Interlude is a classical music e-magazine based in Hong Kong, with contributors from diverse backgrounds offering historical, musical and cultural perspectives.
Music Education
The voice of the cello touches us deeply. Perhaps it speaks to us in a special way as it is the closest sound to the human voice. Due to the fantastic range of the cello, from the brilliant high tones to the deep chocolatey sounds—there are many cello pieces
Know Your Composer
It’s not an exaggeration to declare that the Mason family decidedly and uniquely contributed to American music during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The patriarch Lowell Mason (1792-1872) was a significant composer of church music, including many original hymns. As a strong advocate and educator of classical music,
Know Your Composer
When a professional musician from Helsinki toured the Finnish countryside in the last years of the 19th century, a member of the audience asked him, “Are there other great composers in Helsinki besides Merikanto?” This delightful anecdote certainly tells us something about the enormous popularity of Oskar Merikanto (1868–1924)
Know Your Composer
When families migrate across linguistic borders, their names frequently undergo a number of significant changes. Just take the Stamitz family, an extended and highly active Bohemian group of musicians, as an example. The spelling of their family name in contemporary sources was extraordinarily erratic, with the most common variants being
Know Your Composer
Alfred Brendel describes Schubert as “a sleepwalker”, yet in his final three sonatas, we see Schubert’s innate sense of musical geometry and his bold treatment of traditional sonata form. These are tightly-organised woks with almost perfectly-balanced structures, perhaps most obviously in the middle sonata of the triptych, the D959
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Ignored for years, their composer regarded as Beethoven‘s poor relation, Schubert‘s last three piano sonatas now enjoy a special place in the piano repertoire, ranking alongside Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas, and they hold a particular fascination for pianists, audiences, critics and musicologists. The final year of
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The Scarlatti family name—in various spellings—was common in Sicily, with several branches of additional Scarlatti families residing in Rome and northern Italy. Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was the musical bedrock of the family, and he became the most important opera composer of his generation in Italy. Besides roughly 100
Music Education
Water, in music, is more than just a drop in the ocean. Composers imagine water in rivers, water falling from the sky, water jetting up to the sky, water as a single raindrop, or as the entire sea. Water creatures, such as nymphs or mermaids, also have their place. In
Music Education
When we’re young and in dance class, we’re told to imitate trees – swaying in the wind, bowing down in a torrent of rain or just standing tall in the cold winter sun. Composers are equally inspired; they see trees as emblematic of spring and optimism or of winter
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In 1887, Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz brought together a number of works for solo piano that he’d written the previous year and created his Suite Española No. 1, Op. 47. The works take the entire country for their inspiration, with each title reflecting the inspiring region. In addition to
Music Education
Flowers show us the invisible world – they pop up to show us Spring, they dance in the wind, they bring happiness, and can mark occasions of solemnity. Composers, accordingly, use music to show us flowers – dancing, or something less concrete. We have to start, of course, with the most famous
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Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was the manliest man in a manly world of manly composers! Creator of theatrical and musical dramas lasting the better part of eternity, his works are perpetually in danger of drowning in gigantic puddles of testosterone. As such, it might come as a surprise to learn that