We all know Bess’ song from Porgy and Bess: ‘Summertime, and the Livin’ is Easy’. We decided to do a survey of what other composers thought about summer and were surprised at the very different moods and modes composers used
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In Love With the Music of Reynaldo Hahn February 24th, 2023 Reynaldo Hahn: Si mes vers avaient des ailes (Dilbèr, soprano; Ilkka Paananen, piano) Si mes vers avaient des ailesVictor Hugo If my verses had wingsEnglish Translation © Richard Stokes from A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000) Mes vers fuiraient, doux -
Why Musicians Enjoy Puns and Quips February 24th, 2023 Musicians, like so many others, enjoy jokes, especially those that are puns related to music, composers, and musicians. Backstage, even onstage during rehearsals, these anecdotes, puns, and gags fly. Perhaps it’s because we spend so much time in a practice -
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24 February: Arcadi Volodos Was Born February 24th, 2023For many critics, Arcadi Volodos is the next legendary pianist. “He has everything; imagination, color, passion, and a phenomenal technique to carry out his ideas.” A San Francisco critic raves, “his fingers fly around the keyboard, faster and more accurately -
Musicians and Artists: Tōru Takemitsu and Cornelia Foss February 23rd, 2023 Tōru Takemitsu: Mori no naka de (In the Woods) German-born American painter Cornelia Foss (b. 1931) has works in the leading art museums in the US and specializes in paintings and portraits done around New York and Long Island. Her -
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23 February: George Frideric Handel Was Born February 23rd, 2023The Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Fame is nothing but the sum total of misunderstandings that cling to a name.” George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) is almost universally acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of his age, -
Hugo Wolf February 22nd, 2023 120 years ago, on 22 February 1903, Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) died in an insane asylum after trying to drown himself in October 1898. He had last appeared in concert on February 1897, but the impending paralysis of tertiary syphilis was -
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21 February: Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le Toit Was Premiered February 21st, 2023By his mid-20s, Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was already an international musical superstar. His musical direction was well established early on, as he writes, “My musical education was influenced exclusively by the Latin-Mediterranean cultural milieu, which is readily explained by the -
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20 February: Riccardo Chailly was Born February 20th, 2023An old Chinese Proverb reads, “Giving your son a skill is better than giving him one thousand pieces of gold.” Such was certainly the case with Riccardo Chailly, born on 20 February 1953 into a highly musical family of Romagnol