Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen

In the last decade or so the growth of technical proficiency among young pianists has seemed exponential. The new generation that can play anything includes Yuja Wang.
Photo: Felix Broede/Deutsche Grammophon

THE latest young pianist from China to excite classical music audiences and earn raves from critics is the 24-year-old Yuja Wang, a distinctive artist with a comprehensive technique. That Ms. Wang is already a musician of consequence was made clear this year when Deutsche Grammophon released her first recording with an orchestra: performances of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Second Piano Concerto with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The conductor is Claudio Abbado, no less, a towering maestro who is extremely discriminating in his choice of collaborators.

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Date: December 30th, 2011
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Why music matters

Music can help with children's brain development.
Picture: Getty Images

IT’S more than just nice to listen to, learning to play music helps build children’s brains.

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Date: December 28th, 2011
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As Opera Struggles in West, an Art Form Flourishes in China

Chinese visitors are seen in a hall of the Guangzhou Opera House in April 2010
Imaginechina via AP Images

As if any more proof was needed of China’s growing dominance, it is now being bellowed at full volume by tenors and sopranos. Chinese composers have become a major source for opera in Europe and North America, while more opera festivals are staged in the People’s Republic than anywhere else. “The future of opera may be in China,” says Tian Hao Jiang, China’s most celebrated operatic export a mainstay at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. “So it’s about time to reverse the trend. Instead of Chinese singers always coming to the West, Western singers are coming to learn Chinese.”

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Date: December 23rd, 2011
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Everything to play for at the Tchaikovsky competition

Winning pianist Daniil Trifonov of Russia performs during the Tchaikovsky.
Photograph: Dmitry Lovetsky/AP

It’s the fiercest, sweatiest, most nerve-shredding competition in the classical world. Tom Service reports from Moscow

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Date: December 21st, 2011
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Music can ease anxiety in cancer patients

MUSIC not only nourishes the soul, it reduces the anxiety cancer patients feel, according to a major international review of the effectiveness of music therapy.

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Date: December 16th, 2011
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Venezuela prison orchestra gives hope to inmates

The music project is currently being run in several prisons in Venezuela

The strains of classical music drift on the breeze across the vast concrete yard at Coro prison in western Venezuela.

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Date: December 14th, 2011
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Unlocking kids’ musical gifts

DO all children have the ability to be musical?

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Date: December 9th, 2011
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Lack of testes gave castrato superstar headaches

Farinelli's voice came at a price
(Image: Getty Images)

THERE was at least one downside to Farinelli’s castration. The operation may have preserved the 18th-century singer’s treble voice into adulthood, making him a musical legend, but it also condemned him to a skull deformity that may have affected his mind.

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Date: December 7th, 2011
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Bolshoi Theatre archives reveal lives of musicians

Branches of a tree in front of the Bolshoi theatre in central Moscow are covered with ice, December 26, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Mikhail Voskresensky

(Reuters) – The death of a tyrant, abduction by the secret police and insight into the minds of some of the greatest composers in history are all part of the details that Russia’s Bolshoi Theater have discovered in the margins of the centuries-old sheet music in its archives.

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Date: December 2nd, 2011
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NHS urged to pay for music therapy to cure depression

Making music using African percussion instruments has been proven to help people recover from depression by enabling them to express repressed emotions and communicate painful experiences.

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Date: November 30th, 2011
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