Unlike earlier days, it was harder for modern operas to truly qualify as a Hit! However, Richard Strauss’ 1911 opera Der Rosenkavalier was not only a success, but a triumph, with impressive ticket sales from the night of its premiere.

Is it night or is it day? A serenade is a song sung at night, generally in the open air below the window of your beloved. But what does it mean when Malipiero calls this 1959 work a ‘serenata mattutina’,

We often regard vocal music and instrumental music as quite separate. We know the limitations of the voice, such as a limited range, and we know the freedom of an instrumental performance, which can cover a range of sound music

Our image of the Renaissance lutenist is of the musician bending over his lute, generally surrounded by his music books. But we know from contemporary sources, that 15th-century lutenists made their art in company. The Ferrarese virtuoso lutenist Pietrobono (c.

In 2001, the first of English composer Peter Maxwell Davies’ Naxos Quartets was completed. A set of ten quartets had been commissioned by Naxos Records and he took the opportunity to examine the string quartet as a whole and to

Parisian composer and virtuoso pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) wrote some of the most fiendishly difficult piano music of his time. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at age six and had a long public career. After 1848, however, he became quite

The violin virtuosos of the 19th century were the rock stars of their day – they commanded the audiences, their latest appearances were awaited on with bated breath, and their wild playing inspired their audiences to awe. A modern virtuoso

Composer Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960) is a rare winner of both the Pulitzer Prize (for his 1997 string quartet Musica Instrumentalis) and Grammy Awards for contemporary classical composition and classical instrumental solo (for his 2019 Violin Concerto). Originally written