Muzio Clementi (1752–1832) may not always get the recognition of Mozart or Beethoven, but to pianists, his stature is beyond dispute. Often called the “Father of the Pianoforte,” Clementi transformed the early keyboard sonata from a simple dance or exercise

Throughout music history, music critics have often elevated (or eviscerated) a composer’s reputation. Sometimes critics and composers have found themselves in public feuds. Other times, the composer and critic in question became unlikely friends. Today, we’re looking at four of

As the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) prepares to celebrate its centenary in 2027, a major new musical milestone is on the horizon – a significant new choral commission, Songs of the Spirit, written by the award-winning and newly-awarded

Few teachers have had as profound an influence on modern conducting as Finnish conductor and pedagogue Jorma Panula. Born in 1930 in Kauhajoki, Finland, Panula studied music and conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He served as the music

Joseph Haydn earned his nickname “Father of the Symphony” while working as the Kapellmeister in the Esterházy household, where he worked for decades, overseeing the court orchestra. However, when Haydn first joined that household at the age of twenty-nine, he

For Plácido Domingo, Otello became one of the defining pillars of his extraordinary career. From nervous beginnings in Hamburg to triumphs on the world’s grandest opera stages, and that even includes the silver screen, Domingo and Verdi’s towering Moor of

When Yvonne Loriod (1924-2010) was born on 20 January 1924 in Houilles, near Paris, few could have predicted that this prodigious young pianist would come to define the sound of Olivier Messiaen’s piano music. A visionary interpreter, a technical giant at the keyboard,

Ludwig van Beethoven is often remembered as a solitary genius: a composer who wrestled with fate, revolutionised music, and struggled through tinnitus, deafness, and depression to create some of the most influential works in the Western canon. But Beethoven didn’t