Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Major: Klezmer Strains

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 over the course of 19 days in September of 1944. He had just completed the haunting Second Piano Trio, and (a year earlier) the Eighth Symphony. While the Second World War still raged, the tide had turned, and a Soviet victory over the Nazis was all but assured. Shostakovich found refuge at a “house of rest and creativity,” a …

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Jean Françaix’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano: Music to “Give Pleasure”

Jean Françaix (1912-1997) began composing at the age of six. When he was ten, his first published work caught the attention of the legendary composition teacher, Nadia Boulanger. In a comment to the boy’s parents, Maurice Ravel said, “Among the child’s gifts I observe above all the most fruitful an artist can possess, that of curiosity: you must not stifle these precious gifts now or ever, or risk letting this young sensibility …

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Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major: Sublime and Valedictory

Franz Schubert completed the String Quintet in C Major in the late summer of 1828, less than two months before his death at the age of 31. Sublime and valedictory, it is music which inhabits mysterious and celestial spaces. It achieves the “heavenly lengths” (Robert Schumann’s words) of Schubert’s “Great” Symphony No. 9 in C Major, which was finished two years earlier. We get a sense of the monumental expanse of Bruckner …

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Michael Torke’s “October”: Autumn Music

Although usually free of a literal program, the music of the American composer, Michael Torke, is highly evocative. Even if we don’t share the composer’s experience of synesthesia, in which musical keys are involuntarily associated with specific colors, Torke’s suite of Color Music from the 1980s makes us feel the essence of green, bright blue, and ecstatic orange. Other orchestral pieces such as Run (1992) and Javelin (1994) convey an exhilarating sense of motion, while December suggests …

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Borodin’s String Trio in G Minor: Variations on a Russian Folk Song

Alexander Borodin’s String Trio in G minor for two violins and cello unfolds in a single brief movement. Composed in 1855, it is a set of eight variations on a once popular Russian folk song, Chem tebya ya ogorchila (“What have I done to hurt you?”). A single violin begins the melancholy theme and is joined soon in a canon by the other two instrumental voices. Each variation opens the door to a …

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Gloria Coates’ String Quartet No. 7, “Angels”: Mystical Spaces in Sound

Gloria Coates, a prolific American composer who in 1969 relocated to Munich, passed away last week. She was 89. Coates’ works include 16 symphonies, 11 string quartets, and numerous songs. Additionally, she was active as an abstract expressionist painter, creating art which appeared frequently on her album covers. The music critic, Mark Swed, wrote, “Coates is a master of microtones, of taking a listener to aural places you never knew could exist …

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Dvorák’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major: Melodies Coming in Droves

As with Franz Schubert, Antonín Dvořák was a composer awash in melody. In a letter to a friend, dated August 10, 1889, Dvořák expressed gratitude for this seemingly effortless melodic stream: Do you want to know what I’m doing? My head is full of it. If only one could write it immediately! But it’s no use, I have to go slowly, only what the hand can manage and the Lord God will …

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