Interview with violinist Regina Carter
Regina Carter started with Dont and Galamian but she only truly found her voice when she discovered jazz. She tells Ariane Todes about...
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Ariane Todes
A musical tonic for the soul
A trip to the Musical Instrument Museum in Arizona offered profound and uplifting insights into the human condition, and interesting...
Ariane Todes
Jacqueline du Pré – a terrible premonition
On what would have been the 71th birthday of Jacqueline du Pré, the words of János Starker sound a provocative warning Jacqueline du Pré...
Ariane Todes
Careless talk costs lives
As Nigel Kennedy goes on Radio 4's Mastertapes programme to be rude about Baroque performance practice, here's a blog I wrote in 2011 on...
Ariane Todes
Top 5 Elbow Music posts of 2015
Thank you for visiting Elbow Music in 2015. It’s been a bumper year for the site, and I’m planning some developments very shortly, so...
Ariane Todes
11 important musical insights
I’ve interviewed many wonderful musicians over the year, have learnt much and had my thinking challenged many times. Here are just a few...
Ariane Todes
‘You have to treat Bartók as you do Mozart or Haydn’
Bartók’s quartets are often played ‘brutal, fast and loud’, but they should be approached as Classical masterpieces, says Jerusalem...
Ariane Todes
Pinchas Zukerman on how to change the world
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates its 70th birthday in 2016 and for its commemorative anniversary booklet, I had the...
Ariane Todes
Joshua Bell on Josef Gingold
Josef Gingold was born on 28 October, 1909. In celebration of the birth of a universally beloved and respected pedagogue, here is an...
Ariane Todes
George Eliot on violin-making obsession and the genius of Stradivarius
To mark the UK's National Poetry Day, 8th October, here's George Eliot's great poem about violin making and the obsession with which...
Ariane Todes
The Freewheelin’ Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma turns 60 on 7 October, 2015, and to celebrate one of the world's best-loved classical music heroes, here is an interview I did...
Ariane Todes
View from the viola front desk
Paul Silverthorne has led the viola section of the London Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, working with the finest conductors and...
Ariane Todes
We’re all misfit weirdos now
The breadth and success of David Byrne’s recent curatorship of Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival demonstrate how the curiosity and...
Ariane Todes
Thomas Demenga: ‘Sometimes I think we’re producing too many musicians at conservatoires’
The Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga discusses the fierce competition in today’s music world, how students should spend less time online and...
Ariane Todes
What do actors and musicians have in common?
A recent performance of the whole of Homer’s epic Iliad offered an opportunity to observe actors close up and to understand what their...
Ariane Todes
How to be present
Great stage actors have an aura of positive energy and openness that musicians can access, too. Acting coach Patsy Rodenburg tells Ariane...
Ariane Todes
John Woolrich: ‘Contemporary music is no different from Brahms’
The British composer John Woolrich discusses the challenges contemporary music faces and the vital role of amateur musicians My interview...
Ariane Todes
No prize given at Fournier Award
The jury of the Pierre Fournier Award hands out no main prize but two Incentive Grants in the prestigious cello contest at Wigmore Hall...
Ariane Todes
The curse of perfection
Perfectionism in music is a modern scourge, and Peter Cropper, who died in May, demonstrated that it is a distracting priority for...
Ariane Todes
Violin Utopia in Oberlin
As some of the world's finest violin makers gather in the small university town of Oberlin, Ohio, to share their knowledge at the annual...
Ariane Todes
The art of listening
The best musicians have special powers of listening, as pianist András Schiff demonstrated in a masterclass last week How can you tell if...
Ariane Todes
Barry Douglas on the pressures and benefits of competitions
As the Tchaikovsky Competition kicks off, we revisit a 2014 interview with the great Irish pianist Barry Douglas, who won the contest in...
Ariane Todes
The Fiddler of Dooney
W.B. Yeats was born 150 years ago, on 13 June, 1865. Here's his poem The Fiddler of Dooney, written in 1889, when he was 24, celebrating...
Ariane Todes
Let’s show modern instruments some #love
The Elbow Music social media campaign puts modern instruments in the spotlight My recent article about Frank Peter Zimmermann’s dilemma...