Saturday, February 27, 2021
Röntgen - Cello Concerto No. 2 In G Minor
Röntgen was on close terms with what the cello could do and the sounds it could produce. He was a traditionally minded composer, but could also show flashes of experimentation in atonal music, and wrote a bi-tonal symphony as well as impressionistic works from time to time. He had the rock-solid compositional technique that comes with talent and hard work. He wrote over 600 works, with about 100 of those works written in his retirement over the last eight years of his life. Some have said that perhaps his pen wrote too much. But most everything he wrote showed craftsmanship and inspiration.
The 2nd Cello Concerto In G Minor was composed in 1909 and is dedicated to his friend Pablo Casals. It is in one continuous movement, but consists of 5 distinct sections:
Shostakovich - Piano Concerto No. 2 In F Major, Opus 102
Dmitri and Maxim Shostakovich |
Friday, February 26, 2021
Handel - Organ Concerto In B-flat Major, Opus 7, No. 1
He wrote in most forms of his time, but had his fame rest on Italian Opera and Oratorios. He wrote 42 Italian operas and when they fell out of favor he wrote Oratorios, of which his Messiah is the most well-known. During the intermissions of his Oratorios, Handel would conduct and play an organ concerto for orchestra and organ. He wrote 16 Oran Concertos, some of which have connections with specific Oratorios.
"A fine and delicate touch, a volant finger, and a ready delivery of passages the most difficult, are the praise of inferior artists: they were not noticed in Handel, whose excellencies were of a far superior kind; and his amazing command of the instrument, the fullness of his harmony, the grandeur and dignity of his style, the copiousness of his imagination, and the fertility of his invention were qualities that absorbed every inferior attainment. When he gave a concerto, his method in general was to introduce it with a voluntary movement on the diapasons, which stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression; the harmony close wrought, and as full as could possibly be expressed; the passages concatenated with stupendous art, the whole at the same time being perfectly intelligible, and carrying the appearance of great simplicity. This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself, which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one ever pretended to equal."
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Haydn - Piano Sonata No. 59 In E-flat Major Hob. XVI/49
The sonata is in 3 movements:
I. Allegro - Haydn opens the first movement with a theme in the tonic of E-flat:
III. Finale : Tempo di Minuet - The minuet is in the home key, while the middle section is in the key of E-flat minor. The minuet returns the music to the home key and the sonata is finished with a short coda and a final cadence.
Monday, February 22, 2021
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 27 In E Minor, Opus 90
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Shostakovich - Concerto For Piano, Trumpet, And Strings In C Minor, Opus 35
Friday, February 19, 2021
Tchaikovsky - Capriccio Italien, Opus 45
The work opens with a fanfare for trumpets, a tune he heard played outside the window of his hotel in Rome. The piece goes through a number of folk songs of differing moods, and ends with a rousing tarantella, the dance that legend says is caused by the bite of the tarantula spider and makes the victim dance a frenzied dance until death.