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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Finale This was a detailed examination of Mozart’s last 12 months in which he wrote some of his greatest works (including the Clarinet Concerto, the Magic Flute, La Clemenza di Tito, Ave Verum Corpus, the Requiem, the last Piano Concerto and the last two String Quintets) but struggled financially and professionally. I ran this…
Walmer Suite
Walmer Suite This suite of five short piano pieces were written or revised whilst I was teaching at a small school in Walmer, Kent. The pieces are all suitable for teaching piano techniques. I was the head of History at the school but also taught History of Music and Music Theory to the older pupils. …
Modest Mussorgsky
The Mighty Handful The lives and music of Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov examining how they came together and how their careers overlapped. In 1867 the critic Stasov wrote a review of the Pan-Slav concert organised by Mily Balakirev: “God grant that our Slavonic guests may never forget today’s concert; God grant that they…
Florence Price
Florence Price – Composer and Pioneer A child prodigy making her concert debut at 4, the same age as Mozart, Florence Price graduated with 2 diplomas at the age of 19. She was a professional organist, concert pianist and teacher, heading the music department at Clark University, Georgia at 23. Of her 300 compositions her…
Gustav Holst
Vaughan Williams and Holst Two great friends who pioneered a new English style with varying success. Not just the composers of Greensleeves and the Planets, Vaughan Williams and Holst followed Elgar’s lead as two of the standard bearers of the English Musical Renaissance. Both were from Gloucestershire but they met as students at the Royal…
Maurice Ravel
Unravelling Ravel A study of his life and music and that of his contemporaries. Maurice Ravel was a very private man who wrote some of the best-loved music of the twentieth century although he always dismissed Bolero as merely an academic exercise – but then he never saw Torvill and Dean. Works studied include Pavane pour…
