Scott joplin (1868-1917)

Georges Bizet is probably not the first name to come to mind when we think of French composers of piano music. Indeed, few of us would think of Bizet as a piano composer at all, such is the towering s

Marc-André Hamelin (piano) Hyperion CDA67077 The People United has been recorded regularly over its 50 years, from Ursula Oppens in 1978 to a recent, recommendable version by the young Bulgarian piani

Andrey Gugnin (piano) Hyperion CDA684712 83 mins This album of Russian ballet transcriptions sparkles like a glass bauble hanging amidst the fairy lights. Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky wrote so colourful

‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw

Kammerorchester Basel/Giovanni Antonini Alpha ALPHA1092 76:29 mins The most familiar of the symphonies here, if only because it has a nickname, is No. 55, whose ‘Schoolmaster’ title arises out of the

As part of my research for meeting Seong-Jin Cho, I learned that Korean names tend to have specific meanings. But I also found several variants (in translation, naturally) of his own moniker. One of m