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 …
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 …
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 …
Gustav Mahler was fifteen or sixteen years old and a student at the Vienna Conservatory when, in 1876, he composed the Piano Quartet in A minor. The work exists as a single movement, cast in sonata form and marked Nicht zu schnell (not too fast). Conceived as the opening movement of a larger abandoned project, it is followed by a thirty-two measure fragment of an unfinished scherzo. This is the only surviving …
With the title, Summer Music, Samuel Barber did not have anything specifically programmatic in mind. Instead, the single movement piece for wind quintet conveys a general atmosphere. Barber said, “It’s supposed to be evocative of summer—summer meaning languid, not killing mosquitoes.” Indeed, the lazy opening moments of Summer Music are enveloped in haze and humidity. Fleeting blues strains combine with primal echoes of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. As the piece continues, the musical conversation among …
In 1892, Antonin Dvořák left his beloved Bohemian homeland to accept an invitation to serve as director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music. In his words, Dvořák had been brought to the New World to “discover what young Americans had in them, and to help them express it.” During the nearly three year stay, Dvořák traveled as far west as Spillville, Iowa, and composed some of his most famous works, including …
Menahem Pressler, the pianist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, passed away on May 6. He was 99. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, the 14-year-old Pressler hid from Nazi thugs who vandalized the shop owned by his Jewish parents during the Kristallnacht. In 1939, the family fled and emigrated, first to Israel and then to the United States. In 1946, Pressler won first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San …