Behind the scenes

133 Posts
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Edward Elgar: Dreaming of Blue Knickers
It’s always been fashionable to emphasizing artistic greatness at the expense of some more down-to earth-human qualities. Mozart wrote exceptional music but he also wrote scatological letters to his cousin. Wagner gave us the Artwork of the Future and a
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The Dangers of being a Musical Prodigy
Antonio Paganini: Musical Father from Hell
Niccolò Paganini left an irrefutable mark on the history of instrumental music and 19th century social life. Born in Genoa on 27 October 1782 he was the third of six children of Antonio and Teresa Paganini. Antonio Paganini was a
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The Mozart “Adélaïde” Scam
It was advertised as the musical discovery of the century! In 1933, the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Aranyi stepped onto the London stage and performed a preciously unknown violin concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That concerto had been published in 1933
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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Klara Berkovich and Hilary Hahn
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I will remember”
Shinichi Suzuki believed that the ability to learn music parallels the acquisition of language. His famous “Suzuki Method” is based on creating a positive environment that fosters musical immersion at an early age. Suzuki strongly believed that “every child was
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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Pianistic Traditions and Contemporary Sensibility
Gary Graffman and Yuja Wang
We all know that Yuja Wang was born in Beijing, but she is deliberately vague about her emergence as a prodigy. She always likes to tell interviewers that her mother wanted her to be a dancer, “but that she was
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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Discovering the Musical Universe
Gary Graffman and Lang Lang
Lang Lang! The two words in the classical music universe that say it all! China’s first crossover classical superstar pianist, he has played for presidents, on the Great Wall of China, at Buckingham Palace and in the White House. He
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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
“I really should be practicing”
Vladimir Horowitz and Gary Graffman
The exceptional pianist and educator Gary Graffman started his musical education at the tender age of 3! Initially, however, he did not play the piano but took violin lessons from his father Vladimir Graffman. Vladimir was a student of Leopold
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Behind the Curtain
The BBC Music Prank
“Piotr Zak, who is of Polish extraction but lives in Germany, was born in 1939. His earliest works are conservative, but he has recently come under the influence of Stockhausen and John Cage. This work for tape and percussion was
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