Bohuslav Martinů: Les rondes
Martinů’s Les rondes glides between second-hand bits of Harlem, memories of Moravia, and interwar Paris.
Category: Melbourne Symphony
Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben
Ein Heldenleben might be the most egotistical piece in the orchestral repertoire—a musical depiction of one Richard Strauss battling villainous music critics, romancing a lady, reminiscing over past triumphs, and settling into a happy ending.
George Gershwin: An American in Paris
“You are to imagine, then, an American, visiting Paris, swinging down the Champs-Elysees on a mild, sunny morning in May or June.”
Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
At the 1961 New York Philharmonic gala, probably the entire Carnegie Hall audience had seen West Side Story, owned the LP, and could hum its tunes. But Bernstein wanted to do more than a medley of hits for this special concert.
Johann Sebastian Bach: St. John Passion, BWV 245
Citizens of Leipzig who attended the 1724 Good Friday Vespers service at St. Nicholas Church would have heard the first performance of St. John Passion, written by the town’s new director of religious music, J.S. Bach.
Baroque Festival: Bach and Vivaldi Concertos
The style of the early 18th century would soon seem antiquated, and nearly irrelevant to the modern orchestra of the mid-19th century and beyond. But none of it would have been possible without the innovations of the Baroque era.
Baroque Festival: Handel and Vivaldi Arias
Before the symphony gained prestige in the second half of the 18th century, concertos and arias were the star genres of the Baroque era.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Rondo in D major for Piano and Orchestra, K. 382
Mozart wrote the Rondo in D Major in 1782 as an alternate finale to his Piano Concerto No. 5, which he had composed almost a decade earlier. In the intervening years, he had quit his job in Salzburg and moved to Vienna with “a kick on my arse” from the Archbishop.
Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 9, “From the New World”
In 1885 the New York philanthropist Jeannette Thurber founded the National Conservatory of Music of America, and in 1892 recruited Dvořák to be its director. In the words of H. L. Mencken, he was hired to “introduce Americans to their own music.”
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93
The longest gap in Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphonic output was the eight years between his Symphony No. 9, in 1945, and No. 10, in 1953. In between, he was denounced by Soviet authorities for a second time, accused of “formalism”—writing music without a proper social purpose.