Romantic Period

Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor: Exploring Dreams and Passions

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Gabriel Fauré’s motivation for writing the Piano Quartet No. 2, in G minor, Op. 45 remains something of a mystery. There was no commission. The work appears to represent the composer’s personal exploration of the magical possibilities regarding an unusual combination of instruments: piano, violin, viola, and cello. Only Mozart, and a handful of other composers, had ventured into this territory. Arriving seven years after Fauré’s First Piano Quartet, the G minor …

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Liszt’s “Au Lac de Wallenstadt” from “Années de Pèlerinage”: Sighing Waves

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…Thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring. These lines from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage form the poetic caption for Franz Liszt’s Au lac de Wallenstadt (“At Lake Wallenstadt”). Following the exalted La chapelle de Guillaume Tell, with its distant Alpine horn calls, Au lac de Wallenstadt is the second movement of Liszt’s …

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Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons”: March, Song of the Lark

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In the 19th century, writers such as Charles Dickens commonly published books in monthly installments which appeared in popular periodicals. Published on the first day of each month in 1876 in the St. Petersburg music journal, Nuvellist, Tchaikovsky’s piano cycle, The Seasons, Op. 37a reached listeners in a similar way. Subtitled “12 characteristic scenes,” the atmospheric works are miniature tone paintings. Tchaikovsky composed them concurrently with the ballet, Swan Lake. In this era before recordings, …

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Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Paganini: Musical Athleticism

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Niccolò Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin has provided an irresistible blueprint for numerous composers. Most famously, its jaunty, infectious melody inspired the 24 variations of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43. Nearly seventy years before Rachmaninov, in 1863, Johannes Brahms composed his own Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35. The work is organized in two books, each made up of fourteen blazingly athletic variations, and …

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Schumann’s Six Fugues on B-A-C-H and Six Canonic Etudes: Contrapuntal Explorations

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“What art owes to Bach is to the musical world hardly less than what a religion owes to its founder,” said Robert Schumann. (Eric Frederick Jensen) Championed in part by Mendelssohn, the first half of the 19th century saw a revival of interest in the music of J.S. Bach. Nine days after their wedding, Robert and Clara Schumann began an extensive study of Bach’s counterpoint together. The occasion was documented by Clara …

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Schumann’s Second Symphony: Drums, Trumpets, and Triumph

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“For several days, drums and trumpets in the key of C have been sounding in my mind,” wrote Robert Schumann to Felix Mendelssohn in a September, 1845 letter. “I have no idea what will come of it.” These recurring musical reveries were the seeds of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61, sketched over the course of two weeks in December of 1845, and completed a year later. As he …

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Remembering Kazuyoshi Akiyama

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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 …

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