The 2018 Oscars: Nominees for Best Original Score

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The 90th Academy Awards ceremony was held last Sunday. French composer Alexandre Desplat’s music for The Shape of Water was awarded Best Original score. Here are excerpts from the five scores nominated for this category for 2018: “The Shape of Water” (Alexandre Desplat) Arpeggios rise and fall in continuous waves of sound in Desplat’s music for the opening scene of The Shape of Water. The composer discusses the music for this love story between a mute …

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New Release: Seong-Jin Cho Plays Debussy

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On Wednesday, we heard the vague, dreamlike associations of light and water in Claude Debussy’s three orchestral Nocturnes. As a followup, here are three excerpts from a recently-released Debussy album by Korean pianist, and 2015 International Chopin Competition-winner, Seong-Jin Cho. The album includes three suites for solo piano: the Suite bergamasque, Children’s Corner, and Images, as well as the solo piano work, L’isle joyeuse. Debussy’s six Images were written between 1901 and 1905. The first, Reflets dans l’eau (“Reflections in the Water), …

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Debussy’s “Nocturnes”: Impressions of Color and Light

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Despite their descriptive, imaginal titles, Claude Debussy’s three orchestral Nocturnes transcend the concrete and the literal. Instead, they inhabit a colorful, atmospheric dreamscape in which senses blend together in the ultimate synesthesia. Debussy’s resplendent sonic world almost allows us to “feel” colors and “hear” light. This is music which floats in a sumptuous present, without concern for forward motion towards a distant, future goal. It’s also music which moves in a radically different direction …

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Nahre Sol: “Good Night I Love You Bye”

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Nahre Sol is a pianist and composer whose music blends elements of “improvisation, traditional Western form and harmony, jazz harmony, and minimalism.” Her online video series, “Practice Notes” provides an educational resource for piano students. I discovered her music during her recent conversation with Rick Beato. Good Night I Love You Bye opens with a warm, quietly-embracing melody, propelled forward with crystalline, Bach-like contrapuntal lines. A series of exuberant musical adventures follows this opening statement. The …

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The 2018 Classical Grammys

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We’ll finish the week with an overview of last Sunday’s 60th Annual Grammy Awards in the classical categories. As you’ll see below, it was a good night for Second Viennese twentieth century composer, Alban Berg. Best Orchestral Performance Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Barber: Adagio — Manfred Honeck, conductor (Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) This album was recorded live in June (Shostakovich) and October (Barber) of 2013. It’s the second Pittsburgh Symphony album to be honored …

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Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony: An Unfinished Farewell

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Feierlich, misterioso…This is the marking Anton Bruckner inscribed above the first movement of Symphony No. 9 in D minor. Indeed, from this opening movement’s first, quietly haunting sounds, we’re drawn immediately into a place of “solemn mystery.” Hushed, shivering tremolo emerges out of silence, followed by a multi octave-deep D in the winds. Quiet, persistent fanfares in the trumpet and timpani intone ghostly echoes of a distant battlefield. Perhaps Bruckner was the …

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Four Nations Plays Bach

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The Hudson Valley, New York-based Four Nations Ensemble has released an exciting Bach recording as part of a new education initiative I detailed last month (Harpsichordist Andrew Appel on J.C.F Fischer’s Passacaglia). Here is the last of J.S. Bach’s six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, (the Sonata in G major BWV 1019), performed by Quebec violinist Olivier Brault and harpsichordist Andrew Appel. The duo intends to record the other five sonatas in coming months. Bach frequently …

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