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Posted: |
Jul 16, 2018 - 10:02 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Benjamin Britten’s most frequent and important muse was his personal and professional partner, the tenor Peter Pears. In 1940, Britten composed “Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo,” the first of many song cycles for Pears. It consists of musical settings of seven sonnets, all love songs, by the Italian painter and poet Michelangelo (1475–1564), in the original language.
Britten’s “Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings” (1943) sets verses by a variety of poets, all on the theme of night-time. Though Britten described the song cycle as "not important stuff, but quite pleasant, I think", it was immediately greeted as a masterpiece, and it established him as one of the leading composers of his day.
“Winter Words” is a song cycle for tenor and piano that Britten wrote in 1953. It sets eight poems by Thomas Hardy.
The 1986 tape below, reissuing recordings originally made in 1945 and 1954, has Peter Pears singing all three of these song sets. Britten himself conducts the orchestra and plays piano on the recordings.
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Posted: |
Jul 18, 2018 - 11:45 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Cellist Steven Isserlis was born in London on 19 December 1958 into a musical family. His grandfather, Julius Isserlis, who was a Russian Jew, was one of 12 musicians allowed to leave Russia in the 1920s to promote Russian culture, but he never returned. Steven Isserlis once revealed that on arrival in Vienna in 1922, his pianist grandfather and father found a flat, but the 102-year-old landlady refused to take in a musician, because her aunt had a previous musician tenant who was noisy and would spit on the floor—the tenant was Ludwig van Beethoven.
The recording below of cello sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc, and Franc was made in February 1989, when Isserlis was 30. Pascal Devoyon provided piano accompaniment.
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Posted: |
Jul 25, 2018 - 1:23 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Marie-Claire Alain was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France on 10 August 1926. Her father Albert Alain was an organist and composer, as were her brothers, Jehan and Olivier. Marie-Claire Alain, who died in 2013 at the age of 86, was the most-recorded classical organist in the world, with over 260 recordings in her catalogue. Alain recorded the complete organ works of J.S. Bach three times as well as the complete organ works of over a dozen other major composers of works for the organ, as well as many individual works. When her third recording of Bach's works for organ appeared in 1994, she explained to The Organ, a British journal, why she was recording them again:
“It's because of the instruments, the instruments above everything else, and the fine state to which they have been restored—and the fact that they are now accessible. These recordings use instruments from Bach's time, and we know that Bach even played some of them—it's an extraordinary feeling, to put your hands on the keyboard, knowing that he was there 250 years before you!”
It was with the organ in the Orléans Cathedral, a church once attended by Joan of Arc, that Alain recorded a 1987 program of organ music by Franz Liszt.
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Posted: |
Jul 26, 2018 - 1:03 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Janet Baker is an English mezzo-soprano who gained fame during the 1960s and 1970s for her operatic performances and for her oratorio and song work. In 1968, she recorded Gustav Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder,” a song cycle for voice and orchestra, with Sir John Barbirolli and The Halle Orchestra. The words of the songs are poems by Friedrich Rückert. David Gutman, writing in Gramophone, described her performance as "intimate, almost self-communing."
Dame Baker's final operatic appearance was as Orfeo in Gluck's “Orfeo ed Euridice,” on 17 July 1982, at Glyndebourne. She continued to perform lieder recitals for another seven years, retiring for good in 1989 at age 46. She will turn 85 years old next month.
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This might sound weird, but Rozsa's outstanding score for Providence helped spur my interest in what was never a favorite instrument of mine, the piano! So, I've been delighting in the Pollini box set of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas as well as Uchida's interpretations of Mozart's same; plus I discovered Rachmaninoff's 2nd and 3rd Concerti (I like Fedorova and Ashenazy on these).
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Felix Prohaska (1912 – 1987) was an Austrian conductor, who spent many years conducting at the Vienna State Opera and the Frankfurt Opera. He is noted for his recordings for the Vanguard Classics label of the music of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Mahler. His recording of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony (No. 41) with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra was made in 1961. This 1987 cassette is that recording’s last known re-issue.
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Felix Prohaska (1912 – 1987) was an Austrian conductor, who spent many years conducting at the Vienna State Opera and the Frankfurt Opera. He is noted for his recordings for the Vanguard Classics label of the music of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Mahler. His recording of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony (No. 41) with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra was made in 1961. This 1987 cassette is that recording’s last known re-issue.
I'm still looking for that on CD without much luck.
Me:
Beethoven Piano Sonata "Les Adieux" (performed by my favorite pianist, Pollini).
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A gift from my guy: Ms. Uchida burning through the Mozart Piano Concertos (complete box set)!
Though there are film composers I actually like better than Mozart (really! lol), I'm starting to appreciate his music much more as I get older. As consonant as he was, he took more musical risks than he's given credit for. Great composer (like anyone here didn't know that, sorry!).
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