A slave no more

Some years ago, Colin Matthews – a lifelong Londoner – bought himself a composing retreat on the Somerset/ Dorset borders and half-seriously confessed to fears that the view of cows from his windows ‘

There’s a trepidatious growl from the contra-bassoon. Soon, it is joined by French horns, strings and timpani; the sound rumbles, snowballs – and then: abrupt silence. The piano sings into the stillne

When the first pianos made it to India around the 18th century, during the heyday of the East India Company, their usage was confined to British colonisers and a small minority of aristocratic Indians

‘I felt that I should like to kiss the hands that had awakened a new world of music for me.’ The year was 1888, the occasion was the Paris debut of a 27-year-old pianist named Ignacy Jan Paderewski. A

Leigh Lawson has embraced acting and poetry with the same determination that sustained Marie Lloyd, the music-hall queen whose memorabilia he collects, as Carla Passino discovers

A composer’s idiosyncratic guide to western classical music