Music Preserved - Home. ClassicsToday - the world’s first & only daily classical music reviewClassics Today. Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 1. On the 30 May 1938 in Leningrad, Shostakovich began his first string quartet, the String Quartet no. 1 in C major, opus 49. The piece has a duration of about 15 minutes and is in four movements, marked: Moderato, Moderato, Allegro molto, Allegro, Shostakovich was now almost thirty-two, fairly late for his first adventure in this genre considering how prolific he had been in his youth and how many string quartets he would compose in the rest of his life.
He wrote: I began to write it without special ideas and feeling, I thought that nothing would come of it. The composition did make rapid progress for he completed it in Leningrad on the 17 July. Don’t expect to find special depth in this, my first quartet opus. The depths which Beethoven explored remain undisturbed in Russian string quartets; they tend to be more relaxed and lack the cerebral intensity so apparent in their Germanic cousins. I have also completed my quartet, the beginning of which I played to you. Steve Reich on Schoenberg, Coltrane and Radiohead. There is something oddly reassuring about the fact that Steve Reich lives in precisely the kind of house you might expect Steve Reich to live in. The cab journey to Pound Ridge, the tiny town on the New York-Connecticut border that the composer has called home since 2006, passes a lot of rather grand homes built in various classic styles, from colonial to arts and crafts.
Reich, by contrast, lives in what appears to be one of the area's few examples of modernism. Inside, the rooms are huge and white. There is beautiful mid-20th-century furniture. It is clearly the home of someone of refined taste. You could even describe it as minimalist, if you wanted to use a term that the person generally regarded as America's greatest living composer is apparently not so fond of applying to his music. "Well, I take the Chuck Berry approach," he smiles.
Reading this on mobile? Reading this on mobile? It feels a little strange to think of Reich as a riot-provoking iconoclast. Steve Reich & David Cossin - Clapping Music - Bloc Weekend - London Pleasure Gardens - July 6 2012. A guide to Terry Riley's music. Grand Theft Auto IV, the radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Who have one thing in common; one composer, in fact – the visionary musician, improviser and creative-consciousness-expander who is Terry Riley.
In fact, it's one album in particular that creates this strange cross-cultural Venn diagram: Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air, a piece he released in 1969. It's music of still-inspirational and frankly feel-good electronic and overdubbed radiance, made from Riley playing, improvising and re-recording all the instrumental parts you hear in a mind-bending 18 minutes. Riley says that a good friend of his was running the lighting for the Who's shows, "and he turned Pete Townshend on to A Rainbow in Curved Air. The Who song Baba O'Riley was dedicated to both me and [Indian guru] Meher Baba.
Pete has always said that I had a big influence on him. " By the late 60s, Riley was already celebrated in experimental musical circles. The Rite of Spring: 'The work of a madman' 'Mild protests against the music," wrote Stravinsky, "could be heard from the beginning. " The composer was remembering the night of 29 May 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. The event was the premiere of a new ballet called The Rite of Spring – and, if you believe all the stories about what happened that celebrated evening, not least the one about the riot that ensued, it's as if the 20th century only really got going when the audience in that gilded art-nouveau auditorium started kicking off.
If you know how Stravinsky's music begins, you may not be too surprised by the audience's reaction to The Rite, which was choreographed by the young dancer Vaslav Nijinsky and performed by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. After the strangest, highest and most terrifyingly exposed bassoon solo ever to open an orchestral work, the music becomes a sinewy braid of teeming, complex woodwind lines. What really happened on that night of nights? Let's deal with the riot first. Classical Notes - Classical Classics - Haydn's String Quartets, Op. 76, By Peter Gutmann. The string quartets of Joseph Haydn afford a unique opportunity in the annals of Western art – to trace the development of a major genre from birth to maturity, and all within the output of a single artist. A corollary benefit is to outline the evolution of a leading composer's genius, since Haydn's quartets extend from his very first to his very last published works. Just what is a quartet?
The standard dictionary definition is merely a work written in four separate vocal or instrumental parts. But the string quartet, using an array of two violins, one viola and one cello, demands far more. Perhaps Goethe said it best: "a stimulating conversation between four intelligent people. " The challenges and opportunities that the form presented to Haydn are summed up by Reginald Barrett-Ayres: "The limitations imposed by four stringed instruments appealed so much to his sensitive mind that he often used the string quartet as a means of expressing his deepest and innermost thoughts. " Mozart Str Quartets Vol 2 NI25335 [BW]: Classical Music Reviews - August 2009 MusicWeb-International. CD1 String Quartet in B-flat, K172 (1773) [12:25] String Quartet in F, K168 (1773) [10:41] String Quartet in B-flat, K458 ('Hunt') (1784) [22:31] String Quartet in F, K590 ('Prussian No.3) (1789) [23:33] CD2 String Quartet in A, K464 (1785) [28:34] String Quartet in d minor, K173 (1773) [14:37] String Quartet in A, K169 (1773) [11:39] String Quartet in G, K156 (K134b) (1772) [10:37] String Quartet in D, K155 (K134a) (1772) [7:49] CD3 String Quartet in C, K465 ('Dissonance') (1785) [26:45] String Quartet in G, K80 (K73f) (1770-1774) [11:29] String Quartet in F, K158 (1772/3) [12:26] String Quartet in C.
K170 (1773) [12:53] String Quartet in E-flat, K160 (K159a) (1773) [9:16] Nimbus have already released the American Quartet's performances of nine of the Mozart String Quartets, originally issued on MusicMasters, on NI2508-10. This well-filled second volume, containing 14 quartets, completes the 6-CD set of all Mozart's 23 String Quartets. Brian Wilson. Haydn String Quartets. Classical CD Reviews - MusicWeb International. The Takács take on Beethoven's 'Razumovsky' string quartets. Beethoven's three "Razumovsky" string quartets left both their first performers and the public shocked and suspicious. The violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whose quartet premiered the Opus 59 works, complained they were unreasonably difficult.
After playing the opening solo from the second movement of the first of the three quartets, cellist Bernhard Romberg threw his music to the ground and stamped on it. What sort of sorry substitute for a tune was this? How insulting to give a cellist of his stature such a banal rhythm, the sort of thing anyone could tap out with a pencil! Meanwhile, the violinist Felix Radicati is said to have complained these were "not music". "They are not for you, but for a later age," Beethoven told his critics.
Commissioned in 1802 by Count Razumovsky to write three new quartets, Beethoven surprised his Russian patron by presenting him with lengthy compositions that express intense, shifting emotions. Play It Again by Alan Rusbridger – review | Books | The Observer. In middle age some men take up marathon running. Others climb the Matterhorn or buy a red sports car. Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, decides to master Chopin's First Ballade, Op 23. Following an epiphany during a French summer course, Rusbridger gives himself a year to learn this fiercely demanding work, later extending his self-imposed deadline when at various points Julian Assange and the families Gaddafi and Murdoch eat into his practice schedule.
This is a journal of that year: part piano diary, part day-by-day breakdown of what a 21st-century editor actually does. The result is a unique melange of political and musical reportage, meditations on music-making deftly interwoven with reflections on the ever-changing newspaper industry. The frenetic pace of Rusbridger's working life contrasts starkly with the tortoise-like speed of his pianistic progress, documented through detailed, self-flagellating metronome marks.
Change or die. Hard on the heels of Radio 3's highly successful Beethoven Experience and Bach Christmas, last week saw the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart, which triggered worldwide celebrations that will continue throughout the year. Naturally, it's a cause for rejoicing to see the work of the great masters celebrated. But where does all this leave today's music? Contemporary classical music can empty a concert hall faster than the threat of bird flu; most people know the names of more MEPs than they do contemporary composers. Is this really a problem when the classical repertoire is full of masterpieces? Composers used to be at the heart of the orchestra. The dialogue between the composer, the orchestra and the audience was based on an understanding that the composer would primarily serve the needs of the listener and performer by providing music for worship or entertainment. A symphony orchestra is undoubtedly the flagship ensemble of the classical music world.
Myth, Muzak and Mozart. How do we know what we think we know about Mozart? And why is he still the most popular composer of the western classical tradition? He is one of the most written-about, dissected and mythologised composers in the history of western music. A Google search just before the 250th anniversary of his birth offers more than 5m entries.
My mobile phone's predictive text spells Mozart, but not Haydn or Beethoven. The number of books published about him ranks with those about Shakespeare, Christ and (his nearest rival among composers) Wagner. He was the subject of an acclaimed play by Peter Shaffer, Amadeus, and even more popular film in the 1980s, which re-embedded myths about the man at the heart of our understanding of his music. Of Mozart's short life, there is almost too much evidence - hundreds of family letters, diaries, catalogues, newspaper reports, etc. The image of the bourgeois, respectable Mozart was an astoundingly rapid creation of the late 1790s. 1 Ave verum corpus K617. Programme notes on the Beethoven String Quartets by Dr. Robert Simpson. Copyright © Intim Musik.
Please do not reproduce without permission. Here follow some of the late Dr. Robert Simpson's thoughts on the Beethoven String Quartets as published with the Vanbrugh Quartet's CDs on the Intim Musik label. Op.18 No.1 · No.2 · No.3 · No.4 · No.5 · No.6 Op.59 No.1 · No.2 · No.3 Op.74 Op.95 Op.127 Op.130 with Op.133 Op.131 Op.132 Op.135 Beethoven String Quartet in F major Op.18, No.1 Allegro con brio Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato Scherzo: Allegro molto Allegro Beethoven's Op.18 quartets were not written in the sequence in which they are numbered. 1. The F major quartet, published as No.1, underwent a comprehensive revision by which it became in many ways the strongest work of the set.
The first movement is one of the most succinct and muscular statements in early Beethoven, and the first figure generates a remarkable range of growth. Beethoven told Amenda that when composing the slow movement he had Romeo and Juliet in mind. Dr. Allegro Molto adagio.