April 1951 carnegie hall witnesses a top pianist’s fatal final concerto

‘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

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

After the premiere of his orchestral piece Coptic Light in 1986, Morton Feldman was described by an irate American critic as ‘the most boring composer in the history of music’. Listeners coming to his

The unconventional instrumentation favoured by Tortoise is an indicator of how many different lineups have always jostled for space under the jazz umbrella. The national treasure that is The Pete Alle

Yet, given the dark and often introverted nature of the concerto, it’s hardly surprising that Shostakovich kept the work under wraps for so long, feeling that programming it was inadvisable until the

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