Twentieth Century

Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini: Virtuosity with a Twinkle in the Eye

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As a musical form, the “theme and variations” is pure fun. For the composer and performer, it can represent the ultimate display of cleverness—as if to say, “listen to what I can do!” We can imagine Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert showing off at a party with a series of increasingly intricate keyboard variations on a given theme. Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 is filled with this kind …

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Janáček’s “Mládi” (Suite for Wind Sextet): A Memory of Youth

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Czech composer Leoš Janáček had just turned 70 when, in July of 1924, he composed the wind sextet, Mládi, JW 7/10 (“Youth”). In a letter to Kamila Stösslová, Janáček described the work as “a kind of memory of youth.” The four movement suite formed a musical reminiscence of his student days at the Augustinian monastery of St Thomas in the old Moravian city of Brno. For Janáček, these formative years were marked …

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Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus: Concerto for Birds and Orchestra

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In 1915, while working on his Fifth Symphony, Jean Sibelius ventured into the Finnish landscape where he saw sixteen swans take flight into the midday sky, circle, and disappear “into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon.” The experience inspired the pivotal theme of the Symphony’s final movement, which emerges majestically in the horns. Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016), perhaps the most significant Finnish composer of the second half of the 20th century, …

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Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1: “A True Turning Point”

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Arnold Schoenberg completed the Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 in July of 1906, a year after Mahler finished his Seventh Symphony. Both works can be heard as daring glimpses into a disquieting modernist future. Nineteenth century Romanticism was crumbling under its own weight, and an over-waltzed Vienna was entering the turbulent twilight years of the Habsburg Empire. Mahler delayed the Seventh Symphony’s premiere until 1908, anxiously anticipating the audience’s bewildered response. …

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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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Ravel’s Boléro: Robert Treviño and the Basque National Orchestra

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“Ravel is commonly understood as a French composer, but to us he is a French-Basque composer,” says Robert Treviño, Music Director of Spain’s Basque National Orchestra. As a child, Ravel heard Spanish folk songs, sung to him by his mother, who was of Basque heritage, and who grew up in Madrid. This early influence is evident throughout Ravel’s works. Now, a Spanish orchestra, led by a Mexican-American conductor who grew up in …

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Puccini’s “Tosca”: Four Key Excerpts

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Giacomo Puccini’s three-act opera, Tosca, blends “intrigue, love, lust, politics, and religion.” (James Conlon) Set in Rome in June of 1800, amid the turbulence of the Napoleonic wars, the action takes place over a breakneck sixteen hours. The story centers around three principal characters: Floria Tosca (soprano), a star opera singer, her lover Mario Cavaradossi (tenor), a painter and republican, and the corrupt and sadistic chief of police, Baron Scarpia (baritone), a …

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