Carlos Kleiber’s Rehearsal
My personal view is that Carlos Kleiber was the greatest orchestral and Opera conductor of the past 100 years. He did not shout or curse the musicians as did Toscanini. Kleiber was demanding, of course. …
Composers Archive
Cesar Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano
In 1886, when he composed his Violin Sonata, César Franck (1822-1890) was 64 years old and still a fairly obscure figure in the French musical world: a church organist and professor of organ at the …
Sviatoslav Richter in a Beethoven Piano Recital
Sviatoslav Richter was born in Zhitomir, Russia but grew up in Odessa. Unusually, he was largely self-taught although his organist father provided him with a basic education in music. Even at an early age, Richter …
Symphony #2 by Robert Schumann
In my younger years I was a member of several orchestras. As an example, the San Jose (California) symphony; the Minneapolis Civic Orchestra, and more. When you and your fellow musicians work on re-creating the …
Mitsuko Uchida Plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto #15
I have been listening to Mitsuko Uchida for 40 years, perhaps longer… As a young girl, her family came to Vienna when her father was the Japanese Ambassador to Austria, and Ms. Uchida studied music …