Timothy Judd

A native of Upstate New York, Timothy Judd has been a member of the Richmond Symphony violin section since 2001. He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music where he earned the degrees Bachelor of Music and Master of Music, studying with world renowned Ukrainian-American violinist Oleh Krysa. The son of public school music educators, Timothy Judd began violin lessons at the age of four through Eastman’s Community Education Division. He was a student of Anastasia Jempelis, one of the earliest champions of the Suzuki method in the United States. A passionate teacher, Mr. Judd has maintained a private violin studio in the Richmond area since 2002 and has been active coaching chamber music and numerous youth orchestra sectionals. In his free time, Timothy Judd enjoys working out with Richmond’s popular SEAL Team Physical Training program.

Paul Dukas’ Fanfare from “La Péri”: Prelude to a Mythical Ballet

by

Paul Dukas’ 1912 ballet in one act, La Péri, is based on a Persian folktale. Iskender, an aged king, steals the magic Flower of Immortality from the hands of the sleeping Péri, a beautiful winged fairylike creature. Immediately, Iskender is filled with the vitality of youth, and consumed with earthly material desires. He falls in love with Péri. Performing a dance which brings her gradually closer, Péri is able to take back …

Read more

Michael Torke’s “Last Year”: Music for Solo Violin and String Orchestra

by

Last Year by American composer Michael Torke (b. 1961) suggests the beautiful melancholy of a cold, overcast winter day. The solo violin’s contemplative melody emerges over frigid, unrelenting pizzicati. As the music develops, the concertmaster picks up the melody and enters into a duet with the soloist. To my ears, there are echoes of the music of Tchaikovsky at its loneliest and most brooding. This is part of a collection of twelve meditative …

Read more

Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, “Turkish”: Isabelle Faust, Bernard Haitink and the Boston Symphony Orchestra

by

For Mozart, a virtuoso keyboardist from the age of 5, the violin was a second instrument. Following his teenage years, Mozart largely abandoned performing publicly on the violin to focus on the piano. He composed his 21 mature piano concertos from age 20 to the final year of his life. Still, by all accounts, Mozart played the violin exceptionally well. In 1756, the year of Mozart’s birth, his father Leopold published a …

Read more

Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2: Dmitry Shishkin with Mischa Damev and the Mariinsky Orchestra

by

After hearing the premiere of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, the pianist and composer Sigmond Stojowski remarked that it “began with Bach and ended with Offenbach.” In a previous post, we explored this brilliant and exhilarating work, which shakes up the traditional concerto form with a slow and solemn first movement, a bright scherzo for the second movement, and a concluding presto. Now, let’s listen to this emotionally …

Read more

Percy Grainger’s “Lincolnshire Posy”: Portraits from the English Countryside

by

Lincolnshire Posy, a folk song suite for band by Australian-born composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961), reveals ancient sounds from the English countryside. In 1905, Grainger, who adapted England as his homeland, traveled to remote villages with pencil, notebook, and phonograph in hand. His efforts to preserve the raw, exotic sounds of the isolated countryside mirrored the work of other composers at the time, including Ralph Vaughan Williams (in England) and Zoltán Kodály and …

Read more

Korngold’s “Die tote Stadt” Finale: Torsten Kerl

by

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1920 opera, Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”) is “a psychological drama about grief, obsession, and acceptance.” (English National Opera) The opera’s synopsis is nearly identical to the plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film, Vertigo. Haunted by the memory of his late wife, Paul obsessively pursues a dancer who closely resembles her. Amid Paul’s psychological descent, reality blurs with hallucination. He believes that he has strangled the dancer, Marietta, with a lock …

Read more

Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” Overture: Tragedy and Comedy

by

As the story goes, Mozart wrote the Overture to Don Giovanni the night before the opera’s Prague premiere on October 29, 1787. “Don’t worry, it’s all up here,” the composer insisted, pointing to his head. Mozart’s wife, Constanze, provided punch and kept him company while he worked through the night. The manuscript was finished at 7:00 AM, and was rushed to copyists. With the ink barely dry, the musicians of the orchestra reportedly …

Read more