In my freshman year of high school, my piano teacher, an ebullient, shrewd Japanese woman, plopped down a thick manuscript on the desk before me. “This,” she said, with a devilish glint in her eye, ...

Ravel's Bolero is a composition that rose from the depths of nonchalant dismissal by Ravel's contemporaries to being one of the few truly recognizable melodies in classical music. Sadly, you rarely ...