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

‘Instead of doing drugs or joining a gang, I played piano’ Francois Pierron went from sleeping rough to starring on The Piano after teaching himself how to play and tickling the ivories at St Pancras

‘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

There was once a time when native New Yorkers like Aaron Copland and Ferde Grofé composed odes to the American West; when Europeans like Darius Milhaud and Frederick Delius extolled the deep South; an

CONCERT HEAVEN Stevens & Pound Silent Planet Suite (premiere); Holst Planets re-imagined by Stevens & Pound Stevens & Pound (percussion); Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Musicians from the Roy