Opinion
Beethoven has been described as ‘the Face of Western Classical Music’. You may have your favourites—Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Bach…but you are still unlikely to dispute that statement, so secure is Ludwig van’s position in the pantheon of music. His music is ingrained in our culture: the opening
Opinion
I begin this piece by acknowledging that I am a Chinese American concert pianist, AB Harvard, MM Juilliard, DMA SUNY at StonyBrook. I’ve been playing Beethoven nearly my whole life, having lived with his music for over half a century. I’ve spent more hours in his presence than
Opinion
Shakespeare’s Globe in London, a major theatre and tourist attraction, announced in June last year that it would permanently shut down unless it received a large government handout. The British theatre industry as a whole asked for a £100 million per month bailout. The U.K. government responded to
Opinion
Ritwik Bhattacharya, guitarist and academic consultant with Trinity College London-India, gives an overview of the classical guitar scene in India. The guitar is undoubtedly one of the most popular musical instruments in the world. Almost every child, at some point or another, dreams of making that dramatic stage entry, slinging
Opinion
Eminent businesswoman, Vinita Bali, draws on her experience in the corporate world to examine why supporting the performing arts is not only culturally important but is also good for business. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time” – Thomas Merton The cultural heritage of civilisations
Opinion
Renowned names from the world of Western classical music, whom the NCPA has hosted on its stage, weigh in on what cancelled concerts, the gift of gestation, and the return to live performances amidst restrictions entail for the performing arts. Dame Felicity Lott, soprano This pandemic has made me try
Opinion
Until the Coronavirus got its vicious spikes all over it, 2020 was meant to be Beethoven’s year. He was born on 17th December 1770 in Bonn. (In Vienna, where he spent most of his adult life and died in 1827, they regard 16th December as his birthday). In either
Music Education
A monthly column that explores any and every aspect of the performing arts. This month, concert pianist, lecturer and writer Karl Lutchmayer mulls over the tradition of historically informed performance which entails playing classical music exactly as it was originally conceived. We often talk about a piece of music as
Features
The current state of classical concerts would be unrecognizable, even enraging, to the performers and audiences of the past centuries. The stifling rules and rituals, the religious adherence to scores, soaring ticket prices, coupled with several awkward ‘can I clap now?’ moments are relatively new to the heritage of Western
Music Education
Most of us have heard music described as the universal language. I have heard this expression as long as I can remember and I have spent a good amount of effort trying to prove it to myself, trying to find complicated explanations for what I felt intuitively. I simultaneously struggled
Features
It is quite clear that – at least at certain levels – we live in a globalised world. New technologies developed over the last years in the fields of transportation and digital communication are allowing us now to travel and access knowledge with remarkable ease and speed. Among other advantages, the access
