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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Composers and their Poets: Beethoven II December 2nd, 2016 Although he set the great poets such as Goethe, Beethoven set one poem by a German writer who was better known for his plays. In music, many of those plays were the basis for great operas: Wilhelm Tell became Rossini’s -
Sunwook Kim December 1st, 2016 ‘The Quality of the Moment’ Sat in a Piccadilly coffee shop, I catch Sunwook Kim just before he heads off to Switzerland to play Beethoven’s first piano concerto with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. -
Unsung Concertos
Sergei Bortkiewicz: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 16 (1913) November 30th, 2016Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952) described himself as a romantic and a melodist, and he had an emphatic aversion of what he called modern, atonal and cacophonous music. His musical style builds on the sounds and structures of Chopin, Liszt and the -
Gesture in Piano Playing, Part 2 November 29th, 2016 In my previous article on gesture, I talked about the physical gestures we can employ to influence and enhance the quality of our sound and how we can create certain effects at the piano, such as staccato, a rich cantabile -
Minors of the Majors
Johannes Brahms: Deutsche Volkslieder November 28th, 2016“Minors of the Majors” invites you to discover compositions by the great classical composers that for one reason or another have not reached the musical mainstream. Please enjoy, and keep listening! -
Movers and Shakers of Music World
The God among Impresarios: Alessandro Lanari (1787-1852) November 27th, 2016Of the three great impresarios of 19th century Italy (Domenico Barbaja, Alessandro Lanari, Bartolomeo Merelli), Lanari stands out as the one who commissioned the most operas that have lasted to this day: Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and L’Elisir d’Amore, -
Mahler beyond the Couch November 27th, 2016 The 2010 film “Mahler on the Couch” provided a fictional reconstruction—dressed up as a grand historical drama—of the famous therapy session involving Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler! We do know that the meeting actually did take place, but how did -
Composers and their Poets: Beethoven I November 25th, 2016 When we think of Beethoven (1770-1827), we think of his orchestral music – great symphonies that brought a century-old genre forward. By the end, it wasn’t enough to have a large orchestra, he also had to have a chorus as