Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through

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He renewed the glue and adjusted parts that had cracked or shifted, restoring the instrument’s tone and vitality. There are images in the book too (eight of which are reproduced here), offering a separate, quiet tune alongside. It’s from Játékok (Hungarian for “games”), a collection by the composer-pianist György Kurtág inspired by children’s play. She is the author of 'Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age' (Faber), 'Harrison Birtwistle: Wild Tracks – A Conversation Diary with Fiona Maddocks' (Faber) and 'Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

I was writing a book about Rachmaninov in exile when my own

In this music, the spirits of the earth and air, Finnish style, are ever present in the strangeness of harmonium, harps and ghostly voices. The rise of online lessons means that an army of tutors awaits the chance to discover your dormant virtuoso. Rachmaninov did not survive long enough to hear Harry’s music, but he had chilly views on experimental modernism.

I could have selected only works by Bach or Beethoven – and where are Haydn or Brahms or Janáček, among my own favourite composers? The quiet plucking of lute or oud sometimes wafts up through the floorboards (a rare boast in Peckham, south-east London). In 1940 Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland. Yet those Saturdays were part of my identity and, in a combative way, the passport to wider horizons I so wanted.

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Maddocks's] companionable prose makes an invigorating and at times very moving read, and her historical and biographical digressions greatly enrich the narrative.Nautilus, the noisiest piece on offer here, launches with an urgent horn fanfare then thuds its way into your consciousness.