The overture from The Bartered Bride is a thrilling romp which sets the mood for the comedy (and, arguably, the entire tradition of Czech classical music) to follow.
Read MoreFew societies are prouder of their music than the Czechs. This small population – there are only 10 million native speakers in the world – has had an outsized influence on the history of classical music.
Read MoreThis is a lyrical piece in which moments of agitation or anxiety on the part of the soloist or orchestra are always coaxed back into joy by the other musicians.
Read MoreThe Sinfonietta La Jolla was written for the Musical Arts Society of La Jolla, which requested that he write something tuneful and accessible. Martinů, who once commented that “music must be beautiful, or it wouldn’t be worth the effort,” gladly acquiesced to this request.
Read MoreIn Bohemia, the trumpets never call to battle. They always call to the dance.
— Rafael Kubelik
Read MoreThe compelling drama of Leonore Overture No. 3 has earned it a life of its own in the concert hall.
Read MoreJames Agee’s essay is a dreamy, conversational, almost improvisatory piece of prose reflecting on summers spent with his family at their home in Tennessee.
Read MoreMozart’s 31st symphony was a colorful three-movement work tailored for Parisian audiences.
Read MoreFelix Mendelssohn wrote a letter to his mother catching her up on some recent news:
Read MoreYou want to know how it went with my overture for Ruy Blas? Funny story...
Gone are the ponderous sonorities and heavy textures so prominent in Vaughan Williams’ earlier music. In their place, we find a work of majestic power and shimmering beauty.
Read MoreThe score for Pulcinella was something new— not an original composition, but more than just an arrangement.
Read MoreThe “Dance of the Hours” was intended to depict neither dancing hippos nor desperate letters from summer camp.
Read MoreAs difficult as it may be to believe, The Firebird was Igor Stravinsky’s first large-scale work for orchestra.
Read MoreMozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major stands out as one of the composer’s most intimate and expressive works.
Read MoreBeethoven was unmatched in the musical portrayal of complex heroic characters.
Read MoreTheir songs and stories have become such an integral part of our culture that it is easy to forget how revolutionary the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were.
Read More“I was anxious to write a work that would immediately be recognized as American in character,” Copland later recalled. Music for the Theatre was a five-movement suite exploring several different moods while trying very consciously to create a new national sound.
Read MoreThe comic plots and infectious melodies of operetta were a natural fit for Johann Strauss, Jr., whose polkas and waltzes had been delighting Viennese audiences for years.
Read MoreWe’re all familiar with the ending of Shakespeare’s most famous play: Romeo, discovering the seemingly lifeless body of his bride, drinks a lethal poison. Juliet, awakening from her faked death, finds him and, heartbroken, stabs herself with his dagger. This wasn’t how Sergei Prokofiev thought it should end.
Read MoreHis two piano concerti— opus 21 in F minor and opus 11 in E minor— were the only pieces Chopin ever composed for orchestra.
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