Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: Music Inspired by Shakespeare

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As a teenager, Felix Mendelssohn was drawn to the works of Shakespeare, especially the shimmering fairytale magic of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After reading a German translation of the comedy, Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny wrote, We were entwined in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Felix particularly made it his own. He identified with all of the characters. He recreated them, so to speak, every one of them whom Shakespeare produced in the immensity of …

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The Vocalise: Music of André Previn and John Williams

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Free of the literal meaning of a text, the wordless vocalise floats into a dreamy and surreal landscape. In André Previn’s Vocalise, the singer enters into a haunting musical conversation with the solo cello and the instrumental voices of the orchestra. Composed at Tanglewood on July 18, 1995 for Sylvia McNair and Yo Yo Ma, the work was originally scored for voice, cello, and piano, and was orchestrated later. Previn, the German-American pianist, …

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Remembering Alfred Brendel

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Alfred Brendel, the Czech-born Austrian pianist, writer, composer, and lecturer, passed away on Tuesday (June 17) at his home in London. He was 94. Largely self-taught after the age of 16, Brendel followed a unique path to the top. As a teenager, he was already an author and an exhibited painter. At the age of 14, in the final days of the Second World War, he dug trenches in Yugoslavia. In 1949 …

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Poulenc’s Violin Sonata: A Wartime Elegy

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Francis Poulenc’s Violin Sonata is music born out of war and tragedy. It is one of a series of defiant, politically charged works Poulenc composed between 1942 and 1943 while remaining in occupied France.* The Sonata was dedicated to the Spanish poet, Federico García Lorca, who was arrested, imprisoned without trial, and executed by Falangist forces during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Poulenc, who wrote numerous chamber pieces …

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Remembering Brian Wilson

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Brian Wilson, the legendary American musician, songwriter, singer, record producer, and co-founder of The Beach Boys, passed away last Wednesday, June 11. He was 82. As the primary songwriter for The Beach Boys, Wilson employed striking harmonic sophistication and innovative recording techniques. In 1964, he stopped touring with the band to focus on writing and recording. Meticulous in the recording studio, Wilson demanded the highest standards. In his memoir, Hallelujah Junction, composer John …

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John Adams’ “China Gates”: The Hypnotic Patter of Rain

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For American composer John Adams (b. 1947), the inspiration for the solo piano work, China Gates, came on an endlessly rainy day in San Francisco during the winter of 1977. Adams recalls the gentle, hypnotic patter of the rain hitting the roof of his cottage near the Pacific Ocean. This natural counterpoint gave rise to the repetitive patterns of China Gates, a brief companion composition to Adams’ Phrygian Gates, composed during the same period. “Gates,” …

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Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” Overture: Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Staatskapelle Dresden

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Richard Wagner’s 1868 opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (“The Mastersingers of Nuremberg”), is a comic love story, set in the sixteenth century. Its plot centers around the historical Master Singers, an ancient guild of amateur poets and musicians who were primarily middle class master craftsmen of various trades. The guild’s Tabulatur, or law book, established an intricate system of rules which dictated the structure and performance of songs. The opera’s principle theme involves …

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