BRIAN DOWDY

Musical tones are always telling us something in The Rape of Lucretia . Sometimes they signify the most specific of things. Harpy mosquitos nag at the three generals. The humid air of their camp is thick with dusky, muted violins. The croaking of bullfrogs is plucked out by the double

The genesis of Coleridge-Taylor’s violin concerto is a story of two pioneering artists: the composer and his commissioner, Maud Powell. Powell became one of the first American violin virtuosos to gain international fame, and she did so decades before women in the U.S. even had the right to vote. She

“And when, after the number was completed, the large auditorium, filled to the brim with music lovers of all races, rang out in applause for the composer and the orchestral rendition, it seemed that the evening could hold no greater thrills,” Nahum Danile Brascher, Chicago Defender Premiered by the Chicago

Franz Liszt was best known during his lifetime as the lean, black-haired virtuoso whose skill and daring at the piano caused audiences to faint, exclaim, and otherwise lust over the music and the man. In 1844, journalist Heinrich Heine called the phenomenon “Lisztomania.” Yet just four years after Heine’s coinage,