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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Music and Nature
Seasons: Spring March 21st, 2019We start the year with Spring, even though any year starts in the throes of Winter, be it the frosty Winter of the Northern Hemisphere, or the burning Winter of the Southern Hemisphere. Spring is awakening, is renewal, is a -
Tcherepnin: Symphony No. 2
Premiered Today in 1952 March 20th, 2019Commissioned by the Associated Music Publishers in New York, Alexander Tcherepnin premiered his second symphony in Chicago on 20 March 1952. It took Tcherepnin a long while to finish the composition, as he labored on the orchestration for the better -
Mozart’s Musical Journey
20 March 1784: Piano Concerto No. 14, K. 449 March 20th, 2019On 20 March 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sent his father the famous list of subscribers who paid an entrance fee of six gulden for three concerts at the Trattnerhof. “Here you have the list of all my subscribers,” he writes, -
Hector Berlioz: Enfant Terrible! March 19th, 2019 Whether we like it or not, Hector Berlioz is primarily associated with a single composition. Everybody knows his Symphonie Fantastique, but his religious works, the dramatic legends, his songs and even his operas are rarely scheduled for performance, and they -
At the Center of the Musical Universe
Antonio Salieri March 18th, 2019Ever since Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) fictionally poisoned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he has gotten some seriously bad press. But as we know all too well, factual information and historical fact have never stood in the way of Hollywood telling a good -
Musicians and Artists: Burney and Reynolds March 17th, 2019 Charles Burney (1726-1814) took on the three roles of music historian, composer, and musician. His first music books, The Present State of Music in France and Italy… (London, 1771) and The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and -
The Salon Concert March 17th, 2019 We are so used to attending concerts in specially-designed large halls that it is easy to forget that until about 1850, most music was experienced in people’s homes, churches, small intimate venues or ‘salons’. The Salon Concert was particularly popular -
Martinů: Julietta
Premiered Today in 1938 March 16th, 2019Haunted by the memory of Julietta, a girl he once spied singing from her window in a seaside holiday town, the Parisian bookseller Michel searches for her in his dreams. He meets a number of characters in increasingly bizarre encounters