37,332 views Mar 27, 2018 Roger Williams' recording, "Somewhere in Time" is the mesmerizing music score of the 1980 film. This performance, in 2009 was 3 days after his 85th birthday, is Roger Williams' exquisite medley of "The Rose" and "Somewhere In Time," and the epitome of his artistry. Marc Riley conducted the Crystal Cathedral Orchestra. Website: https://rogerwilliamsmusic.com
Friday, August 19, 2022
Mozart Piano Concerto No 9 E flat major K 271 Jeunehomme Maria / his music and his life
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Thursday, August 18, 2022
Dmitri Shostakovich - his music and his life
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) was a Russian composer and pianist and was one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.
Life and Music
Despite Shostakovich's exceptional talent, it was not until he was nine that he received his first formal piano lessons from his mother, a professional pianist.
In 1919, composer Alexander Glazunov considered the young Shostakovich ready to begin his studies at the Petrograd Conservatory, where he was director.
The 19-year-old Shostakovich produced a First Symphony that is an astonishing act of creative prodigy.
In 1936, Stalin attended a performance of Shostakovich's operatic grotesquerie, Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District. Dismayed by its lack of positivist flag-saving, the state newspaper, Pravda, slated this "bedlam of noise".
With the gun of the Soviet regime pointed at his head - and Stalin's finger effectively on the trigger - Shostakovich knew he had to produce a surefire winner.
The Fifth Symphony, with its universal message of triumph achieved out of adversity, was exactly what the State wanted, and it made him a public hero.
In 1948, several composers, including Shostakovich and Prokofiev, were hauled over the coals by Pravda for "decadent formalism".
In 1953 Shostakovich also composed his masterly Tenth Symphony, written - although no one was aware of it at the time - as a reaction against the Stalinist regime, and in the case of the vitriolic Scherzo, a sardonic portrait of Stalin.
The constant psychological torture had taken its toll, and it seems that in 1960, following the completion of his Eighth String Quartet, Shostakovich contemplated suicide. In 1966 he suffered a heart attack from which he never fully recovered, and which hastened a preoccupation with death which is tangibly realised in his angst-ridden Fourteenth Symphony.
Shostakovich died a broken man.
Did you know?
One of Shostakovich's songs was sung by the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin over the radio from his spacecraft to Mission Control down on earth.
(C) ClassicFM London
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Davao City composer explains what is popular Kadayawan song ‘Bahaghari Tayo’ all about
LANDERO (Keith Bacongco)
by Keith Bacongco, Manila Bulletin
DAVAO CITY – For almost 20 years, the iconic song “Bahaghari Tayo” composed by local music legend Popong Landero is always associated with the annual Kadayawan Festival every August.
Aside from Davaoeños, this festive song is also familiar among those who are frequent visitors of this city not just during the Kadayawan Festival but also the Araw ng Davao celebration.
The song is usually played in public places during festivities.
But what is really the inspiration behind the making of this festive song?
Unknown to many, Bahaghari Tayo does not simply depict festivity but it is more about the recovery from fear, pain, and suffering from terrorist attacks in this city, Landero admitted to the Manila Bulletin.
“When I heard that a bomb exploded at the airport, I was very worried because my wife was working there. Although she was safe because they were inside,” he recalled, referring to the bomb attack on March 4, 2003 that killed 21 people and injured hundreds here.
The incident, the musician added, reminded him of a grenade blast during college days at the University of Mindanao in the 1980s that injured several people. “The explosion was quite close to the spot where we were playing guitar. We saw some people injured and the debris even hit our heads. We were shocked and a lot of people panicked.”
Based on this experience, Landero added, he tried making a song but it never materialized. “So I just tried to forget that experience.”
And the 2003 twin bombings happened.
Aside from the airport bombing, another bomb went off ear the gate of the Sasa International Seaport on April 2 that killed 16 persons and injured 45 others.
These incidents fueled him once again to write the song, Landero recalled. But he also wanted to the song to be his entry to the Huni sa Dabaw, a songwriting contest, which was a part of the Araw ng Dabaw celebrations in 2004.
Released in 2004, the song is part of a locally-produced album with the same title that contains nine other tracks that talk about love, abundance in harvest, peace, and harmony.
While the song is based on the pain and suffering, Landero further disclosed that he wanted to write the song the opposite way.
“I thought of writing the song that would not touch on fear and loneliness. So that explains the lyrics that talks about recovery from sufferings, sustained development amid the adversities, as well as to urge the Davaoeños tounite for peace,” the seasoned musician explained.
In 2008, Landero added, the city council adopted the song as the official theme song of the Araw ng Dabaw celebrations.
The song’s festive melody has inspired various local artists and school-based drum and bugle corps to play it with their own renditions during their performances in different events.
The entire album is now available on Spotify.
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Yuja Wang: Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 54 [HD]
Robert Schumann was a German composer and critic born in Zwickau on June 8, 1810. A quirky, problematic genius, he wrote some of the greatest music of the Romantic era, and also some of the weakest. Severely affected by what was most likely bipolar disorder, he achieved almost superhuman productivity during his manic periods. His life ended early and miserably with a descent into insanity brought on by syphilis. He did his best work when younger, in small forms: piano pieces and songs.
Early Years Of Study
Schumann's bookseller father was also a novelist and translator of Walter Scott and Byron; highly nervous, he married a violently passionate woman, and Schumann was brought up in an environment both literary and unstable. He began piano lessons at seven, and studied Latin and Greek in school in Zwickau, developing a keen interest in literature and in writing as he entered his teens. He continued to develop as a pianist and wrote novels. When he was 16 his father died and in the same month his sister committed suicide. His father had stipulated that for Robert to receive his inheritance he had to take a three-year course of study at the university level, and the next year Schumann enrolled as a law student at the University of Leipzig. He spent his time reading Jean Paul Richter and soon became a piano student of (and border with) Friedrich Wieck, whose daughter Clara, then nine, he would eventually marry. He developed a consuming interest in the music of Schubert, which opened a window on his own creative yearnings.
In 1830, Schumann opted out of law and resumed his studies with Wieck. Despite incessant practice, he never became the virtuoso pianist he hoped to be, owing to a "numbness" in the middle finger of his right hand. The problem may have resulted from his use, over Wieck's objection, of a splint contraption to strengthen the hand, or from mercury poisoning related to the treatment of syphilis, which he probably contracted in his teens. Fortunately, he would not need to be a virtuoso — because he married one.
Music — And Trouble — In The 1830s
The 1830s were turbulent for Schumann. He fought with Wieck over his training and his relationship with Clara, which Wieck opposed. Under stress, he drank and smoked heavily and suffered his first bouts of depression. Gradually, Schumann let go of the dream of keyboard virtuosity and became active as a critic, for which he was, during his lifetime, as well known as he was for his music. Simultaneously, he developed into quite a capable composer.
In 1834 he founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, turning it into a platform for his philosophizing on the music of the past and present and for notices and analyses of new works. Among his own important works of the decade were the majority of the pieces that established his reputation as a composer for the piano: Carnaval, the Davidsbündler Tänze, the Symphonic Etudes, the Fantasy in C, Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), Kreisleriana, and others. During this time, he befriended Chopin and Mendelssohn.
Marriage, Music, And Mania
By 1840, Clara Wieck, 20, was a distinguished pianist and had been in the public eye for more than a decade. Schumann's marriage to her — which took place a year after he prevailed in a lawsuit against her father — resulted in an enormous creative outpouring. First came the "year of song." Anticipating marriage in a decidedly lyrical state of mind, Schumann focused his pent-up emotion on vocal music, composing nearly 140 songs in 1840, most of them in the anxious months before August, when the marriage permission suit he and Clara had filed against her father was decided in their favor. The following year, in a mood of celebration, he turned to the orchestra. His works included two symphonies — No. 1 in B-flat and No. 4 in D minor — as well as Overture, Scherzo and Finale, and a Fantasie in A minor for piano and orchestra. In 1842 Schumann focused on chamber music, composing three string quartets, the often heard Piano Quintet in E-flat, and the wonderful Piano Quartet in E-flat.
Such feverish concentration on a single genre at a time can be seen as typical manic behavior. The other side of the coin — phobias and terrifying slides into depression — turned up as the 1840s wore on, leaving the composer incapacitated. At the end of 1844 Schumann and Clara moved to Dresden, at one of the lowest of his low points. During his next few years, he completed the Piano Concerto in A minor, his Symphony No. 2 in C, his one opera, Genoveva, and an extraordinary dramatic poem based on Byron's Manfred.
Düsseldorf And Downhill
In 1850, Schumann accepted a position as municipal music director in Düsseldorf. One of the first works he composed after his arrival was the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, the Rhenish, inspired by the majestic Cologne Cathedral. During the three seasons he held the job, Schumann experienced difficulties with city administrators and ultimately, owing to his increasingly erratic behavior on the podium, lost the respect of the orchestra and chorus. He was fired in the fall of 1853. A bright spot during that sad season was the time the Schumanns spent with the renowned violinist Joseph Joaquim and the 20-year-old Johannes Brahms, whose budding genius Schumann immediately recognized.
During the winter of 1854, Schumann's insanity manifested itself dramatically: He heard "angelic" voices that quickly morphed into a bestial noise of "tigers and hyenas." On a February morning he walked to a bridge over the Rhine and threw himself in; he was rescued by fishermen. Insisting that for Clara's protection he be institutionalized, he was placed in a sanatorium. His doctors prevented Clara from seeing him for more than two years, until days before his death.
The Music Of Poetic Personalities
Schumann's literary sensitivity and introspective nature led him to imbue nearly everything he wrote with personality — in the case of his best songs and piano pieces, often the multiple sides of his own personality. Nearly all of his piano music is referential, attempting to embody emotions aroused by literature or to characterize actors' interactions in some ongoing novel or lyric poem of the mind. One of Schumann's favorite conceits was the "Davidsbund" ("Tribe of David"), peopled by imaginary characters who, like the biblical David, were willing to stand up to the artistic Philistines of the day. The members of this society included Meister Raro, probably an idealization of his teacher and father-in-law, as well as Schumann's two major personae: the impetuous extrovert Florestan and the pale, studious, introverted Eusebius. The Davidsbündler Tänze (Dances of the Tribe of David) specifically chronicles an emotional and musical journey with these two alter egos at the wheel — but so do most of Schumann's works, especially those for piano.
Schumann's lyrical, intense musicality produced some of the most beautiful and moving lieder in the repertoire. His Dichterliebe (Poet's Love), a setting of 16 poems by Heinrich Heine, is his best-known song cycle and a supreme achievement in German lied. Other cycles include Frauenliebe und Leben (Women's Love and Life) and two sets titled Liederkreis (one to poems of Heine, one to poems of Joseph von Eichendorf). There is a substantial amount of chamber music; the best pieces are the Piano Quintet (the first piece ever written for that complement), the Piano Quartet, and the Three Romances for oboe and piano.
As a symphonic composer Schumann sports a long rap sheet: awkwardness in larger forms, muddy scoring, excessive doublings that always sound a little out of tune. But he was capable of achieving splendid orchestral effects, and his Third and Fourth Symphonies also reveal original and innovative approaches to form. In an effort to reinforce a feeling of unity in the Fourth Symphony, he specified that its four movements be played without a break, with the aim that the entire work would form a large, cyclical structure. The underlying unity of the piece asserts itself in the treatment of the key and in the thematic linking of the last movement to the first, and of parts of the third movement to the second. The material is so closely knit that musicologists have come to regard it as a landmark in the history of the genre. Of the concerted works, the Piano Concerto is Schumann at his best. The Cello Concerto is a solid piece but the Violin Concerto, a late work of troubled delicacy, requires very sympathetic treatment to be effective. None of Schumann's efforts for the stage has found a place in the repertoire.
There is little doubt that Schumann will remain a canonic figure, though if quality of work is the only gauge, his importance has long been overrated. His abilities, at times, fell short of his ambitions, but he brought enthusiasm and a rare poetic genius to everything he attempted. As a critic he was remarkably astute in some judgments, wildly off the mark in others, and in all cases generous. He never became a great pianist, was a failure as a conductor, and at times was not even a very good composer. But his entire being was music, informed by dream and fantasy. He was music's quintessential Romantic, always ardent, always striving for the ideal.
(Ted Libbey is the author of "The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music")
Monday, August 15, 2022
Manila Symphony Orchestra | Medley of Philippine Folk Songs by Bernard G...
Manila Symphony Orchestra | Medley of Philippine Folk Songs by Bernard Greene
11,669 views Premiered Aug 7, 2020 On March 13, 2019, the Manila Symphony Orchestra performed in the FEU Auditorium in cooperation with the Silaw Foundation.
The Manila Symphony Orchestra was based in the FEU Auditorium for 8 years in the 1950s. This concert was part of the celebration of FEU's 91st anniversary and the 70th birthday of the Auditorium.
Watch as they perform a medley of Philippine Folk Songs by American Composer Bernard Greene under the baton of Professor Marlon Chen.
© Video courtesy of the FEU Media Center
Yuja Wang: Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 [HD]
20,430 views Aug 1, 2021 Verbier Festival, Salle Médran. Verbier Festival Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur Jul 31 2009
Here Wang is of similar age as the orchestra players. Verbier host Charlotte Gardner describes Masur as "Mr. Mendelssohn". https://www.facebook.com/1663099812/v...
In 2009 Masur was already affected by Parkinson's disease, and he would pass away in 2015 from the disease.
0:00 Molto allegro con fuoco in G minor
6:57 Andante in E major
12:00 Presto—Molto allegro e vivace in G major
#YujaWang #Mendelssohn #Verbier #KurtMasur
Friday, August 12, 2022
Reading Franz Liszt: The Poetry Behind the Piano Music
by Frances Wilson, Interlude
In the introduction to his new book, pianist Paul Roberts recounts a conversation with “an elderly and much celebrated piano teacher” when he was just starting out as the inspiration for a lifetime’s fascination with literature and language and the essential connections between literature and music: “I introduced myself. I cannot remember quite how the topic came about, but within a few minutes we were talking about Liszt’s great triptych of piano pieces known as the Petrarch Sonnets, inspired by the love poetry of the 14th-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. “Oh!” I enthused, “those poems …!” She entered her studio. “We don’t need them,” she said, and closed the door. I was deflated. And dumbfounded.”
Paul Roberts feels that music comes from sources beyond simply itself – from, for example, the composer’s life experience, the influence of others, and, in the case of Liszt, poetry and literature, and that as pianists we do the music, and its composer, a disservice by not paying attention to these external sources of inspiration. In his engaging, eloquent and highly readable text, Roberts explores what he believes to be an inseparable bond between poetry and the piano music of Franz Liszt, and how literary inquiry affects musical interpretation and performance. For Roberts, an appreciation of the poetry which inspired or informed Liszt’s music gives the pianist, and listener, significant insights into the composer’s creative imagination, bringing one closer to his music and allowing a deeper understanding, and, for the performer, a richer, more multi-dimensional interpretation of the music. It also offers a better appreciation of Liszt the man: too often dismissed as a superficial showman, in this book Roberts reveals Liszt as a man of passionate intellectual and emotional curiosity, who read widely and with immense discernment, all of which is reflected in his music. As Alfred Brendel said, “Liszt’s music….projects the man”.
Paul Roberts © Viktor Erik Emanuel
Poetry and literature were meat and drink to Franz Liszt, who performed in and attended the cultural salons of 1830s Paris where he knew writers such as Victor Hugo and George Sand. He was familiar with the writing of Byron, Sénancour, Goethe, Dante, Petrarch and others, and his scores are littered with literary quotations which offer fascinating glimpses into the breadth of his creative imagination and what that literature meant to him. For the pianist, they provide an opportunity to “live inside his mind” and open “our imaginations to the wonder of his music”.
Perhaps the most obvious connection between Liszt and poetry is his Tre Sonetti del Petrarca – the three Petrarch Sonnets. They began life as songs which Liszt later arranged for piano solo, and included them in the Italian volume of his Années de pèlerinage. Liszt and his lover Marie d’Agoult spent two years in Italy and it was here that Liszt was exposed to the marvels of Italian Renaissance art and architecture and the poetry of Dante and Petrarch.
The poetry of Petrarch was central to Liszt’s creative imagination and in his triptych inspired by the Italian poet’s sonnets, we find an extraordinary depth of expression and emotional breadth. In the chapter ‘The Music of Desire’, Roberts explores Petrarch’s sonnets in detail and demonstrates how Liszt translates the passion of the poet into some of the finest writing for piano by Liszt, or indeed anyone else.
Perhaps because I have studied and performed these pieces myself, a study which included close reference to Petrarch’s poetry, it is here that I find Roberts’ argument most persuasive, that the pianist really needs this literary context and understanding to bring the music fully to life. He shows how Liszt responds to the ebb and flow of emotions in Petrarch’s writing, in particular in the most passionately dramatic of the three sonnets, No. 104, “Pace no trovo” (I find no peace), where the poet veers almost schizophrenically between extremes of emotion, from the depths of despair to ecstasy.
Franz Liszt
Subsequent chapters explore other great piano works – the extraordinary B-minor Sonata which Roberts believes is firmly connected to that pinnacle of nineteenth century European literature, Goethe’s Faust, the existentialism of Vallée d’Obermann, a work which exemplifies the Romantic spirit, and its relationship with Etienne de Sénancour’s cult novel Obermann, the “aura” of Byron and his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which pervade the Swiss volume of the Années alongside Liszt’s personal experience of the majestic landscape of Switzerland and the Alps. The final chapter explores the Dante Sonata and Liszt’s reverence for The Divine Comedy at a time when Dante’s poetry was being rediscovered by English and European Romantic writers like Keats, Coleridge, Shelley and Stendhal. Throughout, Roberts conveys the power of literature to awaken and inspire the Romantic imagination and sensibilities, and demonstrates how this might inform the way one performs Liszt’s music – from the physical cadence of poetry to its drama, narrative arc and emotional impact which had such a profound effect on Liszt and which infuses his music in almost every note. Here Liszt finds a new kind of expression in which, in his own words, music becomes “a poetic language, one that, better than poetry itself perhaps, more readily expresses everything in us that transcends the commonplace, everything that eludes analysis”.
A useful Appendix explores the influence of other poets such as Alphonse de Lamartine and Lenau, with analysis of other pianos works, including Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, the Mephisto Waltz, the two St Francis legends, and Mazeppa, inspired by a poem by Victor Hugo.
In this book, Paul Roberts reveals the essence of Liszt literary world, providing the pianist with valuable insight and inspiration with which to appreciate, shape and perform his music.
Reading Franz Liszt: Revealing the Poetry behind the Piano Music is published by Amadeus Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, USA.
Musicians Divulge a Secret: The Pieces They Would Rather Not Play Ever Again!
by
Put Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe or La Valse, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, or Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances—or pretty much anything by Prokofiev or Mahler—in front of me and I’ll play them happily over and over, and I have. But dear readers I must confess there are pieces of music I hope I never have to play again, and I’m not alone. Some works we professionals play to death; others just get under our skin. Let me explain.
Perhaps you love the Pachelbel Canon. It’s a popular piece for weddings. While the violins soar through multiple variations the poor cellist plays the same 8 notes s-l-o-w-l-y, repeating the pattern D-A-B-F#-G-D-G-A. Each iteration takes 4 measures and is played 28 times! And some perform it extra deliberately. It’s a bit like detention for cellists! Funny enough, once a local National Public Radio classical music radio station played this continuously until they’d met their pledge drive donation goals. I imagine some listeners silently (or loudly) screamed, “Make it stop…”
Crazy instructions!
Ravel’s Bolero is another very popular piece of music but not for the snare drum player. He or she has to play the two-bar 24-note pattern unrelentingly steady in rhythm starting very softly or pianissimo and increasing in volume to a dramatic fortissimo. The piece is 430 bars; about 15 minutes. Need I do the math? That’s 5,144 snare drum strokes. Talk about repetition… And since we’re counting, did you know Tchaikovsky was fond of the cymbals? During Swan Lake, there are a total of 1,214 cymbal crashes in each performance. One of my colleagues sat very close to the percussion section. The din after 21 performances and 29,715 cymbal crashes, left her shell-shocked.
Other pieces can be tiresome because of the ubiquitous numbers of performances of them. One colleague told me, “I had a nightmare that I was playing Messiah, and I woke up and it was true!” Ditto Tchaikovsky Nutcracker. I remember during the Holidays the Minnesota Orchestra would be divided in two. Half played 10 Messiah performances and the other half performed The Nutcracker Ballet 13 times in two weeks—twice on weekend days—every season for years. May I remind you of the temperatures in December in Minnesota that dip well below zero? The nearest parking was several blocks away. I’d drag my cello in the bitter cold to the huge auditorium hoping to thaw in time for the performances.
There are many works that are ever-present in our repertoire. Sometimes the consequences of often-played repertoire are that they are given short shrift in rehearsal. No musician enjoys walking on eggshells during a concert or conversely slamming through a work such as Liszt Les Preludes, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet or the Symphonies No. 4 or No. 5, or even Handel’s Water Music. There are always tricky passages and difficult transitions that should be rehearsed for ensemble.
Perhaps a particular piece brings back bad memories. Did your mom force you to play Für Elise by Beethoven or Haydn Trumpet Concerto for Aunt Betsy, and Grandma Rose and every person who was invited over for dinner when you were growing up no matter how you protested? My parents were guilty.
Please don’t blame the poor second violins and violas (and sometimes the horns) when they almost drop their instruments in boredom. While you’re elegantly waltzing, they have to play endless off beats in Strauss waltzes or Sousa Marches, and they rarely get to play the melody.
Unplayable!
We really have no patience for a composer who doesn’t know our instrument and writes nothing but rests. We relish performing pieces that are challenging unless the composer’s metronome markings suggest an unplayable tempo, contradictory (or silly) instructions, or if he or she uses an undecipherable meter, like something you’ve seen in a calculus textbook watch out. That’s when we might throw up our hands!
Even soloists must bemoan the fact that certain concertos, favorites and crowd-pleasers, are requested in every city despite the fact that an artist hopes to perform more unfamiliar works worth playing and hearing. But that said, we never tire of the great masterworks: Brahms, Sibelius, Barber, and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos, Brahms, Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky Piano Concertos and Beethoven of course.
Pianist Jon Kimura Parker tells us that he first played the Beethoven Third Piano Concerto in C minor, when he was twelve years old. It was his concerto debut in Vancouver, with the Vancouver Symphony and the first concerto he ever learned. This week, the 50th anniversary of performing the work, he still finds new revelations, after playing it countless times. Beethoven’s vehement music continues to speak to us. Surely music wouldn’t be where it is today without him. Listen to this rendition of the last movement of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto during Covid. “One can only imagine what Beethoven would think of all of this,” says Parker. “That his music is being performed so much even now, when our logistic preparations have required extra imagination, would surely boggle his mind!”
Rather than predictable as some music is, this music never ceases to amaze performers and listeners alike. But even the masterworks of our repertoire benefit from a fresh approach by the artist and/or new ideas from the conductor.
My suggestion for programing a recital, a small ensemble concert, or a full orchestra season: it would be wise for small ensemble artistic directors, orchestra managements, and conductors to consider not only “good box office” but also what will challenge, inspire, and stimulate the musicians. That’s no secret!
Thursday, August 11, 2022
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