Happy Birthday, William Primrose

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Today marks the anniversary of the birth of the Scottish violist and teacher, William Primrose (1904-1982). Primrose performed in Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony in the late 1930s and formed the Primrose Quartet. He made numerous recordings with Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, and Arthur Rubinstein. He commissioned and premiered Béla Bartók’s Viola Concerto, a piece which was finished posthumously after the composer’s death in 1945. As a teacher, he contributed several books on viola playing. Primrose’s singing tone …

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“Total Eclipse” from Handel’s “Samson”

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Total eclipse! No sun, no moon! All dark amidst the blaze of noon! Total Eclipse, the aria from Handel’s 1743 oratorio, Samson, isn’t directly referencing the kind of awe-inspiring celestial dance many of us will experience today. The words, taken from John Milton’s tragic closet drama, are Samson’s anguished lament at losing his eye sight. (Milton and Handel both went blind. According to some accounts, this aria moved Handel to tears in the final years of …

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Michael Gordon: Trance No. 4

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On Wednesday, we considered the way three minimalist works bend, stretch, and augment our perception of speed and time. Now, let’s listen to one more gradually unfolding piece of musical minimalism- an excerpt from American composer Michael Gordon’s 1995 Trance.  A single melodic line, played by a number of antiphonal voices, begins to break into twos and threes giving us a sense of sonic “blur.” I love the brash, defiant rock-inspired soundscape of …

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Festina Lente: Three Pieces Which Alter Our Perception of Speed and Time

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“Festina lente” is a classical adage which translates as, “Make haste slowly.” Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) chose this contradictory proverb as the title of a hauntingly mystical 1988 composition for strings and harp. Pärt’s Festina Lente has been described as a musical hologram in which the whole is contained in each part. The piece is made up of a single melodic line which is heard at varying rates of speed. Long, sustained tones in the basses …

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Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico Play Telemann

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Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) wrote extensively for the recorder. One of his most popular works is the Suite for Recorder, Strings & Continuo in A Minor, TWV 55:A2, a seven-movement piece which takes a virtual tour of Europe. The first movement is a French overture (a form first developed in ballet overtures of Jean-Baptiste Lully in the 1650s). The third movement is an Air à l’Italienne, while the final movement, a spirited Polonaise, seems to have …

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Broadway’s Jerry Goldberg Remembers Barbara Cook

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Yesterday, my friend Jerry Goldberg shared with me his memories of Barbara Cook, the legendary singer who passed way earlier this week. Jerry spent decades in the Broadway theater as a pianist and conductor, working on such notable shows as A Chorus Line and rubbing shoulders with some of Broadway’s greatest performers. He worked with Cook on two occasions. The first was in preparation for Cook’s appearance in the leading role of Fanny Brice in Jule Styne’s Funny …

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Remembering Barbara Cook

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Barbara Cook, the Tony Award-winning lyric soprano who came to prominence during Broadway’s Golden Age and later re-emerged as a star of cabaret and concert hall, passed away yesterday. She was 89. Cook was known for her wide vocal range and her magical ability to color musical phrases and shape lyrics. In her later years, her voice darkened and she performed to great acclaim into her eighties. In 1956, she played the …

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