Twentieth Century

Michael Torke’s “Run”: A Shifting Musical Panorama

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Run is a brief and exhilarating orchestral showpiece written by American composer Michael Torke in 1992. The work is filled with boundless energy and forward motion. It evokes a bright, gradually shifting landscape. The work is launched into motion with string flourishes and the crack of the woodblock. The short, repeating motif takes shape through a pulse-driven additive process reminiscent of the music of Steve Reich. Here is the composer’s program note: Run …

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Britten’s “Young Apollo”: Fanfare for Piano, String Quartet, and String Orchestra

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Young Apollo, Op. 16 is blazing, exuberant music of the 25 year old Benjamin Britten. Composed in the summer of 1939 in response to a commission from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it is a striking fanfare for piano, string quartet, and string orchestra. The three disparate musical forces frolic in the bright sunshine of unending A major. The title refers to a line in John Keats’ unfinished poem, Hyperion.  In his program …

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“Music, When Soft Voices Die”: Frank Bridge’s Setting of Shelley

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“Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory.” These are the opening lines of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous 1824 poem, a meditation on the eternal nature of memory, sensation, and love. English composer Frank Bridge (1879-1941) created an a cappella choral setting of the poem in 1907. The opening phrases pay homage to the English madrigal tradition. Visions of mortality are painted tonally with a plaintive sighing gesture. The final notes …

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Heifetz Plays Gershwin: Selections from “Porgy and Bess”

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Jascha Heifetz and George Gershwin were close friends who often performed together. The two celebrated American musicians shared a common Russian-Jewish heritage. Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, while Heifetz was born in Vilnius, Lithuania. Escaping the Russian Revolution, he emigrated to the United States in 1917, and became a citizen in 1925. Heifetz urged Gershwin to compose a violin concerto, but the project never materialized. Gershwin’s life was cut short at age …

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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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