The Classical Music Guide Forums

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Young people today are extremely righteous and demand absolute purity (kind of like my generation in the 60s, except they're not stoned and so therefore have more focus), and they're out to end racism and will not tolerate any veneration of slavery. Yes, they do go too far. I say by all means we sho...

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It seems curious to me that advocating for fair treatment from law enforcement makes one part of an "extreme left". How far right must a person be to see justice, which should be at the center of what the U.S. is about, as something "extreme left"? Speaking of muzzling speech, George Floyd, Breonna ...

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I recognise all those things, and I want black lives to matter as much as white. And I want white to matter as much as black. And Aborigines, Japanese, Chinese as much as any. The original point was, is the criticism of Black Lives Matter as a cover for a wider agenda accurate in any way. Possibly ...

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The thing I find the most appalling about the "All lives matter" response is the level of studious and deliberate miscomprehension of the point being made. It should be as clear as day that in a society where black people are time and time again shot by policemen in situations where a white offender...

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This is great stuff. He should have been far more widely known during his lifetime. I've been looking up samples of his work online this morning, and I'm impressed with the ease with which he folds jazz into the Chopin/Scriabin virtuoso pianist/composer thing. It's too bad he didn't write more for o...

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The prominence of the clarinet in Schubert's Octet (as well as the Beethoven Septet which served as its model) is because it is the highest of the three wind instruments in the ensemble. It is the wind counterpart to the first violin, and a lot of the time the composer is passing the melody between ...

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Speaking of Sorabji, if you've got a couple hours to spare, here's a computer-generated performance of the third movement of Sorabji's Symphony no. 2, Jami . I assume the title refers to the suggested attire for listening to the whole 2-hour stretch. Actually, that's not right. This is just the thir...

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Maybe the first 78 variations are easier?

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Today I enjoyed Michael Daugherty's Trail of Tears Concerto for flute and orchestra (2010), and found it a very well-written and substantial composition. Daugherty's early compositions mined pop culture associations ( Dead Elvis ), and struck me as superficial, but maturity has been kind to him. He ...

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Most of the churches I know of have online services conducted on social media. One church I know of has a regular service in the church with a skeleton crew (pastor, organist, choir of four). My regular church uses Zoom to get everyone involved, as does a discussion group called the "Jesus seminar" ...

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At least they don't have to speculate about "what would the composer have done with this?" They don't have to bring in a Deryk Cooke, for instance, to flesh it out.

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I am staying at home most of the time, and that's fine because I like my house and my wife is good company. I'm working from home too, since everything I do at the Library of Congress can be done via telework. My musical activities, unfortunately, have been put on hold. The two community orchestras ...

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maestrob wrote: ↑
Sun May 10, 2020 1:23 pm
Interesting piece, Mark, thank you. I do wish your violinist had a sweeter tone, however.

Well, as they say, you fight with the army you've got. Thanks for listening.

diegobueno

I recently performed Louise Farrenc's excellent Nonet in E flat, op. 38, for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and bass. The piece was a milestone in her career, because she had been teaching piano at the Paris Conservatoire for years at a salary much lower than her male col...

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This is a great loss to classical music. His "missing" Sixth Symphony, subtitled "Chinese Songs," just turned up on CD Accord, and I intend to order it promptly. Apparently, he was so fixated on the numerology of the Seven Gates of Jerusalem , that he designated it his Symphony no. 7, even though t...

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Sacred choral music, often on a massive scale, was a Penderecki specialty. He set out, in the 1990s, to compose a setting of the Mass, but gave up the project when his Credo turned out to be an hour in duration by itself. His Symphony no. 7, The Seven Gates of Jerusalem , is an hour-long choral work...

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Penderecki initially gained fame in the 1960s as a wild-eyed radical, taking advantage of the suddenly relaxed cultural policies in communist Poland. His music called for all manner of unconventional playing techniques, broad tone clusters, etc. all in a search for new sounds. His Capriccio for viol...

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I can't say for sure what his best work is. Perhaps the St. Luke Passion. Probably the piece of his that I enjoy the most is his Quartet for clarinet and strings, here with the great clarinetist Anthony McGill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipRaaFOzutc

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There is no other source that backs up the story (if there is, I'd like to be corerected). No idea source here : https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/maria-yudina-stalin/ The wording here, especially the account of Yudina's letter and Stalin's reaction very closely echoes the wording of ...

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And on a tangent, for anyone interested in modern Soviet history you must see the recent movie 'Death of Stalin', which is a black comedy. It's a bit in the style of Bulgakov - that is, the events are horrible, but so bizarre that they take on a comic sheen. Interestingly, the opening incident in t...

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That's a very ambitious program. The Rachmaninoff is very difficult from a rhythmic standpoint, especially in the last movement, in which a Russian liturgical chant is employed, in a rhythmic setting which goes against the prevailing 6/8 meter. The one time I played it, the conductor had to move the...

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Nikki Haley Bob Corker James Comey (Independent) Kenneth Blackwell Mitt Romney John Kasich Lisa Murkowski Jeb Bush Jeff Flake John Bolton Ted Cruz Mike Bloomberg [D, R and I] Is this some kind of joke? These are the very last people who should be holding any kind of political office. Biden has comm...

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I'm very partial to Enescu's Dixtuor (1906) for wind instruments. A very complex and difficult work that requires professional musicians to bring off, but a very lovely nonetheless. TLPQMTQwMzIwMjAl0QKHOGKcJQ&index=4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwlWpESNpV0&list=TLPQMTQwMzIwMjAl0QKHOGKcJQ&index=4

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The 7th was my "gateway drug" into Bruckner. It does have something special that the others don't have. Maybe it's that wonderful cello melody at the beginning. Maybe it's the fact that it's the only Bruckner symphony in a key not used by Beethoven in a symphony. Here it is conducted by Eugen Jochum...

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So the next time I have 77 minutes (or ideally, somewhat less as suggested) I'll pull up the Bruno Walter rendition and have a listen. Here's Otto Klemperer, my choice for the 4th. I don't know if it will change your opinion, but you can save yourself 17 minutes, for his runs exactly one hour. 56VB...

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Any performance of Bruckner 4th that lasts 77 minutes is waaaaayyyyyy toooooo slloooooowww!

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I haven't seen a proper contents list, but here's what's in the set Leon Kirchner -- Trio for viola, cello and piano ; Sonata concertante for violin and piano Jerome Rosen -- String Quartet no. 1 Ilhan Usmanbas -- String Quartet Benjamin Lees -- String Quartet no. 1 William Denny -- String Quartet n...

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One thing about the article that has set me to thinking is that, in trying to represent Schoenberg's attitudes about music, the author draws heavily on the writings of Theodore Adorno. I'm wondering to what extent Schoenberg's attitudes are actually aligned with Adorno's. That will require some read...

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Good Lord, Flaming angels! You may want to bring a fire extinguisher to that one. Fiery Angel has a much better connotation. Yes, I suppose the word "flaming" as an intensifier for certain body parts used pejoratively to describe a person one doesn't like wasn't as widely used back when the earlier...

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Thanks for the link, but it costs $44 to get access for 24 hours. So, alas, I will give it a miss. Thanks for the reminder. The article is from the Journal of Musicological Research, v. 34, 2015. Here it is without the illustrations and musical examples. I will gladly remove or shorten it if there ...

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Apparently, Schoenberg referred to his VC as " unplayable." Actually, the story is that Jascha Heifetz called the piece unplayable. Schoenberg showed the solo part to Heifetz, hoping to interest him in performing it. Heifetz got to one passage, struggled, and then said "Has it occurred to you that ...

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All the recordings I grew up listening to, including Rozhdestvensky's recording of the 3rd Symphony (based on music from the opera) said Flaming Angel , so I've always called it that. The 1960s recording on the Westminster label conducted by Charles Bruck, which was the first recording I was able to...

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A staged Flaming Angel is enough of a rarity, I may have to see it.

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The Walton Viola Concerto has become, at least in recent years, the go-to piece for viola soloists. -- I should amend that to say that it is the favored vehicle for young aspiring viola soloists entering string competitions. The competitions award prizes for violin, viola and cello soloists, and if ...

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Ashkenazy has had such a long and productive career, he deserves to have his rest. I heard him play the Emperor Concerto in 1968 in Saint Augustine, Florida, during the short period when the London Symphony had a summer season there. I was 14, and not a very discerning judge of piano playing, but my...

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only in the past year has the opening movement's main subject made any etching on the surface of my memory.....it seems almost like a student composer's earnest yet limited attempt at a big bow-wow symphonic subject. Have you heard the original 1872 version of the symphony? Talk about an earnest at...

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Coming back to the finale, it takes many listenings to the rather milquetoast second theme that was Tchaikovsky's own creation that the listener remembers it; the tune he so shrewdly used to dominate the work was an old Russian folktune. I've always been drawn to that second theme in the finale. I ...

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I guess this is the place to cite the letter Mozart wrote to his father about the performance in Paris of the symphony now known as the Paris Symphony (no. 31, K. 297) in the m i d s t o f t h e f i r s t a l l e g r o came a passage I had known would please. The audience was quite carried away-ther...

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Belle, you make the mistake of thinking this is just a disagreement about policy. the fact is, as I said before, that Trump violated the law from the very beginning. Yes, the Kavanaugh fiasco was a disaster. The way that man responded to his accuser, the temper tantrum he threw, the nakedly partisan...

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Donald Trump has engaged in corrupt, illegal behavior since... but certainly from the time of his 2016 campaign. That's why Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadapoulos are in jail, and Roger Stone will join them soon. There was ample reason to investigate him for...

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I think I should mention also Kevin Puts. I often think his music is a bit too much on the "nice" side. I wish it had more edge to it. But this Concerto for Marimba is an attractive work and it has enough to keep my interest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlioHe_fJ-M

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And unfortunately, we have Pennywise as president.

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If you haven't heard this yet, you really need to. This is a remarkable vocal arrangement of a Christmas song In the Bleak Midwinter made and performed by Jacob Collier, an impossibly gifted youngster with an amazing ear. I post it here in the Corner Pub because it quite clearly comes from the popul...

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I don't think it has so much to do with Beethoven as boosting AI. It's a technological quest rather than a musical one. Right. I guess it helps if you start with good material. But there were other options. They could have given the computer the first so-many-measures of any of the Beethoven sympho...

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There's already a Beethoven's 10th completion by Barry Cooper. Is that not good enough? If not, why does someone think a computer can do better?

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One set of works I've been concentrating on these past few months are the 10 string quartets of Ben Johnston. Written between 1959 and 1995, they embody styles which fall on both sides of the line Belle and Brian would call noise. Nos. 2-10 employ microtones, dividing the octave into many tiny units...

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I didn't say it was all noise; I was talking about those who hitched their wagon specifically TO noise!! My position is that none of it is noise. It's all valid as music. Those who've hitched their wagons to it, do so because they enjoy listening to it. You don't have to like it or listen to it you...

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By way of contrast, the music of the British composer Gavin Bryars tends to be slow in unfolding, and very lyrical. His Concerto for Double Bass, following the example of Busoni, features a male chorus in addition to the orchestra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHAeakWz36A

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I can't say I agree with the characterization of 20th century High Modernism as "noise". But I can understand why composers today don't feel like that kind of music is a hill they're willing to die on. A lot of the composers I'm going to introduce here grew out of the minimalist movement. They featu...

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I love the oboi d'amore and oboi di caccia (in the Sinfonia). Colorful orchestration isn't the first thing you think of with Bach, but his choice of instruments is so specific, you know he put a lot of thought into it. And it often involves instruments no longer in use for which with modern instrume...

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