News Flash

2025-11-28

New Festival Curator in Lucerne

Lucerne’s new “Pulse” festival, running May 8–17, reflects the rhythm of thought and emotion. Director Nordmann chose pianist Olafsson to curate, praising his creativity and belief that music meaningfully unites diverse artistic forms for him.
Read more at lucernefestival.ch

2025-11-27

Psychiatrists' Take on Mozart

Some suggest ADHD-linked dopamine and noradrenaline differences shaped Mozart’s novelty-seeking, reward-driven focus. His intense hyperfocus enabled rapid composition, yet debates persist over psychology versus history in understanding his humour, creativity, and enduring musical genius today.
Read more at classical-music.com

2025-11-26

Pianist Muscle AI Reader

Scientists created an AI model that infers hand-muscle activity using regular video. Learned from professional pianist data, it reproduces activation without wearable sensors, delivering noninvasive information for motor evaluation, therapy, skill development, and human-machine collaboration.
Read more at isct.ac.jp

2025-11-25

Eric Lu's Last Chance

American pianist Eric Lu returned to the 2025 Chopin Competition a decade after placing fourth, echoing classical music's pattern of artists revisiting the stage, motivated by competition, expectations, and a desire to advance a career.
Read more at koreaherald.com

2025-11-24

Olafsson in E Major and Minor

Olafsson pairs Beethoven’s Op. 109 with Bach, Schubert, and the earlier E-minor Sonata, creating an album unified by the key of E, whose green-hued character, to the synaesthetic pianist, suggests vivid, luxurious color and energy.
Read more at theguardian.com

2025-11-23

Reviving the Music of a WW2 Prodigy

A gifted young pianist, Josima Feldschuh wrote and performed music in the Warsaw Ghetto before dying in 1943 at 13. Her surviving manuscripts inspired Non Fiction, a new 40-minute piano concerto by Polish composer Hania Rani.
Read more at ft.com

2025-11-22

Brahms and Dukas with Chen

Pianist and UMKC professor Sean Chen performs Brahms’s Four Ballades and his arrangement of Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in a Kansas Public Radio program, highlighting his work as both performer and arranger.
Read more at kansaspublicradio.org

2025-11-21

A Guinness World Record Piano Relay

Nearly 200 pianists will perform in an 11-hour relay at Sunderland’s Fire Station on 7 December 2025, as Keys of the City attempts to surpass Hong Kong’s recent record of 169 consecutive performers.
Read more at sunderlandmagazine.com

2025-11-20

In Concert: Argerich, Pires and Mozart

When two singular artists meet, their contrasting energies spark fresh life in familiar music; so it was as Argerich’s fire and Pires' lyricism fused in Geneva, turning Mozart’s elegance into something deeply human and moving.
Read more at arte.tv

2025-11-19

Yuja's VR Experiment

In Playing with Fire at the Musée de la musique, Yuja Wang recites Verlaine hourly - and in heels - while audiences, wearing VR headsets, appear as knitted creatures moving around an empty space anchored by a solitary Steinway Spirio piano.
Read more at xrmust.com

2025-11-18

Jan Lisiecki in Interview

Lisiecki discusses the discipline behind his poise, the psychology of performance, and the architectural clarity guiding his choices. He says programming is as crucial as playing, building a seamless journey around Chopin’s Op. 28 core with preludes by Bach, Rachmaninoff, Messiaen, Górecki, and Szymanowski.
Read more at earrelevant.net

2025-11-17

The French Piano Clash

Marguerite Long’s playing shimmered like a sunlit silver thread while Alfred Cortot erupted through Liszt with volcanic force. Their stark contrast embodied not just stylistic divergence but a cultural struggle amid nineteenth-century music’s Germanic traditions.
Read more at interlude.hk

2025-11-16

Holst's Piano Up for Adoption

Holst’s museum in Cheltenham has launched an “adopt an object” initiative, offering supporters the chance to sponsor his piano—used to compose The Planets—alongside items like the family gramophone and manuscripts, aiming to raise £25,000 for preservation.
Read more at bbc.com

2025-11-15

Hamelin's Discoveries

Hamelin’s new album, Found Objects / Sound Objects, unites composers from Zappa to Cage, Martirano, Wolpe, Oswald, Wyner, and himself. Though he calls it simply a group of pieces he wished to record, his notes reveal deeper personal ties.
Read more at gramophone.co.uk

2025-11-14

Fanny's Three Piano Sonatas

Fanny grew up in a cultured but constrained milieu, receiving rigorous musical training alongside Felix. Born to a Jewish family converted to Lutheranism, she mastered Bach’s preludes by thirteen and composed Songs without Words too.
Read more at interlude.hk

2025-11-13

Four Hands Schubert

Pianists Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou reunite to capture Schubert’s radiant Fantasia in F minor, creating a milestone four-hands album released forty years after Lupu–Perahia’s iconic recording and sixty after Britten–Richter’s landmark performance there.
Read more at theguardian.com

2025-11-12

Pianist Rana in Philadelphia

At 32, Rana has earned strong goodwill through prior Philadelphia Orchestra appearances, yet it was striking how fully the Perelman Theater audience, hearing her PCMS debut, remained captivated as Debussy’s already-peculiar études became increasingly uncanny.
Read more at inquirer.com

2025-11-11

Collaborative Pianist Perron

Francis Perron began accompanying singers as a teenager and instantly knew, “This is what I want to do—make music with singers.” Drawn to blending poetry and sound, he credits teacher Gilles Manny for instilling discipline, detail, and love for craft.
Read more at myscena.org

2025-11-10

From Juilliard to J. P. Morgan

A Juilliard-trained pianist, Matthew Maimone dreamed beyond music — earning a scholarship to Columbia Business School and now thriving as a private banker at J.P. Morgan, where he’s already won a community engagement award.
Read more at poetsandquants.com

2025-11-09

Irresistible Simplicity

Debussy called Satie “a gentle medieval musician lost in this century.” A paradoxical bohemian, his whimsical minimalism defied convention, shaping the twentieth century’s avant-garde. A century after his death, we honor his quiet rebellion and radical simplicity.
Read more at interlude.hk

2025-11-08

Creative Sorrow

Pianist Adam Tendler said "Inheritances" helped transform his complicated feelings toward his “semi-estranged” father, turning them into “a companion in a good way,” allowing him to reconnect and accept: “I am my father’s son. We are family.”
Read more at vtdigger.org

2025-11-07

Sumino’s Multi-Piano

At Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall, Hayato Sumino performed amid two Steinways, a Prophet synth, and a toy piano. His eclectic, multi-piano program captivated a sold-out audience, earning multiple standing ovations during his second U.S. concert this year.
Read more at sfcv.org

2025-11-06

Paderewski - The Statesman

When Paderewski returned to Poland in December 1918, he was more than a famed pianist - he was a national symbol. His arrival in Poznań ignited patriotic fervor, sparking the Greater Poland Uprising the very next day.
Read more at warsawinstitute.org

2025-11-05

Sir Hough and Lee in Conversation

Composer and pianist Sir Stephen Hough views all his artistic pursuits - piano, composition, and writing - as stemming from the same poetic impulse. “Poetry takes everyday words and makes them mean something more,” he explains. For him, music and creativity transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Read more at bakchormeeboy.com