Twentieth Century

Jason Vieaux: “Images of Metheny”

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Here is music which seems strangely appropriate for the unofficial end of summer. It’s an excerpt from classical guitarist Jason Vieaux’s 2005 album, Images of Metheny, which pays homage to the music of the Pat Metheny Group. Something interesting happens when Metheny’s glistening, electronic-based, Brazilian-tinged jazz fusion is transferred to the intimacy of the solo guitar. Letter from Home is the final track on the Pat Metheny Group’s 1989 album by the same name. This …

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Elgar’s Cello Concerto: Elegy for a Vanishing World

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The music of Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is often characterized as stately and regal- the musical embodiment of everything British. You can hear this in the majestically celebratory final moments of the Enigma Variations or the Imperial March, Op. 32, music written for the 1897 Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Both pieces propelled Elgar to fame. The stirring Pomp and Circumstance Military Marches provide a glimpse of the self assurance, order, and security of the British …

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Two Hanson Pastorales

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American composer Howard Hanson’s Pastorale for Oboe, Harp, and Strings, Op. 38 begins with a plaintive oboe call. It’s a sound which carries faint nostalgia, evoking ancient connotations of shepherds on hillsides and the serenity of the pasture. But there’s also a hint of anxiety lurking under the surface in this music, which Hanson wrote in 1949 and dedicated to his wife, Peggy. Perhaps an “anxious pastorale” was the only kind possible in the …

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A Snapshot of Janacek with Jessica Lee

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This week, the Cleveland Orchestra announced that Korean-American violinist Jessica Lee has been appointed assistant concertmaster (the fourth chair). Lee is a native of my adopted hometown, Richmond, Virginia. Although our paths never crossed (she left before I arrived in 2002), many of my Richmond Symphony colleagues remember her fondly. A graduate of Juilliard and Curtis, Jessica Lee has been a long-time member of the Johannes String Quartet. (You can see her in action …

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Common Tones in Simple Time: John Adams’ Gradually Shifting Sonic Landscape

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Something really interesting happens to your perception of time, space, and motion when you listen to John Adams’ Common Tones in Simple Time. It’s music which is cinematic and topographical. One critic likened it to the experience of “flying or gliding over a landscape of gently changing colors and textures.” The composer Nico Muhly called it, “distinctly American music: the music of the cross-country road trip, the slowly changing landscape above the quickly moving pavement.”  Muhly’s last …

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Ned Rorem’s “Little Elegy”

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It’s amazing how much can be said in the small space of sixteen measures. A case in point is Little Elegy, a song by American composer Ned Rorem (b. 1923). Rorem, who was born in Richmond, Indiana and will turn 93 in October, produced a series of operas, three symphonies, countless concertos, and chamber works over the course of his long career. But he’s most known for his prolific contribution to a genre …

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Celebrating the Music of Brazil’s Greatest Composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos

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As the eyes of the world turn to Rio this week, let’s explore the music of Brazil’s most celebrated composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). It’s music in which multiple worlds harmoniously collide. The sounds of native Brazilian folk music and the casual strains of Rio’s street bands blend with European modernism and hints of Debussy and Stravinsky. A “body of music in which European sophistication and native wit and energy compete for supremacy” was Bernard Holland’s …

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