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The theme for this year’s Con Brio Festival 2019 was “More Schumania: Celebrating women with Clara”. The festival showcased the works of female composers through the ages with one work by Clara Schumann each day of the festival to celebrate her bicentennial birth year. I was entrusted the task
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Zane Dalal revisits the music, the drama and the pervasive social message that has become emblematic of the music of Richard Wagner. Much has been written on the life and work of composer Richard Wagner, and even more on his famous tetralogy of operas Der Ring des Nibelungen. There is
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He was falsely cast as Mozart’s murderer and music’s sorest loser. Now he’s getting a fresh hearing. On a chilly, wet day in late November, I visited the Central Cemetery, in Vienna, where several of the most familiar figures in musical history lie buried. In a musicians’
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This month, the tenth edition of Con Brio will shine a light on the oft-overlooked works of history’s finest female composers. We explore the lives of these path-breaking women who, despite possessing musical genius, were hardly celebrated in their time. By Beverly Pereira “A woman must not desire to
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Johann Sebastian Bach was part of an extensive Saxon-Thuringian family that produced an unparalleled and almost incalculable number of musicians. From fiddlers and town musicians to organists, from Kantors, court musicians and Kapellmeisters, member of the Bach family extensively populated the musical landscape from the 16th to the 19th century.
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The name “Mozart” is almost universally associated with the musical genius of Wolfgang Amadeus. However, Wolfie was not the only Mozart with significant musical talent, just take a quick look at his father. Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) was a controversial figure among his biographers. He was either seen as
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How a reclusive Frenchman created some of the most radical, beautiful music of the modern era. Claude Debussy died a century ago, but his music has not grown old. Bound only lightly to the past, it floats in time. As it coalesces, bar by bar, it appears to be improvising
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How an African-American composer’s works were saved from destruction. In 2009, Vicki and Darrell Gatwood, of St. Anne, Illinois, were preparing to renovate an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. The structure was in poor condition: vandals had ransacked it, and a fallen tree had torn a hole
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Katharine Rawdon: Sören Sieg, the first time I heard your music I nearly fell off my chair with delight! It made me tap my foot, smile, and want to get up and dance (and I’m no dancer!). So in this interview I would love for you to answer for
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The extraordinary dynasty of dance music composers and musicians named Strauss originated in the Hungarian town of Buda. Around 1750, Grandfather Johann moved to Vienna, and his son Franz Borgias operated a small tavern in the suburb of Leopoldstadt. That pub became the birthplace of Johann Strauss I (1804-1849), and
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Orlando Gibbons (1572-1625) was born in Oxford, son of a town wait—essentially a town musician whose duties included playing his instrument for the townsfolk, welcoming Royal visitors, and leading processions on civic occasions. William Gibbons moved back and forth between Oxford and Cambridge, and young Orlando became a chorister
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘reminiscence’ as either ‘a story told about a past event remembered by the narrator’ or ‘a characteristic of one thing that is suggestive of another’. We all love to reminisce: we gain comfort by our efforts to recollect the pleasures of our pasts and to