Tony Bennett, the American jazz singer, passed away late last week. He was 96, just two days shy of his birthday. A devotee to the Great American Songbook, Bennett was, perhaps, the last exponent of the mid-twentieth century crooner style of singing. Among his signature songs was, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. As styles changed with the rise of rock and roll, Bennett launched a spectacular comeback in the 1980s, …
Gustav Mahler was fifteen or sixteen years old and a student at the Vienna Conservatory when, in 1876, he composed the Piano Quartet in A minor. The work exists as a single movement, cast in sonata form and marked Nicht zu schnell (not too fast). Conceived as the opening movement of a larger abandoned project, it is followed by a thirty-two measure fragment of an unfinished scherzo. This is the only surviving …
The fifteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn already had thirteen string symphonies and a number of chamber works under his belt when, in March of 1824, he completed his first symphony for full orchestra. Mendelssohn was a classicist who built on traditions of the past. He studied, extensively, the works of Mozart and Haydn, as well as the counterpoint of J.S. Bach and Handel. Additionally, the teenage composer absorbed the influences of his contemporaries, most …
The atmospherically titled Sessions, 3 A.M. is the most recent project of American composer, Michael Torke. It is a collection of fifteen pieces for solo piano, performed by the composer. The first track, Nave, was released as a single earlier this month, and the full album will be available in November. In the nave of a cathedral, repeating structural columns rise to a vaulted ceiling and convey a sense of order and symmetry. …
In his later years, the cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, recalled a conversation that he had with Nina Vasilyevna, the wife of Dmitri Shostakovich. Rostropovich wondered what he could do to encourage Shostakovich to write a concerto for the cello. “Slava,” she answered, “if you want Dmitri Dmitriyevich to write something for you, the only recipe I can give you is this—never ask him or talk to him about it.” Eventually, in July of …
Nymphes des bois (“Nymphs of the woods”) is a sensuous, five-voice lamentation by the High Renaissance Franco-Flemish composer, Josquin des Prez (c. 1450-1521). A musical memorial, it was written following the February 1497 death of Johannes Ockeghem, an influential composer with whom Josquin may have studied. The text, based on a poem by Jean Molinet, includes the Requiem Aeternam as a cantus firmus. The first two sections of the piece pay homage to …
André Watts, the celebrated American pianist, has passed away following a battle with prostate cancer. He was 77. At the age of 16, Watts made his national debut, performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic as part of a nationally televised Young People’s Concert. Soon after, Bernstein invited Watts to perform on one of the orchestra’s subscription programs, where he substituted for an …