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First & Last Songs From Les Misérables In Concert: The 25th Anniversary ...

Join the cast of Les Misérables' 25th anniversary concert as we take a look at the first & last songs from the live musical with our latest compilation. CHAPTERS: Look Down: 00:00 - 3:12 One Day More (Reprise): 3:13 - 12:15 What is Les Misérables In Concert: The 25th Anniversary (2010) about? Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary was performed and filmed at The O2 Arena in North Greenwich, London, England, on 3 October 2010 at 1:30 pm and 7:00 pm.

I'll Never Love This Way Again & That's What Friends Are For - Dionne Wa...

From Orchestra to Piano: Debussy’s La Mer

by Maureen Buja

With its full title, La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre (The sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra), we can understand what Claude Debussy (1862–1918) was trying to show in his 1905 orchestral work.

I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From dawn to midday on the sea)
II. Jeux de vagues (Play of the Waves)
III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the wind and the sea)

The three sections let us know that Debussy is capturing different aspects of the sea. The three great influences on his work at the time, Impressionism, Symbolism, and Japonism, all played a role in this work. If we look at the first edition of the work, the cover makes the Japan connection clear as it shows a detail from Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Mount Fuji and all the boats in the water have been removed.

The cover for the full score, published by Durand et Fils in 1905, recoloured the wave from its original blue to ‘various shades of green, blue, tan, and beige.’

First edition cover

The work was given its orchestral premiere in October 1905 by the Orchestre Lamoureux conducted by Camille Chevillard. Early reception of the piece was poor, with audiences expecting rather more of the sea than the ‘agitated water in a saucer’ that the critics reported. It was only later, in 1908, that the work was a success. As conducted by the composer, it was felt that the 1908 concert presented the ‘first real performance of the piece’.

André Caplet, a long standing friend of Debussy’s made a two-piano arrangement of the work, which is used by the duet on this recording. It was published the same year as the premiere.

André Caplet and Debussy

As recorded by the piano duet team of Vaness Wagner and Wilhem Latchoumia, the use of the two keyboards to replace the orchestra gives us a different kind of work. We’re on the top of the waves, rather than in the darker waters that the orchestral version can take us into.

Vanessa Wagner and Wilhem Latchoumia (Photo by William Beaucardet)

The two performers are well aware of the different ways in which they play the piano and see value in the fact that their ‘respective touches, while not necessarily similar, go together very well (VW)’. They take up the challenge of Debussy’s orchestral timbres and how it requires a certain finesse, fluidity, and shimmer to complete the early 20th-century sound on the piano. Latchoumia quotes Debussy: ‘It was Debussy who encouraged pianists to look for a mellow sound that would make you forget the instrument has hammers. I think that sums up the way we should approach French music’.

The pianists deliberately chose to use André Caplet’s version of La mer for 2 pianos rather than Debussy’s version for 1 piano 4 hands. Even Debussy thought Caplet’s version was better than his!

Wagner and Latchoumia’s recording presents the best of French music at the turn of the century with the trio of Debussy, Satie, and Ravel, but in works that are often more famililar in the orchestra versions. Ravel’s La Valse, Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune are given in their piano transcriptions. Works so familiar heard in a new guise can be so rewarding.

Debussy, Ravel, Satie: Piano Twins
Vanessa Wagner and Wilhem Latchoumia
La Dolce Volta LDV 120

Official Website

Slave Pianist Sensation: “Blind Tom”

By Georg Predota 

“Blind Tom,” as he was generally known, was born into slavery in Columbus, Georgia in 1848. He was sold with his family during infancy to General James Neil Bethune, a country lawyer and newspaper publisher. The blind child was considered mentally impaired, but one day he crawled to the piano and started playing one of the pieces the General’s daughter was practicing. The General quickly recognized the musical aptitude of his young charge—not to mention the possibility of making serious money—and started Tom on lessons.

Blind Tom at the piano

By the tender age of five, Tom apparently composed his first tune and barely a year later he was performing publically throughout Georgia. Recognizing the commercial value of the autistic savant, Blind Tom was hired out to the travelling showman and concert promoter Perry Oliver. He was advertised as “a gorgon with angel’s wings,” emphasizing the transformation from animal to artist. A member of the audience wrote, “Before the audience’s very eyes, Tom would stop twitching and rocking. His blank open-mouthed expression would vanish. He would sweep his hands over the keys with the air of a master and draw the most beautiful, heartfelt music from the instrument. I am astounded. I cannot account for it, no one can, and no one understands it.”

Blind Tom and General Bethund

Blind Tom’s Wellenklange

Tom had the ability to reproduce complex musical scores after a single hearing, and over time his repertoire included several thousand works. Besides American and European vernacular music, he also played pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt, and well as over a hundred of his own compositions! A good number of his compositions, at Tom’s insistence, were published under the pseudonyms, “François Sexalise,” “Prof. W. F. Raymond,” “J.C. Beckel,” and “C.T. Messengale.”

His legendary performances were soon the talk of the nation—he had also been taken on a European concert tour—and he was summoned to the White House to play for President James Buchanan. Tom’s annual earnings from his concerts amounted to a staggering $100,000 dollars, making him the most highly paid pianist of the 19th century! Blind Tom’s life and incredible musical ability caught the imagination of various authors, including Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Willa Cather who wrote, “Tom is a human phonograph, a sort of animated memory, with sound producing power.”

More recently he has been the subject of scholarly studies, documentaries, novels, poems, motion pictures and even a 2013 song by Elton John entitled, “The Ballad of Blind Tom.”

Ten Pieces of Musical Advice from the Great Composers

by Emily E. Hogstad  June 7th, 2025

The great composers left behind more than just great music: they also left behind advice for their fellow artists.

Much of that advice is still surprisingly relevant, even in our fast-paced digital age.

Today, we’re looking at ten pieces of advice from the great composers.

Johann Sebastian Bach

J.S. Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685, and sadly, not many verifiable direct quotes from him survive.

However, we do have a biography called Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, published in 1802, half a century after Bach’s death.

While writing his book, Forkel drew from Bach’s obituary (a document known as the Bach Nekrolog) and corresponded with two of Bach’s sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

This J.S. Bach quote appears in Forkel’s book:

I was obliged to be industrious; whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.

Did Bach really say this? He was among the most prolific composers in the classical canon, so it’s certainly possible!

Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

In 1776, a 44-year-old Joseph Haydn was asked to prepare a brief autobiography for a collection of profiles. He turned in a charming sketch that was published two years later.

In it, he writes about his childhood:

Proper teachers I never had. I always started right away with the practical side, first in singing and playing instruments, later in composing.

I listened more than I studied, but I heard the finest music in all forms that was to be heard in my time…

Thus little by little my knowledge and my ability were developed.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

When his opera Don Giovanni was being prepared and premiered in Prague in 1787, Mozart performed on the harpsichord. Composer, conductor, keyboardist, and all-around Mozart booster Jan Křtitel Kuchař worked alongside him.

Mozart explained to his colleague:

I have spared neither care nor labour to produce something excellent for Prague. Moreover it is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me.

I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven

It’s hard to imagine gruff Ludwig van Beethoven answering fan mail from children, but in 1812, he did exactly that.

A ten-year-old pianist named Emilie sent him an embroidered pocketbook as a gift, including an admiring letter.

He began his thank-you note with a heartwarming salutation: “My dear good Emilie, my dear Friend!”

He went on to write:

The true artist has no pride; unhappily he realises that art has no limitations, he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and while perhaps he is admired by others, he grieves that he has not yet reached the point where the better genius shall shine before him like a distant sun.

He also marveled at how music can bring people together:

If you wish, dear Emilie, to write to me, only address straight here where I shall be still for the next four weeks, or to Vienna; it is all one. Look upon me as your friend, and as the friend of your family.

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Today, we usually think of Frédéric Chopin as a composer first and foremost, but he was also very active as a teacher.

He was especially popular with Parisian aristocrats and women students.

One of those students was a woman named Emilie Timm, also known as Emilie von Gretsch after her marriage.

In an 1844 letter, she relayed what Chopin told her at one of her lessons:

It seems to me that you don’t dare to express yourself as you feel. Be bolder, let yourself go more. Imagine you’re at the Conservatoire, listening to the most beautiful performance in the world. Make yourself want to hear it, and then you’ll hear yourself playing it right here…

I see that timidity and lack of self-confidence form a kind of armour around you, but through this armour I perceive something else that you don’t always dare to express, and so you deprive us all…

Be bold and confident in your own powers and strength.

The advice must have worked, as Timm went on to become a professional musician, teaching piano in St. Petersburg. 

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, 1839

In 1848, composer Robert Schumann wrote a long list of tips for young musicians to accompany his Album für die Jugend, or Album for the Young, which he wrote for his three young daughters.

Here are two of his tips:

Play strictly in time! The playing of many a virtuoso resembles the walk of an intoxicated person. Do not take such as your model.

It is not only necessary that you should be able to play your pieces on the instrument, but you should also be able to hum the air without the piano. Strengthen your imagination so that you may not only retain the melody of a composition, but even the harmony which belongs to it.

We wrote more about Schumann’s list of tips for young musicians.

Clara Wieck Schumann

Andreas Staub: Clara Wieck, 1839

In the spring of 1858, Robert Schumann’s widow, the pianist and composer Clara Schumann, visited one of her dear friends. soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient.

Devrient was one of the true divas of her age. She created several important Wagnerian roles, including Venus in Tannhäuser.

She was also known for her series of intense romantic relationships, and ended up in jail for the political stances she took during the 1848 Revolution.

The two women got along well, even when they disagreed. Schumann wrote in her diary in April:

A long chat with Devrient, who thinks me mistaken in asking Johannes [Brahms] and [violinist Joseph] Joachim for advice as to my playing… She declares that it makes one lose one’s self-reliance.

I say, “no”, a strong intellect will know how to pick out the good, or rather that which suits its particular individuality, and can only profit by so doing.

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

Arthur M. Abell was a violinist, journalist, and eccentric. In 1955, he published a book called Talks with Great Composers. It included a purported transcription of a long conversation with Johannes Brahms.

Abell wrote that he had promised Brahms to wait fifty years after his death to share the transcript.

So is this quote entirely accurate? Maybe, maybe not. Take it with a grain of salt. But it’s still famous.

But don’t make the mistake…of thinking that because I attach such importance to inspiration from above, that that is all there is to it; by no means.

Structure is just as consequential, for without craftsmanship, inspiration is a ‘mere reed shaken in the wind’ or ‘sounding brass or tinkling cymbals’.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Émile Reutlinger: Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, 1888

Here’s the opening to our 2023 article about Nadezhda von Meck:

In 1877, Tchaikovsky received a letter that would change his life forever. It was from a wealthy woman named Nadezhda von Meck, who described herself as a “fervent admirer.” She commissioned some chamber music from him, and eventually, she began paying him the impressive sum of 6,000 rubles a year so that he could devote himself to composition…on one condition: they could never meet.

In March 1878, early in their arrangement, when they were both getting to know each other, Tchaikovsky wrote to her:

Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration.

There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation.

We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.

A few days ago, I told you I was working every day without any real inspiration. Had I given way to my disinclination, undoubtedly I should have drifted into a long period of idleness.

But my patience and faith did not fail me, and to-day I felt that inexplicable glow of inspiration of which I told you; thanks to which I know beforehand that whatever I write to-day will have power to make an impression, and to touch the hearts of those who hear it.  

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Kubey-Rembrandt Studios: Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1921

Last but certainly not least, here’s a short and simple quote from pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff:

A technique must be built, just as a house must be built. It takes years to do this. There are no real short cuts.

Summing Up the Great Composers’ Advice

What should be the takeaways from these masters? Here are simplified summaries:

1. Be industrious. (Bach)
2. Always be listening, and attend the finest performances you can. (Haydn)
3. Be aware that making music won’t be easy, and that’s okay! Even Mozart had to work hard! (Mozart)
4. You’ll often feel very far from your artistic goals. Keep going. And make friends along the way! (Beethoven)
5. Be bold and confident. When you play, pretend you’re listening to the most beautiful performance in the world. (Chopin)
6. Play in time. Also, hum the music you’re working on, apart from playing it on an instrument. (Robert Schumann)
7. Ask trusted friends for feedback…but also trust yourself and your own judgment. (Clara Schumann)
8. Inspiration needs technique and craftsmanship to be fully expressed. (Brahms)
9. Don’t work just when you’re inspired; keep at it all the time. (Tchaikovsky)
10. When learning music, there are no real shortcuts. You have to put in the work! (Rachmaninoff)

We hope these tips from these great composers inspire you, no matter what stage of your music studies you’re in!

Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major, K. 456

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Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major, K. 456 Rachmaninov Hall Of Moscow Conservatory Moscow Youth Chamber Orchestra Arina Pan - piano, student of Ksenia Knorre Daiana Hoffmann - conductor 15/03/2017

"Sabay-sabay": Celebrating 127th Anniversary of Philippine Independence

 Joseph Isidore Saluta

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Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra is with Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of the Philippines and Philippine Embassy in Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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"Sabay-sabay": Celebrating 127th Anniversary

of Philippine Independence

MSJO Concert and National Day Reception

June 10, 2025 Shangrila Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Upon the kind invitation of Ambassador Tata Puzon Mayo, Philippine Ambassador to Cambodia, a delegation of 26 members of the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra (MSJO) performed a concert attended by over 350 guests from government, diplomatic, business, academic, religious, military and cultural sector in Cambodia. Special guest of honor from the government of Cambodia was led by H.E. Cham Nimul, Minister of Commerce.

Joining the MSJO in the performance are Ms. Bianca Lopez Aguila and Keiko Cayanga, known as the Nightingales, a soprano duo from the Philippine Madrigal Singers. The program consisted of Classical, Filipino and Cambodian music, especially arranged for the MSJO led by their conductor Mr. Jeffrey Solares and violin teacher and program coordinator Ms. Sara Maria Gonzales.

After the concert the MSJO proceeds to city of Siem Reap, for additional concerts at the Grand Hotel D' Angkor for the Filipino Community and will film some music videos at the historic sites of the world cultural heritage site of the Angkor Wat.