Tag: Vancouver Recital Society
-
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: ANDREA LUCCHESINI
Domenico Scarlatti Six Sonatas K 491 – K 454 – K 239 – K 466 – K 342 – K 146 The 550-odd sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti are perhaps the most successful works to migrate from the harpsichord to the modern grand piano. Their transparent texture of simple two- and three-part keyboard writing has one foot in the imitative counterpoint of…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: IGOR LEVIT
Johann Sebastian Bach Chaconne in D minor BWV 1004 (arr. Brahms) The Bach revival of the 19th century began with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829, conducted by the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. It reached its stride at mid-century with the founding, by Robert Schumann and others, of the Bach-Gesellschaft, a society…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: JULIA BULLOCK & JOHN ARIDA
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) Four Lieder About the Composer Franz Schubert established the German lied as an important art form and then set a standard of excellence that no one since has quite matched. Schubert created more than 600 songs in a prodigious outpouring that sometimes saw him composing five songs in a single day. However,…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: JERUSALEM QUARTET WITH PINCHAS ZUKERMAN & AMANDA FORSYTH
Richard Strauss String Sextet from Capriccio Capriccio (1942), Richard Strauss’ last stage work, is an opera about opera, constructed as a series of elegant salon conversations dealing with a question that has bedevilled opera lovers for centuries: which is more important, the words or the music? The year is 1775 and the setting is the…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: EVGENY KISSIN
Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann “…calling it a sonata is a caprice if not a jest for Chopin seems to have taken four of his most unruly children and put them together possibly thinking to smuggle them, as a sonata, into company where them might not be considered individually presentable.” That’s the perceptive way Robert…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: CASTALIAN STRING QUARTET
Franz Joseph Haydn String Quartet in D, Op. 76 No. 5 Having recently returned from his hugely successful visits to England and been liberated from financial woes, Haydn composed a set of six String Quartets, Op. 76 which were commissioned by Hungarian Count, Joseph Erdödy in 1797. Deviating from more traditional forms and establishing a…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: PAUL LEWIS
Ludwig van Beethoven 11 Bagatelles Op. 119 Beethoven’s Op. 119 is a catch-all collection of pieces written without any preconceived formal plan for the enjoyment of amateur piano enthusiasts. The last five were published first as a contribution to a pedagogical publication called the Wiener Piano-Forte Schule (1821), with the first six added to that…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: EDGAR MOREAU & JESSICA XYLINA OSBORNE
Francis Poulenc Sonata for Cello and Piano Op. 143 Mozart meets Stravinsky – in a Paris cabaret. As unlikely as such a meeting might be in historical terms, it is about as good a description as you can find for the musical style of French composer Francis Poulenc. The directness of his writing, its exuberance…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: SIR ANDRÁS SCHIFF
Robert Schumann Variations on an Original Theme in E at major (“Ghost Variations”) WoO 24 In February of 1854, Robert Schumann was in a state of delirium, but a very musical one. He was surrounded by ghosts, he told his wife Clara, ghosts that fed him wonderful music and had occasionally tried to drag him down…