C minor is traditionally the key of drama, passion, pathos, and pain, which also applies here in Mozart's famous C minor sonata K. 457. He wrote it in October 1784, though what might have triggered th...
As is the case with quite a few of his works, there are two versions of Schumann's opus 14 - a three-movement 'Concert sans Orchestre' from 1836 and a 'Grande Sonate' in five movements from 1853. We d...
When Mendelssohn learned from his publisher Nikolaus Simrock that he was to receive an additional honorarium for a part of his 'Lieder ohne Worte', he effusively thanked him for this gift. However, th...
This dark and tragic sonata in A minor, composed in Paris in 1778, tends to be linked with the death of Mozart's mother on 3 July 1778. While this of course cannot be ruled out, not a single concrete...
The great pianist Paul Badura-Skoda counts the first movement of this B-flat major sonata K. 333 as 'among the most beautiful … in the piano literature.' And who would want to contradict him? What a p...
Those wishing to get to know Mozart's gentle, slightly elegiac side should play the opening movement of this lesser-known piano sonata K. 570. The second movement, too, marries the calm strains of hor...
'Do you not know Jean Paul, our great writer? I have learnt more counterpoint from him than from my music teacher'. His 'Vorschule der Ästhetik' with its extensive treatment of humour probably occasio...
To Diotima' - this addendum to the title was preserved until shortly before publication of the piano 'songs' and mystified Schumann's contemporaries. 'The Goddess to whom they are addressed has caused...
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, on his return journey from Scotland in late summer 1829, spent a few sublimely beautiful days with the Taylor family in Wales. The 'Trois Fantaisies ou Caprices op. 16' fo...
Everywhere only confused combinations of figures, dissonances, passages - in short, for us torture' - Schumann certainly did not deserve this contemporary slating. He only published the opening moveme...
