Tag: Sunday

  • PROGRAM NOTES: ZOLTÁN FEJÉRVÁRI

    PROGRAM NOTES: ZOLTÁN FEJÉRVÁRI

    Robert Schumann Waldszenen Op. 82 It is not by chance that Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz, the founding work of German musical Romanticism, is set in a forest. Nor is it a coincidence that German Romantic poets from Ludwig Tieck to Joseph von Eichendorff and Heinrich Heine extolled the deep spiritual joys of…

  • PROGRAM NOTES: SIR SIMON KEENLYSIDE

    PROGRAM NOTES: SIR SIMON KEENLYSIDE

    Johannes Brahms Songs from Opp. 6, 72, 86 & 96 It may be surprising to learn that while Brahms is universally revered as a giant of 19th-century instrumental music, he is often listed as one of the lesser composers of 19th-century art song. This may be because the texts he chose to set were for…

  • PROGRAM NOTES: SCHAGHAJEGH NOSRATI

    PROGRAM NOTES: SCHAGHAJEGH NOSRATI

    Johann Sebastian Bach GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BWV 988 Historical Background Such was Bach’s mastery of his musical materials that he was often tempted to explore a particular genre or compositional technique in a systematic way by providing a quasi-exhaustive compendium of its possibilities. Fugue, for example, is represented in the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier…

  • PROGRAM NOTES: NIKOLAJ ZNAIDER & ROBERT KULEK

    PROGRAM NOTES: NIKOLAJ ZNAIDER & ROBERT KULEK

    Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata for Violin & Piano in G major Op. 30 No. 3 “Who are you, and what have you done with Ludwig van Beethoven?” Such is the question that Beethoven enthusiasts raised on the Pathétique Sonata, the Fifth Symphony, and the late quartets might wish to ask of the musician responsible for…

  • PROGRAM NOTES: SHEKU KANNEH-MASON & ISATA KANNEH-MASON

    PROGRAM NOTES: SHEKU KANNEH-MASON & ISATA KANNEH-MASON

    Gaspar Cassadó Suite for Solo Cello Gaspar Cassadó is hardly a household name, but he was one of the great cellists of the twentieth century, active as a performer, composer and transcriber for his instrument. Born in Barcelona in 1897, he was discovered at the age of nine by a young Catalan cellist just starting…