performed by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, or below by Alfred Brendel (cover image by Rodion Kutsaev) If you were to listen to the piano sonatas of Beethoven based on the order of their opus numbers, after a dozen and a half increasingly … Continue reading Beethoven Piano Sonata no. 19 in Gm, op. 49 no. 1
performed by the Amadeus Quartet, or below by the Festetics Quartet (cover image by Brenda Godinez) The seventh quartet of W. A. Mozart is the last of the so-called ‘Milanese quartets,’ written while the young composer was in Italy, and showing … Continue reading Mozart String Quartet no. 7 in E flat, K. 160
performed by the Amadeus Quartet, or below by the Festetics Quartet (cover image by Rodion Kutsaev) Mozart’s sixth string quartet dates from 1773, again very early in his output, as evidenced by the low catalogue number. As part of the … Continue reading Mozart String Quartet no. 6 in B flat, K. 159
performed by the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz, first movement below (also available on Spotify) Dimitri Mitropoulos loved it. Koussevitzky premiered it. The critics compared it to contemporary works by Shostakovich. In its time, the Symphony No. 2 of David Diamond was one of the acknowledged … Continue reading Diamond Symphony no. 2
performed by the New York Chamber Symphony under Gerard Schwarz (available on Spotify) or below in a mediocre live recording by the Westchester Symphony under Anthony Aibel (cover image by Paul Morris) Here’s yet another piece we, or I, at least, know … Continue reading Diamond Concerto for Small Orchestra
performed by the Potomac Quartet So the first quartet really is a work inspired by Mr. Broch’s great novel called The Death of Virgil. he was working on it, finishing it then… and so when I finished the quartet, I knew … Continue reading Diamond String Quartet no. 1
performed by the CBC Vancouver Chamber Orchestra under John Avison (cover image by Brenda Helen) Since this article isn’t going to be very long, let’s talk briefly about the conductor above, John Avison. He was born on April 25, 1915 … Continue reading Rosenberg: Sinfonia da Chiesa no. 1, op. 15
performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Stig Westerberg in a performance that is no longer on YouTube, or anywhere else, it seems (cover image by Caleb Woods) As I said, we’re back to Rosenberg for the next installment of … Continue reading Rosenberg Symphony no. 1, op. 5
performed by the Kyndel Quartet (available here on Spotify) (cover image by Rodion Kutsaev) Here we are introducing the next composer in our Editor’s Choice lineup, Hilding Rosenberg. We’ve only seen him once on the blog before, and yet here … Continue reading Rosenberg String Quartet no. 1, op. 9
performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle, or as below with the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique under Sir John Eliot Gardiner (cover image by Terry Tan De Hao) Okay, all you lovers of a good subtitle, here we are … Continue reading Beethoven Symphony no. 6 in F, op. 68 ‘Pastoral’
performed by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Riccardo Chailly (cover image by Shirly Niv Marton) Ah, Beethoven. As I’ve written about before, there’s that great sense of ‘spirituality’ in his music, an underlying, captivating magic about the beauty and often subtle … Continue reading Beethoven Coriolan Overture, op. 62
performed by the Artemis Quartet, or in a superb performance below by the American Quartet I am thinking of devoting myself almost entirely to this type of composition… Beethoven, to a publisher, regarding his composition of the Razumovsky quartets (cover … Continue reading Beethoven String Quartet no. 7 in F, op. 59 no. 1
performed by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Riccardo Chailly, or below by the Orchestra Mozart under Claudio Abbado (cover image by Brooke Lark) I feel such a sense of distance from people like Bach and Telemann and Handel and all the … Continue reading Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no. 1, BWV 1046
performed by the Emerson String Quartet, or below by the Juilliard Quartet (cover image by Patrick Hendry) We’re going on a little journey. Come with me. Back to Bartók, and now in the second half of his output of six … Continue reading Bartók String Quartet no. 4, Sz. 91
performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado There had to come a day when we could hear how a chord of eight tones really sounds in the brasses! (cover image by Tara Evans) Earlier in the week, we had Schoenberg’s op. 16, … Continue reading Berg: Three Pieces for Orchestra, op. 6
performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, or below with the London Symphony under Robert Craft The conductor need not try to polish sounds which seem unbalanced, but watch that every instrumentalist plays accurately the prescribed dynamic, according … Continue reading Schoenberg: Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16
performed by the Sjælland String Quartet (cover image by Kawin Harasai) Paul August von Klenau was born on February 11, 1883 in Copenhagen, and he there studied under Otto Malling, who himself studied under Niels Gade. (I wrote about Malling’s … Continue reading Paul von Klenau: String Quartet no. 1 in Em
performed by Isaac Stern and Charles Rosen, or below by Kyung Wha Chung and Kevin Kenner It is always over before it starts… Webern’s father, about op. 7 (cover image by Glen Carrie) He wasn’t wrong. One of Webern’s early works, … Continue reading Webern: 4 Stücke für Geige und Klavier, op. 7
performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Carl Maria Giulini (cover image by Tao Wen) 600 Well, here we are, my 600th music post. For my long-time readers, I’m sure you’re both tired of hearing me explain how not ALL … Continue reading Mahler Symphony no. 9
performed by the Beaux Arts Trio, or below by the people credited in this video (cover image by Joanna Kosinska) Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born on May 29, 1897 in Brünn, Austria-Hungary, which is nowadays Brno, in what is apparently … Continue reading Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Piano trio in D, op. 1
performed by the RSO Berlin, Dunn, Fassbaender, Baur, Hollweg, and Schmidt under Riccardo Chailly, or below by The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and lots of people under Sir Simon Rattle (cover image by Roman Mavrin) We got around to … Continue reading Mahler: Das klagende Lied
Fugue for Thought 