Month: March 2024

Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater: Music of Sorrow and Solitude

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Antonio Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, RV. 621 was first performed during Holy Week in 1712 at Santa Maria della Pace in the Northern Italian city of Brescia. The text, a 13th century poem which has been attributed to numerous authors, is a sorrowful meditation on Mary’s suffering during the crucifixion of Christ. Scored for solo alto (originally castrato) and orchestra, Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater sets only the first ten of the poem’s twenty stanzas. Its …

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Fauré’s String Quartet in E Minor: A Mystical Farewell

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The String Quartet in E minor, Op. 121 was the final work of Gabriel Fauré. Completed in September of 1924, a month before the composer’s death at age 79, it is a quiet musical farewell, solemn, intimate, and lamenting. It unfolds in three movements, all of which return to the same mystical space. In contrast with Fauré’s earlier works, this music is hazy, austere, and less firmly rooted in its tonal center. …

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Remembering Maurizio Pollini

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Maurizio Pollini, the acclaimed Italian pianist whose career spanned more than six decades, passed away on March 23 in a clinic in his native Milan. He was 82. La Scala, the opera house where Pollini frequently performed,  hailed the Grammy-winning pianist as “one of the great musicians of our time and a fundamental reference in the artistic life of the theater for over 50 years.” Pollini began performing publicly at age 11, …

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Sondheim’s “Not While I’m Around”: A Chilling Take on the Soaring Ballad

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Today marks the 94th anniversary of the birth of Stephen Sondheim, who passed away in 2021. Sondheim’s multifaceted songs were always conceived with a dramatic situation in mind. Taken as stand-alone works, they become vignettes of character and drama. Not While I’m Around comes from the second act of Sondheim’s 1979 musical thriller, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in which a vengeful barber gives multiple victims the ultimate close shave, …

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Gershwin’s “An American in Paris”: A “Rhapsodic Ballet” Born in the Jazz Age

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In the spring of 1928, George and Ira Gershwin traveled to Europe for a three-month sojourn. The brothers, among the most celebrated composer-lyricist teams on Broadway, had just finished work on the musical, Rosalie, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, and they relished the time off. It was during this trip that George Gershwin set to work on a commission he had received from the New York Philharmonic. The result was the vividly evocative …

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Michael Torke’s “Unseen” (No. 7): Embracing an Ecstatic Groove

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The first single from Unseen, the newest work by American composer, Michael Torke, was released last week. (The full album will be available on May 10). The excerpt, No. 7 from a piece which unfolds in nine brief movements, delivers a visceral and ecstatic sense of groove. Scored for a larger ensemble, Unseen continues in the direction of Torke’s recent chamber albums, Being (2020), Psalms and Canticles (2021), and Time (2022). The composer writes, Unifying these four projects is the …

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Nikolai Tcherepnin’s Prelude to “La Princesse Lointaine”: A Celebration of Orchestral Color

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Edmond Rostand’s 1895 play, La Princesse Lointaine (“The Distant Princess”), was inspired by medieval romantic legend, and the archetype of the knight errant pursuing an unattainable, idealized love: On the enchanting coasts of Provence, and under its bright blue skies, an echo bears from east to west news of a lady divinely beautiful, the pearl of Byzantium, the famous Princess Melisande. A young troubadour, Prince Geoffroy, hears of the beautiful princess. She …

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