Andy Akiho’s Timpani Concerto: Leonardo Soto, Juraj Valčuha and the Houston Symphony 

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In March, the Houston Symphony premiered an exiting new Timpani Concerto by American composer Andy Akiho (b. 1979). The performance, led by Music Director Juraj Valčuha, featured the Orchestra’s Principal Timpanist, Leonardo Soto. The Concerto was co-commissioned by the Houston Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Brevard Music Festival. Written in collaboration with Soto and the Houston Symphony, “the piece reimagines the timpani as a melodic soloist, featuring prepared drumheads, an inverted …

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Saint-Saëns’ “The Carnival of the Animals”: The Kanneh-Masons and Friends

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In February of 1886, Camille Saint-Saëns set aside work on his Third Symphony to write The Carnival of the Animals. Saint-Saëns considered it an act of compositional frivolity for a purely private audience. He prohibited public performances of the work during his lifetime out of fear that  it would damage his reputation as a serious composer. The Carnival of the Animals is full of parodies and inside jokes. A quote of Offenbach’s famous …

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Franck’s Choral No. 3 in A Minor: An Epic Farewell

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The mighty Choral No. 3 in A minor for organ was the final work of César Franck. Composed in 1890, it is an epic farewell. Filled with chromaticism and moments of haunting dissonance, its progressive harmony pushes at the boundaries of tonality. The symphonic scale of the music, with its array of tonal colors, was influenced by the magnificent three-manual Aristide Cavaillé-Coll pipe organ Franck played for 30 years at Paris’ Basilica of …

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Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major, “Classical”: Musical Time Travel

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If Haydn had traveled 100 years into the future, what kind of music might he have written? The 25-year-old Sergei Prokofiev provided a compelling answer with his Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25, widely known as the “Classical” Symphony. Filled with grace, elegance, exuberance, and humor, it is compact music, scored for the pared-down classical orchestra. Bold 20th century harmony meets traditional sonata form. In his autobiography, Prokofiev wrote, “It …

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Ingram Marshall’s “Authentic Presence”: Timo Andres

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In search of what he called “the dark and the beautiful and the endless,” American composer Ingram Marshall (1942-2022) blended electronic and acoustic elements to create awe-inspiring soundscapes. The Listeners’ Club archive includes Marshall’s atmospheric Fog Tropes (1982) and Wanderer’s Night Song (1992). Timo Andres made this impromptu recording of Marshall’s 2002 solo piano work, Authentic Presence, following the composer’s death. He wrote the following program note: Ingram Marshall was one of my graduate …

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John Adams’ “Harmonielehre”: David Robertson and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony

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American conductor David Robertson, who served as music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2018, is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of the music of John Adams. He describes Adams’ music in cinematic terms: The main thing that you find in every single one of his pieces is that it is a journey through a landscape. And as you proceed, you see similar types of trees …

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Dudley Buck’s Concert Variations on “The Star-Spangled Banner”: A Triumphant Showpiece for Organ

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In 1814, after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, Francis Scott Key penned the famous words that would become the American National Anthem. At the end of the battle, the 15 stars and stripes of the young nation’s flag continued to fly defiantly above the Fort, forming the poem’s defining image. Composed in 1866, a year after the end of the American Civil War, Dudley Buck’s Concert Variations …

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