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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Caroline Shaw’s “Blueprint”: Imagining Structure

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Born in Greenville, North Carolina, composer Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) has been called “a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed.” She is active as a violin soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble singer in the group, Roomful of Teeth. At the age of 30, Shaw became the youngest composer ever to be awarded the …

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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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Mozart’s Flute Quartet No. 1 in D Major, K. 285: Music for a Mannheim Merchant

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During the winter of 1777, Mozart spent three months in Mannheim, the German city which was renowned for having one of Europe’s most elite and cutting edge orchestras. Months earlier, the 21-year-old composer had resigned from a position which he found stifling in his hometown of Salzburg. Accompanied by his mother, he set out on a job hunt that would take him to Paris. Ultimately, the trip ended in disappointment. But while …

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Philadelphia’s Wanamaker Organ: Power, Warmth, and Lyricism

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Last week, Macy’s announced that it is closing its Center City Philadelphia store in the iconic Wanamaker’s Building. Built between 1904 and 1911 during the ascendancy of Wanamaker’s department store, the magnificent Beaux-Arts structure was designed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. Flanked by majestic columns, and clad in polished marble, its soaring seven-story tall central atrium culminates in a Renaissance-style mosaic ceiling. For shoppers, this Grand Court functioned as a bustling indoor …

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Esa-Pekka Salonen’s L.A. Variations: A “Dionysian Hymn to the Orchestra”

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Esa-Pekka Salonen has said that composing and conducting are “two sides of the same coin.” The Finnish maestro, who has been music director of the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, follows in a long tradition of composer-conductors which includes: Mendelssohn, Weber, Wagner, Mahler, Strauss, Bernstein, and Boulez. For some, the two equally demanding roles have led to conflict, and to the …

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