Pianist Marion Stein was born in Vienna to a Jewish family in 1926. In 1938, they fled Austria for England, fleeing Nazism, and she studied at the Royal College of Music in London. She began a career as a concert pianist, which she abandoned at her 23 when she married George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood, and nephew of George VI. A common friend, Benjamin Britten [...]

In April 1770, then twenty-one years old, Johann Wolfgang Goethe arrived in Strasbourg to study law at the University. There he met someone who had a decisive influence on his training and poetry: Johann Gottfried Herder, only five years older than him. He introduced him to writers such as Homer and Shakespeare; he made him realize the importance of [...]

My dearest, as I promised you last week, I am sending you another musical postcard from my holiday spot. Many songs mention it, sometimes explicitly, and sometimes more hidden, like the song I am suggesting to you. The verses will be familiar to many of you, while the song is one of the most unknown by its author, Francis Poulenc.

My dearest, my holidays are finally here. Now that almost everyone has returned, I've left. However, I will not forget about my readers, and that is why I am sending you this digital and musical postcard from where I am. I hope the technology doesn't fail us and that it will get to you on Wednesday.

All the ingredients of a serenade are found in An die Laute [To the lute]: a warm, fragrant night with moonlight; a woman in her room, and a man beneath the window who wants to tell her his love. However, in the poem, the man does not address the woman, but instead his lute. The lute is the vehicle for the love message and it must be persuasive… and discreet. [...]