Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001: James Ehnes at Home

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J.S. Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin are technical and musical marvels. They transform the violin, an instrument usually associated with a single melodic line, into a vehicle of dazzling polyphony. The collection begins with the purity and resonance of G minor, a key which is centered on the open fifths of the violin’s lowest two strings. The Adagio which opens the Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV …

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Handel’s Sinfonia in B-flat Major, HWV 339: Ensemble Diderot

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The Sinfonia in B-flat Major, HWV 339 is music of the young George Frideric Handel. It was probably composed in Hamburg between 1704 and 1706, in the years before Handel’s move to London. No autograph manuscript exists, and it remained unpublished until 1979. The Sinfonia unfolds in three movements (fast-slow-fast). As a composer, Handel was skillful at borrowing and adapting existing music. The Sinfonia’s opening movement (Allegro) was taken from the composer’s …

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Dvořák’s “The Noon Witch”: A Slavic Horror Story Told Through Music

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In Slavic mythology, Polednice, the Noon Witch, is a demonic figure who is known to emerge in the middle of the hottest summer days, causing farmers working in the fields to suffer heatstroke or insanity. The poem, Polednice, by the Czech folklorist, Karel Jaromír Erben (1811-1870), tells the story of a mother who, while preparing lunch, is desperate to quiet a young child who screams for attention. She warns her son that …

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Mendelssohn’s Fifth Symphony, “Reformation”: Commemorating the Protestant Revolution

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The Protestant Reformation changed the world forever. Anticipating ideals of the Enlightenment, which swept across Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was a revolutionary movement which challenged the authority of the Catholic hierarchy, elevated the sanctity of the individual, and affirmed his direct relationship with God. The 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn chose to celebrate these exalted ideals, not with a choral work, but with a dramatic symphony. Completed in 1830, the …

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Ives’ “Calcium Light Night”: Sounds of a Nineteenth Century Fraternity Party

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For years, “Calcium Night” was a boisterous tradition at Yale University, where Charles Ives was a student between 1894 and 1898. Students wishing to join a fraternity paraded around the campus, singing their fraternity’s song under the glow of a calcium light, the “limelight” used on theater stages before electricity. (The calcium light was so blinding that it was used during the American Civil War to illuminate artillery targets, and on navel …

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David Diamond’s String Quartet No. 3: From Adventure to Elegy

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Rooted in diatonic and modal harmony, much of the music of American composer David Diamond (1915-2005) unfolds as a dynamic weave of contrapuntal voices. It flows in a seemingly continuous stream, in which one phrase opens into the next without resolution. Listening to this music, we are forced to celebrate the magic of each fleeting moment. Diamond composed his String Quartet No. 3 in 1946, shortly after the end of the Second …

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Clayton Stephenson Plays “Tea for Two”

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Last weekend at the Richmond Symphony we welcomed American pianist Clayton Stephenson. The 25 year old New York native performed Ravel’s glittering and bluesy Piano Concerto in G Major. Two other 20th century masterworks rounded out the program; one depicting the majesty and mystery of the sea (Debussy’s La Mer), and the other rooted firmly in the earth (Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring). A finalist at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano …

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