Popular Posts

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Michael Buble and Blake Shelton - Home ( Live 2008 ) HD



#nowwatching Natalie Cole LIVE - Unforgettable



White Christmas - Percy Faith & His Orchestra


Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Mariah Carey Ft. Phil Collins - Against All Odds (Live)



John Williams | In Vienna with Anne-Sophie Mutter


REMEMBRANCES" from Schindler's List John Williams, composer and conductor Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin Wiener Philharmoniker John Williams In Vienna Recorded at Goldener Saal der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien Vienna, Austria on August 14, 2020 Video Director: Michael Beyer

Bedrich Smetana-Overture from "The Bartered Bride"


Giacomo Meyerbeer - Fantasy for clarinet and String Quartet (ca. 1839)


Giacomo Meyerbeer Work: Fantasy for clarinet and String Quartet (ca. 1839) Clarinet: Dieter Klöcker Violin I: Andreas Rainer Violin II: Simon Fordham Viola: Helmut Nicolai Cello: Anja Lechner


Great quintet addition to clarinet quintet repertoire of Weber & Mozart! Meyerbeer & these all wrote for opera and their music shows it. Love this piece, FUN! Thanks KuhlauDilfeng2 for its upload, after 48 years as a clarinetist I have learned something new to play!!!

Monday, December 4, 2023

Composers and their Poets: Ernest Chausson

 by 

French Chansons Composed by Ernest Chausson

Ernest Chausson

Ernest Chausson, by Guy & Mockel, Paris (ca. 1897)

French composer Ernest Chausson’s early death in a bicycle accident cut short a career just as it was beginning to flourish. His position as secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique for 13 years put him at the centre of France’s active music networks. He studied with Massenet and César Franck at the Paris Conservatoire, which he attended at the relatively advanced age of 24, was friends with Vincent d’Indy, and many other composers including Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Isaac Albéniz. He also knew the poet Mallarmé, although he never set any of his poetry, and the painter Monet.

 Chausson, standing, turning pages for Debussy (1893)

Chausson, standing, turning pages for Debussy (1893)

The poets he set include Camille Mauclair (1872-1945), Jean Richepin (1849-1926), Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), Maurice Bouchor (1855-1929), and Maurice Maeterlinck (1849-1949), among others. If we look just at his contemporaries, Camille Mauclair, Maurice Bouchor, and Maurice Maeterlinck, we have three poets of very different sensibilities.

 Camille Mauclair by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1896)

Camille Mauclair by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1896)

Camille Mauclair (the pseudonym of Séverin Faust) was not only a poet but also a novelist, biographer, travel writer, and critic. He was an admirer of Mallarmé and was most famous for his roman à clef, Le Soleil des Morts (1898). For his contemporaries, it was brilliant portrait of the leading actors in the arts of his day, including writers, artists, critics, and musicians. For us, it has become an important historical document about the French avant-garde at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the most musically relevant portraits in the novel is that of Debussy at the premiere of “Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune”. Chausson appears in the book as ‘Rudolphe Méreuse’ and is the dedicatee of the novel. He is, in the novel, praised as ‘ …the composer whose symphonies, with those of César Franck, were the only original works to appear since Wagner.’

Mauclair provided the words for Chausson’s Op. 27 lieder. The first song, Les heures, casts us directly into the shadowy decadent world of the French fin du siècle: the piano provides a mordent background to the poet, ‘singing until death’ the pale hours of the night. 

Maurice Bouchor

Maurice Bouchor

Maurice Bouchor was a poet and playwright with an interest in music. He worked with the musician Julien Tiersot to preserve French folk songs and published a book of them for use in schools.

His poetry was set extensively, and Chausson set it a number of times, most memorably in his Op. 8 set. This set of four poems describes love in all aspects: from the young love in the first poem, the memory of a former lover in the second, to the broken heart of ‘Printemps triste’ and the memories of the happy past in ‘Nos souvenirs’. 

Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck

The Belgian playwright, poet and essayist Maurice Maeterlinck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. At the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, he was a source of musical inspiration: Debussy set his Pelléas and Mélisande, and it inspired Gabriel Fauré, Arnold Schoenberg, Jean Silbelius and others. 13 of his other plays were also made into operas, inspired symphonic poems, or had incidental music written for them by some 40 composers. His plays forged a new style, an example of which can be seen in Pelléas and Mélisande: the setting is lean and spare and the characters have no foresight and a limited view and understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit. The forces that compel people, not the emotions that drive them, was the centre of his style.

Maeterlinck’s first collection of poetry, Serres chaudes (Hothouses) (1889), was the source for Chausson’s Op. 24 song cycle. The second song, ‘Serre d’ennui’ (Hothouse boredom), seems to capture the overly humid confines of a hothouse, where boredom is blue but is captured within a green world where all is still. 

Chausson set poetry by many other poets, including Verlaine, Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, and Gautier. In his brief life, Chausson brought the French chanson forward out of the Romanticism found in composers such as Massenet and Franck and closer to the more introspective world found in Debussy’s work.

Thursday, November 30, 2023

José Feliciano performs Every Breath You Take


Every breath you take (Gordon Sumner) Performed by José Feliciano and Jelena Krstic with The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hans Ek and the Polar Music Prize band at the Polar Music Prize Ceremony 2017 © Polar Music Prize. For Licensing Inquiries, please email: licensing@polarmusicprize.org Sting and Wayne Shorter received the Polar Music Prize on June 15, 2017 at a ceremony at Konserthuset Stockholm in Sweden. Several artists honored the Laureates together with the The Royal Stockholm Philarmonic Orchestra, led by maestro Hans Ek. Artists performing in tribute to Sting and Wayne Shorter, included Gregory Porter (   • Gregory Porter performs It's Probably...  ), Jennie Abrahamson, Lennart Åberg, Marius Neset, José Feliciano, Jelena Krstic, Josefin Runsteen, Ane Brun (   • Ane Brun and friends perform Why Shou...  ), Linnea Olsson, Fredrik Ljungqvist and The Tallest Man On Earth (   • The Tallest Man On Earth performs Rox...  ). José Feliciano also read the citation for Sting (   • Sting receives the Polar Music Prize ...  ): "The 2017 Polar Music Prize is awarded to the singer, musician and composer Sting, real name Gordon Sumner, from Wallsend in Northumberland. Sting grew up in a shipyard town in northeastern England. As a child his thoughts and dreams roamed as far as the ships that sailed from his town. Internal and external travel has also characterised his music. As a member of the trio The Police, and later as a solo artist, Sting has never sat back and rested on his laurels; he has put down his anchor in more musical harbours than perhaps any other artist of his generation. As a composer, Sting has combined classic pop with virtuoso musicianship and an openness to all genres and sounds from around the world. Sting is a true citizen of the world, who has also been indefatigable in using his position as an arena-filling artist to promote human rights." The Polar Music Prize was founded in 1989 by the late Stig ”Stikkan” Anderson, one of the true greats in the history of popular music. As the publisher, lyricist and manager of ABBA, he played a key role in their enormous success. Its name stems from Anderson’s legendary record label, Polar Music. The Polar Music Prize is one of the most prestigious and unique music prizes in the world, crossing over musical boundaries and awarded to individuals, groups and institutions in recognition of exceptional achievements.

David Foster: Hit Man Returns "Pie Jesu" (Jackie Evancho)

HORST JANKOWSKI - A WALK IN THE BLACK FOREST



A classically trained German pianist, Horst Jankowski is most famous for his internationally successful easy listening music. Jankowski's fame as a composer of easy listening pop peaked in 1965 with his tune "Eine Schwarzwaldfahrt", released in English as "A Walk in the Black Forest" (Wikipedia).

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Mariah Carey, Luciano Pavarotti - Hero (Live)



Mariah Carey - Hero (Official HD Video)


364,955,967 views  Nov 24, 2009  #MariahCarey #Remastered #HD

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 23 - Anna Fedorova - Live Concert HD


Pianist Anna Fedorova and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie led by Yves Abel perform Tchaikovsky's 'Piano Concerto No. 1' in The Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam. The concert is part of the NPO Radio 4-series The Sunday Morning Concert. Pianist Anna Fedorova is well known for her performance of Rachmaninoffs ‘Piano Concerto No. 2’. Her interpretation of this work on our YouTube Channel has over 19 million views! What will her version of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 1’ achieve? The concerto is one of Anna’s all time favourites and it’s full of tenderness and bravura. Enjoy! The musical program Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23 The musicians Anna Fedorova [piano] The Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie Yves Abel [conductor] Recording Sunday the 14th of October 2018, in The Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Mozart, A Lonely Island, A Sunrise And An Expatriate in The Philippines

I started writing a book ten years ago. I thought, being an expatriate living in the Philippines, I will be having all the time of my life. "Beethoven under Palms"... .

Meanwhile, I realized that  the book have to wait! I am there somewhere near a beautiful sunrise, on a lonely tropical island and MY classical music. Mozart is one my friends here... .

Ich begann, irgendwann vor 10 Jahren als Einwanderer auf den Philippinen ein Buch zu schreiben. Ich dachte, ich hätte die gesamte Zeit meines Lebens noch vor mir. "Beethoven unter Palmen"... .

Inzwischen ist mir klargeworden, dass mein Buch warten muss. Ich befinde mich irgendwo zwischen einem wundervollen tropischen Sonnenuntergang, einer tropischen und einsamen Insel und meiner klassischen Musik. Mozart gehört zu einem meiner Weggefährten... .



Can you imagine.... .? Können Sie sich das vorstellen?

From time to time I am staying on such an island while enjoying Rachmaninow's Piano Concerto No.2, Mozart's Clarinet Concertos, Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, Vaughan Williams'  "The Lark Ascending", Grieg's Piano Concerts, Elgar's "Enigma Variations" or Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 and 9.

By the way: Mozart remains the most prolific of the 104 composers in the European charts since more then 20 years. Beethoven is - of course - the next followed by Tschaikowsky and Johann Sebastian Bach.

During the last years there has been a surge in support  in English composers with the numbers of entries from Elgar up to Vaughan Williams. Howard Shore's music from the film "The Lord Of The Rings" remains as one of the rare examples in the top 20