performed by Trio Wanderer, or below by Barenboim, Du Pre and Zukerman (cover image by Norbert Levajsics) Moving right along in Beethoven’s catalogue, we come to the op. 70 piano trios, of which there are two. These works come just … Continue reading Beethoven Piano Trio in D, op. 70 no. 1, ‘Ghost’
performed by the Artemis Quartet, or below by the Alban Berg Quartet Would it be going too far to suppose a connection between this extraordinary work and Beethoven’s advancing deafness? Could that painfully groping introduction seem like someone trying to … Continue reading Beethoven String Quartet no. 9 in C, op. 59 no. 3
performed by The Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly (cover image by Sorin Tudorut) Beethoven’s op. 84 is actually an overture with incidental music (nine pieces) for soprano, male narrator, and orchestra for Goethe’s play of the same name. I thought … Continue reading Beethoven: Egmont Overture, op. 84
performed by Rudolf Serkin and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa, or below with Serkin and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Choir under Rafael Kubelik You may wish to print another text, as the text … Continue reading Beethoven Choral Fantasy, op. 80
performed by the Artemis Quartet, or below by the Alban Berg Quartet (cover image by Francisco De Legarreta C.) We find ourselves now at the second of Beethoven’s three Razumovsky quartets. The works were written in 1806 for the Russian … Continue reading Beethoven String Quartet no. 8 in Em, op. 59 no. 2
performed by Dame Mitsuko Uchida and the English Chamber Orchestra under Sir Jeffrey Tate (cover image by John McCann) This work is the farthest along we’ve gotten in any of Mozart’s works in any form (with the exception of the … Continue reading Mozart Piano Concerto no. 11 in F, K. 413
performed by Jenő Jandó, Dénes Várjon, pianos, and the Concentus Hungaricus under Mátyás Antal, or as below, with Alfred Brendel, Imogen Cooper and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Sir Neville Marriner (cover image by Nicolas Gras) I’ve always thought that so many … Continue reading Mozart Piano Concerto no. 10 in E-flat, K. 365
performed by Dame Mitsuko Uchida (cover image by Aaron Burden) We jump ahead a few years, around where we were last week, in 1777, although this work wasn’t published until 1782. The ninth sonata was composed in Augsburg and Mannheim … Continue reading Mozart Piano Sonata no. 9 in D, K. 311
performed by the Amadeus Quartet (cover image by Brooke Lark) So we, uh… jump back a few important years to the tenth quartet, written in 1773. The middle of this decade is clearly a time when the composer advances noticeably … Continue reading Mozart String Quartet no. 10 in C, K. 170
performed by Dame Mitsuko Uchida second and third movements One gets the feeling, listening to the Sonata in A minor, that Mozart had been stocking up on minor mode drama for some time when he wrote it. Its stormy music is a … Continue reading Mozart Piano Sonata no. 8 in Am, K. 310
performed by Fazıl Say, or below by Dame Mitsuko Uchida (cover image by Chris Barbalis) Mozart’s seventh piano sonata dates from 1777, a full two and a half years after the sixth. It was composed during a trip to Mannheim and … Continue reading Mozart Piano Sonata no. 7 in C, K. 309
performed by Dame Mitsuko Uchida and the English Chamber Orchestra under Sir Jeffrey Tate (cover image by Leonard Cotte) Mozart’s ninth piano concerto is actually his fifth original concerto for the piano (after the first four, which were more or … Continue reading Mozart Piano Concerto no. 9 in E-flat, K. 271, ‘Jenamy’
performed by the Amadeus Quartet, or below by the Festetics Quartet (cover image by Irina Blok) Mozart’s ninth string quartet, the second of the set of six called the ‘Viennese quartets,’ was composed in (August of) 1773. (Apparently, according to … Continue reading Mozart String Quartet no. 9 in A, K. 169
performed by the Gewandhausorchester under Riccardo Chailly, or below by the Orchestra Mozart under Claudio Abbado (cover image by Aaron Burden) We have made it to only the second of Bach’s six Brandenburg concertos. As you may recall, or else … Continue reading Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 in F major, BWV 1047
performed by Andrea Lucchesini (cover image by Aaron Blanco Tejedor) Berio’s Encores are relatively short pieces composed over a three decades, and provide a pretty wide-ranging vocabulary for the performer. For the brevity of the individual pieces, they provide a really wonderful … Continue reading Berio: Six Encores
performed by Simon Smith (available on Spotify, but not YouTube) The music of Alfred Schnittke has always delivered on its promise of darkness, but one must occasionally remind oeself [sic] that man could be really funny sometimes; on his misshapen circle, … Continue reading Schnittke: 8 Pieces for piano
performed by the Quatuor Diotima, or below by the Lasalle Quartet (cover image by Dhruv Weaver) Webern’s string quartet, the only work to be so labeled by him (even though he composed other things for four strings), is also his … Continue reading Webern String Quartet, op. 28
performed by Mitsuko Uchida, or below by Krystian Zimerman, or Pollini w/ the score (cover image by Mitch Lensink) Of all forms and structures of music, the variation form may be the easiest to understand: a theme… with variations, or … Continue reading Webern: Variations for Piano, op. 27
performed by Roland Pöntinen, or below by Eduard Steuermann (cover image by h-e-n-g-s-t-r-e-a-m) It may sound like a cliche, but Schoenberg’s earlier (by a little over a decade) opus 11 really was a watershed moment for the composer in dealing … Continue reading Schoenberg: Fünf Stücke, op. 23
performed by Eero Heinonen, or below by someone who may or not be the same person (cover image by Dennis Buchner) It’s unlikely that when you hear Sibelius’ name, you think of anything he wrote for piano. Whether it’s any … Continue reading Sibelius: Eight pieces, op. 99
performed by Matti Raekallio, or below by Boris Berman In every fleeting vision I see worlds, Filled with the fickle play of rainbows Konstantin Balmont (cover image by Joel Filipe) It’s not ‘visions of fugitives.’ Prokofiev wrote his Visions Fugitives from … Continue reading Prokofiev: Visions Fugitives, op. 22
Fugue for Thought 