As I mentioned last week, these are days of musical hangover. The Schubertíada ended on Sunday; the head is still full of music and emotions and, until the holidays arrive, there is work to be done. I have not had the peace of mind or time to open the season properly. Will you still allow me a short article?

I'm not sure how, but we're already into the last week of August and, therefore, of the Schubertíada. The three previous articles were written before it started, but I had no time to prepare the last one. Here I am, trying to write something...

Gioachino Rossini wrote his Péchés de vieillesse between 1857 and 1858, which was the year of his death. The collection is divided into fourteen albums, four of which contain works for voice and piano and seven, for solo piano. One album is dedicated to chamber music and solo piano and two others to vocal music and solo piano. Together with the Stabat Mater and the Petite messe solennelle [...]

Emily Dickinson lived a retreated life for many years at the family home of Amherst, Massachusetts, protected from prying eyes. So quiet and private was her life that she only published ten of the 1800 poems she wrote. She didn't like the corrections the publishers made or intended her to make (because, if you allow me to use irony, any publisher would know more about [...]

When the Bohemian tenor Gustav Walter commissioned Antonín Dvořák to compose a cycle of songs, the composer turned to the poetry of Adolf Heyduk, one of the poets of the May School, whose most prominent representative was Jan Neruda. Heyduk, an engineer by profession, had published in 1858 his first volume of poetry, Básně [Poemes], which included [...]