“For several days, drums and trumpets in the key of C have been sounding in my mind,” wrote Robert Schumann to Felix Mendelssohn in a September, 1845 letter. “I have no idea what will come of it.” These recurring musical reveries were the seeds of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 61, sketched over the course of two weeks in December of 1845, and completed a year later. As he …
Arnold Schoenberg completed the Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 in July of 1906, a year after Mahler finished his Seventh Symphony. Both works can be heard as daring glimpses into a disquieting modernist future. Nineteenth century Romanticism was crumbling under its own weight, and an over-waltzed Vienna was entering the turbulent twilight years of the Habsburg Empire. Mahler delayed the Seventh Symphony’s premiere until 1908, anxiously anticipating the audience’s bewildered response. …
George Frederick Handel composed violin sonatas from his youth (Sonata in G Major, HWV 358) into old age (Sonata in D Major, HWV 371), over a 40 year timespan which took him from Rome to London. Among the nine violin sonatas attributed to Handel, a few are the works of other unknown composers, mislabeled by greedy publishers. Among the authentic works is the Sonata No. 3 in A Major, HWV 361, composed …
Kazuyoshi Akiyama, the renowned Japanese conductor, passed away last Sunday, January 26. He was 84. Akiyama made his debut with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra in 1964. The collaboration was so successful that, within two months, he was given the dual posts of music director and permanent conductor. He went on to serve as assistant conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1968-1969), and music director of the American Symphony Orchestra (1973-1978). His reputation …
Born in Greenville, North Carolina, composer Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) has been called “a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed.” She is active as a violin soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble singer in the group, Roomful of Teeth. At the age of 30, Shaw became the youngest composer ever to be awarded the …
“Ravel is commonly understood as a French composer, but to us he is a French-Basque composer,” says Robert Treviño, Music Director of Spain’s Basque National Orchestra. As a child, Ravel heard Spanish folk songs, sung to him by his mother, who was of Basque heritage, and who grew up in Madrid. This early influence is evident throughout Ravel’s works. Now, a Spanish orchestra, led by a Mexican-American conductor who grew up in …
Giacomo Puccini’s three-act opera, Tosca, blends “intrigue, love, lust, politics, and religion.” (James Conlon) Set in Rome in June of 1800, amid the turbulence of the Napoleonic wars, the action takes place over a breakneck sixteen hours. The story centers around three principal characters: Floria Tosca (soprano), a star opera singer, her lover Mario Cavaradossi (tenor), a painter and republican, and the corrupt and sadistic chief of police, Baron Scarpia (baritone), a …