Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

by  Hermione Lai, Interlude    April 12th, 2022 Easter is the most important holiday for Christians around the world. But you don’t have to be seriously religious to enjoy that particular time of year, as the coming of Spring, at least in the Northern hemisphere also signals a sense of renewal. Many of our modern Easter celebrations actually reflect non-Christian traditions. The name “Easter” comes from “Eastre,” a Saxon goddess of fertility and spring. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the spring equinox, and modern Easter is also tied to the vernal equinox. Springtime fertility probably explains the two most popular Easter traditions, the Easter bunny and Easter eggs. The Easter bunny was originally a hare, and as a symbol of new life, painted eggs have been around for a very long time. So, Easter can actually be both a deeply religious celebration and a secular festivity “with ancient pagan or modern commercial origins.” I think that most everybody has a favour...

Music - from the Greek "mousikos" and pertaining to one of the nine muses in the Greek mythology - is the art of combining sounds or sequences of notes into harmonious patterns hopefully playing to ears and satisfying to our emotions. An insipid and dry explanation - I must confess.  Can you, my dear reader, imagine a life without music? For me, it would be such a monotonous and boring world. I don't think only about the musical "mayfly" or the so-called "musical nine days wonder". Music doesn't consists of Groove or Techno alone. I am not against these or other music trends, because each generation has its own music development. But we have greater riches of different kinds of music by going back to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance (which means 'rebirth'), the Baroque Age, the Classical Period, and the Romantic Era up to 1900. The Western tradition of music has its origins in the chant tradition of the Early Christian Era. Everybody can de...

  by   Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude Joseph Haydn has entered music history as a jovial, grandfatherly figure with a reputation for a quick wit. Generations later, we still chuckle at the stories behind the Surprise Symphony or the Farewell Symphony. His famous good humor is all the more striking considering his often difficult upbringing. Joseph Haydn was born in the little town of Rohrau, Austria, on 31 March 1732, the second of twelve children. His father Mathias was a wheelwright by day and a folk musician by night. He was especially fond of accompanying himself on the harp singing folk tunes, and he would often encourage his family to sing along with him. It’s no surprise that Joseph’s talent blossomed in this idyllic, naturally musical environment. That talent would soon change his life forever. When he was six, a distant relative named Johann Matthias Frankh visited Rohrau. Frankh was a schoolmaster and choirmaster in the town of Hainburg, and he thought that Joseph ...

6 April 2022, 15:02 | Updated: 6 April 2022, 16:23 Tchaikovsky stayed in Trostyanets in his 20s; the city is now destroyed.  Picture: Getty By Sophia Alexandra Hall, ClassicFM @sophiassocials   One of Russia’s most famous composers once called Trostyanets home. Now the city lies in ruin.  Trostyanets is a city in the north-east of Ukraine, which once played host to Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Aged 24, the famed 19th-century Romantic composer stayed in a villa in the city of Trostyanets, then a part of the Russian Empire. It was here he composed his first symphonic work - the overture ‘The Storm’ (1864). The villa, like the rest of Trostyanets, now lies in ruin following the capture of the city on 1 March 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After a month of occupation, where civilians were reportedly killed by Russian hand grenades, Ukrainian forces used heavy shelling to gain back control of Trostyanets. Though the Russian army have now left ...

by Georg Predota , Interlude Johann Sebastian Bach In the course of your instrumental studies or attending concert performances you might have come across works title “Partita.” It is a slippery term, and throughout history it has designated a number of different concepts. At times it was used to indicate a variation, a piece, a set of Variations and a Suite or other multi-movement genres. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries it was applied to variations or elaborations on a bass of a traditional tune. Over time this evolved into a collective term for a set of variations. This musical application seems to have been rather popular in Italy, with keyboard compositions thus titled by Trabaci, Frescobaldi, Rossi, Strozzi and Scarlatti. However, this musical form also made it into Germany and  Johann Sebastian Bach  (1685-1750) composed a number of Partitas on various chorale melodies. Bach: Partita No. 1 As the 17th century progressed, “Partita” acquired an additional m...

by   Georg Predota, Interlude Vltava in Prague The conductor Adolf Čech (1841-1903) premiered a number of significant works by Antonín Dvořák, Zdeněk Fibich, and Bedřich Smetana. Such was the case on 4 April 1875, when he took the podium with the Orchestra of the Prague Provisional Theatre in a musical depiction of Bohemia’s longest river. Smetana tone poem  Vltava  (The Moldau), perhaps the most famous  river journey  ever sounded in music, was rapturously received by audiences and critics alike. Adolf Čech Smetana had actually composed the work after losing his hearing completely. He had noticed substantial hearing loss in 1874, and he informed the Provisional Theatre’s management of his situation. “It was in July… that I noticed that in one of my ears the notes in the higher octaves were pitched differently than in the other and that at times I had a tingling feeling in my ears and heard a noise as though I was standing by a mighty waterfall. My con...