Tag: piano
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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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Light refreshment: the piano singles (ISCM 1922/23)
As an antidote to my previous two posts, and to show that modern music wasn’t all about serious soul-searching, here is a playlist of 14 minutes of pure delight: five short piano pieces, chosen for performance at the first festivals of the International Society of Contemporary Music in 1922 and 1923.
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Modernism in miniature?
Here we are at post no. 12 in this series on recordings of 1922 and there’s been little mention of the m-word. 1922 is often seen as a crucial year in the history of Modernism – the year that saw the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. And both writers were…
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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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