The solo violin has long been acknowledged as the perfect instrument to express emotions like love, longing, heartbreak, rapture, and romance. The Romantic era lasted from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century and produced numerous works that
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Star Wars and the Nutcracker: The Phenomenon of the Concert Suite August 15th, 2021 For many people, their first (and perhaps only) exposure to the sound of the orchestra has been through film music. We can all think of the big blockbusters and films we cherish from our childhoods, and the big, lush, orchestral -
Symphonies by Women Composers
Farrenc, Gubaidulina, Price, Senfter and Zaimont August 14th, 2021Museums can be magical places as they collect, preserve, interpret and display objects of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance. Exhibitions tell us stories of communities and cultures or highlight particular missions such as civil rights or environmentalism. In essence, museums -
Musicians and Artists: Dufourt and Pollock August 14th, 2021 In 1947, with Lucifer, American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) put down his brush, laid his canvas on the floor, and started to apply his paint by drips and spatters. In this canvas, he also added small bits of gravel to -
Music Is My Life August 13th, 2021 My first recollection of anything was the sound of music. At age five, so my mother told me, I used to sing from behind a curtain in our lounge room to my family. Supposedly, I was too shy to have -
A New Orchestral Sound: Martinaitytė’s Saudade August 13th, 2021 We’re used to the classical orchestral sound – the violins, the winds, the mostly ignored lower brass. Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (b. 1973), a Lithuanian composer currently based in New York, uses the symphony orchestra as her instrument of many voices – -
Musicians and Artists: Hahn and Proust and Others August 12th, 2021 We think of Marcel Proust (1871-1922) mainly as the novelist, author of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past) but in his youth, he was a poet as well. In his -
Listening to Choral Composers
David Wordsworth: “Giving Voice to My Music” August 10th, 2021Conductor David Wordsworth has taken advantage of his connections within the choral world and the fact that everyone’s been home for quite a few months to speak with 24 of the world’s leading choral composers. He started with a list -
Marcel Dupré (1886-1971)
The Organ in the Living Room August 10th, 2021Orgue de Marcel Dupre à Meudon In 1925, Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) bought a large house in the Parisian suburb of Meudon. He quickly installed a house organ that had once belonged to the revered organist Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911). Aristide Cavaillé-Coll