Whenever I hear of orchestral musicians making jokes at the expense of violists, I sigh and think that a little gratitude should be in order. For much of history’s greatest music was written by ...

Brahms struggled for three years to find just the right instrumentation for his Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. After rejecting several options, he finally settled on piano plus string quartet. It's ...

Aston Magna is on the move this summer. At least temporally speaking. “Winds of Romanticism” was the title of Thursday night’s program at Brandeis’s Slosberg Auditorium. After having pitched its tent ...

Coupling music by Brahms and Bartók makes enormous sense, given the former composer's penchant for Hungarian dance music. Janine Jansen's studio recording of Bartók's Violin Concerto No 1 makes a ...