This week, as you may have seen from yesterday’s post, is going to be a miniature Beethoven week. Actually, I don’t know what’s miniature about it; Beethoven certainly isn’t, and it’s a full seven-day week like any other. Beethoven week. … Continue reading Uchida on Beethoven, Schubert and Vienna
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
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
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
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
I want to share a very long quote I was pleased to read the other day about a subject I had been thinking about not too long ago. As the title suggests, it’s from Erst Krenek, regarding his opinion based on his experience of finishing works left incomplete by other composers. He says the following: Completing the unfinished work of a great master is a very delicate task. In my opinion it can honestly be undertaken only if the original fragment contains all of the main ideas of the unfinished work. In such a case a respectful craftsman may attempt, … Continue reading Ernst Krenek on completing unfinished works
performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner (Below is the Failoni Orchestra under Michael Halasz) https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/n2fxg3ncs5s&source=uds There is a tenuous connection to one of the characters in this week’s “on this day” series. Although he may not be a name many casual fans of classical music would recognize, Antonio Salieri played a large part in the development of the young Schubert and his musical education. Salieri’s influence was greatest in opera, which he wrote in three languages. He was apparently one of the most respected, sought-after teachers of his era, and aside from … Continue reading Franz Schubert: symphony no. 1 in D (D. 82)
Fugue for Thought 