The Concerto for Orchestra was composer Bela Bartok's last completed work; he did not live to finish either the Third Piano Concerto or the Viola Concerto that followed it. In these last works, all ...

Completed in 1919, the Cello Concerto was Edward Elgar's last major work for orchestra, and his most confessional. In spite of fleeting moments of idyllic release, it's dominated by disillusionment, ...

If you’ve spent any time around classical music, you might have heard the word ‘concerto’. It is a testimony to the enduring relevance of the concerto that for over four centuries, the genre has ...

He works in mysterious ways.

The Cello Concerto was the last important work that Elgar wrote. Its first performance, in October 1919, with the composer himself conducting, opened the first post-war season of the London Symphony ...

This insane viola concerto requires its soloist to literally start screaming halfway through a movement. Jörg Widmann, a German conductor, clarinettist and quite frankly one of the most intriguing ...

In 1914, the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein was shot in the elbow and his right arm amputated. Wittgenstein resolved to continue his career as a performer and asked some of the most famous ...

Vaughan Williams’s 1944 Concerto for oboe and strings is one of few such works to maintain a foothold in the repertoire. David Threasher listens to a selection of the available recordings Ralph ...

On November 14, 2024, French-Lebanese pianist and composer Omar Harfouch made history in the Vatican Apostolic Library, one of the most sacred repositories of human knowledge. For the first time in ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The Church publishes the Monitor ...