Chamber Music & Recitals

When Handel composed his Judas Maccabaeus in 1746 he had brought to an end his activity for the (Italian) opera in London and begun a second career as an oratorio composer, which at first got off to a very successful start but then soon experienced a...

When Glenn Gould performed his last public piano recital in Los Angeles on April 10, 1964, he included Ernst Kreneck's Piano Sontata No. 3 alongside works of Bach. This is a clear indication of Kreneck's significance as a twentieth-century composer. This...

When Giovanni Benedetto Platti was born, Johann Sebastian Bach was already twelve years old, and when he died, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was only two weeks short of his seventh birthday. So far scholars have not been able to unearth any significant...

When Gina Bachauer made her first gramophone recordings in 1949, she could already look back on an impressive career. Alfred Cortot and Sergey Rachmaninoff were among her teachers; Dimitri Mitropoulos conducted her first public concert in Athens in 1935,...

When Giacomo Puccini received an offer from Vienna "to write an opera - yes: similar to Der Rosenkavalier, only more entertaining and more organic," he replied, "An operetta, that for me is out of the question." What the composition became is La rondine-...

When Germany invaded Austria in 1938, Robert Furstenthal, born in 1920, took the path of many Viennese Jews and fled to the United States, where he made his living as an accountant; the fact that he had written music in his youth was soon forgotten...

When George Gershwin presented his Rhapsody in Blue at Manhattan's Aeolian Hall in 1924, Jazz had prized it's way into the classical concert halls. Only one year later the Concerto in F followed - the motifs and themes 'jazzy', whilst bearing all the...

When four musicians of high caliber join forces, one can generally expect favorable results; but only the truly splendid manage to create a musical experience greater than the sum of it's parts. Such is the nature of The Opus Project, founded in 2020 and...

When examining the instrumental statistics for Aulis Sallinen's overall oeuvre, we see that in quantitative terms he has preferred the violoncello above all other solo instruments, and a constant that uniformly pervades his chamber compositions is his...

When Eug?ne Ysaáe composed his cycle of 6 sonatas op. 27 for solo violin in June 1923, gut strings were still very common and highly appreciated - statements by contemporary violinists such as Mischa Elman, Toscha Seidel and Jacques Thibaud confirm this...

When Emperor Joseph II established a professional wind ensemble drawn from the Viennese court orchestra in 1782, he initiated an influential trend that gave composers an important opportunity to popularize their operatic music. The beautifully craft.1...

When Elgar' popular part-song My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land was published in 1890, a ready market for such pieces had been established by the competition festival movement, itself fuelled by the enormous growth in the number of choirs.1. There Is...