Eddie Palmieri, the pianist, composer, band leader, and innovator of Latin music, passed away last Wednesday, August 6 at his home in New Jersey. He was 88. Born in East Harlem to a Puerto Rican immigrant family and raised in the South Bronx, Palmieri was exposed to jazz in the New York City public school system. As a child, he frequently accompanied his brother, Charlie Palmieri, who became a prominent jazz musician …
In 2001, a long lost work by Handel was miraculously discovered. The manuscript for Handel’s Gloria in excelsis Deo had been hiding in plain sight in the library of London’s Royal Academy of Music. Bound in a collection of Handel arias that had been owned by singer William Savage (1720-1789), the manuscript was not in the composer’s hand. It was authenticated by Hamburg University professor Hans Joachim Marx. The Academy’s principal, Curtis Price, …
Last February, we explored Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major, a work unified by a single motivic thread which runs through its four movements. Emerging as a mystical trumpet call in the Symphony’s opening, this motto (an ascending fifth) rings out as a triumphant statement in the Symphony’s concluding moments. For Schumann, a composer who faced inner demons, this majestic, life-affirming work can be heard as the musical equivalent of …
Nachtmusik (“night music”), a light serenade intended for evening entertainment, was the party music of the 18th century. Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik is the most famous example. With his Serenade in A for solo piano, composed in Vienna in September of 1925, Igor Stravinsky brought the form into the 20th century. Stravinsky commented that the work was conceived “in imitation of the Nachtmusik of the 18th century, which was usually commissioned by …
When Francis Poulenc’s Gloria was first performed in 1961, some critics derided it as “sacrilegious.” With his setting of the liturgical text, scored for chorus, soprano solo, and large orchestra, Poulenc followed in the footsteps of composers such as Vivaldi and Handel. But here, the exalted text is approached, not with solemnity, but with playful exuberance. Mysticism blends with humor. There is a joyful sense of song, dance, and the sounds of a Parisian …
Camille Saint-Saëns’ Fantaisie for Violin and Harp, Op. 124 is filled with charm, virtuosity, and dreamy exoticism. The 72-year-old Saint-Saëns was vacationing in the city of Bridger in the Italian Riviera when, in 1907, he composed this sparkling miniature. He dedicated the work to a musical duo made up of two sisters, harpist Clara Eissler and violinist Marianne Eissler. Set in a single brief movement and bathed in Italian sunshine, the music …
Chuck Mangione, the American flugelhorn player, trumpeter, and composer, passed away last Tuesday (July 22) at his home in Rochester, New York. He was 84. Born in Rochester to Italian parents who were avid jazz fans, Mangione rose to prominence as a student at the Eastman School of Music. He performed with his brother, Gap Mangione in the ensemble, The Jazz Brothers. In the mid 1960s, at the recommendation of Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck …