I selected Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand because I'd always heard of it, but I've never actually listened to it == and now that I think about it, that's a bit astonishing -- and I do mean just a little bit -- because I play the piano and I'm left-handed. LOL -- I woulda thunk that I would have given it a try somewhere in the past. Well, I can never say I've never heard it anymore -- and I loved it. First, I read up on the concerto from a variety of sites. Here's some of what I learned: * Ravel wrote the concerto between 1929 and 1930 (concurrently with his Piano Concerto in G Major). * It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein who'd lost his right arm during World War I. * Some sources say the concerto is only one movement. Others say the piece is divided into two movements linked together. * Still others argue the concerto has a tripartite structure; not fast-slow-fast like most three-movement concertos, but slow-fast-slow instead. An article on Wikipedia states, "Towards the end of the piece, some of the music of the early slow sections is overlaid with the faster music, so that two tempi occur simultaneously." * An article on the website for the Houston Symphony describes the structure of the concerto thoroughly; it includes these lines: "The concerto is structured as one movement with two clear parts. The slower first part begins with low, whispering arpeggios in the double basses, which accompany a murky contrabassoon solo....(this) is soon interrupted by a jazzy melody in the horns based on three notes of a descending scale. The rest of the piece evolves organically from these two ideas....A grand orchestral crescendo builds to the beginning of the faster second part of the concerto: a march. Fragmentary ideas appear above the steady tread of the march accompaniment, until the soloist introduces a new, dancing melody above it." The complete article is HERE, and it is definitely worth a read! Okay -- so my thoughts? * LOL -- upon my first time listening, I wasn't even sure that the concerto had begun. The Houston Symphony article was not exaggerating when they described the double basses as "whispering" -- the opening mood is very mysterious and very -- capital letters VERY -- quiet. * I loved the drama and the range of the piano's entrance, but after watching the score for the piece (on the video linked above), I still can't understand how one hand could achieve what is written. It is fascinating how Ravel created a sound that two hands are performing the concerto -- with longer/tied notes on the top, while the same hand then jumps down to strike lower notes; however, for example, check out some of the chords outlined below. Who could play those with one hand? * The march section, which begins just after eight minutes into the piece, is as captivating as it is thrilling -- and the triplet notes above the pounding bass reminded me of the rhythms employed by Stephen Sondheim in "Into the Woods" -- albeit with a more ominous tone.
* Is it just me, or does anyone else pick up on a slight "Bolero" vibe just at the measure marked "28" (at about 10:30 into the piece)? * By about 11:30, Ravel seems to have three pieces going on simultaneously: the constant throbbing of the march, the haunting triplets on the piano (a la "Into the Woods"), and a lush, slower piece of passion in the strings. It's all quite impressive. * At one point I heard the tension of a Bernard Herrmann score for an Alfred Hitchcock movie (particularly the piano runs at section 38 -- reminiscent of "Vertigo"?), maybe some Gershwin (or even Louis Moreau Gottschalk?) around section 41, and toward the end of the piece I heard some John Williams a la his score to "Star Wars." As I stated above, Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand is impressive! I loved it.
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Each week I listen to a new piece of classical music (i.e., new to me), and then I make comments and post a rating. In 2022 I listened to 40 pieces (with various weeks off for travel), and a recap of my ratings is shown below.
To read about any particular piece, click on the composer's name in the "Archives" list on the right side of the page. I will listen to my first new piece for 2023 during the week starting January 8th.
I had an odd thought this week when I was looking for a piece to listen to (my apologies to those of you who don’t like sentences which end in prepositions – should I have said “when I was looking for a piece to which to listen”?: I wondered if there were any classical music works out there where the composer was totally unknown. I ran various Google-searches on works by nameless composers, but I kept coming up with pieces by “unknown” composers, i.e. “not well known” – not completely unknown.
I found the Trio in A Major (for piano, violin and cello) that is “attributed to Brahms” so I thought I’d give it a try. A bit of the history of the piece is HERE, and the article explains why scholars believe that the work was most likely composed by Brahms. The Trio is composed in four movements:
The Moderato opens with a tranquil passage on piano played in thirds, and then it is shared with the cello. This passage is repeated now and again throughout the movement, and there was something about it that gave off just a hint of Rachmaninoff. It reminded me of a Rach melody that might turn up in a pop song by Gilbert O’Sullivan or in something akin to “Full Moon and Empty Arms” – but again, there was just a hint of this, and there was no depth to any line as lush and rich as something by the Rach. The better part of the movement was light and airy, but not so joyous as the A major opening to Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4. Overall, though, the mood is filled with contentment. There is a touch of drama after the first repeated section, but then the opening theme returns the trio to the serenity present throughout most of the movement. The second movement starts with a sneaky vivace that sounds a bit devious. It sweeps the listener to a calmer, lullaby-ic (is there such a word as “lullaby-ic”?) trio before returning to the more mischievous slinkiness of the piece’s opening. The third movement is, for the most part, peaceful, but with an added touch of mystery provided by the occasional use of a tango-like rhythm (instead of the straight eighth notes used throughout most of the movement, Brahms (or the unknown composer) threw in some eighth notes followed by a sixteenth rest and a sixteenth note) The final movement is marked as “presto,” but the use of many half notes and whole notes on the melody line with an underscore of more action below (with quarter notes and eighth notes) gives the illusion of a somewhat slower dynamic. Later, the addition of quarter notes followed by two eighth notes provides a bit of a rocking lilt – even more so later when dotted quarters are paired with eighth notes – and then the trio races to its vigorous end. Overall, I did like the work. I wouldn’t say that I loved it. When listening, nothing made me stop in my tracks, so to speak, like when I listened to Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto” or Schubert’s “Fantasie in F Minor” – but I did enjoy the work. It was very pleasant.
On Thanksgiving, my wife and I visited my brother and his wife in the northern Virginia area, and for a time in our car we listened to WETA's annal Thanksgiving countdown of Top 100 classical music favorites. Of course, we only heard a few of the selections while we were in the car, so later I checked the WETA website to see the complete list (HERE).
I was not familiar with three of the pieces on the list, so I listened to them as part of this site. I listened to Marin Marais' "The Bells of St. Genevieve" during the week of 11/27 (HERE), and I listened to Vasily Kalinnikov's Symphony Number One during the week of 12/4 (HERE). This week I listened to the final of the three pieces, Symphony Number Three by Florence Price. I've listened to the piece a few times, and Imma be honest -- I vacillated between rating the piece BLUE ("Okay, It Was") and YELLOW ("Liked It, I Did") -- but I ended up rating it YELLOW because I did like the 3rd and 4th movements -- and much of the first movement -- so that put me over the top to give a final rating of YELLOW. The symphony is composed in four movements:
"Mrs. Price, both in the [piano] concerto and in the symphony, spoke in the musical idiom of her own people, and spoke with authority. There was inherent in both works all the emotional warmth of the American Negro, so that the evening became one of profound melody satisfaction. In the symphony there was a slow movement of majestic beauty, a third in which the rhythmic preference of the Negro found scope in a series of dance forms, and a finale which swept forward with great vigor." To me, though, the four movements did not seem particularly cohesive, and (LOL) it reminded me of words of advice I hear often on my favorite reality show, "Top Chef." I've been binge watching "Top Chef" for a few weeks now -- and I'm up to the current season, 19 (so I"ve witness a lot of cooking!) -- and two things I've learned from the show (and these are important lessons for chefs to grasp who aspire to be on the show), (1) the contestants should concentrate on one meal/preparation during an "elimination challenge" and not spread themselves to thin by preparing too many disparate aspects for the dish and (2) if/when preparing a multi-course meal, the menu items should be cohesive. As a multi-course "meal," so to speak, Price's four movements in this symphony just seemed too disparate with little cohesion. I liked the first movement, but it just didn't seem to fit with the third. The second movement? It was okay. The third movement seemed out of place with the second and fourth -- but as a stand-alone piece, it "worked." As the King of Siam in "The King and I" would say, "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." However, like I said earlier, I did like the third and fourth movements, and there was enough about the first movement that I did enjoy that that "pushed it over the edge" for me when I was considering whether to land on a rating of BLUE or YELLOW. YELLOW it is. ; )
This past Thanksgiving, I drove through the northern Virigina area, so for a time I was able to listen on my radio to WETA’s annual countdown of their listeners’ Top 100 classical music favorites. I was only able to hear a handful of the selections, so when I got home, I pulled up their website to view the complete Top 100 list, HERE.
I was familiar with 97 of the 100 works, so I thought I would listen to the three I've never heard. Last week, I listened to Marin Marais’ “The Bells of St. Genevieve,” #41 on the list. My comments and rating are HERE. This week I listened to Vasily Kalinnikov’s Symphony Number One, #94 on the list. Next week I will listen to #100, Florence Price’s Symphony Number Three in C Minor. I’m somewhat but not completely surprised that Kalinnikov’s symphony made the Top 100 list. On the one hand, it’s not a frequently played piece in the standard classical repertoire (at least not that I’m aware of); on the other hand, it employs a lot of bold brashness especially with blaring brass and lush strings in the final movement so I can understand why this is a crowd pleaser. For me? I liked it. I didn’t love it – but yes, I liked it. Kalinnikov’s symphony is made up of four movements:
The first movement begins with a main theme played in unison strings, and I don’t know if there is such a thing as a “Russian boat song” genre – similar perhaps to sea shanties but more in line with the Volga boat song – but it has a definite feel of a Russian boat song, and soon it moves into a Russian-boat-song-meets-Broadway fusion. There is a second theme developed later in the piece before returning to the opening theme, so the opening movement to the symphony is a bit long. Hmm…maybe Kalinnikov should have just concentrated on that first theme and then moved on. The second movement opens with quiet, pulsating strings, and then an oboe glides in with a melody as graceful as Saint-Saens’ “The Swan.” Though much of the piece was reminiscent of Saint-Saens’ magnum opus, Kalinnikov’s work ever quite reached that level of greatness. The third movement is a scherzo and contains Russian folk-music influences. As a result, it’s bouncy and more cheerful than the opening and second movements. The initial “boat-song” theme from the first movement opens the final movement, and it quickly moves to a more joyful rendition of the motif (predictably so as the key has changed from G minor to G major). Kalinnikov then revisits and transforms themes from the other two movements as well before concluding with a festive ending played by the full orchestra. For me, though, a more festive – and memorable – work for full orchestra is Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture.” Kalinnikov’s symphony is worth a listen to, though, and I suspect it would be a fun and exciting piece to hear performed live.
On Thanksgiving day, my wife and I drove up to (and back from) Reston, VA, and when we were in the northern Virginia area, we listened to a "Top 100" listener countdown on WETA. The countdown is HERE -- and spoiler alert: Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" scored quite an upset by knocking Beethoven's Choral Symphony out of its perennial top position. Of course, I didn't hear every work included on the list, so when I got home, I pulled up the inventory on my trusty Google machine and perused it. I was surprised to find three pieces I have never heard, and the highest ranking of them is #41, "The Bells of St. Geneviève" by Marin Marais. Not only have I not heard this piece before, but I've also never heard of Marin Marais. Therefore, I thought I'd give the piece a listen this week, and then I'll listen to the other two works in the coming weeks: #94, Symphony #1 by Vasily Kalinnikov, and #100, Symphony #3 in C Minor by Florence Price. So I've listened to Marais' work a few times now, and I have one word: Seriously?
Seriously -- "The Bells of St. Genevieve" nabbed the number 41 spot on the WETA's Classical Countdown of the "Top 100" listener favorites? Imma be honest -- there are several comments under the video I linked above where listeners said something like, "I've never heard this before." How did such an unfamiliar piece take the #41 spot? It beat out Mahler's Symphony Number 5, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 3, and Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, "Eroica" -- just to name of the few 59 pieces it bested. As an aside, I'll add that I'm not a big Mahler fan myself, but the Adagietto from his Symphony Number 5 is both transcendentally sublime and sublimely transcendent. And Marais' work topped that? "The Bells of St. Genevieve" was written in 1723 for viol, violin and harpsichord with basso continuo. It can be considered a passacaglia (info HERE) or a chaconne (info HERE), with a repeating D, F, E bass line -- which repeats and repeats and repeats. As a matter of fact, if there were such a genre as Baroque Minimalism, then this piece would be a model if not the pinnacle of the style. Now don't get me wrong -- I didn't hate the piece -- it was okay. It had a haunting melody line and did offer some first-rate background music (LOL -- am I being too harsh) -- but #41 on a "Top 100" of celebrated classical music hits? In a word -- no.
Imma be honest: I suffer from a severe case of PTSD: Post Trump Stress Disorder (I still can't understand why the man hasn't been arrested yet). As a result, I've cut back considerably on my viewing of news programs, and I have increased greatly my listening to classical music.
I listen on my computer (WQXR out of New York City), on my cellphone (with Spotify), on my radio (my local NPR station WVTF), and on my television (Music Choice channels). Sometimes these various media air some of my favorites and/or many of the conventional/popular pieces in the classical music canon, and I can hum along. Other times, they play pieces which simply serve as background music as I complete whatever it is I'm doing throughout the day. In cases like that, when an unfamiliar work is playing -- and something about the piece connects with me in some fundamental way -- I'll look up (if watching TV) or wait for info from the announcer (if listening to the radio or internet) to find out "What is that piece? Who wrote that?" It happened just yesterday when I was listening to a Music Choice channel on my TV. I heard a perfectly delightful piece that I was totally unfamiliar with, and I wondered, "What is that?" It turned out to be Joseph Haydn's Piano Concerto in F Major. I loved it. So why the info on Haydn's work here on my post about Boccherini's piano concerto? Because I've now listened to the Boccherini piece several times, and I have to say that nothing about it caused me to look up and wonder about the piece. Don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly pleasant piece, but nothing about it really called to me or connected with me. The concerto consists of three movements: I. Presto II. Adagio ma non troppo III. Moderator con variazione The first movement in particular sounds like it is best suited as the soundtrack for a Hallmark Christmas movie -- you know the plot, where a career woman is too busy for love, so she has to move to a small town where a handsome local bachelor teaches her about the true spirit of the holiday. It starts snowing and they kiss. There's also a dog. Also -- with apologies to Muzio Clementi -- much of the concerto sounds like what classical musicians might describe as a Clementi-esque quality (though Clementi's reputation for simple, repetitive and easy "white key" works is a bit unfair as he wrote some pieces that are much more exceptional than his sonatinas, the works for which he is most famous). So yeah, that's it on Boccherini's piano concerto. It's not up there with his famous minuet (HERE) which is, in a word, delightful. I think I'll go now and listen to the concerto by Haydn. See ya next week. ;-)
Two works by Richard Wagner -- the overtures to Rienzi and Tannhäuser -- are on my list of "Top 100" classical music favorites. Of course, there are many other pieces by Wagner that I enjoy as well, so for this week I thought I would find an orchestral work by him that I was not familiar with, and then listen to that; however, that task didn't turn out to be all that easy.
I found this list, HERE, of compositions by Wagner, and there wasn't a lot to pick from under the heading "Other Orchestral Works," so I opted to select one of his piano works instead, the "Grand Sonata in A Major." Two piano sonatas are on my "Top 100" list -- Beethoven's #8 and Mozart's #16 -- and others could have easily made the inventory -- for example, Beethoven's #14 and #23 -- so I thought why not give a sonata by Wagner a try? I mean, he wrote such grand pieces -- like Rienzi and Tannhäuser -- and just the title alone for the Grand Sonata in A Major sounded, well, grand. The sonata was composed in 1832, when Wagner was just 19 years old, and it is comprised of three movements:
And was the “Grand Sonata” grand? Well, yes, in just the way I imagine a “grand” sonata would be written by a nineteen-year-old student in an advanced composition class if challenged to compose a "grand" sonata. Of course, I’m not saying that Wagner was a student in an advanced composition class at the time he composed the piece nor that he was directed to complete such an assignment. I’m just saying the piece has all the hallmarks of a composition by such a student striving to make a work sound grandiose. There’s a great deal of pounding throughout the work, and there are plenty of plodding chords in the base. There seems to be an attempt to emulate revered composers’ works of the time – in this case, Beethoven (the first movement certainly calls to mind Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, though with a three note motif versus four) and Carl Maria von Weber (in the final movement). There are trills and flourishes galore (particularly in the finale) – and there are plenty of runs and broken chords a la Clementi. So again, was Wagner's Grand Sonata grand? As a piece composed by a 19-year-old, yes. Compared to the mature, resplendent and transcendent later works by Wagner? No.
Here was the plan for this week: I would run a search for a list of the greatest classical music composers, scroll down the list until I came to an unfamiliar name, and then pick a piece by that composer to listen to. Sure enough, I found a list of "The Top 100 Greatest Classical Composers" at RateYourMusic.com -- HERE. I clicked on the link and began to scroll down. I wasn't surprised at all to see J. S. Bach listed as number one followed by Beethoven as number two -- but then...
From an article in Wikipedia, I found this information: "Arvo Pärt (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrʋo ˈpært]; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019—after John Williams." Okay, I'll look up "tintinnabuli" later, but for now, " From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019—after John Williams." I suppose that is plausible, but I have to be honest -- I listen to classical music on the radio all the time, and I've been to many concerts, and I've never even heard nor come across his name. And he's listed as the third "greatest classical composer" of all time as ranked by RateYourMusic.com? I'll listen to "Tabula Rasa" later this week and see what I think. Stay tuned. Pärt.So here's what I did"
When I listen to classical music throughout the day -- on TV (a Music Choice channel), on my cell phone (usually through Spotify), over the internet (most often WQXR out of New York City) or on the radio (generally WVTF) -- if a piece "speaks to me" or piques my interest in some way, I'll stop what I'm doing, listen a bit more intently, and think to myself, "What is that piece? Who composed that?" So after I listened to "Tabula Rasa' one time, I thought I'd run a little experiment: as I sat on the couch working a crossword puzzle, and my wife sat across the room scrolling through messages on her phone, I played Pärt's piece loud enough so that she could hear it. I wanted to see if -- in any way -- this piece would "speak" to her. I mean after all, Pärt was listed as the third greatest composer ever -- would this work pique her interest in such a way that she would stop what she was doing and look up to listen? Very scientific, huh? I hit the play button, continued my crossword puzzle, and waited to see what would happen. Nothing. Things continued status quo. Toward the end of the work, I said something like, "What do you think of this piece?" She kind of grunted out the equivalent of a "meh." "It's good background music," she said. True, that it is. I did enjoy the work, and it has an interesting structure, though I don't think it's a piece I'd go back to very often. "Tabula Rasa" was written in 1977, and it contains two movements, "Ludus" (Latin for "game") and "Silentium" ("silence"). It was composed as a double concerto for two solo violins, prepared piano (a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings), and chamber orchestra. The first movement begins with the two solo violins playing a double-f octave "A," and then after an eight beat pause, the string section of the orchestra plays a simple pulsating rhythm The two solo violins then offer a few bars of a simple melody before the work fades into a pause. The pattern is then repeated: the strings begin the pulsating rhythm, the solo violins develop their melodies are bit more, and then it all fades into a pause before the patten begins anew. Each time the added sequence plays for a few beats more than the previous statement. Things get interesting just after seven minutes into the piece when the piano strikes an ominous and very deep bass chord, and the ever-developing melodies of the violins get more frantic if not panicky. The mood calms at the start of the second movement, described in an article on Wikipedia as a "mensuration canon." Here's the description: "Pärt divides the instruments into three sections; solo violins, violin I and violin II, and viola and cello. Each pair, divided into melodic and tintinnabuli voices, begin on a central pitch, and move at a different rhythmic speeds. Pärt expands the music by adding one pitch above and below the central pitch of each pair in each successive section. Every time the solo violins reach their central pitch, “D,” the piano again plays a D minor chord and the contrabass plays an octave “D.” Once each of the sections reach their expanded octave range, they fade out of the texture. The solo violins, moving at the slowest rhythmic speed, reach their octave span in measure 130, and then begin a downward descent of a D minor four-octave scale. As the violins move down the scale, the lower voices return to the texture and assist in the downward motion, until the violins finish their scale, leaving solo viola, solo cello, and solo bass to continue the scale in their low register. The viola and the cello finish the scale, leaving only the contrabass, which continues to play until reaching “E,” or the second scale degree of the D minor scale. Pärt omits the final “D” of the scale, leaving the listener with four written bars of silence in which to resolve the piece." The complete article is HERE. In a section of the article labeled "Notable Performance," Wikipedia notes, "The first performance of Tabula Rasa in Tallinn 1977 was considered to be a major success. The composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, said about the performance: 'I was carried beyond. I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music...nobody wanted to start clapping.'" Well, I did enjoy the work, and I found the information about Pärt, his minimalist style of tintinnabuli (info HERE), and the structure of this piece to be fascinating. However, I can't say that I was "carried beyond" by this piece or that "I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music" -- not, say, like I feel when I listen to Mahler's Adagietto from his Symphony Number 5 -- but, like my wife said, it makes for decent background music. |
A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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