Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through

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This tiny bagatelle – French for trifle – from one of the three sets (plus a few stray ones) he wrote across his lifetime, shows his capacity for surprise and wit. The work had already stirred dangerous emotions in a railway refreshment room as the soundtrack to David Lean’s film Brief Encounter(1945). New lodgers, models of the species, moved in, one a master luthier, or maker of stringed instruments. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes.

Fiona Maddocks | Faber Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile by Fiona Maddocks | Faber

In this slow movement from his Cello Sonata, the piano introduces a long, heart-rending melody, before cello and piano interact as equal partners. She was aware that her life would be brief, her time measured,” observed her sister Nadia Boulanger, the great French pedagogue, friend of Stravinsky, teacher of Copland, Bernstein, Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Philip Glass and guru of countless more, who outlived her younger sibling by nearly six decades. Dowland was a shadowy figure, a spy and a papist who thought little of leaving his wife and three children behind in England to earn large sums abroad. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer.I had booked, months earlier, to go to Berlin in October 2022 to hear Daniel Barenboim conduct his last Ring cycle. She gave her first concert aged four, and instead of following an expected career as church organist and music teacher set out to become a composer. Here’s a diet where you can listen and walk the dog, lift dumbbells, practise hula or, with care, reverse running.

I was writing a book about Rachmaninov in exile when my own

A separate, quiet tune’… a vintage postcard featuring ‘anonymous figures from the past, their stories songs without words’.

Fiona Maddocks selects 100 classical works from across nine centuries, arguing passionately, persuasively and at times obstinately for their inclusion, putting each work in its cultural and musical context, discussing omissions, suggesting alternatives and always putting the music first. They are joined by pianist Boris Giltburg, who is about to release his new Rachmaninov piano concertos disc, and who performs specially for Music Matters on Rachmaninov's original Steinway grand piano in the Villa's studio. Today we mark two events of 2023: for China’s lunar new year, the choice is the international piano star Yuja Wang, born in Beijing.