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Piano Street's Classical Piano Blog contains over 300 posts. This page displays a
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Written partly during Chopin’s catastrophic wintertime stay on Majorca, the 24 Preludes, opus 28, are some of the composer’s most mysterious works. Schumann said of them: “They are sketches, beginnings of études, or, so to speak, ruins, individual... Read more >>
Film maker Bruno Monsaingeon suggests that with Michelangeli, Gould, and Richter no longer alive, Grigory Sokolov may be the “greatest living pianist.” Listen to the piano recital Sokolov gave at the Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Read more >>
G. Henle Publishers employ a variety of techniques in producing their beautiful scores, including software programs like Sibelius. But very few people know just how involved the art of music engraving was in the days before modern music printing... Read more >>
Celebrate the Schumann anniversary by reading our new translation of his very original and entertaining review of Chopin's Opus 2. This review includes the famous quote "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius". Read more >>
NAXOS Music Library (NML) is a very useful resource for music professionals, students, amateurs and collectors. The service offers more than 26,000 CDs with over 371,000 tracks of music for online listening. Read more >>
The documentary “Imagine: Being a Concert Pianist” gets under the lid of this extreme form of musicianship. Celebrated pianists, including Yevgeny Kissin, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Lang Lang, talk intimately about their lives, their work and their... Read more >>
Piano Street’s series of recordings of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier with pianist Martin Sturfält continues with four pairs of Preludes and Fugues, two from the first book and two from the second book Read more >>
Michelangeli built a reputation as much on the frequency of his cancellation of concerts as on his piano performances. On this video, he plays the first movement from Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C major Op. 2 No. 3, recorded in 1970. Read more >>
In an article about one of the greatest masterpieces of the 19th century piano literature, Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor, Patrick Jovell guides us through the history of the work as well as a few of the most common analytical approaches. Listen... Read more >>
Garrick Ohlsson was the first American to win first prize in the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition in 1970. In recognition of the bicentenary of Chopin’s birthday Mr. Ohlsson just performed at the Chopin Birthday Concerts in Warzaw... Read more >>
Broken strings and missing keys have made an appearance on the art scene as part of the Piano As Art Exhibition. A collaboration of two talented artists, Penny Putnam and Shauna Holiman, the exhibition features art created from bits and pieces of... Read more >>
Variation form was a central feature of Beethoven’s piano writing in general, from his early years until the end of his life. 32 Variations in C-minor as well as the Six Variations in G-major, both based on Beethoven’s original themes, are now... Read more >>
The Polonaises, with their “cannon buried in flowers,” in Schumann’s words, have become symbolic and poignant evocations of an oppressed people. Listen to Rafal Blechacz playing the Polonaise in A-flat major Op. 53 “Heroique” in a live broadcast from... Read more >>
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) is widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. In this translation of the first full-scale biography of Richter, Danish composer Karl Aage Rasmussen combines his artistic appreciation of... Read more >>
“The tone isn’t breathing.“ – complains pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, distraught. This is a typical sentence in Steinway & Sons’ chief technician and Master Tuner Stefan Knüpfer’s normal work day. The film Pianomania takes the viewer along on a... Read more >>
Hailed by critics is this new release from young Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz born in 1985. Blechacz plays Piano Music by Debussy and Szymanowski. Read more >>
Alfred Brendel is an outstanding modern exponent of Schubert’s piano music. He is capable of bringing not only the verve of this music but also its poetic intensity and intellectual depth to life with a special vibrancy. In this unique collection – a... Read more >>
Want to own a white grand piano just like the one John Lennon had and played in the famous video for his song Imagine? Or maybe you rather want to own Lennon’s estate in Weybridge which is now up for sale? Read more >>
The project Pictures Reframed, unites two strikingly original artists – pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and visual artist Robin Rhode in a collaborative performance which centres around Mussorgsky’s epic piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Read more >>
What Scarlatti is most prominently remembered for are the 555 short keyboard sonatas originally labelled Essercizi (Exercises). When he died in Madrid, Scarlatti left this treasury of manuscripts, which were largely unplayed beyond Spain and Portugal... Read more >>
More than 20 events from the Verbier festival are streamed live as well as being available on demand for free. Here are some piano related highlights you may not want to miss... Read more >>
A short documentary film by Nathaniel Kahn about Fleisher’s persistence, Two Hands, was nominated for a 2007 Academy Award. Read more >>
Pictures at an Exhibition, one of Modest Mussorgsky’s most famous work, is a set of ten pieces originally composed for the piano. The work is also well known in various arrangements with Ravel’s orchestration being the most recorded and performed. Read more >>
The Czech pianist Ivan Moravec's recordings for Connoisseur Society were notable for their audiophile quality and nearly all of them remain available, long after the LP era, on CD reissues. He is described by New Grove as one of the finest Chopin... Read more >>
Neither of the two Gould recordings of J.S. Bach´s Goldberg Variations (1955 and 1981) were made on Gould´s favourite instrument. The Aria is played here on a Yamaha grand, shortly before Gould´s death in October 1982. Read more >>
“The Visual Recital” is an attempt to help audiences understand and enjoy the syntax of music with visualizations that are scripted and controlled by the musician – a kind of live “Fantasia”, so to speak. Read more >>
More than 8,000,000 users populate SoundCloud’s airwaves. They prefer the free-of-charge, intuitive, streamlined interface on SoundCloud to the license-driven content on Spotify or MOG. Read more >>
Gloria Cheng, recent Grammy winner of the Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (Without Orchestra) for “Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky and Lutoslawski” talks to Patrick Jovell, Piano Street (proud UCLA alum.). Read more >>
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Camerata have joined forces to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn with a series of concerts and events. To promote the events a dedicated website has... Read more >>
Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University (both in Sweden) have now demonstrated a correlation between general intelligence and the ability to tap out a simple regular rhythm. Read more >>
Volkswagen in Stockholm, Sweden, have created a campaign website featuring several videos, all dedicated to the idea that happiness is the easiest way to get people to change. The Piano staircase resulted in a 66% increase in people taking the stairs... Read more >>
This documentary on the unconventional life and ground-breaking music of Russian pianist and composer Alexander Scriabin sheds light on the mystical ideas which inspired him. Read more >>
Shopper Approved has collected over 1,000 ratings from paying Piano Street Gold members and due to the high level of customer satisfaction Piano Street has received the exclusive Shopper Approved 5-Star Excellence Award. Read more >>
Celebrate one of the greatest piano composers in history, Frédéric Chopin, by listening to the Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman’s performance of Ballade no 2 in F-major while following along in Chopin’s autograph manuscript. Read more >>
In part one of a three-part special on building a career as a professional pianist, Piano Street’s guest writer Alexander Buskermolen spoke with Holland’s most prominent pedagogue, Professsor Jan Wijn. Read more >>
Chico Marx was known for “shooting” the keys of the piano. As part of the act he would play passages with his thumb up and index finger straight — like a gun. A charming example of his keyboard flamboyance is found in the film ”A Night at the Opera”. Read more >>
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Piano Street's Classical Piano Blog contains over 300 posts. This page displays a
random selection of 36 posts. Refresh the page for a new random selection.
|