Romantic Period

Remembering Yuri Temirkanov

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Yuri Temirkanov, the renowned Russian conductor, passed away last Thursday, November 2, in St. Petersburg. He was 84. From the time of his appointment as artistic director in 1988, Temirkanov was credited with restoring the brilliance of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between 2000 and 2006, he served as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Additional titles included principal guest conductor of …

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Mahler’s “Erinnerung”: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Leonard Bernstein

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Composed in the 1880s, prior to the First Symphony, Erinnerung (“Remembrance”) is one of the early songs of Gustav Mahler. It is the second in a collection of fourteen Lieder und Gesänge (“Songs and Airs”) published in 1892. The text, by the German poet, Richard Leander (1830-1889), reflects on the intermingling of love and song. Mahler’s setting is shrouded in dreamy melancholy and quiet anguish. The lamenting melody drifts over a hypnotic stream of …

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Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major: Sublime and Valedictory

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Franz Schubert completed the String Quintet in C Major in the late summer of 1828, less than two months before his death at the age of 31. Sublime and valedictory, it is music which inhabits mysterious and celestial spaces. It achieves the “heavenly lengths” (Robert Schumann’s words) of Schubert’s “Great” Symphony No. 9 in C Major, which was finished two years earlier. We get a sense of the monumental expanse of Bruckner …

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Mussorgsky’s “Mysterious Powers” from “Khovanshchina”: Dolora Zajick

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Modest Mussorgsky’s opera, Khovanshchina, is set in a dark and politically unstable period of Russian history. The five-act “national music drama,” composed in Saint Petersburg between 1872 and 1880, tells the story of the 1682 rebellion, led by Prince Ivan Khovansky and the Old Believers, against Peter the Great. Additionally, the plot involves the disloyalty of the corrupt Prince Vasily Golitsyn. At its center, the conflict is between the continuation of a …

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Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto: A Continuous, Cyclic Drama

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From its opening bars, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 defies convention. We are denied the expansive orchestral introduction which traditionally sets the stage for the entrance of the soloist. Instead, the Concerto is launched into motion with a single A minor chord which lands as a vigorous, attention-grabbing punch. The solo cello enters immediately and sweeps us forward, breathlessly, with the rhapsodic and tempestuous main theme. …

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Remembering Stephen Gould

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Stephen Gould, the world-renowned tenor, passed away on September 19 in Chesapeake, Virginia. After withdrawing from  scheduled appearances at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany over the summer, Gould announced that he had been diagnosed with incurable bile duct cancer. He was 61. A leading interpreter of Wagner, Stephen Gould performed regularly at Bayreuth, where he was hailed as the “Wagner Marathon Man.” Following a musical theater stint which included a Broadway touring …

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Mahler’s First Symphony: The Titan

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Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major is music rooted in nature and song. It is the work of a 28-year-old composer who was rapidly rising as one of Europe’s premier conductors, and who was coming out of a stormy love affair with Marion von Weber, the wife of the grandson of composer, Carl Maria von Weber. It is music which synthesizes the Romantic influences of Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Liszt, and Bruckner, …

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