Twentieth Century

Ravel’s “La Valse”: Viennese Twilight

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Maurice Ravel’s glittering orchestral tone poem, La valse, is filled with ghosts of an over-waltzed bygone Vienna. Alex Ross describes the haunting work, completed in 1920, in terms of “Old Europe waltzing in the twilight…This is a society spinning out of control, reeling from the horrors of the recent past toward those of the near future.” Originally titled “Wien,” La valse was written in response to a commission from Serge Diaghilev, impresario …

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Mahler’s Adagietto: Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra

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From 1988 to 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas served as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Claudio Abbado. His first association with the ensemble came in 1970 when he stepped in as a last minute replacement for Gennady Rozhdestvensky. In a recent obituary published by the London Symphony Orchestra, violinist Sarah Quinn recalls, I first worked with MTT nearly 30 years ago, when I was a nervous student sitting at the …

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Remembering Michael Tilson Thomas

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American conductor, composer, and pianist Michael Tilson Thomas passed away at his home in San Francisco last Wednesday following a battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was 81. Known widely as “MTT,” Tilson Thomas served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years. He is credited with elevating the orchestra’s stature and championing adventurous new music. The grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, stars of New …

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Debussy’s “La Puerta del Vino”: A Dreamy Habanera

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Dreamy and seductive, La puerta del Vino (“The Gate of Wine”) is the third piece in Claude Debussy’s Préludes, Book 2 for solo piano, published in 1913. The work is said to have been inspired by a postcard Debussy received from Spanish composer Manuel De Falla, depicting a Moorish gate at the Alhambra Palace in Granada. For the performer, Debussy provides the interpretive marking, “With sudden contrasts of extreme violence and passionate tenderness.” …

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György Kurtág’s “Stele”: A Musical Epitaph

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If Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio, is a story of imprisonment and heroic rescue, Hungarian composer György Kurtág (b. 1926) takes us deeper into the dungeon in his 1994 orchestral work, Stele, Op. 33. Stele is a Greek word for a decorated slab used as a tomb stone or commemorative monument. Set in three brief movements which unfold without pause, Kurtág’s Stele is a sombre musical epitaph for Hungarian composer, conductor, and teacher András Mihály (1917-1993). …

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André Previn’s “I Want Magic” from “A Streetcar Named Desire”: Renée Fleming

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I Want Magic is a key aria from the third act of André Previn’s 1995 opera, A Streetcar Named Desire.  With a libretto by Philip Littell, the work, premiered by San Francisco Opera in 1998, is based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. Renée Fleming appeared in the role of Blanche Dubois, a promiscuous, aging Southern belle who escapes into a veiled fantasy world to avoid confronting the harsh realities …

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Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel”: Excerpts from a Dark Fairytale Opera

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Completed in 1907, The Golden Cockerel was the last opera of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Based on an 1834 poem by Alexander Pushkin, its fairytale plot unfolds over three acts, bookended by a prologue and epilogue. The story involves the bumbling Tsar Dodon. “Advised by an Astrologer, Dodon uses a magical cockerel (a young male rooster) to warn of threats, but his incompetence leads to his sons’ deaths and his infatuation with the treacherous …

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