Martha Argerich

Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto: The Greatest C Major Riff of All Time?

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Musician, teacher, and producer Rick Beato shares some interesting insights into Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto in a recent video at his channel, Everything Music. He calls this passage from the first movement “the greatest riff of all time written with only the white keys.” It’s a stream of notes which seems as fluid and inevitable as any jazz keyboard riff- an unrelenting, anticipation-building, virtuosic romp, completely in white-key C major until one stray G-sharp sneaks in at the last …

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Aida Garifullina: Maria’s Lullaby from Tchaikovsky’s “Mazeppa”

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Over the past few weeks, we have explored a few of the albums honored with a 2017 ECHO Klassik- Germany’s prestigious annual classical music awards. Today, we’ll turn our attention to the debut album of Russian operatic soprano Aida Garifullina. The recording, simply titled Aida Garifullina, won in the category of “Solo Recording/Voice (Arias/Recitals).” It’s a compilation of arias and songs by composers including Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov. Garifullina is accompanied by Vienna’s ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien and conductor Cornelius …

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The Mercurial Romanticism of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 73

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Listening to Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 forces us to live in and enjoy the moment. The three short “Fantasy Pieces,” written in just over two days in February, 1849, are filled with abrupt, slightly schizophrenic, changes in mood. Moments of deep introspection, followed by bursts of euphoria, remind us of Florestan and Eusebius, the split personalities which inhabit much of Schumann’s music. In the Fantasy Pieces, each delightful and unexpected harmonic shift whisks …

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