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Articles, biographies and essays on composers, performers and great recordings, first published in our Facebook groups.

25 October 2026Mozart's Symphonies by Blomstedt and the Staatskapelle DresdenWOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Symphony No. 38 in D major, K 504 ‘Prague’ - Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K 543 - Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K 550 (first version) - Symphony No. 41…21 October 2026When Karajan's Magic Failed: Six Recordings That Divided the CriticsFew conductors left a recorded legacy as influential as Herbert von Karajan. Yet the qualities that made his finest performances unforgettable—luxurious orchestral sound, seamless phrasing…20 October 20261907: The Year That Destroyed Mahler's WorldFew years in the life of Gustav Mahler have acquired such powerful symbolic significance as 1907. Later biographical tradition would turn it into his annus terribilis, the year of the great…19 October 2026Mahler's Night: The Seventh and Eighth, From Darkness to TriumphBetween the Sixth and the Eighth Symphonies, Gustav Mahler travelled in only a few years across an aesthetic distance that seems almost impossible. The Sixth had ended in absolute defeat,…19 October 2026Yehudi Menuhin: From Child Prodigy to Young Interpreter of ElgarBetween the ages of eleven and sixteen, Yehudi Menuhin experienced an extraordinary passage from childhood promise to international recognition. These years brought celebrated appearances,…19 October 2026Yehudi and Hephzibah Menuhin: A Lifelong Dialogue in MusicThe relationship between Yehudi Menuhin and his sister Hephzibah Menuhin belongs among the most enduring sibling partnerships in classical music. Their bond grew from a shared childhood…16 October 2026The Hammer of Fate: Mahler's Sixth SymphonyWhen Gustav Mahler began work on his Sixth Symphony during the summer of 1903, his outward life offered very little reason to imagine a work dominated by defeat. He had reached a position…13 October 2026Alfred Roller and Gustav Mahler: When Music Learned to SeeThe artistic partnership between Gustav Mahler and Alfred Roller was one of those rare encounters in cultural history in which two people working in apparently different disciplines…13 October 2026Mahler Reinvents Opera: Roller, Vienna and the Obsession with PerfectionWhen Gustav Mahler arrived in Vienna in 1897, he already understood that the Court Opera was far more than a prestigious theatre. It was an imperial institution, one of the musical centres…12 October 2026Mahler and the Fifth Symphony: The AdagiettoWith the Fifth Symphony, something genuinely new begins in the career of Gustav Mahler. The first four symphonies could be seen as a great unity connected with the poetic world of Des…9 October 2026Alma Schindler: Love, Marriage and an Impossible RelationshipWhen Gustav Mahler truly came to know Alma Schindler in the autumn of 1901, the two of them seemed to stand at almost opposite ends of existence. He was forty-one years old, director of the…7 October 2026Biography Of Mahler By Jens Malte FischerWhen Gustav Mahler finally arrived in Vienna in the spring of 1897, he was not simply returning to the city in which he had studied twenty years earlier. He was returning to the musical…7 October 2026Zdeněk Mácal: From Brno and Exile to America and the Czech PhilharmonicThe career of Zdeněk Mácal (1936–2023) forms one of the most remarkable bridges between the great Czech conducting tradition and the international orchestral world of the second half of the…7 October 2026Jiří Bělohlávek: The Quiet Authority Of The Czech Conducting TraditionAmong the major Czech conductors of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Jiří Bělohlávek (1946–2017) occupies a distinctive position. He inherited a national conducting…7 October 2026Václav Smetáček: The Oboist Who Became One of the Great Builders of Czech Orchestral LifeThe career of Václav Smetáček (1906–1986) is one of the most remarkable examples in twentieth-century Czech music of a musician who gradually transformed himself from an instrumentalist and…7 October 2026Zdeněk Chalabala: From Janáček to the National Opera of PragueAmong the great Czech conductors of the twentieth century, Zdeněk Chalabala (1899–1962) occupies a particularly important place because his career united several traditions that were…7 October 2026Winners of the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Conducting Competition with Leonard Bernstein — 1963From left to right: Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado, Pedro Calderón, and Zdeněk Košler. The photograph captures a remarkable moment in conducting history: three young conductors who…7 October 2026Zdeněk Košler: A Czech Maestro Between Prague, Bratislava, Berlin and New YorkThe life of Zdeněk Košler (1928–1995) belongs to one of the most distinguished traditions of Czech conducting in the second half of the twentieth century. He was neither a flamboyant podium…7 October 2026Libor Pešek: The Czech Maestro Who Brought Bohemia to LiverpoolThe career of Libor Pešek (1933–2022) represents one of the most attractive bridges between Czech musical tradition and the wider international orchestral world of the late twentieth…7 October 2026Bystrík Režucha: The Slovak Maestro Between Bratislava, Košice and the Discographic LabyrinthThe career of Bystrík Režucha (1935–2012) occupies an important place in the musical history of Slovakia. He was a genuine and substantial conductor, deeply involved in the creation and…7 October 2026Anton Nanut: The Slovenian Maestro Between Ljubljana, Mahler and the Discographic LabyrinthThe career of Anton Nanut (1932–2017) occupies a distinctive place in the musical history of Slovenia and of the former Yugoslavia. He was not merely a successful national conductor but an…7 October 2026Milan Horvat: A Central European Maestro Between Zagreb, Vienna and GrazThe career of Milan Horvat (1919–2014) belongs to that remarkable Central European conducting tradition in which the profession was understood not primarily as a vehicle for celebrity, but…7 October 2026Hans Zanotelli: A Real Conductor Trapped in a Discographic LabyrinthThe figure of Hans Zanotelli (1927–1993) presents a particularly curious paradox within the history of twentieth-century German conducting. He was a genuine conductor, with a solid career…7 October 2026Alberto Lizzio: The Conductor Who Never ExistedFew stories in the history of classical recording are as curious, confusing, and fascinating as that of Alberto Lizzio, a conductor whose name appears on an astonishing number of recordings…6 October 2026Nadia Boulanger and Leonard Bernstein: Two Giants of Music and an Extraordinary FriendshipA remarkable relationship between the legendary French teacher and the American conductor, from their mutual admiration to their unforgettable final encounter in 1979. Few encounters in…6 October 2026Four Giants Of Music: A Historic Encounter In Moscow — March 1963This remarkable photograph brings together four of the most influential figures in twentieth-century classical music: Mstislav Rostropovich (1927–2007), David Oistrakh (1908–1974), Benjamin…6 October 2026The Universe in a Symphony: Mahler's ThirdAfter carrying the Second Symphony from death to resurrection, Gustav Mahler confronted an artistic problem of extraordinary magnitude: what could possibly follow a work that had ended by…5 October 2026Henryk Szeryng and Claudio Abbado in Milan, 1971The great violinist Henryk Szeryng (1918–1988) with the Italian conductor Claudio Abbado (1933–2014), photographed in Milan on 13 October 1971. Szeryng, one of the outstanding violinists of…5 October 2026Clara Schumann: Virtuoso, Composer, Editor and Guardian of a Musical TraditionClara Josephine Wieck Schumann (1819–1896) was one of the central figures of European musical Romanticism and, at the same time, one of the most complex personalities of the entire…♪5 October 2026Anton Rubinstein — The Piano Titan Who Changed Russian Musical LifeAnton Grigorievich Rubinstein (1829–1894) occupies a singular position in the history of nineteenth-century music. He was one of the greatest pianists of his time, an extraordinarily…5 October 2026Biography Of Mahler By Jens Malte FischerWhen Gustav Mahler arrived in Hamburg in the spring of 1891, he had just left Budapest after an experience as brilliant as it had been exhausting, during which he had learned that directing…4 October 2026Herbert von Karajan: Virtues and Flaws of One of the Most Powerful Conductors of the 20th CenturyHerbert von Karajan (1908–1989) was one of the most influential conductors in the history of recording and one of the most controversial. His extraordinary technical control, his obsession…4 October 2026Franz Liszt: Virtues and DefectsFranz Liszt (1811–1886) was one of the most extraordinary personalities of nineteenth-century music. His character was full of contrasts: dazzlingly vain yet remarkably generous, theatrical…4 October 2026The Hungarian State Opera House In Budapest — A Symbol Of National Ambition, Art And MusicThe great opera house of Budapest, today known as the Hungarian State Opera House, is one of the most magnificent theatres of nineteenth-century Europe and one of the clearest architectural…4 October 2026Budapest: The Young Conductor Who Wanted to Revolutionise Opera (1888–1891)When Gustav Mahler arrived in Budapest at the end of September 1888, he was twenty-eight years old and had just passed through one of the most intense periods of his youth. He had conducted…3 October 2026Hans von Bülow, The Conductor Who Helped Invent Modern ConductingHans von Bülow (1830–1894) was one of the decisive figures in the transformation of conducting from a practical function into an independent artistic profession. A formidable pianist,…2 October 2026Mannerisms, Rituals and Obsessions of the Great Conductors (VI)The history of conducting is full of masters whose artistic personality revealed itself not only in concert, but also in the way they studied a score, rehearsed, corrected, spoke to…2 October 2026Mannerisms, Rituals and Obsessions of the Great Conductors (V)The great conductors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not merely interpret scores differently; they often constructed entirely different systems for making orchestras function.…2 October 2026Manias, Rituals And Obsessions Of The Great Conductors — When Perfectionism Becomes Ritual (iv)The history of conducting is not simply the history of different interpretations, but also the history of radically different ways of preparing, controlling and imagining an orchestra. Some…2 October 2026Mannerisms, Rituals and Obsessions of the Great Conductors (III): When Perfectionism Becomes RitualThe history of conducting is full of personalities whose way of working could appear, from the outside, obsessive, eccentric, or even contradictory, although it almost always responded to a…