performed by The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Josef Krips, or below by the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (cover image by Grant Ritchie) Here we are with our last Mozart symphony for a while. The 30th was written … Continue reading Mozart Symphony no. 30 in D, K. 202
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Josef Krips, or below with the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (cover image by Dawid Zawila) Did you expect anything else? Mozart’s 29th symphony, in contrast with the previously numbered work, does have … Continue reading Mozart Symphony no. 29 in A, K. 201
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Josef Krips, or below by The Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (cover image by Dawid Zawila) Here we are with the next in that little set of four symphonies we started … Continue reading Mozart Symphony no. 28 in C, K. 200
performed by Josef Krips and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, or below by The Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (cover image by Aneta Pawlik) For today’s symphony, we jump back to 1773, a few years before some of the pieces … Continue reading Mozart Symphony no. 27 in G, K. 199
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Josef Krips, or The Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (cover image by Brooke Lark) We’re still in 1773, Mozart’s year of climbing toward greatness. The piece was dated October 3, 1773. The … Continue reading Mozart Symphony no. 24 in B flat, K. 182
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Josef Krips, or below with The Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (cover image by Lucija Ros) The 23rd symphony was written only a month or so later than the previous work. … Continue reading Mozart Symphony no. 23 in D, K. 181
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Josef Krips, or below by The Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (cover image by Federico Respini) Well here we are with a Mozart symphony, for the first time in a while, … Continue reading Mozart Symphony no. 22 in C, K. 162
performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink (cover image by Gaetano Cessati) Georges Bizet was born on 25 October, 1838 in Paris as Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, but baptized as Georges. His father was a hairdresser and wig maker … Continue reading Georges Bizet: Symphony in C
performed by the Czech Philharmonic Wind Ensemble & Zdenek Jilek, or below with Daniel Hoexter (piano) with members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra (cover image by Aaron Burden) Listening to this work, it just doesn’t surprise me that there aren’t very many works … Continue reading Beethoven Quintet in E-flat for Piano and Winds, op. 16
preformed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under Mariss Jansons, or below by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy It is the creation of a genial mind laboring in a field well known and loved by it, but not … Continue reading Revisit: Rachmaninoff Symphony no. 3 in A minor, op. 44
performed by Leif Ove Andsnes and the Berlin Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez, or below by the Géza Anda and the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink Since we discussed the first piano concerto earlier this week, I’d like to suggest you … Continue reading Bartók Piano Concerto no. 2, Sz. 95, BB 101
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral. Honorable mention in the “Symphonic but not a symphony” category is this … Continue reading Hector Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Marriss Jansons One of the largest symphonies in the standard repertoire, along with most of Mahler, bits of Bruckner, and some Shostakovich (but this is his longest). This recording comes in at around … Continue reading Shostakovich Symphony no. 7 in C major, op. 60 ‘Leningrad’
How quickly things happen. Just a few weeks ago, I was able to enjoy my first two-night concert set ever, and who better to enjoy it with than the Vienna Philharmonic? I’d gone to separate concerts back-to-back before, but never the … Continue reading Concert Review: The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky (or in the other recording below by Concertgebouw under Karel Mark Chichon) Heaven forbid! Do not touch it; alter nothing. Your modulations are neither extravagant nor faulty. Your artistic instinct … Continue reading Borodin Symphony no. 2 in B minor
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink “although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works.” So, here we are at arguably … Continue reading Tchaikovsky Symphony no. 1, op. 13, ‘Winter Dreams’
performed by Claudio Arrau and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink … and here we are, at the end of a very long string of piano works taking us from the heart of the Classical era almost a hundred … Continue reading Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1 in Dm, op. 15
performed, as always, by Neville Marriner and the ASMF, or below by Marriss Jansons and the Concertgebouw (apologies for the anime image, but it’s a nice performance) Mini-German: Part 2(I know he’s Austrian) Now for a slight change of pace. Sort of. While this work came a decade after last week’s Beethoven piece, it is… at least to my ears, not as far ahead of its time. That’s no criticism at all. Let me explain.For one, Eroica was just kind of a phenomenal thing. Beethoven was already into his thirties when this piece was written. Schubert was about half that … Continue reading Schubert Symphony no. 3 in D major, D. 200
…on themes of Carl Maria von Weber in an absolutely phenomenal performance by Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony, here, or below by the Royal Concertgebouw under Riccardo Chailly So again, relative to last week’s sprawling, enormous piece, this … Continue reading Paul Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphosis
performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado, or as below, Abbado with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, a wonderful performance So here we are, at kind of the middle point of our series, and we have reached quite a point in … Continue reading Mahler Symphony no. 3
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 Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein I believe the recording above is the same as the one I listened to from this box set by Deutsche Grammophon. If not, go check out that recording, because it’s the one I want. Hello again, Mahler. Hello, not-so-old friend. It’s been not-so-long. To this day, if I need to get in the kitchen and cook or clean … Continue reading Mahler Symphony no. 1 in D, ‘Titan’
Fugue for Thought 