Month: November 2024

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique”: Juraj Valčuha and the Houston Symphony

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Founded in 1913 by philanthropist Ima Hogg, the Houston Symphony has long been regarded as one of America’s major league orchestras. Its past music directors include Andrés Orozco-Estrada (2014–2022), Christoph Eschenbach (1988–1999), André Previn (1967–1969), John Barbirolli (1961–1967), and Leopold Stokowski (1955–1961). Stokowski and the Houston Symphony gave the American premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, “The Year 1905,” and made the first commercial recording of the work. On the recording, the …

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Remembering Pavel Karmanov

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Pavel Karmanov, the Russian post-minimalist composer and rock musician, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last Saturday, November 23. The cause of death was heart failure. He was 54 years old. Born in Siberia, Karmanov was once described as “a romantic dressed in a minimalist gown.” A flutist and pianist, he was a permanent member of the alternative band, Vezhlivy Otkaz from 2000 until 2017. In past posts at The Listeners’ Club, we have explored …

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Bartók’s First Violin Concerto: A Portrait of Idealized Love

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For fifty years, Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz. 36 was treated much like a forgotten love letter relegated to the bottom of a dusty drawer. Completed in 1908, thirty years before Bartók wrote the monumental work we now know as Violin Concerto No. 2, Sz. 112, the First Concerto remained unpublished until 1956, after the composer’s death. Its posthumous premiere, performed by Hansheinz Schneeberger, occurred two years later in Basel, Switzerland. …

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Ives’ “The Unanswered Question”: Perennial Mysteries in a Cosmic Expanse

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The fifth installment of Leonard Bernstein’s 1973 Harvard lecture series, The Unanswered Question, takes on “The Twentieth Century Crisis.” Drawing upon linguistics and its subcategory of phonology, Bernstein outlines an aesthetic crisis: the gradual over-saturation of ambiguity which, amid increasing chromaticism, stretched tonality and 19th century Romanticism to the breaking point, resulting in the twelve-tone music pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg. Underlying the aesthetic crisis is a deeper and more terrifying reality: With the …

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Remembering György Pauk

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György Pauk, the renowned Hungarian violinist and teacher, passed away last Monday, November 18 in Budapest. He was 88. Pauk lost both of his parents to the Holocaust. He was raised by his grandmother in a Budapest ghetto where he experienced “hunger, cold, and fear.” Pauk began playing the violin at the age of 5. At 13, he was admitted to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where his teachers included violinist …

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Walter Piston’s Sinfonietta: American Mid-Century Neoclassicism

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It can be argued that, far from being restrictive and stifling, rules and parameters create conditions for the ultimate creativity. Such is the case with the music of American composer Walter Piston (1894-1976), with its sublime contrapuntal lines and adherence to neoclassical structure and form. Born in Rockland, Maine, Piston taught for many years at Harvard University, and contributed three significant text books on the technical building blocks of music: Harmony (1941), Counterpoint (1947), …

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Brahms’ Tragic Overture: Mysterious and Melancholy

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By habit, Johannes Brahms often composed pairs of contrasting works in the same genre. Brahms’ two concert overtures, written during the summer of 1880, follow this pattern of compositional yin and yang. The impetus for the witty and celebratory Academic Festival Overture, a collection of frolicking student songs intricately developed, was an honorary doctorate, awarded to the composer by the University of Breslau. Tragic Overture, Op. 81 formed the companion piece. Describing …

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