Mozart was at the height of his popularity in Vienna when, in March of 1785, he composed the Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467. In a letter dated March 12, two days after the Concerto’s premiere, Mozart’s father, Leopold, wrote to his daughter back home in Salzburg, We never get to bed before one o’clock and I never get up before nine. We lunch at two or half past. …
Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) is one of the earliest and most iconic examples of programmatic music. Vivaldi composed the collection of four violin concerti, each depicting a season of the year, during his tenure as music director at the court chapel of Mantua. Along with eight additional concerti, the works were published in Amsterdam in 1725 under the enticing title, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (“The Contest Between Harmony and …
Kazuyoshi Akiyama, the renowned Japanese conductor, passed away last Sunday, January 26. He was 84. Akiyama made his debut with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra in 1964. The collaboration was so successful that, within two months, he was given the dual posts of music director and permanent conductor. He went on to serve as assistant conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1968-1969), and music director of the American Symphony Orchestra (1973-1978). His reputation …
For fifty years, Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz. 36 was treated much like a forgotten love letter relegated to the bottom of a dusty drawer. Completed in 1908, thirty years before Bartók wrote the monumental work we now know as Violin Concerto No. 2, Sz. 112, the First Concerto remained unpublished until 1956, after the composer’s death. Its posthumous premiere, performed by Hansheinz Schneeberger, occurred two years later in Basel, Switzerland. …
Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) is one of the earliest and most iconic examples of programmatic music. Vivaldi composed the collection of four violin concerti, each depicting a season of the year, during his tenure as music director at the court chapel of Mantua. Together with eight additional concerti, the works were published in Amsterdam in 1725 under the enticing title, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (“The Contest Between Harmony and …
Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 was born out of a deep collaborative friendship. Brahms composed the monumental work during the summer of 1878, a year after completing his Second Symphony, in the southern Austrian lakeside town of Pörtschach am Wörthersee. The Concerto was dedicated to the Hungarian-born violinist, Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), who actively advised the composer on technical aspects of the violin in relation to the score. Joachim, …
Stoika Milanova, the renowned Bulgarian violinist and teacher, passed away on September 29 in Madrid following a long illness. She was 79. Milanova began playing the violin at age three, under the guidance of her father. She went on to study with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. After placing second in the 1967 Queen Elisabeth Competition, Milanova won first prize at the 1970 Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. Between 2005 and …
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