Beethoven Sonata Cycle – Conclusion
Playing the complete Beethoven sonatas this season has been a beautiful, arduous and transformative journey. As with all journeys, though, this one must now come to an end. For the eighth and final recital I …
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Memory and Music
We are what we remember, and as individuals or societies we are in a constant struggle against the erosion of memories, against forgetting. Because it’s through our memories of life’s events big and small, and …
On the power of music – for Harrogate festival
“This will be our response to violence, to make music more intensely, more beautifully more devotedly than ever before” Leonard Bernstein I’ve often had an ambiguous feeling towards this Bernsteinian declaration on behalf of music’s …
Variations on a name
Lately I have been asked, or even rebuked, for shortening my name, as some have felt that I’m abandoning something, or indeed giving in, in some way. “But Saleem Abboud Ashkar sounds so beautiful and …
