Free Republic

Benjamin Britten was born 100 years ago on 22 November and as events take place around the world to celebrate the work of one of Britain's greatest composers, two people who knew both the man and the musical genius share their recollections. "I was never frightened of Ben but I had great respect for him. He was a very easy person to get on with but you were careful about what you said about works he either liked or disliked, or his own works. You chose your words carefully!" In a rare interview with BBC Radio 3's Tom Service, 87-year-old...

Sir John Tavener, one of the leading British composers of the 20th and 21st Centuries, has died at the age of 69. Sir John was known for music that drew on his deep spirituality. In 1992, The Protecting Veil topped the classical charts for several months and in 1997 his Song For Athene was played at the funeral of Princess Diana.

Composer Ned Rorem has always seemed to exist in his own well-furnished sphere, writing music regardless of current fashion, saying exactly what he thinks (right as he's thinking it), and striking stances that are effortlessly provocative and contrary. He may even give you an argument about his 90th birthday Wednesday. "Other people turn 90," said the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rorem, who will be celebrated at a tribute concert Wednesday at the Curtis Institute, where he was on the faculty until recent years. Though he's not sure whether he'll attend, "I still think of myself as the youngest person at the party."

Visitors browsing through the YouTube channel of the pianist Valentina Lisitsa can watch her in hundreds of videos. There are live webcams of her practicing at her home in North Carolina, long blonde hair tossing and brow furrowed in concentration as she reads through new works. There she is in a red gown playing Schumann’s “Traumerei” at a concert in Seoul, and recording Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 at the Abbey Road Studios in London. Ms. Lisitsa, 43, resurrected a completely stalled career through YouTube.

Pope Francis, long reputed to be an opera lover, has opened up about his tastes in classical music, which turn out to be remarkably voracious and specific. His comments were part of a wide-ranging interview given to 16 Jesuit journals worldwide in which he also spoke about a host of social issues and about making the church more welcoming. The Pope tells America magazine: "Among musicians I love Mozart, of course. The ‘Et incarnatus est’ from his Mass in C minor is matchless; it lifts you to God! I love Mozart performed by Clara Haskil. Mozart fulfills me. But I...

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee held an impromptu press conference outside the House chamber, while the House was voting to defund Obamacare; to demand that C-span stop playing classical music during televised House votes. "This has got to stop," Jackson-Lee said. "Nobody listens to that s**t any more. This is designed to discourage the youth, and minorities, from tuning in and paying attention to their government."

It was Christmas Day 1989, Adina Spire’s twelfth birthday, and she and her family were celebrating both occasions in their apartment in Arad, Romania. Suddenly, five soldiers burst through the door. Adina’s younger sister was quickly hidden in a kitchen cabinet, but it was too late for the rest of the family. In front of Adina’s eyes, the soldiers gunned down her mother and father. They next seized Adina, raped her, and beat her senseless. It was days later that she awoke from a coma to find herself in the nearby Bezdin monastery, where Orthodox Christian nuns cared for orphaned...

Cookouts, fireworks and the "1812 Overture." On the Fourth of July, we hold these truths to be self-evidently American, right? Don't light the cannon fuses just yet. The "1812 Overture" may be an American tradition, with its patriotic strains and thunderous battery. But while orchestras across the land, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra tonight at Point State Park, will perform it with clanging bells and cannon fire, the music could hardly be any more distant from the Stars and Stripes. That's because the overture, written by famed composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, depicts Napoleon's retreat from Russia in 1812, not America's...

A Concert for Scotland The Hebrides (or Fingal's Cave) Overture by Felix Mendelssohn - ListenScottish Fantasy by Max Bruch - Listen The Land of the Mountain and the Flood by Hamish MacCunn - ListenSymphony No. 3 (the Scottish) by Felix Mendelssohn - Listen

Stravinsky's work caused a scandal in 1913 but has since been recognized as one of the 20th century's most important pieces. The audience, packed into the newly-opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to the point of standing room only, had neither seen nor heard anything like it. As the first few bars of the orchestral work The Rite of Spring – Le Sacre du Printemps – by the young, little-known Russian composer Igor Stravinsky sounded, there was a disturbance in the audience. It was, according to some of those present – who included Marcel Proust, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Maurice Ravel and...

Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner wrote some of the most famous music of all time. They became icons of their nations during turbulent eras: Verdi for Italy and Wagner for Germany. Their music still moves us, and their operas still play to packed houses around the world. But, in many ways, the two composers were fundamentally opposites, and on the occasion of their Bicentennial year, WQXR presents a one-hour program exploring these crucial differences. We learn how these two men of music, both born in the same year, but flowering in completely different directions, ultimately empowered both the greatest and...

Today, May 22, is the 200th birthday of famed composer Richard Wagner — so his native Germany is awash in concerts, lectures and recordings to celebrate the Jubiläumsjahr (Jubilee Year). But predictably, the additional attention has stirred up an intensified version of the never-stale debate over Wagner’s authentic legacy: aesthetic prince to be honoured, or moral leper to be shunned? Germany was once considered the pinnacle of aesthetic and philosophical sophistication, and at that pinnacle sat Richard Wagner. But after the war, Wagner (who is universally acknowledged to have been a racist and anti-Semite) retained more fame as Hitler’s muse...

Henri Dutilleux, one of France's leading modern composers, has died in Paris aged 97, his family has confirmed. Born in Angers in 1916, he was a prolific composer of predominantly instrumental works, including symphonies and orchestral pieces.

Harold Shapero, an American composer, pianist and longtime Professor of Music at Brandeis University, passed peacefully in his sleep on Friday, May 17, 2013 at the age of 93, following complications with pneumonia. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts on April 29, 1920, Shapero maintained a bold presence on the music scene in greater-Boston for the last 73 years. His friend Aaron Copland identified him with the American “Stravinsky school” of neo-classical composers that included lifelong friends and colleagues Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein and Irving Fine.

Legendary cellist and teacher renowned for his focused playing and aristocratic style passes at the age of 88. Born in Budapest in 1924, János Starker was given a cello at the age of five and soon proved to be a child prodigy making his first appearances at the age of seven. He trained under Adolf Schiffer at the Franz Liszt Academy where his teachers included Leo Weiner, Kodály, Bartók and Dohnányi. By the age of 12 he had five pupils of his own.

Thirty-six million Chinese kids now study classical piano, not counting string and woodwind players. Chinese parents pay for music lessons not because they expect their offspring to earn a living at the keyboard, but because they believe it will make them smarter at their studies. Are they right? And if so, why?The intertwined histories of music and mathematics offer a clue. The same faculty of the mind we evoke playfully in music, we put to work analytically in higher mathematics. By higher mathematics, I mean calculus and beyond. Only a tenth of American high school students study calculus, and...

The president of the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, has died. Davis, who first conducted the LSO in 1959, died on Sunday after a short illness at the age of 85.

Wagner and Verdi are destined to be linked forever, however awkwardly, since they were both born in 1813: Wagner in Leipzig, Germany, on May 22; Verdi in little Roncole, Italy, in the Duchy of Parma, on Oct. 9 or 10. (The records are not clear.) They never met and had little good to say about each other. Wagner tended to be circumspect on the subject of Verdi. But in an 1899 interview with a German newspaper Verdi, then 86, called Wagner “one of the greatest geniuses” who left treasures of “immortal worth.” Verdi added that as an Italian, he could...

Wolfgang Sawallisch has died, Der Spiegel reports. The Philadelphia Orchestra's music director from 1993-2003 was 89. Sawallisch died Friday, according to the Bavarian State Opera, which Sawallisch led for 20 years. He had been stricken in recent years by a number of diseases and conditions.

James DePreist, one of the first African-American conductors and a National Medal of Arts winner, died Friday at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., his manager Jason Bagdade said. DePreist, who was 76, had been in and out of the hospital since a massive heart attack last March that was followed by open-heart surgery, his wife, Ginette DePreist, told The Oregonian newspaper.