Twentieth Century

Bring on the Wascally Wabbit

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The Richmond Symphony season is winding down. But this weekend we’ll be busy performing the popular touring show, Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II with conductor George Daugherty. The show is a tribute to the music of classic Warner Brothers’ cartoons. Generations of viewers gained an exposure to classical music through these zany cartoons, which included: A Corny Concerto  (1943) -an adaptation of Johann Strauss’ Tales from the Vienna Woods and The Blue Danube Pigs in …

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Le Tombeau de Couperin: Post-Apocalyptic Ravel

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Listening to Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, it’s easy to get a sense of altered reality. Outwardly, the original six movement suite, written for solo piano, responds to the horrors and devastation of the First World War, a conflict Ravel experienced first hand as a military ambulance driver. Ravel dedicated each movement of the work, written between 1914 and 1917, to the memory of a friend lost on the battlefield. But, interestingly, …

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A La Bohème Masterclass

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Opera, with its rich blend of music, drama and staging, is one of the most complex art forms on the planet. If you’ve ever been curious about the myriad of subtle details that singers encounter as they bring an opera scene to life, watch the clip below from a young artists’ workshop at London’s Royal Opera House. Conductor Sir Mark Elder coaches soprano Susana Gaspar and tenor Michel de Souza in Marcello and Mimì’s duet …

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Rated R: Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin

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It’s one of the scariest pieces ever written. Both shockingly violent and erotic, Béla Bartók’s “pantomime grotesque” ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, was met with “catcalls, stamping, whistling and booing” at its premiere in Cologne, Germany in November, 1926. The ensuing scandal, which whipped up the fury of Cologne’s clergy and press, among others, caused the mayor, Konrad Adenauer (later the first chancellor of post-war West Germany) to ban the work on moral grounds. The ballet’s plot, …

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Walter Piston’s Second Symphony: A Neglected Mid-Century Gem

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Walter Piston’s Second Symphony, written in 1943, is one of those mid-twentieth century American musical gems that deserves to be heard more often. Following its National Symphony Orchestra premiere in March, 1944, conductor Hans Kindler declared that the symphony, is without even the shadow of a doubt one of the half dozen great works written during the last ten years. It sings forever in my heart and in my consciousness, and it does …

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Paganini Meets Szymanowski

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  Niccolò Paganini’s Twenty-four Caprices were written for solo violin between 1802 and 1817. Each features one or two distinct technical challenges for the violin. In 1918 the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) radically transformed the 20th, 21st and 24th caprices by adding piano accompaniment. Listen to the original Caprice No. 20, which opens with a simple melody accompanied by a D string drone. Then listen to Szymanowski’s slightly haunting version, which drips with an opulent pre-war Viennese …

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Mahler for the First Day of Spring

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Spring won’t let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again. -Gustav Mahler Spring seems to erupt with a raucous fervor from the first notes of Gustav Mahler’s Der Trunkene Im Früling (“The Drunken Man in Spring”). The song is part of Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”), Mahler’s combination symphony and song cycle, completed in 1909. The text comes from Die chinesische …

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