Ruth Gipps: A Centenary Tribute
Ruth Gipps was a self-declared rebel all her life and was one of Britain’s most prolific female composers, producing well over 100 works including five […]
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Double Bass
Guest Blogs
Piano
György Cziffra and Walter Gieseking
Two pianists with the same birthday had radically different approaches to music-making — each of them wonderful in their own way.
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Double Bass
Remembering Ovidiu
[Why?] … belongs amongst the best pieces written for this instrument combination. Double Bassist I first met the great Romanian virtuoso Ovidiu Badila at Kloster
Piano
Beyond the Score: A Conversation With Gerald Kingsley
A conversation with a pupil of Edwin Fischer and friend of composer Nikolai Medtner reveals fascinating insights into music-making.
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Music
Under a New Baton
For 23 years, I have had the privilege of being a member of the cello section in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. For the first time
Piano
Josef Labor Plays Beethoven
A recently discovered 100-year-old recording by a forgotten musical giant takes us back to the musical culture of Beethoven’s time.
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Piano
Bizjak Piano Duo — Repertoire for Two Pianos and for Piano Four-Hands
The story of our duo is not the most typical — even though we are sisters, a significant age difference did not allow us to sight-read the scores in slippers in our living room in Belgrade! The duo was “imposed” on us after our respective piano studies at the Paris Conservatory. Sanja was 15, and I was 27. The Odyssey, therefore, begins in 2002, when the Belgrade Philharmonic invites us to play Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in E Major. Before that, we played very rarely together, only to close shared recitals. I remember discovering Schubert’s delicious Rondo in D major, D.608, which will always remain a piece we love to play.
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Piano
The Inimitable Ignaz Friedman
A legendary 1936 recording of a Chopin Nocturne continues to be esteemed as one of the greatest ever made.
The Inimitable Ignaz Friedman Open »
Double Bass
Tchaikovsky and the Czech Connection
Czech bassist Josef Rambousek (1845 – 1901) is best remembered today as the double bass teacher of Serge Koussevitsky (1874 – 1951). Koussevitsky’s fame quickly
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Music
Leonard Bernstein’s Use of Diminished in West Side Story
To understand Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story it is important to understand diminished theory. The diminished scales and chords are some of the most interesting
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