This week, I’m playing Schubert’s monumental Ninth Symphony (the “Great”). It’s a piece which pushes the envelope towards Romanticism in some interesting ways. Can you think of any other symphony from the 1820s that starts this way with a single melodic line in the horns or uses the trombones as a prominent solo voice? The Ninth was Schubert’s last completed symphony and it was virtually unknown until Schumann and Mendelssohn rediscovered it in …
Pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the Cleveland Orchestra have released a new album featuring two Mozart Piano Concertos (No. 17 and 25). The performances were recorded live at Severance Hall last February. Over the past five years, Uchida and the Cleveland Orchestra have recorded select Mozart Piano Concertos on the Decca label. This is the fourth and final album in the series. (The first won a Grammy in 2011). Mitsuko Uchida recently offered this …
Let’s finish the week with three classic recordings of the charming, bubbly gavotte which concludes Book 1 of the Suzuki Violin repertoire. It’s a piece you may recognize, even if you’re unfamiliar with its composer- the now largely forgotten François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829). Originally written for the 1786 opera, Rosine, Gossec’s Gavotte found its way into this 1938 Looney Tunes film. Gossec, a contemporary of Haydn, wrote numerous operas and orchestral works (Symphony in F Major), …
Every great conductor started out as an accomplished instrumentalist. Look at the biography of Sir Neville Marriner, who passed away yesterday at the age of 92, and you’ll be reminded of this truism. In the 1950s, Marriner performed as a violinist in two celebrated orchestras: the Philharmonia and the London Symphony. For 13 years, he served as second violinist of the Martin String Quartet. He first picked up a baton around age 40. …
It isn’t everyday that a piece of music is so fascinatingly inventive that it actually saves lives. But, apparently, that’s what happened when Franz Joseph Haydn conducted his newest symphony at London’s King’s Theatre on the evening of February 2, 1795. The German painter, composer and Haydn biographer Albert Christoph Dies (1755-1822) provided this account: When Haydn appeared in the orchestra and seated himself at the Pianoforte, to conduct a symphony personally, …
This weekend, Itzhak Perlman will join the Richmond Symphony for our season-opening Masterworks program. The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto is on the program for this already-sold-out concert. And unlike this recent BNY Mellon TV commercial, it’s safe to assume Rhea Perlman will not be attempting to fill in. (That’s the introduction of the Mendelssohn in the background of the commercial). Perlman is one of a handful of musicians who has achieved genuine celebrity status …
A new commission was the last thing the 26-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wanted in the summer of 1782. He had just moved to the musical mecca of Vienna, shaking off the provincialism of his native Salzburg and its “coarse, slovenly, dissolute court musicians.” In addition to a busy teaching and composition schedule, he was getting ready to move to a new house in preparation for his marriage to Constanze Weber. But in July, 1782, …