Sunday, August 17, 2025
Saturday, August 16, 2025
5 Mozart vs 5 Beethoven - The Masters of Classical Music - [ 1 Hours ]
We compare 10 masterpieces from each legendary composer. Experience the divine elegance of Mozart against the revolutionary passion of Beethoven.
Who is your winner? Let us know in the comments!
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00:00 Mozart - Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550: I. Molto allegro
08:10 Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: IV. Allegro con brio
15:21 Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in G Major, K. 525: I. Allegro
21:20 Beethoven - Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93: III. Tempo di Menuetto
26:05 Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467: III. Allegro vivace assai
32:49 Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37: III. Rondo. Allegro - Presto
42:07 Mozart - Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, K 331 "Alla Turca": III. Alla Turca
45:46 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 14, "Moonlight Sonata": I. Adagio sostenuto
50:40 Mozart - Requiem, K. 626: Introitus. Requiem
56:02 Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: II. Allegretto
Friday, August 15, 2025
Pure Imagination and Happiness: Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse
Where is your happy place? Debussy’s 1904 work L’isle Joyeuse seems to kidnap us, fly us through the air, and deposit us in a world of warm breezes, blue skies, perhaps a fluffy cloud or two, and, of course, surrounded by all our friends.
Although those giving only a cursory look at Debussy’s biography pin this work to his elopement with Emma Bardac to the isle of Jersey (after sending his wife back to her parents in Normandy), but the work was written over a year earlier. Debussy, in writing to a performer who sought help on how to approach his music, suggested that he think of the world of the imagined faraway land, such as Watteau’s L’embarquement pour Cythère.
Watteau: L’embarquement pour Cythère, 1717 (Louvre Museum)
The picture is a blend of happiness and sadness: the three pairs of lovers shown in the right foreground, or rather the same couple in three aspects of love: New Love, Familiar Love, and the look back with regret at how it all started. This same mix of joy and regret is in Debussy’s work as well. There’s a ‘smiling ambiguity’ that besets both the painting and the music.
Debussy opens with trills and a cadenza, but it is not that which sets the key: the use of the whole-tone scale has an earlier precedent from its use in the ‘darker moments in Pelléas et Mélisande’.
The work progresses from a small, localised trill to a final gesture, much in the manner of Liszt, that encompasses the whole keyboard. It’s pure imagination and happiness, yet with a bit of a twinge.
Claude Debussy: L’Isle Joyeuse
Odette Gartenlaub
This recording was made in 1961 by the French pianist Odette Gartenlaub. She had studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the leading composers of her time, including Olivier Messiaen, Henri Busser, Noël Gallon and Darius Milhaud. She won the Prix de Rome in 1948 after having to leave the conservatoire in 1941 when the German occupiers banned all Jews from the institution. In 1959, she was a professor of piano at the Conservatoire. Her work at the Conservatoire embraced the new ideas of music practice over music theory.
Performed by
Odette Gartenlaub
Recorded in 1961
Official Website
On My Music Desk…… Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – ‘Deep River’
by
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Deep river, my home is over Jordan;
Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.
Oh don’t you want to go to that gospel feast,
that Promised Land where all is peace?
Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.
African-American Spiritual
“What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk music, Dvořák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies.” – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, composer
There is something reminiscent of Brahms’ writing for the piano in the melody, harmonies and textures of Deep River, one of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 24 Negro Melodies, and if you didn’t know it was by this English mixed-race composer, you might mistake it for a lesser-known work by the great German romantic.
‘Deep River’ is a song about crossing boundaries, physical and metaphorical. Through the richness of the music’s textures, its simple yet memorable melody and its contrasting episodes – from serenity to restless drama – the composer suggests both the physical breadth and depth of a great river, and actual and ideological divides between peoples.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London in 1875 and showed early musical promise. He took violin lessons from a young age and studied at the Royal College of Music from the age of 15, initially under Charles Villiers Stanford (who also taught Gustav Holst, Rebecca Clarke, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, amongst others). He was later helped by Edward Elgar. His most significant work is ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’, a cantata inspired by the poem by Longfellow and recognised alongside Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’, but he also wrote song settings (including a setting of ‘Kubla Khan’ by his near-namesake, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and chamber works.
© Alfred Music
‘Deep River’ is one of the best-known spirituals; Coleridge-Taylor first encountered it in a performance by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an African-American acapella ensemble, which he heard in concert when they visited London. Coleridge-Taylor sought to integrate traditional African music into the classical tradition, not unlike Brahms and Dvořák in their use of Eastern European and American folk music idioms in their works. ‘Deep River’ is one of 24 Negro Melodies Transcribed for the Piano, which Coleridge-Taylor published in 1905. In general, he did not use entire folk melodies in his compositions, preferring to create fantasies based on the original melody. In ‘Deep River’, the composer uses only the first four bars of the song, and dispenses with the verse-chorus-verse organisation – though fragments of the main melody return throughout the piece.
The music opens with hushed, arpeggiated chords and the timeless melody, but it quickly moves into more ambiguous harmonic territory, and at this point becomes more redolent of Brahms. The next section departs from the original in its fantasy-like treatment of the original melody, with ornamentation and considerable expressive elements. This is followed by a dramatic interlude of up-tempo octaves, almost a fanfare, before a brief return to the original melody, and a modulation into A-flat major.
The octave fanfare returns, and the music gradually subsides, in both volume and speed, before returning to the opening melody, in the original key of E major. The piece ends in a rather Lisztian fashion, with rolling E major arpeggios, marked pianissimo, and two hushed chords.
For the pianist, the music has much scope for expression and generous use of rubato will only add to the emotional power of the piece. Treat it like a late Brahms Intermezzo, with close attention not only to the main melody but also the interior details, and you have a work of great romanticism and richness.
10 Greatest Piano Concerto Openings of All Time
There’s something thrilling about the opening of a great piano concerto. The big instrument gets rolled onstage; the soloist and conductor stride out to applause; the pianist sits and raises their arms and nods to the conductor to begin.
Today, we’re looking at piano concerto openings that have a claim to be among the best: excerpts that are particularly striking, surprising, or spellbinding.
Of course, when it comes to ranking classical music, there is no such thing as an objective list. Today, we’ve made some subjective calls and made a countdown list in reverse order.
Keep scrolling to find out which piano concertos we think have the best openings, and which concerto nabbed the number one spot.
10. Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor
The first movement of Robert Schumann’s piano concerto began life as a Phantasie in A minor, which he wrote over the course of four days in May 1841.
He had just married Clara Wieck, one of the great pianists of her generation, and the work was clearly inspired by her.
Robert and Clara Schumann
Clara was so taken by the Phantasie that she urged him to write two more movements to make it an official piano concerto. He did so in 1845, and she premiered the whole concerto in December 1845.
The concerto begins with a bold, unsettled statement by the soloist, followed by a sympathetic response by the orchestra.
The soloist answers the orchestra in a dreamy way, but she soon begins to brood. And with that, listeners are off to the races.
9. Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor
This concerto dates from 1868, the height of the Romantic Era, so you might expect it to begin with a lush, Romantic flourish.
Instead, Saint-Saëns begins with a jaw-dropping solo cadenza that is clearly a tribute to Baroque Era master Johann Sebastian Bach.
This unexpected homage makes for one of the most arresting openings in the entire piano repertoire.
After the soloist pounds out the gutsy tribute to Bach, the orchestra steps in with a dramatic, almost operatic response. The piano replies, beginning a dialogue between the two forces.
The work does eventually ease into a more Romantic language, but it does so while retaining a kind of aloof Baroque aesthetic…making for a fascinating tension.
8. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
We’re cheating a little bit by including this one, since, technically speaking, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue isn’t a concerto. However, its opening is so iconic that it had to go on this list.
Why? That opening clarinet glissando. (In fact, that entire opening clarinet solo is unforgettable.)
Amazingly, this iconic moment in music history came about by accident.
Portrait of George Gershwin
Charles Schwartz writes in his 1979 biography:
As a joke on Gershwin…[Ross] Gorman [the clarinettist at the premiere] played the opening measure with a noticeable glissando, “stretching” the notes out and adding what he considered a jazzy, humorous touch to the passage. Reacting favorably to Gorman’s whimsy, Gershwin asked him to perform the opening measure that way…and to add as much of a “wail” as possible.
This delightful accident set the stage for a work that melded the long-standing traditions of European art music with the fresh energy of American jazz.
7. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D-minor
Mozart wrote 27 piano concertos. Only two were written in a minor key. This was the first.
This music here sounds theatrical: like the overture to an opera set on a windswept island.
As per Classical Era convention, the soloist doesn’t enter until over two minutes in. The solo part calls for a pianist to meld restraint with storminess.
6. Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major
Franz Liszt began writing his first piano concerto in 1830, when he was 19. According to scholars, its main themes date from this time. However, he didn’t finish and premiere it until 1855.
The opening features a bold, sassy statement in the orchestra, followed by a mind-boggling display of virtuosity by a snarling solo pianist.
Legend has it that Liszt assigned sarcastic lyrics to this opening theme: Das versteht ihr alle nicht, haha! (“None of you understand this, haha!”).
Franz Liszt
This opening theme recurs throughout the work. It’s no wonder that Béla Bartók called the concerto “the first perfect realisation of cyclic sonata form.”
5. Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-minor
The opening to Brahms’s first piano concerto has a shocking gravity to it, especially for a composer in his early twenties.
But despite his youth, Johannes Brahms had already been through a lot. One of his mentors, Robert Schumann, had recently attempted suicide by jumping into the Rhine. After he was rescued, Schumann agreed to move into an institution for his and his family’s safety.
Many people believe that the falling sensation depicted in the opening to this concerto is a reference to Schumann’s plunge into the water and the depths of incurable mental illness.
As if all that weren’t enough, Brahms was also falling in love with Robert’s wife, Clara, who was pregnant with her eighth child, and fourteen years Brahms’s senior. The two would never marry, but would be close soulmates and creative partners for decades to come.
The tragedy and trauma of witnessing Robert’s illness, Clara’s devastation, and his own doomed love are immediately obvious in this concerto’s opening moments.
4. Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G-major
On its own, this unassuming opening might not seem particularly striking.
But here’s some important context: at the time of this concerto’s composition in 1805-1806, it was not standard for a soloist to begin a concerto.
Beethoven‘s crafting of an opening to a concerto where the orchestra didn’t state the theme first was revolutionary.
Breaking this rule encouraged later composers to create several of the other great concerto openings on this list.
3. Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor
This concerto begins with a short but monumental French horn call.
Next, the soloist accompanies a lush, wistful string theme with massive chords. The instrument practically plays a percussive role here.
Finally, the soloist takes the spotlight in a commanding solo cadenza, creating an intimidating aura of grandeur.
2. Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C-minor
Countless classical music lovers have been drawn into the art by the dark, hypnotic opening of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto.
The opening chords in the solo part peal out like bells and lead to an equally dark, lush theme in the strings.
In under sixty seconds, Rachmaninoff creates a swirling world of passion and heartbreak.
Even today, this opening remains one of the most cinematic moments in the entire piano repertoire. (And, in fact, this concerto has been used in a number of classic films over the decades.)
But in the end, there can only be one greatest piano concerto opening of all time, and today, on this very subjective list, the prize is going to:
1. Grieg: Piano Concerto in A-minor
Everything about this opening is unforgettable:
- The menacing, thunderous timpani roll.
- The heroic cascade of chords from the soloist, equal parts tragic and terrifying.
- The orchestra coming in with an unforgettable, folk-inspired melody.
It’s the perfect opening to a piano concerto.
Interestingly, Grieg was inspired by the first concerto on this list: Robert Schumann’s. Notably, it’s in the same key and features similar gestures in the opening…bringing this list full-circle!
Edvard Grieg, 1891
What’s your favourite piano concerto opening?
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