Music Education
What would opera singers be without their stretchy, malleable tempos? More specifically, where would they be without the unwritten rules – “performance practice”, they’re often called – about when you simply must take some extra time? Opera is no place for heartless clockwork; but when it comes to mastering operatic skills,
Music Education
The celebrated Russian guitarist and composer Nikita Arnoldovich Koshkin (born 1956) needs no introduction to any serious modern classical guitarist. In a prolific performing and compositional career that shows no signs of abating, Koshkin has threaded a unique sonic voice into the history of the instrument, and his works continue
Features
“One reason I love performing non-Western music is because I don’t find non-Western ideas in the music. I find basic human emotions and experiences that I have, I share, and I understand.” That outlook helps Ethan Sperry take on the daunting challenge of transplanting music between disparate traditions. Sperry
Interviews
The Madras Musical Association (MMA) was founded in 1893 in Chennai (formerly Madras) at St Andrew’s Church in Egmore and celebrates its 125th anniversary in 2018. The MMA initially comprised an all-European group of musicians and was set up to perform Western choral and classical music. With the onset
Know Your Composer
According to popular legend, Orlande de Lassus, born in 1530 or 1532 in the Franco-Flemish province of Hainaut, was abducted three times because of the beauty of his voice! Probably pure fabrication, it nevertheless provides a fictional narrative that explains how the 12-year-old boy came to be in the services
Reviews
On 24th and 25th April 2018, Tata Theatre audiences at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai had the distinct and rare opportunity of hearing not one nor two but all five piano concertos by Beethoven. We have to thank the NCPA who regularly partners with touring foreign orchestras
Music Education
DEVELOP A PLAN FOR DRILLING THE TRICKY BITS IN YOUR MUSIC One of the skills you should take with you as you leave post-secondary education is a solid method of learning your own music. While you still have support from regular coaches and teachers, get specific about the steps you
Features
As we all now know, Mumbai has an opera house, and what better in an opera house than lectures on opera? Apart from operas themselves, naturally. Well, hopefully, interest created by the one will lead to passion for the other. Some months ago, Royal Opera House impresario, Asad Lalljee, asked
Features
The United States of America (the India that Christopher Columbus thought he reached) and the real India lie on diametrically opposite sides of the globe; noon here, midnight there. The two lands only had sporadic contact in the distant past. But with America’s rise as a nation and the
Throwback Thursday
My senses had been heightened due to sheer anticipation when I arrived in the Austrian capital. It took me only a few hours to realise that Vienna truly was soaked in history. I felt like I had walked into the past, into the empire of the Habsburgs and into the
Know Your Composer
A partly sad, partly bizarre story of how Mozart (1756-91) suffered benign neglect for the better part of the 19th century, and how he was rehabilitated in the 20th century by Hollywood. By Manohar Parnerkar Today it is hard to believe that the 19th-century radical Romantics once denigrated Mozart as
Music Education
Music was always part of Henri Matisse’s (1869-1954) life. He played the violin on a daily basis, reflecting the rigorous structure and precise technique which corresponded to his artistic methods. It also provided him with an escape and source of inspiration. Some of the early paintings of his room