The String Quartet in E minor, Op. 121 was the final work of Gabriel Fauré. Completed in September of 1924, a month before the composer’s death at age 79, it is a quiet musical farewell, solemn, intimate, and lamenting. It unfolds in three movements, all of which return to the same mystical space. In contrast with Fauré’s earlier works, this music is hazy, austere, and less firmly rooted in its tonal center. …
Seiji Ozawa, the internationally renowned Japanese conductor, passed away in Tokyo last week (February 6, 2024) as a result of heart failure. He was 88. Ozawa’s 29-year tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra began in 1973. Prior to the appointment, he served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1965-1969) and the San Francisco Symphony (1970-1977). In 1984, he founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Matsumoto, Japan. In …
In 1880, immediately following the completion of his First Piano Quartet, Gabriel Fauré began work on a sonata for cello and piano. Often, when composing a new chamber work, Fauré began with the slow movement. Ultimately, the sonata failed to materialize, but the intended slow movement was published as a stand-alone piece—the solemn and lamenting Élégie, Op. 24. As with the First Piano Quartet, the Élégie is set in C minor. Its …
Gabriel Fauré’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 109 inhabits a world of elegance and dreamy nostalgia. It is music characterized by soft edges, buoyant motion, and an effortless sense of melody. Composed in the summer of 1917, this is one of two cello sonatas Fauré completed in the final decade of his life. During these years, Fauré, who served as the head of the Paris Conservatoire until 1920, continued to compose despite …
María Dueñas, the exceptional 20-year-old Spanish violinist, was our guest soloist at the Richmond Symphony last weekend. She performed Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. Dueñas was the first prize winner in the 2021 Menuhin Violin Competition, which was hosted in Richmond. In 2022, she signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. She performs on the 1736 “Muntz” Guarneri del Gesú violin. Paganini: Caprice No. 4 The fourth of Niccolò Paganini’s Twenty Four Caprices …
Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1898 French symbolist play, Pelléas and Mélisande, centers around a doomed love triangle. Set in an ancient ruined castle and a dense forest, it “expresses a sense that human beings understand neither themselves nor each other nor the world.” (Bettina Knapp) Joan Pataky Kosove writes, Pelléas et Mélisande tells the story of a young and beautiful girl who marries one man, falls in love with another, and dies. But the play …
Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15 inhabits a magical world of shimmering colors and buoyant, effortless motion. Amid the emotional excesses of nineteenth century Romanticism, this is music made up of pristine lines and classical elegance. It unfolds with a sublime simplicity and directness. Its expression arises from a kind of emotional detachment. Set in the sunniest and most blissful C minor imaginable, undercurrents of quiet lament …