Tag: classical
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“The lights are going out”: Serkin, Busch Quartet, Brahms
It must have been a Thursday in 1977 or 78. After school, my father drove me to my clarinet lesson with my new teacher – John Melvin, who was Head of Music at Oxford High School. He was a warm and encouraging mentor and taught music as an expressive language, not overly concerned with the…
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Six of the best: violin sonatas for a new age (ISCM 1922/23)
In the early years of the twentieth century, the violin achieved iconic status in European culture in an almost literal sense. Whereas Renaissance painters looked to the Madonna and Child as worthy subjects for art, modernist artists – putting their faith in more secular imagery – often turned to the violin to represent one of…
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Mahler steals a march… or maybe not
Massed high woodwinds, a barrage of brass in lockstep, batteries of snare-drum-heavy percussion: the soundscapes of Mahler’s symphonies are pervaded by the specific sound-world of the Austro-Hungarian military wind band, and dominated by the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic tropes of the military march in particular. There is hardly a Mahler symphony – and first movement…
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My time with Strauss
Richard Strauss was born in June 1864. I was born in June 1964. In a blog series about recordings made 100 years ago, that chronological nicety gives me a little thrill, as, with a stretch of imagination, I can put myself in Strauss’s polished shoes in 1922. (Though, unfortunately, I don’t have the Mercedes. And…
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String quartets, poetry, and cups of tea: Frank Bridge and Ivor Gurney
British classical music in the early twentieth century was dominated by the teaching of an Irishman: Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 – 1924), Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music since its founding in 1883, and Professor of Music at Cambridge University since 1887, where he established Music as an academic subject requiring a…
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Rhythm is life: Paderewski and the Art of Rubato
During these dark times in Europe my recent posts have dealt with music and politics, so who better to listen to next than one of the greatest musicians of his age who was also an international statesman and passionate advocate of the right of nations to determine their own future? Ignacy Jan Paderewski (born 1860…
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On Being Hu(ber)man
If you’re a world-class musician at the height of your fame, and your country, or the country where you perform, commits crimes against humanity, what do you do or say? If you want to take an ethical stance, there are essentially two alternatives: the Furtwängler option and the Huberman option. As the Nazi Party tightened…
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Will the real Mr Rachmaninoff please stand up?
A masterly transcription of an orchestral piece by Bizet. With minimal changes to the original (written 50 years before these recordings, in 1872) – just a few chromaticisms in the figurations and an occasional spicy chord – it has been transformed into a Rachmaninoff-sounding piano miniature. It’s as though Rachmaninoff recognised his doppelgänger in the…
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“The Greatest Woman Violinist the World Has Ever Produced. Unknown.”
Two sisters from Vienna. Erika, about 17 years old, sits casually – her right leg underneath her, holding a copy of the Musical Courier. She wears a sailor-suit ribbon to emphasise her youth. Her smile still has a hint of adolescent self-consciousness about it. Alice, 8 years older, sits on the arm of the sofa…
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