Timothy Judd 
Today is Midsummer’s Eve in Sweden. Held each year around the summer solstice, Midsummer festivities have roots in ancient pagan rituals. With countryside bonfires and maypole dances, Swedes and other Scandinavians mark the beginning of a brief period of warmth and extended daylight after many dark, cold months. This time of year, in northern Sweden the sun never sets, while in the south it sets for only an hour or two. Midsummer’s Eve in …
A keen political and social awareness forms the backdrop for Sound from the Bench, a new album on the Cantaloupe Music label featuring music by American composer Ted Hearne (b. 1982). The album’s four choral works are performed by the Philadephia-based contemporary music choir, The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally. The title track is a 35-minute cantata for chamber choir, two electric guitars and drums which delves into the subject of corporate personhood in …
Gustav Mahler’s music is full of sardonic humor- passages which seem, at once, frivolous and chillingly grotesque. You can hear this in the song cycle, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). The twelve songs, published in 1905, are drawn from a collection of 723 anonymous German folk poems, compiled between 1805 and 1808 by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. The 27-year-old Mahler was conducting in Leipzig when he discovered the anthology. …
Sir Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, completed in 1899, are the musical embodiment of the idea that our lives are all shaped by a close circle of friends and acquaintances. Elgar offered the following description in 1911: This work, commenced in a spirit of humour and continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme and each one attempts …
Earlier this week, news broke that American violinist Paul Zukofsky passed away on June 6 at the age of 73. The son of poet Louis Zukofsky, Paul Zukofsky was a student of Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School. He specialized in twentieth century repertoire, working extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, and John Cage. Let’s listen to Zukofsky’s 1964 recording of Charles Ives’ Violin Sonata No. 4: “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting” with pianist Gilbert Kalish. Begun …
For more than 40 years, the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet has traversed wide and adventurous creative territory- everything from the minimalism of Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich, to film scores (including Requiem for a Dream), and the music of Astor Piazzolla and Jimi Hendrix. The group has commissioned 750 new works. Their over 47 albums include Pieces of Africa (1992), the Mexican-themed Nuevo (2002), and a 2004 Grammy Award-winning recording of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite with …
On Wednesday, we heard Tchaikovsky’s thrilling 1876 orchestral tone poem, Francesca da Rimini. The composer was fascinated with the story from Dante’s Inferno, and first considered turning it into an opera. When that project failed to materialize, Tchaikovsky’s brother, Modest, persuaded him that the subject was ripe for a dramatic tone poem. Sergei Rachmaninov’s opera, Francesca da Rimini, set to a libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, premiered thirty years later in January, 1906. It’s a short work …