There is a new fashion among intellectual pianists. I call it the “pianissimo fetishism.” It works as follows: the intellectual pianist wants to distinguish himself from crowd-pleasing virtuosos and ...

In the opening lines of his recently published memoir, the pianist Sir Andras Schiff, born to Hungarian-Jewish parents in 1953, writes, “To begin with there is silence, and music comes out of silence.

Perhaps somewhere along the way you’ve heard the story of Beethoven’s deafness. From the age of 30, the already hugely accomplished composer began going slowly deaf, until by the age of 45 he was ...

LENOX — What kind of composer writes and presents music for "the hearer who need not applaud"? As I observe standing ovation after standing ovation at Tanglewood, I sometimes wonder if anyone ...