Posts by beaverbase
A Walt Whitman Sampler
Walt Whitman, the defining 19th-century poetic voice of America, inspired several generations of European composers. In the 20th century, Whitman’s poetry was beautifully adapted during World War I by Othmar Schoeck. The catastrophe of World War II inspired Kurt Weill to turn to Whitman’s writings. Franz Schreker and Ralph Vaughan Williams were drawn to Whitman’s…
Read MoreIntolerance
It would be hard to imagine a work more pertinent to our times than Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza 1960. It is a work of musical theater that tells the story of an emigrant worker who encounters prejudice, injustice, incarceration, and violence. It assumes a political context in Europe of the threat of a return to fascism. Intolleranza…
Read MoreLuigi Nono, Intolleranza 1960
Born January 29, 1924, in Venice Died May 8, 1990, in Venice Composed in 1960–61 Premiered on April 13, 1961, at Teatro della Fenice in Venice with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruno Maderna Performance Time: Approximately 75 minutes Fifteen years after the end of World War II, the wounds of Europe were far…
Read MoreThe Courage of Friendship: The Composer as Jew in the Soviet Union
The historical thread running through this concert program is the presence and persecution of the Jews of Poland and Soviet Russia in the mid-twentieth century. The nearly total annihilation of the Jews that began in 1939 with the Nazi invasion of Poland and proceeded with increased intensity after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in…
Read MoreMieczysław Weinberg, Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes
Born December 8, 1919, in Warsaw, Poland Died February 26, 1996, in Moscow, Russia Composed in 1949 Premiered on November 30, 1949, in Moscow by the All-Union Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Gauk Performance Time: Approximately 12 minutes During the last decade or so, a true Mieczysław Weinberg renaissance has begun in the concert…
Read MoreMieczysław Weinberg, Symphony No. 5
Born December 8, 1919, in Warsaw, Poland Died February 26, 1996, in Moscow, Russia Composed in 1962 Premiered on October 18, 1962, in Moscow by the Moscow Symphony, conducted by Kirill Kondrashin Performance Time: Approximately 42 minutes Weinberg’s Fifth Symphony may be seen as the composer’s response to Shostakovich’s Fourth, which was first performed publicly…
Read MoreVeniamin Fleishman, Rothschild’s Violin
Born July 20, 1913, in Bezhetsk, Russia Died September 14, 1941, in Krasnoye Selo, near Leningrad Composed by Fleishman in 1939–41, completed by Shostakovich in 1944 Premiered on June 20, 1960, in Moscow Performance Time: Approximately 40 minutes Shostakovich called Veniamin Fleishman his favorite student at the Leningrad Conservatory. At his teacher’s suggestion, Fleishman was…
Read MoreMusic, Autocracy, and Exile
What makes music so compelling as a means of human expression? Why were composers and audiences in the 20th century still drawn to the symphony and the concerto, musical forms that require neither words nor images and that occupy an extended duration of time? Why did composers seek to prove wrong Richard Wagner’s prediction that…
Read MoreGrażyna Bacewicz, Music for Strings, Trumpets, and Percussion
Born February 5, 1909 in Łódź, Poland Died January 17, 1969 in Warsaw, Poland Composed in 1958 Premiered in 1959 at the Warsaw Autumn Festival Performance Time: Approximately 19 minutes Upon hearing the words Music for Strings…and Percussion in the title of a composition, one immediately thinks of Bartók’s masterpiece from the year 1936, where…
Read MoreBohuslav Martinů, Symphony No. 6, Fantaisies symphoniques
Bohuslav Martinů, Symphony No. 6, Fantaisies symphoniques by Peter Laki Written for the concert Triumph of Art, which was performed on December 7, 2017 at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Born December 8, 1890, in Polička, Czechoslovakia Died August 28, 1959, in Liestal, Switzerland Composed in 1951–53 Premiered on January 7, 1955 in Boston, Massachusetts with the…
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