Claude Debussy’s singular visit to Spain lasted only an hour or two, long enough to attend a bullfight. Even so, his contemporary Manuel de Falla declared Debussy’s Iberia to be more genuine than ...

When it comes to heavyweight game-changers like Claude Debussy, super fans even celebrate death anniversaries. It was 100 years ago, March 25, 1918, that the visionary composer lost his battle with ...

Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

SO MUCH has been said and written about Debussy that there would appear to be nothing to add that is not already known. There was a time, and it seems not so long ago, when this name aroused hot ...

Listen to the first three string quartets on this two-disc set blind, and you'll be convinced that you're in the presence of genius. These are superbly wrought, highly individual pieces, their energy ...

When Víkingur Ólafsson was about 5 years old, he already knew what he wanted to be. "It sounds crazy, but I always saw myself as a concert pianist," he says. "Even if I wasn't a good pianist." Over ...

Many people went to look at her nakedness in Thaïs, to watch her lascivious dancing in Salome. But Mary Garden drew as many operagoers with the emotion in her voice as she did with the perfection of ...

IT HAS been said — and is, I fear, something of an aphorism — that two careers may run in a parallel direction; then suddenly, without premonition or intent, may swerve to meet each other, though the ...