Stravinsky’s Eight Instrumental Miniatures: The Land of Children at Play

by

In 1921, Igor Stravinsky composed a set of simple piano pieces for children titled, Les cinq doigts (“The Five Fingers”). Charmingly spare and neoclassical, each of the eight whimsical keyboard exercises are built on five notes, played in the right hand. Stravinsky returned to this music in 1962 to create the 8 Instrumental Miniatures for 15 Players. It is music which inhabits the innocent, magical land of children at play. The brief …

Read more

Dvořák’s “Rusalka”: Four Key Excerpts

by

First performed on March 31, 1901 in Prague, Antonín Dvořák’s enduring fairytale opera in three acts, Rusalka, Op. 114, blends Slavic mythology with the story of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid . Rusalka is a water nymph who falls in love with a human—a Prince who happens one day to swim in her lake. She tells her father, the water goblin, that she wishes to become human to be with the …

Read more

Remembering Sir Andrew Davis

by

Sir Andrew Davis, the renowned English conductor, passed away on April 20 following a brief battle with leukemia. He was 80. Davis served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1975 to 1988, and later as chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2013–2019). From 1989 until 2000, he led the BBC Symphony Orchestra, becoming the longest-serving chief conductor of that ensemble since Adrian Boult. As an opera conductor, Davis …

Read more

Mozart’s Symphony No. 27 in G Major: Salzburg Sunshine

by

Symphony No. 27 in G Major, K. 199 is sunny, youthful music of the 17-year-old Mozart. Completed in April of 1773, it is among a group of four symphonies Mozart wrote after returning home to Salzburg following his second trip to Italy. (His opera, Lucio Silla, was being performed in Milan). Two months later, Mozart and his father would set out for the imperial capital of Vienna. Scored for two flutes, two …

Read more

Stravinsky’s Concerto in E-flat, “Dumbarton Oaks”: A Sparkling Neoclassical Dialogue

by

The riot-inducing 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s primal ballet score, The Rite of Spring, changed the course of 20th century music. Yet, ultimately, it was an artistic one-off. The final, cacophonous notes of the Sacrificial Dance faded away, and soon, with the 1920 ballet score for Pulcinella, Stravinsky’s style took another sharp and unexpected turn. Austere, witty, and pared down, the new neoclassicism returned to the balance, form, and symmetry of Bach and …

Read more

Brahms’ Trio in E-flat Major for Horn, Violin, and Piano: Music of Nature

by

In May of 1865, following the death of his beloved mother Christiane three months earlier, Johannes Brahms retreated to the picturesque seclusion of Baden-Baden in Germany’s Black Forest. It was here that Brahms composed his Trio in E-flat Major for Horn, Violin, and Piano, Op. 40. He worked in a room which, in his words, “looks out on three sides at the dark, wooded mountains, the roads winding up and down them, …

Read more

Michael Torke’s “Unseen” (No. 5): A Shifting Kaleidoscope

by

Last month, we listened to the first single from Unseen, the newest work of American composer Michael Torke. The piece, scored for orchestra, unfolds in nine brief movements, and continues in the direction of Torke’s recent groove-based chamber works, Being (2020), Psalms and Canticles (2021), and Time (2022). The complete album for Unseen will be released on May 10. Unseen, No. 5, which came out yesterday, emerges from a single pulsating rhythmic pattern in the strings. The piece develops …

Read more