Month: April 2019

Mozart’s Violin Sonata No. 32: Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt

by

We now have the famous Strinasacchi from Mantua here—a very good violinist. She has much taste and feeling in her playing. I am just now writing a sonata which we will play together in the theatre on Thursday at her benefit concert. Mozart wrote these words in a letter to his father dated April 24, 1784. He referred to Regina Strinasacchi, a young Italian violinist, guitarist, and singer who emerged from Venice’s Ospedale …

Read more

Remembering Soprano Heather Harper

by

The British operatic soprano Heather Harper passed away on Monday at the age of 88. Born in Belfast, Harper came to international attention when she stepped in at ten days notice for the world premiere of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem at Coventry Cathedral in 1962. (Galina Vishnevskaya, for whom the part was written, was denied permission by Soviet authorities on the grounds that Britten’s work was too “political.”) Harper went on to perform …

Read more

New Release: András Schiff Plays Schubert Sonatas and Impromptus

by

Sir András Schiff’s new album takes us back to the sounds Schubert would have heard. The Hungarian-born British pianist performs on a fortepiano made around 1820 by Franz Brodmann. The instrument, once owned by Karl I, the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, is an early version of the piano. In the liner notes, Schiff writes, It is to me ideally suited to Schubert’s keyboard works. There is something quintessentially Viennese in its timbre, its …

Read more

The Marriage of Figaro’s Act II Finale: Mozart’s Dramatic “Tour de Force”

by

In his book, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Charles Rosen points out the amazing compositional feat that occurs at the end of the second act of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Citing its length (four acts) and “moral gravity,” Rosen considers The Marriage of Figaro to be Mozart’s first great “fusion” of opera buffe (or comic opera) with the dramatic weight and sophistication of opera seria: Mozart’s ability to define character by purely musical means, to write for each of the three sopranos (the Countess, …

Read more

Léonin, Pérotin, and the Birth of Polyphony at Notre Dame

by

Why did the devastating fire at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral capture such intense worldwide attention this week? One reason is because of the way Notre Dame connects us to the past by way of nearly a thousand years of history. The stones of this iconic structure, which Victor Hugo described in 1831 as “a vast symphony in stone,” have presided over great plagues, the turmoil of the French Revolution, Napoléon Bonaparte’s self-coronation, and the …

Read more

The Organ of Notre-Dame: Music of Messiaen, Vierne, and Duruflé

by

Yesterday, it was reported that the historic organ of Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral was not damaged in Monday’s devastating fire. The news inspired me to return to The Listeners’ Club archive in search of recordings featuring the mighty instrument. One of the most notable is Olivier Latry’s performance of the famous Toccata from Charles-Marie Widor’s organ Symphony No. 5 in F minor.  Olivier Latry has been one of Notre-Dame’s head organists since 1985. The proceeds from a …

Read more

Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 8: Midori at Carnegie Hall

by

Beethoven’s three Op. 30 Violin Sonatas were completed in the summer of 1802. The fall of that year brought the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, the despairing letter in which Beethoven acknowledged his increasing deafness, his contemplation of suicide, and his ultimate determination to overcome adversity: “I will seize fate by the throat— it will certainly not crush me completely.” We don’t hear any of this psychological turmoil in the sunny Sonata No. 8 in G Major, …

Read more