers before,” he recalls. He knew Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel by name but had never given serious thought to the wider history of women who composed, “because they were simply not performed in concert halls.”

Steckeweh opened that largely unknown world to him. During a drive from Berlin to Paris, she began telling him about the composers she had encountered through her research and performances: about their music, their lives, and the obstacles they had faced in their struggle to be taken seriously as professional composers. What had begun as a conversation about a few short concert films was turning into something far larger. As Steckeweh told their stories, van Beveren realised that the real subject lay less in a list of forgotten names than in the circumstances that had allowed so much of their music to vanish from public memory. For women composers of earlier generations, recognition had been hard to come by. They lived in societies that did not regard women as equal to men and denied them the same legal and social standing; only a few held the public’s attention for long.

Kyra Steckeweh and Tim van Beveren

“I said, well, stop right here,” he recalls. “This is stuff which is much more interesting for a full-blown documentary than just a two- or three-minute clip.”

That conversation became the starting point for Women Composers, a documentary by van Beveren and Steckeweh that traces the lives and music of Mel Bonis, Lili Boulanger, Fanny Hensel, and Emilie Mayer. The film travels across Europe to the places where these women lived and worked, weaving historical research and interviews together with performances of their music.

Women Composers

WOMEN COMPOSERS – Theatrical Trailer

One composer who particularly affected van Beveren was Emilie Mayer. She had written eight symphonies, yet her name was largely unfamiliar to the public. Van Beveren was struck that, as early as 1850, Mayer had managed to present a concert devoted entirely to her own compositions at Berlin’s Royal Theatre with royal approval. Even the location of her grave had become difficult to identify, and her music had faded from public awareness.

The experience made van Beveren question how musical history is preserved and, perhaps more importantly, how it is heard. For him, recordings and performances are essential because audiences cannot form an opinion about music they never have the opportunity to hear.

“Only a very small percentage of the population can read music – provided the scores have even been published. So how can people decide what they like if they can’t hear it?” he asks.

While filming Women Composers, van Beveren and Steckeweh also gathered reactions from audiences in Berlin. They asked concertgoers to name composers and sing or whistle a melody by them. Mozart was easy. Beethoven was easy. But when they asked about women composers, the responses were very different.

“For female composers? None,” van Beveren recalls.

The experiment demonstrated something that had already become apparent during their research: the problem was not simply that audiences had forgotten these composers. Many had never been introduced to them in the first place.

After Women Composers, van Beveren and Steckeweh began considering another film. Their next subject became Dora Pejačević, the Croatian composer whose music had once been performed in major European cities but disappeared from the repertoire after her death in 1923. Pejačević’s privileged background gave her opportunities that many women composers of her time did not have. She grew up in a noble family; her household supported music, and the family held concerts at the castle. Yet these advantages did not prevent her music from being forgotten.

Dora Pejačević

While reading about Pejačević, van Beveren again recognised the potential for a much larger story.

“I said this again,” he remembers. “She is a fascinating subject for a full-blown documentary.”

His interest deepened when he began hearing Pejačević’s music. After learning about her from a friend in Zagreb, he searched for her scores and sent them to Steckeweh. She began studying the piano works, among them the Sonata in D minor, and recorded them for Deutschlandfunk.

“The first time Kyra played it,” van Beveren says, “I was shivering.”

Kyra Steckeweh

DORA – Escape into Music

The resulting film, DORA – Escape into Music, follows Pejačević’s life, her music, and the European world she lived in. It also documents an extraordinary attempt to bring one of her major orchestral works back into the concert hall. During their research, van Beveren and Steckeweh discovered a 1921 newspaper article indicating that Pejačević’s Symphony was scheduled to be performed by conductor Arthur Nikisch in 1922. Their research eventually led to the Symphony’s first performance by the Gewandhausorchester, conducted by Andris Nelsons in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic complicated the production, and the planned concert nearly fell through. The film nevertheless incorporated the performance story into its larger exploration of Pejačević’s life and musical legacy.

Before making the films, van Beveren says he was “totally unaware” of the vast body of music written by women. Now he describes it as an “enormous treasury” of compositions that are still rarely performed in a concert repertoire dominated by familiar male names. But he is careful not to suggest that every forgotten work deserves attention simply because its composer was a woman. The important thing, he believes, is to give the music a genuine opportunity to be heard and judged.

Some pieces, he says, are extraordinary. Others may not be. But without professional performances, audiences cannot make that distinction for themselves. For van Beveren, that responsibility extends beyond individual performers. Programmers, conductors, record companies, and major concert institutions all influence which works enter the musical landscape. “You need professional performers,” he says, emphasising that forgotten works need the same level of attention, quality, and commitment as established repertoire.

He also sees a generational shift. Younger musicians, he believes, are less and less concerned with whether a man or a woman wrote a piece. What matters to them is whether the music speaks to them and deserves to be played.

That change can begin with relatively simple choices. After screenings of their films throughout Europe, Steckeweh and van Beveren encouraged audiences to ask their local radio stations to play music by women composers. For them, rediscovery need not remain an academic project or a documentary subject. It can happen through the ordinary ways people encounter music: a concert, a recording, a radio broadcast, or a performer’s recommendation.

A vast amount of music still awaits discovery. Van Beveren points to the Archiv Frau und Musik in Frankfurt, a library that holds works by thousands of women composers, as an indication of how much remains to be explored. When women’s music is left out of the repertoire, he says, “you’re missing half of the cultural heritage of mankind.”

Both films make that absence visible. More importantly, they invite us to consider what might happen when we finally hear this missing music.

The films are available to stream on demand or to buy at:

DORA – Escape into Music (original title: “DORA – Flucht in die Musik”)

English-language version

Spanish-language version

German-language version

WOMEN COMPOSERS – full-length director’s cut (original title: “KOMPONISTINNEN”)

English-language version

German-language version

30 Pieces of Classical Music About Autumn

2026-10-09T18:17:10.939-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad September 2nd, 2024

Need some classical music about autumn and the fall season to add to your playlist? We’ve got you covered!

Today, we’re looking at almost four centuries of music. So grab a pumpkin spice latte, settle in, and enjoy these thirty pieces of classical music about autumn.

The 4 Seasons by Christopher Simpson (ca 1640s) Christopher Simpson was an English composer and virtuoso viol player. (Viol instruments were predecessors to modern string instruments.)

Simpson wrote his Four Seasons for a treble instrument, two bass viols, and continuo. In each one, he included a fantasy, an air, and a galliard (a type of energetic dance).

Players also added their own ornamentation to the work to customize their interpretations.

Autumn from the Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi (1724)

Let’s be honest…you knew this work would be on the list!

In 1724, composer and violinist Antonio Vivaldi wrote a set of violin concertos inspired by each of the four seasons.

He also included poetry in the score to describe in words what he was describing in music.

His autumn concerto portrays harvest celebrations and hunting parties.

Autumn from The Seasons by Joseph Haydn (1801) ut in modern movie terms, The Seasons was a bit of a cash-grab sequel to Haydn’s wildly popular oratorio The Creation.

Unfortunately, like many sequels, it wasn’t as successful as the work that inspired it, but it’s still worth enjoying today.

The forces required to mount The Seasons include a large orchestra, a chorus, and three vocal soloists.

Like Vivaldi, Haydn chose to highlight harvest celebrations and hunting parties. The hunting chorus is one of the best of its era.

October from Das Jahr (The Year) by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1841)

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was composer Felix Mendessohn’s older sister, as well as a brilliant pianist and astonishingly productive composer.

Because she was a woman, many of her works never entered the standard repertoire in the way that her brothers did. Luckily for listeners, that’s beginning to change.

Das Jahr (The Year) is a set of piano pieces that trace the year month-by-month.

In a clever twist on the autumnal hunting motif, Hensel’s October’s piece features horn calls that turn out to be traveling minstrels. The deer in the forest may be startled, but the work ends with a happy flourish.

In Autumn by Edvard Grieg (1865)

Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg was 22 when he wrote this overture. A fellow composer friend told him, “This is trash, Grieg; go home and write something better.”

So Grieg transcribed it for two pianos and submitted it to a composing competition…and that critical composer friend just happened to be on the jury! Amusingly, In Autumn ended up winning first prize.

E.Grieg Concert Overture “In Autumn” op.11 for piano 4 hands

Autumn Song by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1876)

In the 1870s, Tchaikovsky had the same idea as Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: writing a series of piano works, one inspired by each month.

His October song begins with a snippet of poetry:

Autumn, our poor garden is all falling down,
the yellowed leaves are flying in the wind.

The music itself is a wistful, lovely sigh for solo piano, with the melancholy that is brought on by the season in full display. Anyone who has lived in a northern climate can relate!

Symphony No. 10: “To Autumntime” by Joseph Joachim Raff (1879)

Joachim Raff was born in 1822 in Switzerland.

He worked with many of the big names of Romantic music (including Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Clara Schumann) and was widely acclaimed in his own time, but is rarely heard today.

This symphony has four movements, and each was published with subtitles:

I. Impressions & Feelings
II. Ghostly Round-Dance
III. Elegie
IV. Men Hunting

“Pensée d’automne” by Jules Massenet (1887)

In the song Pensée d’automne, or Thoughts in Autumn, composer Jules Massenet set a poem by French poet Armand Silvestre to music.

The poem speaks of “grieving birds” and “withered flower cups.” The narrator wistfully invites a lover to return to the place where they courted in the springtime.

He then points out that his love for her has made the season irrelevant:

Let the beautiful days die! Let the harsh winter be born again!
Like a joyful hymn in the moaning wind,
A song of love emerges from my devoted heart!

Autumn: Etude de Concert No. 2, Op. 35 by Cécile Chaminade (1886)

French composer Cécile Chaminade was one of the most popular composers of her era. She focused primarily on writing piano music and miniatures. They proved to be especially popular in the domestic sheet music market.

That popularity, combined with her sentimental romantic style as well as her gender, led her to be dismissed as an unserious artist.

This autumn-inspired etude challenges that assumption. It’s both achingly tender and technically challenging.

8 Characteristic Pieces, En Automne, by Moritz Moszkowski (1886) Play

Moritz Moszkowski was a German pianist and composer of Polish origin. Although his work is rarely seen on programs today, he was very popular during his lifetime.

This work, from his set of eight Characteristic Pieces, seems to portray a chilly wind blowing leaves off the trees in colored swirls.

Four Sketches, op. 15: In Autumn by Amy Beach (1892)

Amy Beach was a profoundly talented American composer and pianist. She began writing little waltzes for piano when she was only four years old.

After she got married at the age of eighteen, she focused on composition because it wasn’t seemly for a respectable wife of a doctor to tour as a piano soloist.

In 1892’s Four Sketches, written when she was twenty-five, a snippet of poetry appears at the “In Autumn” movement: “yellowing foliage on scattered lawns.” This is a quote from French poet and statesman Alphonse de Lamartine. moods of autumn.

From Vivaldi’s lilting Four Seasons to Tchaikovsky’s melancholy “Autumn Song” to Musgrave’s grim fall hunt, classical music evokes the complex emotions brought about by the season in a way that no other art form can.

The History of the Symphony: From Opera Overture to Postmodern Portrait

2026-10-09T18:01:42.297-07:00

by Emily E. Hogstad October 3rd, 2026

The symphony began as a kind of warm-up act – a short instrumental piece played before a larger work, meant to settle a restless audience.

Over the next two centuries, composers turned that warm-up act into one of classical music’s most ambitious forms.

Today we’re tracing that transformation by looking at specific symphonies – and how each of the major composers inherited their predecessors’ rules, then threw them out.

Sammartini – Sinfonia No. 6 in F major (c. 1744) The symphony originated in the sinfonia, a genre traditionally used as an orchestral introduction to a larger work, like an opera.

Italian composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c. 1700–1775) was one of the first composers to detach the sinfonia from the opera and perform it independently. This change laid the groundwork for the modern symphony.

Sinfonias were often in three parts: a bright, rhythmic fast section, followed by a lyrical, slower section, followed by a dance-like conclusion.

Haydn, Symphony No. 104, “London” (1795)

Austrian composer Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) inherited the form that Sammartini had pioneered.

Haydn’s first symphony dates from 1759. Its structure closely follows Sammartini’s, with three movements: a fast presto, a slower andante, and another presto.

In the 1760s, he began adding a third movement, a minuet. By the 1770s, the four-movement structure became standardised.

Another vital development that Haydn helped pioneer was writing first movements in sonata form: i.e., a form in which two themes are played, contrasted, and developed.

Joseph Haydn

By the time he completed his 104th symphony in 1795, Haydn had spent nearly forty years codifying the modest sinfonia into a genre that would dominate orchestral writing for over a century.

Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 (1822–1824)

German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) inherited Haydn’s four-movement structure and broke it – twice.

His third symphony, nicknamed the Eroica, runs nearly twice as long as a typical Haydn symphony. The second movement is not just the customary slow movement; it is a theatrical funeral march, fit for a tragically fallen hero.

Beethoven originally dedicated it to Napoleon Bonaparte, seeing him as a champion of more egalitarian Enlightenment ideals – but when Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven reportedly scratched out the dedication in fury, tearing the title page.

Christian Horneman: Beethoven, 1803 (Beethovenhaus Bonn)

Two decades later, Beethoven shattered the conventions again. His ninth symphony is scored for a full orchestra, four vocal soloists, and a chorus – the first time vocal soloists and a chorus had ever been used in a symphony.

He also pushed forward the idea that extramusical ideas can be expressed in the symphony; the text he set was Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” an explicit call for universal brotherhood.

Between them, these two symphonies wrestle with the question: how far can the boundaries of a symphony be pushed before it stops being a symphony at all?

With these two works, Beethoven made that question the genre’s central preoccupation for the next century.

Berlioz – Symphonie fantastique (1830)

French composer Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) answered Beethoven’s innovations by going somewhere Beethoven never had: autobiography.

His Symphonie fantastique – subtitled “Episode in the Life of an Artist…in Five Sections” – consists of five movements tracing an artist’s opium-induced descent through obsession, heartbreak, and, finally, hallucinations of his own execution.

August Prinzhofer: Hector Berlioz, 1845

The unhealthy obsession Berlioz drew on here was very real. In 1827, he became infatuated with Irish actress Harriet Smithson after seeing her perform Shakespeare in Paris.

The symphony’s recurring melody, dubbed the idée fixe, represents her idolised image, returning in various guises across all five movements to show the artist’s fixation on her everywhere.

The idée fixe was a striking new way to create cohesion across a large orchestral work, and it became a tempting tool for composers who wanted to inject narrative into their symphonies.

Brahms – Symphony No. 1 (1855–1876)

Beethoven pushed the symphony into new territory of expression, and Berlioz followed him. By the mid-1800s, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner were going even further, pushing extramusical narratives and program music, the so-called “music of the future.”

Johannes Brahms, c. 1872

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), however, wanted to rewind the clock. He believed the symphony could still work in its older, “absolute” form, with no story attached.

Intimidated by Beethoven’s example (he compared his legacy to “the tramp of a giant”), he took his time making his case. He began composing his first symphony in the mid-1850s but didn’t finish it for two decades.

The result was worth the wait. Brahms’s majestic first symphony proved that absolute music could still make an emotional and intellectual impact, even with a traditional structure and without an extramusical narrative.

It also argued that composers don’t necessarily have to “break” what came before or forget it. Sometimes the music of the future could look back to the past.

Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique” (1893)

In 1893, two of the most popular symphonies of all time premiered. Each one offered a potential path for future composers to pursue.

Symphonies almost always close with a fast, affirmative finale. But Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique breaks that unwritten rule: its final movement is slow and mournful, fading into silence.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

In this symphony, Tchaikovsky split the difference in the ongoing 19th-century battle between program music and absolute music. He created a program, but kept it secret, and wanted audiences to come up with a story on their own.

(Intrigue about that program grew after Tchaikovsky died just nine days after conducting the symphony’s premiere, reportedly of cholera – a death that’s remained the subject of speculation and debate ever since.)

Whatever the symphony’s private meaning, its structural statement is clear: honest, emotional expression can dictate a symphony’s structure.

Dvořák – Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” (1893)

The Pathetique pointed one way a symphony could go: toward personal expression of private emotional extremes.

Another 1893 symphony that offered a path forward was Dvořák’s ninth: the communal experience of folk music.

Dvořák had spent his career inspired by the folk songs, dances, and rhythms of his native Bohemia. The Slavonic Dances and his Eighth Symphony both draw on melodic shapes and rhythmic patterns inspired by Czech folk music.

Antonín Dvořák, 1882

Between 1892 and 1895, Dvořák took a job teaching in America, and his influences expanded accordingly. The melodies of his ninth symphony evoke the pentatonic scales and rhythmic character of American spirituals and folk songs.

Tchaikovsky’s sixth looked inward for inspiration, while Dvořák’s ninth looked outward.

Mahler – Symphony No. 9 (1908–1909)

German-Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) stretched symphonic conventions to their breaking point.

Mahler’s ninth throws out multiple conventions. It runs roughly ninety minutes, longer than any other symphony on this list. It also opens with what would traditionally be a slow movement instead of a fast one, and its massive final movement is a slow adagio rather than a triumphant allegro.

Mahler was acutely aware of his own mortality while writing it. He’d recently been diagnosed with a fatal heart condition and had lost his young daughter the year before.

Moritz Nähr: Gustav Mahler, 1907

That biographical weight seems to show up in the music itself – quotes or gestures that mimic the beating of a heart; long passages that seem to dissolve rather than resolve; and a final page that fades to near-silence, marked in the score with an instruction usually translated as “dying away.”

Here, Mahler borrowed all kinds of innovations – including Beethoven’s scale, Berlioz’s embrace of autobiography, and Tchaikovsky’s emotional intensity – and blended them. The work would be his final completed symphony.

Sibelius – Symphony No. 7 (1914–1924)

In his seventh symphony, Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) condensed his ideas into one twenty-minute movement, dictating with precision how tempo and character should evolve gradually over time.

He originally envisioned a more conventional multi-movement work, but as he worked with his material, he came to believe it would be most effective in its ultimate condensed form.

Because of this, he even hesitated to call it a symphony, toying with the idea of designating it a “fantasia sinfonica” before giving in.

Jean Sibelius, 1923

Nearly every composer before him had contributed to the genre by adding something: length in Haydn and Beethoven’s cases, an extramusical story in Berlioz’s, intense and effusive emotional expression in Tchaikovsky’s. Sibelius did something radical by removing what made it a symphony in the first place: clearly delineated movements.

Schnittke – Symphony No. 1 (1969–1974)

Portrait of Alfred Schnittke by Reginald Gray

By the mid-1900s, so many symphonic innovations had already taken place, changing, stretching, and challenging the genre in multiple ways, that it was becoming increasingly difficult for composers to think of new ones while remaining faithful to the genre’s conventions.

But Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998) had one innovation up his sleeve. He developed a style he’d dubbed polystylism – the deliberate blending of different, dissimilar styles – and then wrote his first symphony employing it.

In this symphony, he quotes Haydn, Beethoven, and Strauss waltzes. Jazz improvisation occurs. At certain points in the score, musicians are instructed to walk on and offstage.

Any listener would be forgiven for wondering if this is still actually a symphony – if, perhaps, sometime between Haydn and Sibelius, the word had lost its meaning…or perhaps gained a new one.

Every symphony on this list up to this point defined itself by responding to what came before. Schnittke’s contribution was to enshrine that history rather than build on it.

Conclusion

By the time Schnittke walked musicians on and off the stage mid-performance, quoting Haydn and Strauss in the same breath, the question Beethoven had first posed with the Eroica – how far can a symphony be pushed before it stops being a symphony at all? – had effectively been answered. That answer was: as far as a composer’s willingness to break rules would take them.

Composers still write symphonies today. But whether the word still means what it meant to Haydn in 1795 is another debate entirely.

YUJA WANG, ALWAYS

2026-10-03T18:20:15.242-07:00

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Yuja at the Celebration of MTT in San Francisco! She played the 2d movement from the Barber Concerto and a Poulenc four hands piece with Teddy Abrams. I saw Yuja play that piece with MTT years ago. 

Mei Gui Zhang

2026-10-02T19:21:45.762-07:00

by Oliver Pashley October 1st, 2026

‘Being patient is very important in this business’

Mozart and Chinese folk music surrounded soprano Mei Gui Zhang in equal measure as a child. Growing up in China with singers for parents, one singing opera, the other folk, created an indelible fusion of cultures that she carries with her to this day.

Now based in New York, Mei Gui’s versatility and commitment to a variety of styles and roles have made her a rising star on the opera circuit.

Mozart is particularly close to Mei Gui’s heart, having sung Despina in Così fan tutte (Tanglewood), Zerlina in Don Giovanni (Atlanta Opera) and Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro (Metropolitan Opera); having competed in the Glyndebourne Opera Cup in 2020 (winning the audience prize), Mei Gui makes a role debut as Susanna at the Glyndebourne production of Figaro in their autumn festival this year.

I catch Mei Gui during Glyndebourne rehearsals, and we talk about her love of Mozart, the folk music surrounding her growing up in China, and the one thing from home she never leaves without on her international travels…

You are deep in rehearsals for your upcoming Glyndebourne debut, singing Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. How’s it going?

I think it’s going to be a wonderful production — I’m really looking forward to it. The cast, the singers, everyone is at such a high level. I really enjoy singing Susanna. It’s a lot of fun.

Are there any challenges unique to this role?

Susanna has so many recitatives, and physically I have to anticipate singing them. It’s a long role — I have to sing from the beginning to the end — I have to tell myself where to save the energy and where to give it more, because it’s a really physical role for me. I’m always on stage!

You are renowned for your interpretations of Mozart — do you remember your first encounters with his music?

My parents were both singers, and I studied with my father from the very beginning. My first aria was actually Cherubino’s Voi che sapete, so The Marriage of Figaro was one of the first things I sang!

I then went to the Lindemann Young Artist Programme at the Metropolitan Opera, where I started singing Barbarina from that opera a lot. I sang it in at least thirty different performances across three productions, so I know The Marriage of Figaro quite well!

I started with Cherubino, moved on to Barbarina, and now I am singing Susanna — hopefully later on I can sing the Countess! So I knew Mozart really well from the very beginning of my training.

What kind of music surrounded you as a child, with both parents as singers?

My mother is a Chinese folk singer, and my father is a classical opera singer. The styles are totally different. Opera singers don’t use a microphone, of course, and Chinese folk singers do, so their projection techniques are very different from those of a ‘classical’ opera singer. That’s why my parents are always disagreeing with each other!

I can sing a little bit of folk music because I always heard my mum singing it, and when I was young, my mum taught me a lot of Chinese folk songs, but opera is my favourite.

Your connection to your cultural roots has been described as ‘a hallmark of your career’. What do you do to stay connected?

When I was young, I learned so many Chinese traditional songs and folk songs, so I think I have those melodies in my blood. I enjoy singing them, and my classical opera training helps me sing them.

Sometimes, when I have a recital, I’ll put Chinese art songs into my repertoire. The audiences love it, even if they don’t understand the words. I include translations in the programmes, so they can really feel it and love it.

The audience always gives me good feedback when I do that, so that’s why I keep putting these art songs into my programmes.

How much does the fact that Chinese is a tonal language influence things like the melodic contour when set to music?

Chinese is not an easy language to sing, so when I sing and use my opera technique, I need to modify what I’m doing a little bit, because it’s not as easy a language to sing in as, say, Italian.

Composers do think about the tones — spoken Chinese goes up and down — but in the music it’s not as obvious. I think the most important thing for singing in any language is legato. I think that’s true for every instrument. I played the violin and piano as well, and when you think about a phrase, the legato is very important.

Did you always want to be a singer, or were you tempted by the violin or piano as well?

I always wanted to play the violin when I was very young, but my parents told me that I had to study the piano first. They thought the piano was a necessary instrument not just for singing, but for everything, so they said I had to play the piano first — but they also said that the violin was too difficult!

I started piano when I was seven years old, and my high school major at the Shanghai Conservatory was piano. I started to play the violin only when I was fifteen. I still loved it, so I convinced my parents to let me play it!

I started singing when I was three, just as a hobby, and singing has been in my blood since childhood. My experience with instruments has been really helpful.

You are known for your versatility across different styles and operatic roles. What’s the key to maintaining that versatility?

I’ve sung Mozart a lot, and I also recently sang a lot of Verdi, like Gilda in Rigoletto and Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, so I think my repertoire is quite wide.

It’s wide, but not aggressive. I like to take my time. That’s why I still sing a lot of Mozart. Mozart is very essential for young opera singers, so I keep his repertoire close.

Mozart is like school for me. It’s like when kids play outside and have fun, but then have to come back in for some discipline! It feels like a safe area [for my voice].

What would you like to sing in the future?

I would love to sing Lucia from Lucia di Lammermoor, Liù from Turandot, and maybe, when I’m older, Madame Butterfly. I’d also love to sing Mimi from La Bohème — I think my voice is growing more and more as time goes on, so there are so many more roles I’d like to sing.

I think in the opera world, you have a long way to go — you have to be patient before singing everything. I feel like I’m on the right track, moving slowly! I think being patient is very important in this business. I have to grow myself and let people see me grow.

What do you do in your spare time?

For sports, I love to do scuba diving. I love the ocean, so that’s my favourite thing to do. I like swimming and being in the water. Apart from that, I like to watch movies. I get a lot of inspiration from films, which I can then use on the opera stage. Any kind of movie — Chinese, Korean, American — but not horror movies!

I also like to cook, especially Chinese food. I’m from Southwest China, so I enjoy cooking Sichuan food, which is very spicy. The red spicy peppers are one of the most important ingredients for me, so I always carry chillies with me when I travel — chilli powder, spicy sauce, anything. My fiancé, however, cannot eat spice — he says it’s pain rather than a flavour!

Why Do We Feel Good Listening to Classical Music?

2026-10-02T19:02:39.508-07:00

by Joanna Latala December 4th, 2025

Music has the power to move us, inspire us, and even heal us. Among all musical genres, classical music holds a unique place in influencing our emotions and cognitive functions. But why does listening to composers like Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach make us feel good? Is there scientific evidence that supports the claim that classical music improves our mood and intelligence? This article delves into the psychological and neurological effects of classical music, exploring how it impacts our emotions, brain waves, and overall well-being.

The Science Behind Classical Music and the Brain

Music, in general, has profound effects on the brain, but classical music is often credited with unique benefits. Studies show that listening to classical compositions can stimulate neural activity, enhance memory, and even aid in mental health treatment.

Impact on Brain Waves Classical music has been shown to influence brain wave activity, particularly in promoting relaxation and focus. The human brain operates on different frequencies, such as:
- Beta waves (14-30 Hz): Associated with active thinking and problem-solving.
- Alpha waves (8-14 Hz): Linked to relaxation and a meditative state.
- Theta waves (4-8 Hz): Related to creativity and deep relaxation.
- Delta waves (0.5-4 Hz): Common during deep sleep.
Classical music, especially compositions with slow tempos and harmonious structures, tends to encourage the production of alpha and theta waves. These states help with stress reduction, creativity, and overall mental clarity.
Neurotransmitter Release and Emotional Regulation Listening to classical music can trigger the release of important neurotransmitters, such as:
- Dopamine: The “feel-good” chemical associated with pleasure and motivation.
- Serotonin: Linked to mood regulation and reduced anxiety.
- Oxytocin: Often called the “love hormone,” which fosters feelings of connection and trust.
These biochemical responses explain why many people experience a sense of calm and happiness when listening to classical music.

Does Mozart and Bach Really Improve Mood and Intelligence?

The idea that listening to classical music, particularly Mozart, can enhance intelligence has been popularised through the term “The Mozart Effect.” This theory suggests that listening to Mozart’s compositions can temporarily boost cognitive abilities.

Origins of the Mozart Effect The concept gained traction in 1993 when a study conducted by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky reported that students who listened to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major performed better on spatial reasoning tasks. However, the effects were temporary and did not indicate a lasting increase in intelligence.

Criticism and Further Research While the original study sparked public interest, later research found that the Mozart Effect is more about enhancing mood and focus rather than directly increasing IQ. Listening to enjoyable music, regardless of genre, has been linked to improved concentration and cognitive function.

Why Bach and Mozart Are Special Despite the controversy, composers like Bach and Mozart are known for their structured, harmonious compositions, which have a soothing and stimulating effect on the brain. Their music is often used in therapy sessions, workplaces, and schools to improve focus, creativity, and relaxation.

Scientific Studies on Classical Music’s Benefits

Research has continually reinforced the positive effects of classical music on mental and physical well-being. Some notable findings include:

Stress and Anxiety Reduction
- A study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology found that classical music significantly lowers cortisol levels (the stress hormone), helping individuals relax and cope with anxiety.
- Another study demonstrated that patients who listened to classical music before surgery experienced lower blood pressure and reduced preoperative anxiety.
Improved Memory and Learning
- Research conducted by the Stanford University School of Medicine found that classical music helps the brain absorb and interpret new information more effectively. This is particularly useful for students and individuals engaging in complex learning tasks.
- Classical compositions with a moderate tempo can aid in memory retention, as they provide an ideal background for studying and problem-solving.
Pain Management and Healing
- Hospitals have incorporated classical music into recovery programs, as studies suggest it can help reduce pain perception and enhance the healing process.
- Patients recovering from surgery have reported experiencing less discomfort when exposed to soothing classical pieces.
Better Sleep Quality
- Classical music, particularly pieces with a slow tempo and minimal percussion, can help individuals fall asleep faster and achieve deeper sleep cycles.
- A study conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto found that listening to classical music before bed improved sleep patterns and overall sleep quality.

Why Does Classical Music Feel So Good?

There are multiple reasons why classical music has a uniquely positive effect on our emotions and mental state:

Predictable Structure and Harmony Classical compositions often follow well-defined structures that create a sense of balance and order. This predictability can be soothing to the brain, reducing mental fatigue and stress.

Lack of Lyrics Unlike pop or rock music, classical music is predominantly instrumental. The absence of lyrics allows the brain to focus without distraction, making it an excellent aid for concentration and meditation.

Richness in Sound and Complexity Classical music contains intricate harmonies and dynamic contrasts that engage different parts of the brain. This complexity can be mentally stimulating while simultaneously providing relaxation.

Timeless Beauty and Emotional Depth From the gentle melodies of Chopin’s nocturnes to the grandeur of Beethoven’s symphonies, classical music evokes a wide range of emotions, providing listeners with deep emotional experiences and a sense of catharsis.

The Power of Classical Music in Everyday Life

Listening to classical music is more than just an auditory pleasure; it is a scientifically supported method for improving mental health, cognitive abilities, and emotional well-being. Whether you are seeking relaxation, focus, or inspiration, incorporating classical compositions into your daily routine can provide lasting benefits.

While the “Mozart Effect” may not permanently raise IQ levels, classical music remains one of the most effective tools for enhancing mood, reducing stress, and fostering mental clarity. The next time you need a boost in concentration or a moment of peace, consider turning on a piece by Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven—you may be surprised at just how much it transforms your state of mind.

David Oistrakh (Born on September 30, 1908) Teaching the Musician

2026-10-02T18:46:57.975-07:00

by Georg Predota September 30th, 2026

For many historians and critics, David Oistrakh was one of the preeminent violinists of the 20th century. To be sure, Oistrakh made playing the violin look easy, and many considered him the ideal violinist, combining fingers of steel with a heart of gold.

David Oistrakh, 1956

Isaac Stern considered him a giant among violinists, and his recordings continue to be studied and admired for their interpretive depth. Yet he was no aloof virtuoso; his legacy also includes his role as a teacher and mentor to countless young musicians.

To celebrate Oistrakh’s birthday on 30 September, let us look at Oistrakh the pedagogue as he shaped generations of violinists at the Moscow Conservatory, beginning in 1934.

Teaching the Next Generation

David Oistrakh and Gidon Kremer

At the initiative of the pianist and pedagogue Alexander Goldenweiser, David Oistrakh was invited to teach at the Moscow Conservatory in 1934. At 25, he was already a highly accomplished violinist, but his international breakthrough was still three years away.

By 1939, after winning first prize at the Ysaÿe Competition in Brussels, Oistrakh was appointed professor, and in 1950 he became head of the violin department. Maintaining an active performing career, Oistrakh invited Yulia Brodskaya to assist him in teaching solo and chamber music, and Rosa Fain to assist him with solo students in the 1950s.

His period of employment lasted until 1974, essentially until his death from a heart attack. Oistrakh taught some of the most prominent violinists of the 20th century, including students from outside the Soviet Union, and the Moscow Conservatory still describes his pedagogy as a “fruitful union of intellect and intuition, precise knowledge and freedom of artistic creativity.”

Teaching Individuality

Rimma Sushanskaya

In a 2015 interview with LA Opus, Gidon Kremer was asked directly what it was like to study with Oistrakh, to which he replied: “His main quality towards students was probably generosity; that was literally towards everybody, not so often seen among musicians and especially teachers. David Oistrakh encouraged me a lot to search (for) my own voice.” (Miner, LA Opus, 2015)

It becomes obvious that Oistrakh was not interested in producing “little Oistrakhs,” and that imitation was not his pedagogical ideal. He recognised early that Kremer was a highly individual musician, whose interpretive personality was unlike his own.

Essentially, Oistrakh did not impose a rigid technical teaching system because he wanted to develop the complete musician. In the wonderful Oistrakh documentary by Bruno Monsaingeon, Kremer remembers his teacher telling him, “I would never do what you are doing, but you are right, and you have to go your own way.”

Discipline, Humour, and Humanity

Igor and David Oistrakh

For Gidon Kremer, Oistrakh was one of the greatest violinists of the century, and also a great teacher. He let each student develop in their own way, encouraging their unique talents.

This is not to say that Oistrakh did not have very definite ideas about playing the violin and passing on his knowledge. He was very demanding and firm, and rather than explaining an interpretive problem in words, he picked up the violin and demonstrated it.

His son Igor gave a first-hand account of his father’s teaching. “Father had many different students in his class, not just prize winners. Despite this, the atmosphere never changed. He never got tired of teaching. He was always alert and awake, as were his receptivity and friendly humour, which were occasionally coloured with a touch of friendly irony.” (Yuzefovich, Conversation with Igor Oistrakh, 1979)

Beyond the Violin

Igor and David Oistrakh

In her Memories of David Oistrakh, his last student, Rimma Sushanskaya recalled that Oistrakh did not teach his students how to play the violin, but how to become better musicians and artists. He worked with her on bowing and fingering, but his greatest happiness was helping young musicians. (Sushanskaya, Memories of David Oistrakh)

As a final thought, Oistrakh would tell his students: “Try to know more. The limitations of one’s horizons, a narrowing of one’s interests lead to a decline, even of a strong talent. Avoid any way of restricting the repertoire.” (Yuzefovich, Conversation with Igor Oistrakh, 1979)

2026 Trinity International Music Competitio

2026-10-02T18:35:58.696-07:00

 2026 Trinity International Music Competition 
 Applications are now open for the FIRST ROUND! 
 Deadline for the first round: November 20, 2026
https://www.trinityinternationalmusiccompetition.org
We invite musicians and music students from around the globe to participate, whether you are a soloist, duo, trio, or part of an ensemble. 
 Special awards and prizes are available, including the chance to be featured on major news networks.
 Top winners will be showcased on major music distribution platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, and more!
 We are accepting applications now, so don't miss this opportunity to showcase your talent in this prestigious competition!
 We welcome all instruments and voices, covering all genres of music—from classical to jazz, pop, contemporary, traditional, or ethnic music. Whether you're performing solo, as a duo, in an ensemble, choir, or orchestra, there are no age restrictions.
We look forward to your participation! 

Celebrate Your Talent!

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Celebrate Your Talent!

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Violins and Synagogues: The Story of Salamone Rossi

2026-10-02T18:30:26.640-07:00

by Mengguang Huang September 27th, 2026

Salamone Rossi was born around 1570 into a prominent Jewish family in Mantua, a busy city in Northern Italy. During this period, life for Italian Jews was shaped by tight legal restrictions and social isolation. European rulers often viewed Jewish populations with suspicion, and Mantua followed suit. By 1612, the local authorities forced the city’s Jewish residents to live inside a gated ghetto and made them wear a yellow badge on their clothes whenever they walked through the streets. Yet, beyond these harsh laws, Mantua was also a place where art, theatre, and music flourished under the rule of the wealthy Gonzaga family.

Bird’s-eye view of Mantua, from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, vol. II, 50, published 1575, edited by Georg Braun and engraved by Franz Hogenberg.

Rossi was a remarkably gifted violinist and singer. His talent caught the attention of the court early on, and he officially joined the Duke’s musical household in 1587. He was only a teenager then, but he quickly proved himself. Over the next forty years, Rossi worked his way up from a basic performer to the court concertmaster, leading instrumental groups and providing music for every major court occasion. He composed pieces for royal weddings, grand state dinners, theatrical plays, and outdoor celebrations.

His reputation as a musician was so high that Duke Vincenzo I made a rare exception for him. In 1606, the Duke issued an official decree exempting Rossi from wearing the yellow badge. This was a major concession for the time. It meant Rossi could walk freely through the city and perform his duties at the palace without carrying the visible mark of discrimination forced upon his neighbours. His sister, a talented opera singer known as Madama Europa, also performed at court, making their family a central fixture of Mantuan musical life.

Portrait of Duke of Mantua Vincenzo I Gonzaga wearing the collar of the Order of the Redeemer by Frans Pourbus the Younger

Living in the Gonzaga palace put Rossi in direct contact with some of the era’s greatest creative minds, including Claudio Monteverdi. At the turn of the seventeenth century, European music was going through a major change. Composers were moving away from the complex Renaissance style, where many vocal lines sang different parts at the same time, and turning toward the new Baroque style. This new approach focused on a clear, expressive lead melody supported by a continuous bass line.

Bird’s-eye view of Palazzo Ducale Mantua (Credit:https://www.mantovaducale.beniculturali.it)

Rossi became a pioneer of this new musical language. He applied these fresh ideas directly to instrumental playing, which was quite rare then. Up until that point, instrumental music was mostly used to accompany dancers or backup singers. Rossi changed that by writing published collections of standalone sonatas and sinfonias. He usually wrote for two violins playing above a steady bass instrument like the lute or cello. This specific setup became known as the trio sonata. It was a huge success, and it served as the standard format for chamber music across Europe for the next hundred years.

Even as Rossi climbed the ladder at the Christian court, he never lost touch with his own roots. He remained a devout and active member of the Mantuan Jewish community. This dual identity led to his most famous and daring creation. For centuries, Jewish synagogue music relied on a single cantor singing traditional chants without any backing instruments or complex vocal harmonies. Many rabbis opposed changing this practice because they felt modern theatrical music had no place in sacred worship.

The interior of the only extant Jewish Synagogue in Mantua (Credit:https://www.itinerariebraici.it)

Rossi disagreed and set out to modernise synagogue music. In 1622-3, he published a groundbreaking collection of music in Venice titled Hashirim Asher Li-Shlomo (The Songs of Solomon). The collection contained 33 original choral pieces written for three to eight voices, setting traditional Hebrew prayers, psalms, and hymns to multi-part Western harmonies. To publish the work, Rossi had to overcome real technical challenges. Printers had to align the Hebrew text, which reads from right to left, with European musical notation, which reads from left to right.

The 400th anniversary of Salomone Rossi’s Hashirim Asher LiShlomo (1622)

Rossi also needed religious backing to protect his project. He worked closely with a prominent Venetian scholar, Rabbi Leon of Modena, who wrote a formal defence explaining why polyphonic music was appropriate for Jewish services. This work was the very first published collection of polyphonic synagogue music in history, bringing the sounds of the Italian Baroque into the sanctuary.

Salamone Rossi, Shir asher lishlomo [Songs of Solomon], ca. 1623 (title page).

Sadly, the world Rossi built came to a sudden, violent end in the late 1620s. A feud over who would rule Mantua triggered the War of the Mantuan Succession. In July 1630, foreign Imperial troops invaded and captured Mantua. The soldiers sacked the city and destroyed the Jewish ghetto, forcing the residents to flee. To make matters worse, a brutal outbreak of the plague swept through the region around the same time.

Historical records regarding Rossi stop after 1628, so we do not know the exact details of his final days. Historians generally believe he died around 1630, killed either during the military attack or by the plague. Most of his friends and family vanished from the record during the same chaotic period.

After his death, congregations largely set aside and forgot Rossi’s synagogue music, mostly because they returned to older traditional chants. However, modern music scholars look at his life with great respect. Without any extant portraits, Rossi built bridges. He navigated two completely different cultural worlds—the courtly world of Renaissance princes and the enclosed world of the Jewish ghetto—and left behind a legacy that transformed both instrumental music and sacred song.

A Fantasy About a Fantasia: Henry Purcell and Elliott Carter

2026-10-01T21:57:23.865-07:00

by Maureen Buja May 7th, 2021

Henry Purcell

In the summer of 1680, Henry Purcell (1659-1695) started to experiment with an older musical form, the fantasia. The basic structure of a fantasia is the construction of several musical phrases, or points, each of which is given a contrapuntal working out before going on to the next one. Purcell would have been familiar with these from Matthew Locke’s (c. 1621-1677) fantasia sets of a generation earlier. Purcell brought his own ideas to the form, making each point full of theatrical gestures, and adding in chromaticism and dissonance.

In Purcell’s Fantazia Upon One Note, his only fantasia for 5 parts, one instrument, the tenor viol, plays only one note, middle C. Around this still point, the other instruments play their parts, from the gentle opening to the triumphal ending. It’s only in the middle, in a minor choral section, that the tenor viol has a brief ‘solo’ appearance.

Viols as illustrated in Michael Praetorius: Syntagma musicum: Vol. II De Organographia: Appendix: Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia (1620)

The tenor viol part is difficult to hear on a recording but is much easier to see in a performance.

American composer Elliott Carter (1908-2012) felt that the dramatic nature of Purcell’s work, ‘a repeated, tolling, bell-like note sounding through musical episodes of contrasting character,’ was seldom achieved in performance. The tenor viol’s middle C was lost in the musical mix. His arrangement of the Purcell fantasia was designed to bring out that lost middle C and by moving it to a brass ensemble, could change the dramatic possibilities of the work.

Elliott Carter

The work was created in 1974 as ‘A Christmas Present for the American Brass Quintet,’ as the dedication reads.

It is not known why Purcell took up the writing of fantasias in 1680, but in doing so, he left us a wonderful farewell gift to a musical style that was quickly fading. His 1680 works are considered the last music written for the viol before its modern revival starting in the mid–20th century with England’s Viola da Gamba Society, founded in 1948.

Musicians and Artists: Stravinsky and Benois

2026-09-30T20:40:17.785-07:00

by Maureen Buja January 31st, 2021

Alexandre Benois: Self-Portrait (1893)

Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes hit Europe like a storm: no one had ever seen ballet taken to this level. Founded in 1909 by Diaghilev and lasting 20 years, the Ballet was based in Paris and traveled around Europe and to North and South America. Because of the Russian Revolution, the Ballets Russes never played in Russia. Its productions continue to be staged today.

Stravsinky and Nijinsky
in his Petrushka costume

Diaghilev commissioned scores from the young composers of the day, including Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy (Jeux, Images (1913)), Sergei Prokofiev (Chout (1921) and other), Erik Satie (Parade (1917)), and Maurice Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé (1909)) and commissioned sets from the young artists of the day, including Vasily Kandinsky, Alexandre Benois, Pablo Picasso (Parade (1917)), and Henri Matisse (Le Chant du rossignol (1920)), and had costumes from Léon Bakst (Carnaval (1910), Spectre de la rose (1922), and others) and Coco Chanel (Le Train bleu (1924), Orphée, Oedipe Roi).

Benois: Petrushka Costume for Nijinsky (1911)

Alexandre Benois (1870-1960) was a Russian artist and so much more. He was an art critic, a historian, and a designer for the Ballets Russes. His whole family were in the arts: his father an architect, his brothers were a painter and an architect and his sister married the composer Nikolai Tcherepnin. In 1901, he was scenic director of the Mariinksy Theatre in St. Petersburg and moved to Paris in 1905. He started working with Diaghilev from the very beginning, having known him in Russia in the last years of the 19th century.

In 1911, Benois designed what was considered the highlight of his work with the Ballets Russes: the sets and costumes for Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

Benois: Petrushka’s Cell (1911)

Petrushka, a puppet, falls in love with the Ballerina, who is also loved by the more powerful Moor. The puppet tradition in Russia picked up by Benois was based on his own memories of seeing the Petruska story told in puppet theatres in the street. In the street theatres, Petrushka has a red dress, a red hat, and, often, a red nose. In Benois’ designs, the red is retained for Petrushka’s cuffs, the edge of his ruff and hat, and in the design of his trousers.

Petrushka’s room depicts mountain, clouds, and a starry night – on the wall hangs a portrait of the Magician (his master who brought him to life) and a devil guards the door to prevent him leaving.

His rival, the Moor, has a much more lavish layout, calling to mind the designs by Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes. Instead of the lonely images in Petrushka’s world, fruits and flowers and animals populate this world.

Benois: The Moor’s Cell (1911)

The tragic story comes to its end, with the Moor killing his rival, but Petrushka seems to reappear, thumbing his nose at his rival and perhaps returning as a ghost to haunt him.

Nijinsky as Petrushka (1911)

With Nijinsky in the role of the doomed Petrushka, the ballet was a success and became one of the most popular of the Ballets Russes productions. Even now, it is generally performed using both the original costume designs and sets, as well as Fokine’s choreography.

In writing for Sergei Diaghilev’s ballet troupe, Stravinsky was transformed from an innovative Russian composer to a cutting-edge international composer. His music for the Nijinsky-choreographed The Rite of Spring two years later was the shock performance of the year and he continued each year with works that continue to catch our ear today.

Symphonic Fish

2026-09-29T20:10:38.092-07:00

by Maureen Buja March 14th, 2026

Dutch trombonist, conductor, and composer Johan de Meij (b. 1953) made his international name in 1988 with his first symphony, The Lord of the Rings. Since then, he had gone on to become a noted composer for wind orchestra.

Johan de Meij

In his 1991 work Aquarium, Meij looks into the waters for both common and exotic sea creatures.

He opens with a trio of fish, starting with many people’s first Aquarium fish: the Neon Tetra. A freshwater fish from the streams of the Amazon basin in South America, its brightly coloured stripes make it visible to other tetra, particularly as one of its habitats is the blackwater streams, which are quite acidic. The fish has a light-blue back, a silver-white abdomen and two stripes: one iridescent blue that runs over its back and an iridescent red stripe that runs along its sides. The fish is partially transparent. At night, the blue and red stripes become grey or black as it rests; the colours return in the morning. This response to lighting conditions helps it survive.

Neon Tetra, Paracheirodon innesi (Photo by Holger Krisp)

The Neon Tetra theme becomes a motive throughout all three movements.

The Electric Eel doesn’t get a theme but rather a rhythm. In some public aquariums, they hook up a speaker to the water around the electric eel so visitors can hear its pulses.

Electric Eel (Photo by David Liittschwager)

The Angelfish is represented with cluster chords as though the body decorations on the fish have become the score.

Angelfish

The second movement starts off with one of the most familiar of sea creatures, the sea horse. Its head and neck resemble those of a horse, aided by the fact that the sea horse is usually upright. It has a curled tail that helps it hold onto vegetation. The earliest sea horses were found in Italy, in the Marecchia River. A kind of pipefish, the sea horse is thought to have become its own species when tectonic events resulted in large bodies of shallow water. The shallow water and sunlight encouraged the growth of seagrass that the sea horse holds with its prehensile tail to hold itself upright.

Sea Horse (photo by Florin Dumitrescu)

The Zebrafish is another freshwater fish, this time from South Asia, found in the water of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. The fish has five uniform blue stripes on the side of its body and is a popular fish in home aquariums.

Zebrafish (photo by Yael Noy)

At the beginning, the seahorse peeks out from its seagrass home and starts to talk with the zebrafish. As the movement progresses, the unison zebrafish theme gets more and more menacing.

The final movement is about guppies. They come from South America’s northeast corner, and are many home aquariums’ first fish.

Guppy, Poecilia reticulata (photo by Per Harald Olsen)

Unlike the other fish in Aquarium, guppies come in several different colours and styles, in the picture below, are from the top right, the ribbon mosaic RREA, mosaic chilli, double sword, orange pintail, Moscow red RREA, and cobra snakeskin (top left).

Varieties of guppies (photo by Melanochromis)

The final movement emulates most people’s experience with guppies. It starts with only two instruments (trumpet and xylophone), but then, as more guppies appear, more instruments pile in. The Guppy theme is presented in the piccolo and alto saxophone. As the movement progresses, themes from the earlier themes ‘swim’ by as well.

Meij has managed to give us individual themes or rhythms for each animal represented and has given them to us with a kind of swinging nautical feel. In the full symphonic sound, this is a far cry from Baby Shark!

Yuja Wang

2026-09-29T19:56:04.931-07:00

Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Born on October 16, 1962) Singing with Death

Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings Mussorgsky: Songs and Dances of Death, “Lullaby”

Between Rooms, Between Worlds Marina Baranova on Music, Collaboration, and Curiosity

Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, M. 19

Marina Baranova’s Prélude a la manière de Ravel

Felix Mendelssohn/Marina Baranova’s Drinking Song, Op. 75 No. 3

Marina Baranova’s The Sense of Cohesion

A Debut of Note: Himari

Vienna Soundscapes: The Quatuor Hermès

Chopin’s Final Year: A Month-By-Month Guide to 1849

October 1848: Chopin Draws Up a Will

November 1848: Chopin’s Final Concert

December 1848: Chopin’s Final Compositions

January 1849: Chopin’s Final Picture

February 1849: Visiting With Friends

March 1849: Visiting With Former Students

April 1849: “Boredom is for him the cruellest torment”

June 1849: Summering in the Suburbs

July 1849: The Door Closes on a George Sand Reconciliation

August 1849: Chopin’s Sister Ludwika Arrives to Caretake

October 1849: Chopin’s Death

Conclusion

From Witches’ Sabbath to Dance of Death: Four Related Pieces for October

A Bear Called Winnie-the-Pooh (Published on October 14, 1926)

From Winnipeg to the Hundred Acre Wood

Lopez/Lopez: “The Tummy Song”

From Zoo to Literary Fame

Lopez/Lopez: “A Very Important Thing to Do”

Meet the Gang

Sherman/Sherman: “Like a Rather Blustery

Wisdom, Bounce & Trouble

A Few Simple Lines

Pooh Goes to Hollywood

May His Songs Never End

All by Yourself

Look and sound grand

Five Women Composers Who Studied at the Paris Conservatoire

Grace Becker Vamos

Fontainebleau Suite

Koharik Alis Gazarossian

Sylvia Soublette

Pequeña Suite para Violín y Piano

Sylvia Soublette was born in 1924 in Viña del Mar, Chile. Music ran in the family: both of her parents were musical, and her paternal grandmother was a composer.

Édith Canat de Chizy

A Debut of Note: Himari

Why We Don’t Hear Them: Tim van Beveren on Women Composers and DORA

WOMEN COMPOSERS – Theatrical Trailer

DORA – Escape into Music

30 Pieces of Classical Music About Autumn

The 4 Seasons by Christopher Simpson (ca 1640s) Christopher Simpson was an English composer and virtuoso viol player. (Viol instruments were predecessors to modern string instruments.)

Autumn from the Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi (1724)

Autumn from The Seasons by Joseph Haydn (1801) ut in modern movie terms, The Seasons was a bit of a cash-grab sequel to Haydn’s wildly popular oratorio The Creation.

October from Das Jahr (The Year) by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1841)

In Autumn by Edvard Grieg (1865)

E.Grieg Concert Overture “In Autumn” op.11 for piano 4 hands

Autumn Song by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1876)

Symphony No. 10: “To Autumntime” by Joseph Joachim Raff (1879)

“Pensée d’automne” by Jules Massenet (1887)

Autumn: Etude de Concert No. 2, Op. 35 by Cécile Chaminade (1886)

8 Characteristic Pieces, En Automne, by Moritz Moszkowski (1886) Play

Four Sketches, op. 15: In Autumn by Amy Beach (1892)

The History of the Symphony: From Opera Overture to Postmodern Portrait

Sammartini – Sinfonia No. 6 in F major (c. 1744) The symphony originated in the sinfonia, a genre traditionally used as an orchestral introduction to a larger work, like an opera.

Haydn, Symphony No. 104, “London” (1795)

Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 (1822–1824)

Berlioz – Symphonie fantastique (1830)

Brahms – Symphony No. 1 (1855–1876)

Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique” (1893)

Dvořák – Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” (1893)

Mahler – Symphony No. 9 (1908–1909)

Sibelius – Symphony No. 7 (1914–1924)

Schnittke – Symphony No. 1 (1969–1974)

Conclusion

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YUJA WANG, ALWAYS...

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Mei Gui Zhang

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