hank Archive

During a brief visit to Budapest in 1910 Claude Debussy was impressed by the Gypsy-style cafe ensembles he heard in the city. Of one Gypsy musician, Debussy wrote: “In an ordinary, commonplace café, he gave …

Austrian composer Franz Schubert left us about 600 songs. Among these is the amazing “Gretchen am Spinnrade”, in English: Gretchen at the spinning wheel. The lyrics are as follows: Gretchen at the spinning-wheel English Translation …

I had planned for you today a wonderful program of Romantic music by Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Edvard Grieg. In particular the Grieg brings out the folk tunes of Norway as part of the composer’s …

Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 was composed in 1916–17, and premiered the following year, just before the composer left his politically explosive homeland for an extended residence in the US and Western Europe. The symphony would …

Pianist Igor Levit was born in Russia in 1987, and his parents relocated to Germany when Igor was age 8. He began his piano studies with his mother. As the youngest participant in the 2005 Arthur …