Concert Review: Asian Youth Orchestra
Last month, I had the last minute opportunity to see the Asian Youth Orchestra live here in Taipei from just about the best seats in the concert hall (and for free, no less). I had originally planned on attending that evening’s performance, but of the four events I had decided to go to, it was the least enticing program (up against the likes of Mahler and Sibelius, two of my favorites), so it got the hack. Also, it was a Monday night, which tends to be somewhat more inconvenient. As it turns out, a coworker had two extra tickets (center … Continue reading Concert Review: Asian Youth Orchestra
On this day: week of September 8, 2014
Sort of a special week… September 8 1672 – Nicolas de Grigny, French organist and composer (d. 1703) 1698 – François Francoeur, French violinist and composer (d. 1787) 1824 – Jaime Nunó, Spanish-American composer, conductor, and director (d. 1908) 1841 – Antonín Dvořák, Czech composer (d. 1904) 1917 – Jan Sedivka, Czech-Australian violinist and educator (d. 2009) 1934 – Peter Maxwell Davies, English composer and conductor 1971 – Dustin O’Halloran, American pianist and composer Deaths: 1613 – Carlo Gesualdo, Italian lute player and composer (b. 1566) 1916 – Friedrich Baumfelder, German pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1836) 1944 – Jan van Gilse, Dutch composer and conductor (b. 1881) 1949 – Richard Strauss, German composer (b. 1864) September 9 Births: 1656 – Johann Caspar Ferdinand … Continue reading On this day: week of September 8, 2014
Scriabin Piano sonata no. 2 in G#m, op. 19 ‘Sonata-fantasy’
performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy part 2 here He’s my go to for Scriabin. This is a measly post, because I’m sick… As much as I enjoy his first sonata (I’m more familiar with it than this one, actually), it was … Continue reading Scriabin Piano sonata no. 2 in G#m, op. 19 ‘Sonata-fantasy’
Interview: The piano
An interview with Ana Mirabela Dina Photo credit to Ms. Dina’s son Leandro This week, we have our third installment in our interview series, and one I am very excited about. The piano is really the crux of my interest in classical music, and while I spend a lot of time listening to Mahler symphonies and Sibelius and whatever else, the piano is where it all started, and coming off an 80-minute symphony, there’s something pure and refreshing about a piano sonata or nocturne. I did away with the “The Ensemble” prefix this week because the piano is a self-sufficient … Continue reading Interview: The piano
On this day: Week of September 1, 2014
September 1 Births: 1653 – Johann Pachelbel, German organist, composer, and educator (d. 1706) 1726 – Johann Becker, German organist, composer, and educator (d. 1803) 1854 – Engelbert Humperdinck, German composer (d. 1921) 1886 – Othmar Schoeck, Swiss composer and conductor (d. 1957) 1935 – Seiji Ozawa, Japanese conductor 1944 – Leonard Slatkin, American conductor and composer Deaths: —— September 2 Births: 1661 – Georg Böhm, German organist and composer (d. 1733) 1862 – Franjo Krežma, Croatian violinist and composer (d. 1881) Deaths: 1397 – Francesco Landini, Italian singer-songwriter, organist, and poet (b. 1335) Holy cow… a singer-songwriter from almost 700 years ago… 2013 – Makoto Moroi, Japanese composer (b. 1930) September 3 1914 – French composer Albéric Magnard is killed after … Continue reading On this day: Week of September 1, 2014
Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy
performed by Alfred Brendel Back to Schubert and back to the piano. We did Schubert and Mahler symphonies a while back, and I feel like a more appropriate follow up to those two would have been like, Schubert’s string quartet no. 14, Death and the Maiden, a work which Mahler himself was interested in (and would have related to at certain times in his life, I’m sure) but I am terribly underprepared for anything that logical. Also, we are back to piano for the next few weeks or so (and wonderfully have an interview with a pianist coming up next week!), … Continue reading Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy
Thinking about Mahler’s ninth
As I’ve said before in multiple places here, I have lots of anticipation and ideas and thoughts about Mahler’s ninth that may or may not be accurate, but I have certainly built it up a lot in my head, and I am realizing that it may all be a bit overblown. It doesn’t much matter, because that whole dream image of how I planned to enjoy Mahler’s pinnacle work for the first time is coming to an end much earlier than I’d expected. I read this article that describes Mahler’s ninth as a great symphony. I then sort of ran … Continue reading Thinking about Mahler’s ninth
On this day: week of August 25, 2014
August 25 Births: 1758 – Franz Teyber, Austrian organist and composer (d. 1810) 1796 – James Lick, American carpenter and piano builder (d. 1876) 1829 – Carlo Acton, Italian pianist and composer (d. 1909) 1902 – Stefan Wolpe, German-American composer (d. 1972) 1915 – Walter Trampler, American viola player and educator (d. 1997) 1918 – Leonard Bernstein, American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1990). Thinking so much about and listening to so much Mahler lately…. I can appreciate Bernstein’s influence as an educator and hugely enormous proponent of Mahler’s works (thanks also, I suppose in part, to Mitropolous), but I tend not to go for his interpretations (granted, I haven’t given them as … Continue reading On this day: week of August 25, 2014
Influential People: Nadia Boulanger
Ms. Boulanger with Igor Stravinsky I have a fascination with charts, like the “six degrees of separation” type charts that resemble family trees or mind mapping graphs. I even laid a few out years ago, to see, interestingly, who is … Continue reading Influential People: Nadia Boulanger
On this day: week of August 18, 2014
Week of August 18, 2014 August 18 Births: 1750 – Antonio Salieri, Italian composer and conductor (d. 1825) 1893 – Ernest MacMillan, Canadian conductor and composer (d. 1973) 1910 – Herman Berlinski, Polish-American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 2001) 1916 – Moura Lympany, English pianist (d. 2005) Deaths: 1613 – Giovanni Artusi, Italian composer and theorist (b. 1540) 2004 – Elmer Bernstein, American composer and conductor (b. 1922) Not related to the other Bernstein August 19 Births: 1570 – Salamone Rossi, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1630) 1881 – George Enescu, Romanian violinist, pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1955) 1914 – Fumio Hayasaka, Japanese composer (d. 1955) Deaths: 1900 – Jean-Baptiste Accolay, Belgian violinist, composer, and conductor … Continue reading On this day: week of August 18, 2014
Schubert: Der Wanderer, D. 489
sung by Dietrich Fischer–Dieskau; Gerald Moore, piano Music You Can Understand: Part 3 https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/BR8_n-B8qu0&source=uds This is an actual ‘song,’ in the actual sense of having lyrics, although we could more properly call it by its German name, a Lied (rhymes with ‘need’), plural Lieder (rhymes with feeder). I was preparing for what will now be next week’s post, and it is based on this song, so I thought it only logical to get familiar with this one first. It nearly made me weep. The video above has the German text with English translation, but below is the German text. Ich komme vom Gebirge her, … Continue reading Schubert: Der Wanderer, D. 489
What is music?
https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/6wDreAmNgHQ&source=uds That sounds like such a vague, stupid question to ask, but I love Krystian Zimerman’s (whose name I always manage to spell wrong) description of how music is more than just sound. Watch, listen and enjoy. Aside from Zimerman’s incredible talent, and his incredible musicality, he has a really nice voice (not to mention the beautiful Schubert impromptu in the background). I have featured his performance of a Chopin ballade here, and he is truly a musician and artist of the highest order, and therefore, as you will see, incredibly in touch with his craft. He makes a wonderful … Continue reading What is music?
On this day: Week of August 11, 2014
Week of August 11, 2014 August 11 1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi. This one’s a stretch, but Wi-Fi is really important, and Antheil was a genius and a composer. Births: 1748 – Joseph Schuster, German composer (d. 1812) 1919 – Ginette Neveu, French violinist (d. 1949) 1927 – Raymond Leppard, English harpsichord player and conductor 1966 – Juan María Solare, Argentine pianist and composer Deaths: 1868 – Halfdan Kjerulf, Norwegian composer (b. 1815) 1974 – Vicente Emilio Sojo, Venezuelan conductor and composer (Orfeón Lamas) (b. 1887) 1996 – Rafael Kubelík, Czech conductor and composer (b. … Continue reading On this day: Week of August 11, 2014
Mahler Symphony no. 6
This piece has been revisited, and an updated article has been written. Please read it here. I’ll keep the original article (below) for posterity, but I would suggest reading the new article instead. performed by the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra … Continue reading Mahler Symphony no. 6
Schubert and Mahler
There’s something about these two…. This is a complicated heavy topic, one which I am not really quite ready to address. I have been more and more enthralled with the music of each of these great composers (mostly the symphonies), but I see similarities that link them on an intriguing, deep, almost spiritual level. (They even look a bit like each other in the photos above, no?) There are the obvious parallels: they were both Austrian composers who left the world nine-ish symphonies with some unfinished bits. They are both known for their ninth symphonies (among other works) (see the … Continue reading Schubert and Mahler
On this day: week of August 4, 2014
The first full week in August. Let’s go. August 4 Births: 1844 – Henri Berger, German composer and bandleader (d. 1929) 1901 – Louis Armstrong, American trumpeter and singer (d. 1971) 1908 – Kurt Eichhorn, German conductor (d. 1994) 1910 – William Schuman, American composer (d. 1992) Note the single N Deaths: 1942 – Alberto Franchetti, Italian composer (b. 1860) August 5 Births: (this could be the most births on one day so far… holy cow) 1565 – Paola Massarenghi, Italian composer (d. 1565) 1623 – Antonio Cesti, Italian composer (d. 1669) 1694 – Leonardo Leo, Italian composer (d. 1744) Geez. Three in a row 1797 – Friedrich August Kummer, German cellist and composer (d. 1879) 1811 – Ambroise … Continue reading On this day: week of August 4, 2014
Schubert symphony no. 2 in Bb, D. 125
performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner In honor of the late Maestro Lorin Maazel, the above video is a recording he did with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but the first movement is crisp and clean, at at a much brisker pace than Marriner’s version with the ASMF, which I quite adore. Lorin Maazel (March 6, 1930 – July 13, 2014) I am pleased and surprised at how much I have begun to enjoy the more traditionally classical, less Romantic (or extremely early ‘pre-Romantic) symphonies. … Continue reading Schubert symphony no. 2 in Bb, D. 125
Completed: A month of compositional efforts
I tweeted about this a few weeks ago. I decided that for the month of June, I would write SOMETHING on a staff every day. The idea behind it was the idea behind my early attempts at photography (I’m colorblind, so there’s that) : if I take 30 photographs of this one thing/person/place/event, and then another 30 from a different angle, etc., there’s BOUND to be a good (or even usable) one in the bunch. Cast a wide net. Some days I only got two bars of the treble staff on the piano done, and poorly. Other days, I managed … Continue reading Completed: A month of compositional efforts
On this day: Week of July 28, 2014
Another week of dates and numbers here. While the process of preparing this is quite interesting and educational, it is also tedious, and I will be glad when we get around to early next year and I won’t be redoing these anymore…Also, lots of famous deaths this week… kind of sad. July 28 Births: 1893 – Rued Langgaard, Danish composer and organist (d. 1952) 1914 – Carmen Dragon, American conductor and composer (d. 1984) You may understand why I was a bit incredulous at this name, and then somewhat also surprised to see it was a man. Deaths: 1741 – Antonio Vivaldi, Italian violinist and composer … Continue reading On this day: Week of July 28, 2014
Charles Ives: Symphony no. 2
performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta or below with Leonard Bernstein and the Bavarian Radio Symphony: Part 2 here Part 3 here (please note that these parts are not arranged in any relation to the movements, just 15 … Continue reading Charles Ives: Symphony no. 2
The Ensemble: the viola
An interview with Jessica Wyatt I’m so glad to have our second interview for our (roughly) monthly series on the members and sections of the orchestra. Part of the reason I am always beyond thrilled and giddy to prepare … Continue reading The Ensemble: the viola
Fugue for Thought 