Whatever else the world may debate about Franz Liszt’s life and work, one thing is generally conceded: he was the first modern pianist. Entitled ”Liszt and the Keyboard”, master musicologist Dr. Alan Walker gives us an exciting 47 minute journey describing Liszt being the root of modern piano playing. Liszt’s influence was not that of imitation but of rational solving […]

This Thursday evening the world was fortunate to be able to enjoy Martha Argerich solo – something which is utterly sensational as the legend these days exclusively appear in concerts with orchestras and in chamber music collaborations. Symphoniker Hamburg is running a now ongoing Internet festival at Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, created and designed as musical collages themed around Gustav Mahler’s […]

Enjoy The Five Brown’s new rendition of Leroy Anderson’s joyful season’s celebration wondrously arranged for five pianos! This eternal holiday favorite was composed during a severe heat wave in the summer of 1950 and has been a fixture with holiday concerts for more than half a century. It’s said that the main melody of “Sleigh Ride” was used as the […]

On 11 March 1966, two great young pianists appeared together in public for the first time: Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy played Mozart’s Concerto for two pianos at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon. Looking in the back mirror we realize the unique importance of this performance hi-lighting the two young pianists in the middle of building world famous careers. Enjoying the […]

What happens when innovative acoustical ideas come across a vintage broken piano? Well, Ukrainian musicians transformed it into a unique and completely analog hybrid of 20 different instruments that are each connected and controlled by the piano keys. The musicians in the band Brunettes Shoot Blondes came up with an idea of making a true analog construction which could play […]

Destination: Rachmaninov – Departure, the first installment of a two-part journey, explores Rachmaninov’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos. In his seventh title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, Daniil Trifonov reunites with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the leadership of music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Watch the accompanying short music film of the Fourth Concerto’s opening movement. Directed by Michael Joseph McQuilken, […]

As writer John Terauds puts it; ”… with the varying styles of Impressionist paintings, the long view represents something defined, but the closer you get, the more his compositions start to fall apart into the individual components that our minds work imperceptibly to piece together into meaningful shapes.” March 25 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of one of […]

Pianist Daniel Barenboim, now celebrating 75 years, has published a series of short videos titled “5 minutes on…” in which he discusses well-known piano pieces. In this episode he talks about Franz Liszt’s Funérailles from the piano cycle Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses. Liszt built his monumental and transcendental technique on the back of Czerny’s 1,100 etudes, which, as his teacher, […]

Hear Igor Levit’s encore at First Night of the Proms 2017. Liszt’s piano solo version of Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Piano score to download and print: Extract, page 45-47: Beethoven/Liszt – Theme from Symphony 9 The 9 Symphonies Transcribed by Liszt For those interested in Liszt’s transcriptions of all nine Beethoven symphonies might also find thrill in […]

Since his triumph at the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition (the only American winner ever), pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, the Grammy Award-winner commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano […]

In a piano masterclass on Schubert’s Moments Musical at The International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove, Andras Schiff noted, for one of his students, that, in Schubert’s time, horse-drawn conveyances were the norm instead of just a tourist attraction.

Pianos during the 18th century were much different than their counterparts in the centuries from the 19th to the 21st. First of all, they were much smaller, normally comprising only five octaves instead of 7 1/3. Secondly, they were lightweight contraptions built using barely more materials than a harpsichord. Late 19th-century pianos were much sturdier and could withstand later compositional […]