The vibrant Fall colors outside my window are a great excuse to listen to Vivaldi’s third concerto, “Autumn” from “The Four Seasons. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was writing and playing this music at a time when the violin was developing as a virtuosic instrument. There’s a youthful joy in this music, as if he’s saying, “Look what the violin can do!” The key to playing this music well is to make the technical passages sound effortless …
What is it about the greatest music that keeps us coming back? Mozart’s music, written in an era of powdered wigs and aristocracy, speaks to us as powerfully today as when it was written over 250 years ago. It embodies a universal reality which transcends fashion and style. Meanwhile, Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), a respected contemporary of Mozart, is now little more than a historical curiosity. You may remember this scene from the 1984 movie, Amadeus …
Violinist Frank Almond has come out with an exciting new recording which I highly recommend. A Violin’s Life: Music for the ‘Lipinski’ Stradivari was released on April 19, debuting on Billboard’s Top Ten Classical list. Almond is the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and a faculty member at Northwestern University. He is accompanied by pianist William Wolfram. Here is the interesting story of how the “Lipinski” Stradivari, one of the world’s finest violins, came …
Cellist Janos Starker died yesterday in Bloomington, Indiana at the age of 88. You can read about his extraordinary career as a performer and teacher here and here. You may also be interested in this documentary. Here is his recording of the opening movement of Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello, No. 1 in G Major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtCkc8QneAw This 1956 recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Philharmonia …
Listen to this amazing performance of the final movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto played by Itzhak Perlman. You probably know Tchaikovsky as a Romantic composer of lush, fiery, emotionally charged music, but don’t forget that he was also a ballet composer. You may notice a grace and elegance in the rhythm that suggests dance. After you listen, consider what makes Perlman’s performance so exciting. The piece is a tight rope walk …
Here are some inspiring clips featuring the great Russian violinist, Maxim Vengerov. In the first video, Vengerov performs the Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). The Chicago Symphony accompanies, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The concerto is followed by two encores: The Sarabanda from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin (0:35:31) and Eugene Ysaye’s Ballad (0:40:06). Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880) contributed greatly to the development …
Last month I recommended an exciting new recording of Bach violin concertos, just released by Anne Akiko Meyers. Now, let’s listen to a much older performance of the Bach Double Concerto featuring two of the twentieth century’s greatest violinists, Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh. This music was written around 1730 when Bach was working in Leipzig. Bach’s main instrument was the organ, but he was also a fine violinist and he was …