“The Stars and Stripes Forever”: Three Historic Recordings

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John Philip Sousa’s most famous march was written on Christmas Day, 1896 during a transatlantic ocean liner voyage. Returning home from a European holiday, the composer had just learned of the death of his band’s manager, David Blakely. Sousa likely waited until he reached land to commit the actual notes to paper. But, according to his own account, the complete march entered his mind in a flash and continued to haunt him throughout …

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Dvořák in Houston

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No, Antonín Dvořák never made it to Houston. When the famous Czech composer ventured onto the Iowa prairie during the summer of 1893, his “New World” Symphony just completed, the sprawling metropolis-to-be was only in its infancy. But Dvořák’s music has taken center stage over the past few years with a series of live-concert recordings by conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the Houston Symphony on the Dutch Pentatone label. In this brief video, Orozco-Estrada talks about the …

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New Release: Handel’s Rarely-Heard “Ottone”

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Ottone, Handel’s 1723 tragic opera, tells the story of a bloody Roman coup and the marriage of the German emperor Otto II with the Byzantine princess Theophanu around the year 1000 AD. It was one of the composer’s most successful hits, coming at a time when Italian opera was wildly popular in London. Handel assembled a superstar cast for the first performances at London’s Haymarket Theatre, where the value of scalped tickets soared. Ottone also …

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Dvořák’s “New World Symphony”: Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic

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On Friday, it was announced that conductor Alan Gilbert will take the reins of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra as its next chief conductor. Between 2004 and 2015, Gilbert served as the ensemble’s principal guest conductor. (Back in January, I wrote about the opening of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra’s spectacular new landmark concert hall, which floats above Hamburg’s harbor like a giant, glistening, icy wave). Alan Gilbert’s final performance as music director of the New York …

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Music For Midsummer’s Eve

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Today is Midsummer’s Eve in Sweden. Held each year around the summer solstice, Midsummer festivities have roots in ancient pagan rituals. With countryside bonfires and maypole dances, Swedes and other Scandinavians mark the beginning of a brief period of warmth and extended daylight after many dark, cold months. This time of year, in northern Sweden the sun never sets, while in the south it sets for only an hour or two. Midsummer’s Eve in …

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Interview: Composer Ted Hearne on His Newest Album, “Sound from the Bench”

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A keen political and social awareness forms the backdrop for Sound from the Bench, a new album on the Cantaloupe Music label featuring music by American composer Ted Hearne (b. 1982). The album’s four choral works are performed by the Philadephia-based contemporary music choir, The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally. The title track is a 35-minute cantata for chamber choir, two electric guitars and drums which delves into the subject of corporate personhood in …

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Mahler’s Evolution From Song to Symphony

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Gustav Mahler’s music is full of sardonic humor- passages which seem, at once, frivolous and chillingly grotesque. You can hear this in the song cycle, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). The twelve songs, published in 1905, are drawn from a collection of 723 anonymous German folk poems, compiled between 1805 and 1808 by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. The 27-year-old Mahler was conducting in Leipzig when he discovered the anthology. …

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