The Possibility of Orchestral Performance Oh man, where do I start? Kenneth Woods at the English Symphony Orchestra (check out his awesome blog) put me on to Kirill Petrenko conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker in Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 'Pathetique'. It was his...

The nature of musical pulse Just as pulse is fundamental to life, pulse is fundamental to music. The periodic surge of energy that is either explicit or implicit to the vast majority of music is the primary factor through which we instinctively...

Legato: the thread of thought The legendary conductor Wilhelm Fürtwangler speaks of Legato as if it is one of the holy grails of music. It is the “greatest goal a conductor can achieve”: the legato melody, the “living, breathing flow.” As...