Tag: music

  • PROGRAM NOTES: ALBAN GERHARDT & STEVEN OSBORNE

    PROGRAM NOTES: ALBAN GERHARDT & STEVEN OSBORNE

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    Johann Sebastian Bach Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor BWV 1008 The instrumental suite, with its predictable allemande-courante-sarabande-gigue sequence of dances and its un-predictable addition of various galanteries (minuets, bourrées, gavottes, etc.), was a staple of the Baroque. Arising from neither of the period’s two great wellsprings of musical emotion – religious piety and…

  • PROGRAM NOTES: GEORGE LI

    PROGRAM NOTES: GEORGE LI

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    Franz Joseph Haydn Sonata in B minor Hob. XVI:32 It is not often that you catch the congenial, ever-chipper Haydn writing in
a minor key. But minor keys were all the rage in the 1770s, the age of Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), an age when composers such as C. P. E. Bach sought to…

  • PROGRAM NOTES: ZHANG ZUO

    PROGRAM NOTES: ZHANG ZUO

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    Ludwig van Beethoven 32 Variations in C minor WoO 80 The theme that Beethoven chose for his 32 Variations in C minor (1806) has a Baroque feel to it, with its chaconne-like harmonic pattern in the left hand and sarabande-like second-beat emphasis in the right. This theme, however, is far from the characterless blank canvas…