Joshua Bell on Josef Gingold
Josef Gingold was born on 28 October, 1909. In celebration of the birth of a universally beloved and respected pedagogue, here is an...
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Oct 8, 2015
George Eliot on violin-making obsession and the genius of Stradivarius
To mark the UK's National Poetry Day, 8th October, here's George Eliot's great poem about violin making and the obsession with which...
Oct 8, 2015
The Freewheelin’ Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma turns 60 on 7 October, 2015, and to celebrate one of the world's best-loved classical music heroes, here is an interview I did...
Oct 5, 2015
View from the viola front desk
Paul Silverthorne has led the viola section of the London Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, working with the finest conductors and...
Sep 24, 2015
We’re all misfit weirdos now
The breadth and success of David Byrne’s recent curatorship of Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival demonstrate how the curiosity and...
Sep 4, 2015
Thomas Demenga: ‘Sometimes I think we’re producing too many musicians at conservatoires’
The Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga discusses the fierce competition in today’s music world, how students should spend less time online and...
Aug 16, 2015
What do actors and musicians have in common?
A recent performance of the whole of Homer’s epic Iliad offered an opportunity to observe actors close up and to understand what their...
Aug 16, 2015
How to be present
Great stage actors have an aura of positive energy and openness that musicians can access, too. Acting coach Patsy Rodenburg tells Ariane...
Jul 22, 2015
John Woolrich: ‘Contemporary music is no different from Brahms’
The British composer John Woolrich discusses the challenges contemporary music faces and the vital role of amateur musicians My interview...
Jul 10, 2015
No prize given at Fournier Award
The jury of the Pierre Fournier Award hands out no main prize but two Incentive Grants in the prestigious cello contest at Wigmore Hall...
Jun 23, 2015
The curse of perfection
Perfectionism in music is a modern scourge, and Peter Cropper, who died in May, demonstrated that it is a distracting priority for...
Jun 22, 2015
Violin Utopia in Oberlin
As some of the world's finest violin makers gather in the small university town of Oberlin, Ohio, to share their knowledge at the annual...
Jun 14, 2015
The art of listening
The best musicians have special powers of listening, as pianist András Schiff demonstrated in a masterclass last week How can you tell if...
Jun 13, 2015
Barry Douglas on the pressures and benefits of competitions
As the Tchaikovsky Competition kicks off, we revisit a 2014 interview with the great Irish pianist Barry Douglas, who won the contest in...
Jun 13, 2015
The Fiddler of Dooney
W.B. Yeats was born 150 years ago, on 13 June, 1865. Here's his poem The Fiddler of Dooney, written in 1889, when he was 24, celebrating...
Jun 11, 2015
Let’s show modern instruments some #love
The Elbow Music social media campaign puts modern instruments in the spotlight My recent article about Frank Peter Zimmermann’s dilemma...
Jun 6, 2015
Thomas Hardy and the violin
The great British writer Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June, 1840. His father was a fiddler in the village band and he himself also played....
Jun 3, 2015
Never too old to learn
How much can an adult amateur expect to develop as a musician in a short space of time? Quite a lot, it turns out, given the right...
Jun 1, 2015
Peter Cropper and the art of story telling
The great violinist, former leader of the Lindsay Quartet, and one of the unique and most charismatic voices in chamber music, died on...
May 31, 2015
Baffling results in Brussels
Jury places audience favourite in fifth place at Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition in Belgium Music competitions get a lot of bad press...
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