Johann Sebastian Bach passed away 326 years ago, in July, so I thought what could have been better than starting my column here with the ‘Father of Music’, a composer with whom I have had a love-hate relationship.

When I was little, I was forced by my piano teacher to memorize the complete Prelude and Fugues by Bach. It was a painful process. Naughty as I was, I would create excuses to delay my lesson as long as possible. Every time I changed to a new teacher, I would be asked to bring a Bach’s score to the first lesson. The more you fear it, the more it haunts you! It was until later when I entered the Royal Academy of Music in London, I realized that my early training in Bach’s music has helped me to develop a 3D understanding of music, and that the great French educator Nadia Boulanger even asked her students to practise Bach’s fugue like this – sing one voice and play the other parts on the piano! After all, what I went through was not so bad.

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Why are there so many songs about love?

Regardless of whether it is country music, pop music or classical music, songs about love and romance have always made up the greatest proportion. In fact, the world’s oldest song ever discovered and documented was indeed a love song inscribed in hieroglyphics on the wall of a 4300 year-old tomb, which was found surrounded by images of singers and musicians playing the harp.

Love comes in many forms. There is patriotic love, paternal love, familial love, platonic love, sibling love, romantic love, and sexual love of eros. Although love begins with the heart in the songs and movies, it all really happens in the head.

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Wigmore Hall, Friday 16 June.

Classical artists venturing into other musical styles rarely works. Listeners and critics are stuffy about classical ensembles taking on popular music, and some projects should probably never have got further than the first meeting. With two very significant classical repertoire releases on the Virgin Classic’s label, some would have thought that the Quatuor Ébène was committing artistic suicide, for a project to fill coffers rather than be an artistic statement. Not so, both on disc and live.

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In the society of Hong Kong, keen competition could be found anywhere and everywhere. From getting an empty seat on public transport, to climbing up the social ladder, people have to fight hard for their own benefits. And in recent years, this trend has spread from the cruel world of adults to the supposed-to-be-lighthearted lives of children. In order to fulfill the often-too-high anticipation from their parents and become “the cream of the crop”, youngsters nowadays are forced to pack their schedules with extra-curricular activities, and playing music instruments is a “must” on the list.

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Staatskapelle Dresden once again came to China last week. The tour was led by the young Nikolaj Znaider, who is not exactly renowned for his violin or his conducting. The concerts were fair but far from brilliant, according to the critics. And – whether because Znaider was not available or because the orchestra realised they would need a bigger conductor to match their reputation, we don’t know – they invited Lorin Maazel to fly to China especially for the last concert at the China National Museum for its grand opening day. There were of course many backstage stories about fighting between venues and the agency and between different sponsors, but that is normal for concerts – ugly scenes in the back and a good show in the front. After all, the classical music business is the same as any other business. Well, I got a little bit carried away, but gossiping is an exciting part of life.

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This is not about a luxurious hotel suite somewhere in a remote, romantic hideaway where I spent a wonderful weekend.

No, this is about Bach and one of his English suites, not the average suite played by a ‘lambda’ pianist. I have always preferred Bach’s English suites over his French suites, not because they are more complex or difficult, but because the musical structure touches me more deeply.

And among the English suites, I have a very special appreciation for No. 6. I have listened to numerous recordings from well-established pianists and my favourite has long been the one by Glenn Gould, until the day I heard Piotr Anderszewski’s – a revelation.

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The Baroque period began toward the end of the 16th century, reached into the middle of the 18th century, and is generally seen as the art of the Counter-Reformation. With the Reformation, the Catholic Church had lost a very large number of its believers and needed to reform itself. In 1539, Pope Paul III gave permission to St. Ignatius of Loyola to form the Order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuit Order), and in 1548 approved Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, which became the basis for the reform in the Catholic Church and which affected all of the arts.

In architecture, the basilica form found a revival, bringing priests and public closer together. The form placed the pulpit within the rotunda rather than separating the priest, choir and altar from the nave and the public.

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Well, writing about the royal wedding – yes, the one with Will and Kate – seems a bit passé now, but I’m here to talk about the music, not the wedding itself.

The day of the royal wedding, I was in Seoul with a bunch of good friends. I didn’t watch the wedding live since we were having a much better time celebrating a business venture, toasting new friends, savouring fusion cuisine, sipping Dom Pérignon and listening to classical music.

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Lang Lang is everywhere these days and plays anything (and because of his star status, the story about his playing the Chinese song My Country in the White House led to totally redundant discussions involving thousands of people). Dudamel is likewise everywhere and tries everything. Just as the 30-year-old Venezuelan star conductor stormed the Barbican with the LA Philharmonic at the end of January, the South Bank Centre proudly announced that he will be performing with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in June 2012.

“How original is that?” asked my friend in London, who has been working in the industry for decades.

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Given the way medical advancements have significantly prolonged life expectancies around the world, it is hard to imagine that old-age diseases such as cholera are still affecting people in our world today. The cholera epidemic that recently hit Haiti has reached a death toll of more than 900, with more than 14600 hospitalized with cholera-like symptoms. In Port-au-Prince, more than one million earthquake refugees are living in congestion plagued by patients exhibiting cholera symptoms. It is interesting to find that cholera was not so different in the late 1890s.

In winter of 1893, Tchaikovsky had just completed the premiere of his Sixth Symphony before he passed away in St. Petersburg. To many, the emotional intensity of the movements portrayed the coming of death, and was further theorized as Tchaikovsky’s prelude to suicide. Despite the rumours about his death at the time, the reality is that Tchaikovsky most probably died from cholera, which was prevalent in St. Petersburg at the time.

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