On Valentine’s Day this past February, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers released her newest CD, “Air” The Bach Album, featuring Bach’s A minor and E major Concertos, as well as the “Double” Concerto, accompanied by Steven Mercurio and the English Chamber Orchestra. This recording, which I highly recommend, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Charts and has been a best seller on iTunes and Amazon. It follows on the heels of other excellent …
My last post featured music constructed around a repeating bass line, or ostinato. We listened to Johann Pachelbel’s famous Canon in D as well as passacaglias by Handel and Bach. Now, let’s return to the ostinato with another type of musical composition that was popular in the Baroque period, the chaconne. Like the passacaglia, the repeating bass line of the chaconne gave Baroque composers a great opportunity to write endlessly inventive variations. …
An ostinato is a musical motif or phrase that is persistently repeated. Here are three pieces from the Baroque period that are constructed around a repeating bass line known as a basso ostinato, or ground bass. In each case, the bass line provides the framework for a set of increasingly complex and thrilling variations. It’s as if the composer is saying, “Listen to how clever and inventive I can be!” Canon in D…Johann …
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, winter is slowly beginning to loosen its grip. As we look forward to warmer temperatures and longer days, let’s enjoy music from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Written in 1723, The Four Seasons is a collection of violin concertos, each depicting a different season of the year. A concerto is a composition, usually in three movements (Fast, Slow, Fast) written for a solo instrument (or …