British Classical Music: The Land of Lost Content

Originally a forerunner to the ‘fugue,’ a Capriccio (root meaning from the Latin capra, “goat”) has latterly become a term for a humorous or...

I can still vividly remember looking forward to the evening of 16 July 1977. It was the day defined by a specific broadcast on BBC Radio 3: ...

The outstanding booklet notes by Edward Cowie offer an exceptionally detailed introduction to the four works on this disc, with further comm...

I never had the opportunity to fly by the Anglo‑French Concorde supersonic airliner. But I did see one of the twenty aircraft a few times, m...

There can be few aspiring pianists who have not encountered Carl Czerny’s pedagogical albums. Whether it is The School for Velocity , op.299...

John Ireland is not the first English composer that an organist would consider when assembling a programme for a recital. His best-known wor...

I am not sure why this album has been entitled Inferno . To be sure, featuring Franz Liszt’s Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi-Sona...

For a year or so, Clifford Curzon returned to the Royal Academy of Music as a professor, but he found that it was almost impossible to fulfi...

Donald Brook wrote a series of books presenting attractive short studies or pen-portraits of a wide variety of musicians and authors. Clearl...

For over half a century, the music of Austrian composer Anton Diabelli has served as a companion to my pottering at the piano. Never having ...

Christopher Guild continues his massive survey of Ronald Stevenson’s piano music with more examples of the works and influence of the Austra...

Piano Concerto No.2 (1960) It is unfortunate that this concerto got off to a bad start. It was written specifically for the Dutch pianist, C...