Sonny Rollins, one of the greatest jazz saxophonists of all-time, passed away on Monday at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was 95. A statement on his website included this quote of Rollins reflecting on death: I think when the creative person ends, he continues in the next existence. I’m a person who believes this life isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything. A spiritual person doesn’t feel like that. Rollins grew …
Young Apollo, Op. 16 is blazing, exuberant music of the 25 year old Benjamin Britten. Composed in the summer of 1939 in response to a commission from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it is a striking fanfare for piano, string quartet, and string orchestra. The three disparate musical forces frolic in the bright sunshine of unending A major. The title refers to a line in John Keats’ unfinished poem, Hyperion. In his program …
“Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory.” These are the opening lines of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous 1824 poem, a meditation on the eternal nature of memory, sensation, and love. English composer Frank Bridge (1879-1941) created an a cappella choral setting of the poem in 1907. The opening phrases pay homage to the English madrigal tradition. Visions of mortality are painted tonally with a plaintive sighing gesture. The final notes …
Robert Schumann composed the dreamy and mercurial Fantasiestücke (“Fantasy Pieces”), Op. 73 in a burst of creativity over the course of two days in February of 1849. Set in A major and A minor, the work was first conceived for the melancholy, nostalgic voice of the clarinet. Later, Schumann indicated that the clarinet part could be performed on violin or cello. The three movements unfold in A-B-A song form and flow together without …
English soprano Felicity Lott passed away on May 15 following a battle with cancer. She was 79. Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Lott began singing lessons at age 12. While studying at the Royal Academy of Music she met pianist Graham Johnson who would become her lifelong accompanist. Her operatic debut came with the English National Opera in 1975 when she sang the role of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Appearances at …
Jascha Heifetz and George Gershwin were close friends who often performed together. The two celebrated American musicians shared a common Russian-Jewish heritage. Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, while Heifetz was born in Vilnius, Lithuania. Escaping the Russian Revolution, he emigrated to the United States in 1917, and became a citizen in 1925. Heifetz urged Gershwin to compose a violin concerto, but the project never materialized. Gershwin’s life was cut short at age …
Maurice Ravel’s glittering orchestral tone poem, La valse, is filled with ghosts of an over-waltzed bygone Vienna. Alex Ross describes the haunting work, completed in 1920, in terms of “Old Europe waltzing in the twilight…This is a society spinning out of control, reeling from the horrors of the recent past toward those of the near future.” Originally titled “Wien,” La valse was written in response to a commission from Serge Diaghilev, impresario …