Specific cities have inspired a huge amount of classical music over the years. Today, we’re looking at a selection of classical works explicitly connected to major cities, examining how each composer responded to each place. Some pieces reflect civic pride
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Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1
Premiered Today in 1912 August 7th, 2018Sergei Prokofiev was still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when he took the stage on 7 August 1912 to premier his 1st Piano Concerto. Since it was his first appearance with an orchestra, and expecting a rather large -
Mapping the Musical Genome
The Merikanto Family August 6th, 2018When a professional musician from Helsinki toured the Finnish countryside in the last years of the 19th century, a member of the audience asked him, “Are there other great composers in Helsinki besides Merikanto?” This delightful anecdote certainly tells us -
The Music Typewriter of Charles Spiro August 5th, 2018 When Joseph Haydn was putting the finishing touches on a symphony during the later stages of his career, he dejectedly wrote. “The piece on which I am now working would have been already finished if it were not that my -
Why Perform? August 5th, 2018 The psychological and emotional reasons why musicians perform and why we feel a need to connect and communicate with audiences is a broad and complex subject. For many musicians, performing is their raison d’être – the need, the will to -
He Had the Kind of Male Beauty That Could Cause Havoc – Albert Einstein August 4th, 2018 We’ve seen him with this tongue sticking out… we’ve seen him concerned with the implications of nuclear energy… and we’ve seen him behind the bow on the violin. But, as an inspiration, we have to take the words of one -
Osvaldo Golijov: Azul
Premiered Today in 2006 August 4th, 2018What do you get if one of classical music’s most beloved performers teams up with one of today’s most popular composers? It really is a no brainer, as Azul (the title means blue in Spanish) combines the collective imagination of -
Rossini: Guillaume Tell
Premiered Today in 1829 August 3rd, 2018Rossini’s last opera, the four-act Guillaume Tell, with a composite French libretto based on Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, was produced at the Paris Opéra on 3 August 1829. However, within three performances the opera’s length of roughly four hours and -
Franz Berwald August 3rd, 2018 Violinist, Composer and Orthopedic Surgeon When the Swedish composer and violinist Franz Berwald (1796-1868) died 150 years ago in Stockholm, hardly anybody noticed. At times he had made a living as an orthopedic surgeon and later as a manager of