Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

  by  Emily E. Hogstad     April 19th, 2026 Few pianists in history have embodied artistic courage quite like Maria Yudina. A deeply religious musician living in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century, Yudina was both revered – and feared – for her uncompromising moral and musical vision. Maria Yudina Born in the provincial town of Nevel, she rose from humble beginnings to become one of the Soviet Union’s most formidable pianists and teachers. She also became a celebrated interpreter of Bach,  Mozart , and  Beethoven …as well as modern composers like  Stravinsky , Hindemith, and Bartók. Today, we’re looking at the extraordinary life and times of pianist Maria Yudina. Maria Yudina’s Childhood Maria Yudina Maria Yudina was born on 9 September 1899 in the Russian town of Nevel, 500 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, on the present-day border between Russia and Belarus. She was the fourth of five children of physician and physiologis...

  by  Maureen Buja    April 23rd, 2026 First created in 1853 as work for piano and cello, Gounod combined an improvisation with  Bach ’s Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book 1 of the  Well-Tempered Clavier . By superimposing his melody over the 1722 work, Gounod created a piece that still lives today. The Ave Maria verse as done in historiated initials, ca 1480–1496 (From the  Heures de Charles d’Angoulême , folio 52r) (Gallica, btv1b52502694t/f. 133) Originally, Gounod had just improvised over Bach’s  Prelude . His future father-in-law, the composer and pianist Pierre Zimmerman, transcribed the work and wrote it out as a work for a string instrument (violin or cello) over keyboard (piano and harmonium). It was published under the title of  Méditation sur le 1er prélude de piano de S. Bach. Bayard & Bertall:  Charles Gounod , 1860 (Gallica, btv1b84542916) The same year, the words to Alphonse de Lamartine’s poem, ‘Le livre de ...

  by  Georg Predota    January 10th, 2021 Khatia Buniatishvili One of the most visually glittering pianists today, Khatia Buniatishvili steadily appears on television sets, front covers of glossy magazines and every imaginable social media outlet. She certainly attracts attention; on the cover of a recent  Schubert  release, Khatia takes on the physical persona of the famous corpse Ophelia, prompting a critic to sheepishly ask, “artistic or airheaded?” Unquestionably, she is one of the most highly sought after pianists, and readily appears in the world’s most prestigious concert halls. And it is her appearance in outfits with often plunging necklines that have earned her various nicknames, including the “Betty Boop” of the piano, and “the pop star of the classical music world.” For some, Khatia is a phenomenon “titillating the classical public… shaking and disrupting this fragile world.” To others, she is a “Lady Gaga or Beyoncé craving attention, with fash...

  by  Emily E. Hogstad     April 18th, 2026 The early Romantic Era, which roughly corresponds to the first half of the nineteenth century, brought an explosion of emotional depth and individuality to classical music.  The stories we usually hear about the composers of the time focus almost entirely on men: figures like  Chopin ,  Schumann , and  Liszt . In reality, dozens of women composers were also writing symphonies, operas, piano works, and chamber music that matched their male contemporaries in imagination and skill…and sometimes exceeded them. The surviving works of rediscovered women composers remind us that the true spirit of the Romantic movement was never confined to men alone. Here are twelve forgotten women composers who were born in the early Romantic Era. Louise Bertin (1805–1877) Louise Bertin Born into an intellectual Parisian family, Louise Bertin was the daughter of the editor of the  Journal des débats : a relationship that...