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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Embodied Sexuality
Georges Bizet: Carmen May 29th, 2014Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen was first produced at the Vienna Opera on 23 October 1875, with an extremely curious Johannes Brahms in the audience. Brahms had been aware of the scandalous Parisian premiere, summarized by a local critic. “Mr. Bizet -
Pomp and Circumflex May 28th, 2014 We’ve looked at English ceremonial music – now let’s cross La Manche and look at French music of the same kind. A king such as King Louis XIV and centrality of the court at Versailles meant that there was the -
Sails in the Harbor
Sydney Opera House May 27th, 2014The Sydney Opera House is easily one of the most iconic and readily recognized performing arts centers in the world. Of course it’s not really a single venue, but a building complex that houses multiple performance spaces. It plays host -
Richard Strauss and the Rise of Modernity May 25th, 2014 Six years after the dismal failure of his opera Guntram in Munich, Richard Strauss collaborated with the librettist Ernst von Wolzogen on a project he hoped would exact revenge on the bourgeois provincialism of his hometown. Feuersnot (In need of -
In touch with Jorja Fleezanis
Concertmaster and Prophet May 24th, 2014Jorja Fleezanis became one of two female concertmasters in the country when the Minnesota Orchestra recruited her in 1989. After twenty years in that position, the longest tenured concertmaster in the orchestra’s history, she joined the faculty of Indiana University -
The Supernatural in Music
XI. Black Angels: Electrified Fear May 24th, 2014The American composer George Crumb took the idea of the classical string quartet and turned into an electric ensemble of darkness. His 1971 work, Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land, extended the string quartet by electrifying it, and -
The Dossier Richard Strauss May 23rd, 2014 The Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of National Socialist ideology was launched after the end of the Second World War. The directives of “denazification” identified specific groups and -
An Alpine Symphony
Richard Strauss May 22nd, 2014Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony is seen as one of the peaks of his orchestral writing (oh dear, I’m on the puns already…). Lasting almost an hour, written for a huge orchestra, it follows the dramatic story of a journey up