performed (live) by the Emerson String Quartet, from their box set of the quartets “I visualized childhood scenes, somewhat naïve and bright moods associated with spring.” Dmitri Shostakovich from Epstein, Paul. Emerson String Quartet: “Shostakovich: The String Quartets” I wrote … Continue reading Shostakovich String Quartet no. 1 in C, Op. 49
A concert review. What a fantastic program. Also, I think I’m going to stop including “concert review” in the titles of my concert reviews. Isn’t it obvious? Should be. Just added that first line there. The titles get too long … Continue reading NSO’s Shostakovich: His Humor and Seriousness
All six of them. These pieces have been interjecting themselves into my life lately. When I started the String Quartet Series back in February, I decided to start with Bach because it’d been two and a half years on the blog and … Continue reading Concert Review: Alexander Rudin plays Bach
performed by the Chicago Symphony orchestra under Pierre Boulez The Poem of Ecstasy is the Joy of Liberated Action. The Cosmos, i.e., Spirit, is Eternal Creation without External Motivation, a Divine Play of Worlds. The Creative Spirit, i.e., the Universe … Continue reading Scriabin: Le Poème de l’extase, Op. 54
performed by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Eugene Svetlanov The golden cloud slept through the night Upon the breast of the giant-rock While Rachmaninoff composed a number of symphonic poems and things, his real contribution to classical music, at least … Continue reading Rachmaninoff: The Rock, op. 7
Well, we’ve come a long way. Almost 100 years, to be exact, with some leaps and skips here and there, and there’s obviously plenty we didn’t get to. If you haven’t been following along, you can reach the entire series … Continue reading The Russian Symphony Series: A Wrap-up
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’
performed by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra under Evgeny Svetlanov (as with the others) (for a version with the choral part, see below) (this piece is featured on a list of pieces I heartily recommend to music directors for inclusion … Continue reading Myaskovsky Symphony no. 6 in E flat minor, op. 23
performed by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra under Evgeny Svetlanov playlist of the entire work here Yesterday we talked a bit about Myaskovsky’s early life and his second symphony. Today we’ll talk a bit more about his life and his … Continue reading Revisit: Myaskovsky Symphony no. 3 in Am, op. 15
So… kind of finally, we get around to this guy. The cover image for this article is a far less common (to me…?) image of the composer, not the one below that everyone’s used to seeing: Anyway, he’s outstandingly famous now … Continue reading Influential People: Igor Stravinsky
This is another one of those concerts I have (very proudly, I might add) managed to gather people together to attend. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin enjoyed quite a fantastic turnout on its opening night, and I was very glad at that performance to have been … Continue reading Concert review: NSO’s Fireworks from Russia
“No one was more famous during their lifetime, and few were more quickly ignored after death.” – Faubion Bowers “No composer has had more scorn heaped on him or greater love bestowed.” -The Great Soviet Encyclopedia So this is another … Continue reading Influential People: Alexander Scriabin
performed live by (again) the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky, or in a very nice performance below by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra (perhaps before they were ‘Royal’?) under Vladimir Ashkenazy This, this other terrible first. The … Continue reading Rachmaninoff Symphony no. 1 in D minor, op. 13
as performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Jascha Horenstein; Earl Wild, piano Wait, what? A piano concerto? Yes. So it just now occurred to me that this is the composer’s opus no. 1. And that is only another supporting reason for … Continue reading Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no. 1 in F#m, op. 1
performed by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky “[Tchaikovsky] also knew my Third Symphony, which is dedicated to him. Much in it found his approval and, at his request, I often played the scherzo of the … Continue reading Alexander Glazunov: Symphony no. 3 in D, op. 33
performed by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under Stanislav Vavrinek or here by the people sourced for this video (USSR Radio & TV something?) “In his youth Arensky did not escape some influence from me; later the influence came from … Continue reading Arensky Symphony No. 1 in B minor, op. 4
So this article comes along far more because of who the man taught than any other influence his compositions had. We’ve talked about Anton Arensky only once before, with regards to his piano concerto. It was a work unabashedly modeled after … Continue reading Influential People: Anton Arensky
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’
Ilya Repin’s work is amazing; he also painted RK. From Wikipedia So this is perhaps the first name of the bunch that people might recognize. The only thing of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov which we have discussed so far is his piano … Continue reading Influential People: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
performed (again) by the Russian State Symphony Orchestra under Igor Golovschin I have to say with this symphony that, while I don’t care much for the man who wrote it (after preparing this week’s article on him), of the first … Continue reading Mily Balakirev: Symphony no. 1 in C major,
Fugue for Thought 