New Release: Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé’s “For the Fallen” Features Elgar, Bax

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I can still remember, vividly, Mark Elder’s concerts with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra back in the 90s. I was a teenager at the time, and Elder was a young, up-and-coming British conductor who had risen to prominence as music director of the English National Opera. With a reputation as an “orchestra builder,” Elder succeeded David Zinman in Rochester. His programming was innovative (including concert performances of operas) and well constructed. He spoke eloquently …

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Jason Vieaux: “In a Sentimental Mood”

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American guitarist Jason Vieaux is our guest soloist for this weekend’s Richmond Symphony concerts. His Grammy-winning 2014 album, Play, includes this beautifully atmospheric performance of Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood: An interesting story surrounds the 1935 composition of this famous jazz standard. According to Ellington, We had played a big dance in a tobacco warehouse, and afterwards a friend of mine, an executive in the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, threw a party for …

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Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony: An Overlooked Gem

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When it came to writing symphonies, Beethoven seems to have ascribed to the wisdom of moderation. Beethoven’s odd numbered symphonies (especially, beginning with the Third) were big, heroic game changers. The first audiences must have been stunned by their bold innovations and their often ferocious, titanic energy. By contrast, the often-neglected even numbered symphonies are sometimes described as more “classical.” They open up a strikingly different, but equally thrilling, world. One of …

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Philip Glass at 80

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Tomorrow marks the 80th birthday of American composer Philip Glass. In celebration, conductor Dennis Russell Davies will lead the Bruckner Orchestra Linz in a world premiere performance of Glass’ Symphony No. 11 at Carnegie Hall. Along with Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young, Philip Glass was a leading voice in the American minimalist movement which emerged in the late 1960s and 70s. His music from this period, which includes the gradually unfolding Music in Similar Motion (1969) and …

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Semyon Bychkov on “The Tchaikovsky Project”

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This weekend, Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov leads the New York Philharmonic in a festival called Beloved Friend: Tchaikovsky and His World. It’s a small piece of The Tchaikovsky Project, which includes a cycle of recordings, released on the Decca label, featuring Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic. In a recent interview, Bychkov talked about the project with Richmond Public Radio’s Mike Goldberg. Released in October, The Tchaikovsky Project’s first recording begins at the end of the composer’s output with …

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Remembering Estonian Choral Composer Veljo Tormis

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The prolific Estonian composer Veljo Tormis passed away last Saturday. He was 86. Tormis’ music, deeply rooted in the ancient Estonian folk tradition, includes more than 500, mostly a cappella, choral compositions. His music played a role in the revolutionary movement for Estonian independence from the Soviet Union. (The documentary, The Singing Revolution, chronicles the spontaneous, overnight, mass singing demonstrations which unfolded at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds in June, 1988). Veljo Tormis described the …

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A Flash of Operatic Drama in Chopin’s Second Concerto

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There’s a strange flash of operatic drama in the middle of the otherwise dreamy second movement of Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It’s a moment which caught my attention recently, while I was playing this piece in the orchestra. Chopin, the Polish virtuoso pianist and Romanticist, isn’t a composer we often associate with opera. But, while living in exile in Paris, following Poland’s unsuccessful 1830 November Uprising against the Russian Empire, Chopin frequently attended …

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