Did any great composers write for the accordion? No less than Tchaikovsky, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, Darius Milhaud, Virgil Thomson and Roy Harris did (though sometimes tersely, for coloristic ...

The final volume in John Eliot Gardiner’s mammoth Bach Cantata sequence is one of the very best. Gardiner’s recent BBC2 documentary placed rightful emphasis on Bach’s humanity, his normality. The ...

A gorgeous CD from the great unknown, Hem; debut music from singer/poet Pieta Brown; minimalist rockers The White Stripes; a look back at the Talking Heads; Hungarian folk on accordion from Daniel ...

This is simply a delightful disc for the dog days of summer. Richard Galliano is a long-standing jazz accordionist from France who followed in his father's footsteps, taking up accordion at age 4.

Of course Polish accordion player Lidia Kaminska gets this question a lot from Americans: "How about a polka?" Not a chance. Frankly, she's not interested. She's Bach, not "In Heaven There Is No Beer.

As a collector of quotes, I frequently come across one with which I don’t agree, like “A gentleman is a fellow who can play the accordion but doesn’t.” If that weren’t bad enough, Ambrose Bierce ...

I wonder if Old Man Bach had much of a sense of humor. I wonder how he would feel about the myriad of ways his music, some of the most important composed in Western Civilization, has been treated and ...

One of the world's great classical virtuosi — a globally heralded soloist who can blitz through Bach and render thorny contemporary works with ferocity, grace and aplomb --— is headed to the Capital ...