Month: September 2025

Brahms’ Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118, No. 2: Emanuel Ax

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Completed in 1893, the Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 118 were among Johannes Brahms’ final works. They drift into a world of dreamy introspection and wistful nostalgia. The lengthening shadows of autumn are at hand. Brahms dedicated the collection to Clara Schumann. Op. 118, No. 2, the Intermezzo in A Major, is at once majestic, melancholy, and longing. Marked Andante teneramente (“tenderly”), it has been described as a cradle song. Developing from …

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Bizet’s “Carmen”: Three Celebrated Excerpts

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Filled with infectious melodies and sultry exoticism, Georges Bizet’s 1875 Carmen is one of the most popular and performed operas. Set in Seville, Spain, it tells the tragic story of a free-spirited Romani woman (Carmen) who seduces the soldier, Don José. He leaves his fiancée and deserts the army to be with her, but Carmen soon grows tired of his obsessive love. Carmen leaves Don José for the bullfighter, Escamillo. In the final …

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Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns: A Novel Showcase for an Instrument Reborn

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In the early 19th century, valves began to appear on horns. It was an innovation which expanded the instrument’s virtuosic possibilities. Previously limited to a series of pitches based on the harmonic series, the horn could now glide up and down the chromatic scale. Robert Schumann took notice and was eager to exploit the new technology. He described his Konzertstück (“concert piece”) for Four Horns in F Major, Op. 86 as “something …

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“Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit”: György Kurtág’s Sublime Transcription of Bach

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In an interview, the Hungarian composer György Kurtág (b. 1926) was asked if he is a believer. His answer was uncertain: I do not know. I toy with the idea. Consciously, I am certainly an atheist, but I do not say it out loud, because if I look at Bach, I cannot be an atheist. Then I have to accept the way he believed. His music never stops praying. And how can …

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Remembering Christoph von Dohnányi

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Christoph von Dohnányi, the German conductor and longtime music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, passed away last Saturday, September 6, two days shy of his 96th birthday. Dohnányi was born in Berlin into a high profile family.  His grandfather was Ernst von Dohnányi, a Hungarian composer and pianist. His uncle was the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1945, when Dohnányi was 15 years old, his father and uncle were sent to a …

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Bach’s Cantata, BWV 106, “Actus Tragicus”: Death and Redemption

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Bach’s Cantata, BWV 106 is a gentle and intimate reflection on death and redemption. It is titled, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (“God’s time is the best time”), with the subtitle Actus Tragicus. The Cantata is scored for an unusual combination of instruments which the Netherlands Bach Society calls famous, idiosyncratic, exceptionally beautiful and meaningful…The violins are conspicuous by their absence, but there are two recorders and two viola da gambas, which …

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Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata: Zino Francescatti and Robert Casadesus

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Beethoven composed ten sonatas for violin and piano. The giant of the set, in terms of technical demands and dramatic weight, is Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47, the “Kreutzer” Sonata. The work was dedicated to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer who called it “outrageously unintelligible” and never performed it. Beethoven and the Afro-European violinist George Bridgetower (1778-1860) premiered this convention-shattering music at Vienna’s Augarten Theatre. Beethoven was so late …

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