Monday, March 9, 2020
Stravinsky’s Firebird
Serge Diaghilev was turned down by four composers before turning to Igor Stravinsky to write the music for a new production by the Ballet Russe. Luckily, Stravinsky, eager to try his hand at a ballet, had already been working on the music for a month, and their artistic relationship went on to produce Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Ravel: Mother Goose
In a piece he first wrote for children to play
on the piano, Maurice Ravel found magical new sounds for the orchestra.
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Saint Saëns Organ Symphony
A child prodigy, Saint-Saëns was not only a gifted
composer but an accomplished pianist who could perform all of Beethoven’s 32
piano sonatas from memory by the age of ten.
Composed for the Philharmonic Society of London, his Symphony No. 3, Organ, is dedicated to his friend Franz
Liszt.
Friday, January 17, 2020
Beethoven No. 7
The premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was perhaps his greatest rock-star moment. Buoyed by the excited troops in whose honor the concert was being performed, Beethoven “tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder ... at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air” (according to orchestra violinist and composer Louis Spohr). The work’s explosive energy and Beethoven’s expansion of symphonic structures to emphasize certain key areas make Symphony No. 7 an important stepping stone on his path towards Romanticism.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra
In his Three Pieces for Orchestra, Alban Berg finally "graduated" from his studies with Arnold Schoenberg, and took his first giant step towards fulfilling his musical destiny.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Ravel La Valse
In 1906,
Maurice Ravel made some sketches for a tribute to Johann Strauss, the Waltz
King. By the time he got back to it, World War I had ravaged Europe, and
Ravel's tribute had turned into something much darker.
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Handel's Messiah
However you like your Messiah - big or intimate, modern or period, authentic or interpreted - when you listen you become part of an almost 300-year tradition of what may be classical music's most beloved masterpiece.
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