The post Classical Discoveries – Sergei Prokofiev: Film and Incidental Music appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Sergei Prokofiev
Source: Library of Congress/Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s Classical Discoveries time and it’s back to film music, finally! (For Joe, anyway)
This time, Jens and Joe delve into the world of Prokofiev as film composer, on whether he’s more or less famous for writing film scores than Shostakovich, and why. Along the way, they explore his incidental music, where Prokofiev had set all the great Pushkin plays to music, even if the plays he wrote for weren’t, in the end, ever produced.
Other Episodes: Classical Discoveries – The Podcast
The post Classical Discoveries – Sergei Prokofiev: Film and Incidental Music appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Classical Discoveries – ARIBERT REIMANN: Unlocking Modern Music appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Photo: Aldus Rietveld
Is modern classical music ugly? Why bother with contemporary music at all? Jens and Joe take the example of Aribert Reimann, fearsomely modern on his own, and discuss the merits (and lack thereof) of tackling his re-scoring of Mendelssohn’s Songs for String Quartet – and what it means in the greater context of attaining a taste (or not) for “difficult” music and why there might be a point to it (or not) to do so.
The post Classical Discoveries – ARIBERT REIMANN: Unlocking Modern Music appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Classical Discoveries – BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ: The Symphonies appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>In this episode of Classical Discoveries, Jens and Joe tackle Bohuslav Martinů. Specifically, they look at the six (minimally strange) symphonies of this (endlessly fascinating) composer, which he wrote in the U.S. for the great American symphony orchestras. How ever did the lazy boy who grew up in a church tower in rural Bohemia come to write some of the greatest ‘American’ symphonies?!
The post Classical Discoveries – BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ: The Symphonies appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Classical Discoveries – CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH: Passion and Easter Music appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Easter is coming – and it coincides this year with “C.P.Eppreciation Day!” What’s that, you ask? Let Jens and Joe lead you on an egg hunt for sacred gems among the works of Johann Sebastian’s second oldest son, Carl Philip Emmanuel – C.P.E. – Bach. Along the way, they try to demystify the challenges that the “Galant” period music may pose to modern listeners.
The post Classical Discoveries – CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH: Passion and Easter Music appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Backtrack of the week. Walton. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Each Friday we select a track from a Naxos Music Group album released twenty years ago to provide the accompaniment for five minutes of your downtime.
This week’s pick from the Orfeo label (C621061A) is the second movement of English composer William Walton’s Cello Concerto, a work that provided a rich, atmospheric display vehicle for both soloist Daniel Müller-Schott and conductor André Previn, who was a personal friend of Walton. The second movement is a test of the soloist’s virtuosity, with flickering tone colours and flute-like harmonics combining with brilliant scales and demanding multiple-stopping. After two brief cadenzas, Walton recalls the cello’s lyrical qualities, and in a duet with the orchestral winds, he creates a kaleidoscope of virtuosic rhythmic effects that exploit the instrument’s range of sonorities.
Cello Concerto – Allegro appassionato (C621061A)
The post Backtrack of the week. Walton. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Backtrack of the week. Corbetta. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Each Friday we select a track from a Naxos Music Group album released twenty years ago to provide the accompaniment for five minutes of your downtime.
This week’s pick from the Dynamic label (CDS517) is Mantovana, a short piece by Italian guitarist/composer Francesco Corbetta. Born around 1615, Corbetta served at a number of European courts, including in England from 1660 to 1670, where Charles II conferred upon him the title of "Gentleman of the Chamber to the Queen". He died in Paris in 1681, when an epitaph in the Mercure galant, signed by a pupil, cited as his most precious virtue the fact that he had made the guitar speak the true language of love, and that during his marvellous performances, pervaded by an almost divine spirit, he had charmed all his listeners – and would have enchanted Death itself if it had had ears.
Mantovana (CDS517)
The post Backtrack of the week. Corbetta. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Backtrack of the week. Wolf. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Each Friday we select a track from a Naxos Music Group album released twenty years ago to provide the accompaniment for five minutes of your downtime.
This week’s pick from the Capriccio label (C71128) is by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735–1792), a leading musical personality in Weimar for nearly 30 years, initially as organist and eventually as kapellmeister at the court chapel. He composed almost 40 symphonies between 1770 and 1790, and the large scale of his later ones, with their characteristic use of certain forms, varied treatment of the winds, and elements of motivic and thematic work, clearly reflect the influence of the Viennese School. Here’s the first movement of Wolf’s E minor Symphony, probably written between 1785 and 1790, in which the key and Sturm-und-Drang dramatics of the opening movement reflect the influence of Haydn’s minor-key symphonies.
Symphony in E Minor – Allegro (C71128)
The post Backtrack of the week. Wolf. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Backtrack of the week. Kaipainen. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Each Friday we select a track from a Naxos Music Group album released twenty years ago to provide the accompaniment for five minutes of your downtime.
This week’s pick from the Ondine label (ODE1089-2) is from the Bassoon Concerto by Finnish composer, journalist and writer Jouni Kaipainen (b. 1956). The second movement’s concept derives from a musical play for children titled Hämärän maa (Land of twilight), where a rag doll becomes animated and dances with a piccolo; in the concerto, the piccolo dances with the solo bassoon, about which Kaipainen noted: “I feel that the bassoon is a far more versatile instrument than we are led to believe from school concerts onwards. To regard it only as the ‘clown of the orchestra’ is to disregard a large portion of its potential – or, at the very least, we should then understand the term ‘clown’ as a mixture of comedy and tragedy in the manner of Don Quixote, Chaplin, Pierrot or the characters of the commedia dell’arte in general.”
The post Backtrack of the week. Kaipainen. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Classical Discoveries – ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK: Miraculous and Ecclesiastic Adventures appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>When you hear ‘Engelbert Humperdinck’, you’ll invariably either think of the King of Romance’s hit ballad “Release Me” (in which case you’ve got the wrong Humperdinck, as far as we are concerned) or of the King of Romantic Children’s Opera’s greatest hit “Hansel & Gretel”. Well, in their latest podcast, Jens and Joe will try to re-wire your brain so that you will associate the name with mystical blue birds and nuns on the run. Romance, however, remains the name of the (musical) game all the same.
The post Classical Discoveries – ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK: Miraculous and Ecclesiastic Adventures appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>The post Backtrack of the week. Schoeck. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>Each Friday we select a track from a Naxos Music Group album released twenty years ago to provide the accompaniment for five minutes of your downtime.
This week’s pick from the Musiques Suisses catalogue (MGB-6238) is from the Second String Quartet by Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck (1886–1957). He was the son of the painter Alfred Schoeck and briefly a pupil of Max Reger, going on to become one of the leading composers of his generation in Switzerland. The selected string quartet was completed in 1923, shortly after Schoeck had been first confronted with musical Modernism at the chamber music festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Salzburg. We hear the work’s Presto finale.
Presto (MGB-6238)
The post Backtrack of the week. Schoeck. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.
]]>