A Minute with Miles

Outdoor concerts can be delightful, especially when the music and the natural surroundings make a perfect mix. Then again, when you’re playing outdoors, things sometimes happen that wouldn’t ever happen in the concert hall—and I’m not just talking about thunderstorms.

Composers often call for repeats, in their music, for whole sections of their pieces to be played twice. And the question is: what’s the point?

If you have a chance to attend an orchestra concert anytime soon and one of the pieces on the program calls for a harp, make sure to watch the harpist’s feet. They’ll be busy.

By the 1700's the term was already associated with the artistic and commercial cult of the glamorous leading lady.

"...I now…take the liberty of presenting [you] with the present concertos… humbly praying You not to judge their imperfections by the severity of the fine and delicate taste that every one knows You to have for music …”

People’s anxiety dreams tend to be tailored to their particular personalities, circumstances, and experiences, and often to their particular professions.

We musicians have all known people we’ve found to be thoroughly unpleasant, even cruel, or thoroughly insipid and boring, who walk on stage and play or sing beautifully, movingly. How is this possible?

Ginastera was undoubtedly the most important Argentinean composer of the twentieth century.

Gabriel Fauré is often referred to as one of the greatest French composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But I wonder if that description goes far enough.

Felix Mendelssohn led a performance that reintroduced Bach’s masterpiece to the musical public. And that reintroduction led to the rediscovery and reevaluation of many other works by Bach.