Jan Dismas Zelenka’s Hipocondrie à 7 Concertanti in A Major: Bremer Barockorchester

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It was Bedřich Smetana who, in the mid-1860s, rediscovered the long-lost scores of Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745). A contemporary of J.S. Bach and Handel, Zelenka wrote some of the boldest and most inventive music of the late-Baroque period. His radical, forward-looking works contain elements of the galant style that set the stage for the classical music of Haydn and Mozart. For much of his career, Zelenka was employed by the …

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Sondheim’s “So Many People”: An Early Ballad

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Saturday Night would have been Stephen Sondheim’s first professional musical. Its intended Broadway opening in 1955 was cancelled following the sudden death of the lead producer, Lemuel Ayers. Months later, Arthur Laurents, impressed with the Saturday Night score, recommended the 25-year-old composer to Leonard Bernstein as the lyricist for West Side Story. Saturday Night was finally produced at London’s Bridewell Theatre in 1997. Its off-Broadway premiere came in 2000. Based on the play Front Porch in …

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Piazzolla’s Sinfonietta: Before the Tango

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Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) had not fully embraced the nuevo tango style that would become his signature when, in 1953, he composed the Sinfonietta. The spirited three-movement work for chamber orchestra was written during a transitional period as Piazzolla completed his studies with fellow Argentine Alberto Ginastera. A year later, he settled in Paris, where Nadia Boulanger urged him to stop suppressing his authentic voice. In his memoir, the composer recalled, She …

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Debussy’s Violin Sonata: Karisa Chiu and Zhu Wang

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27-year-old American violinist Karisa Chiu has been awarded the Gold Medal at the 2026 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Born into a musical family, Chiu began to study the violin at the age of two with her father, Cornelius Chiu, a member of the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony. She came to international prominence with her first prize win at the 2021 Isangyun Violin Competition. Released in September of 2025, …

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Gesualdo’s “Moro, Lasso, Al moi duolo”: Shocking Sounds from the Late Renaissance

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“Extremely shocking and disgusting to the ear”—that is how English historian Charles Burney described the music of Italian late Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo (c. 1561–1613) in his 1776 book, A General History of Music. With its wrenching chromaticism, raw dissonances, and strange, wandering harmonies, Gesualdo’s music still sounds edgy to 21st-century ears. The five-voice secular madrigal Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (“I die, languishing, from grief”) was published in Gesualdo’s Sixth Book …

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Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor: A Mysterious, Passionate Reverie

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Cast in a single, monumental movement, Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor unfolds as a mysterious, passionate reverie. Its blazing Romanticism encompasses the widest emotional spectrum—from ghostly terror and quiet melancholy to spiritual ecstasy, heroic virtuosity and soaring, grandiose triumph. This acute sense of drama has led listeners to search for programmatic associations. For some, the themes paint characters from the “Faust” legend. (Liszt was composing his epic “Faust” Symphony during …

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Louise Farrenc’s Overture No. 2 in E-flat Major: A Score Rediscovered

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After falling into obscurity, the music of Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) was rediscovered in the 1970s and 80s, and has recently surged in popularity. A trailblazing French composer, virtuoso pianist, and teacher, Farrenc was the only female tenured professor in the 19th century at the Paris Conservatory. (She was only permitted to teach female students). Her father was a master craftsman, the fourth generation in a line of painters and sculptors who were …

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