Rossini composed his opera based on the Cinderella story in 1817, one year after writing the Barber of Seville, at the age of 25. Rossini “borrowed” the music for this overture from one of his unperformed operas – standard practice at the time - and it works...
The 20-year gestation of this symphony is related to two factors – Brahms’ own self-criticism of his work and the public’s expectation that Brahms would continue “Beethoven’s inheritance” and produce a symphony of depth and scope equal or superior to Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphony.
This concerto was Brahms’ first attempt at symphonic writing. He sketched the majority of the work in 1856. For a while it took the form of a two-piano sonata; then he orchestrated it, striving for a symphony. Finally, it was completed as a piano concerto, but one...
http://www.broadwaybach.org/audio/01_Hungarian_Dance_No1.mp3 The root of Brahms’ music lies in the tension between the duple and the triple rhythmic pulse. The inspiration for this can be traced back to his great fondness for the so-called “gypsy” music of Hungary. In...
This supernatural fantasy for orchestra was composed by the Russian composer Mussorgsky in 1867 and re-orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1886. http://www.broadwaybach.org/audio/Night_On_Bald_Mountain.mp3 Notes from Mussorgsky’s own score make clear its programmatic...
Fittingly enough for this concert, this next work is from Boito’s opera Mefistofele, a retelling of the Faust legend and his bargain with the devil. In this hauntingly beautiful aria, Faust’s beloved Margherita is in her jail cell and going mad from grief at the...
According to an old French superstition, Death appears at a graveyard at midnight on Halloween, “tunes” his violin (a very peculiar type of tuning), and calls forth the skeletons from their graves to dance – to their own type of waltz! Saint-Saëns, who first performed...
This song is taken from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Ruddigore, or the Witch’s Curse. This delightful operetta features (among other things) a roomful of portraits of ghostly noble ancestors - who actually step out of their picture frames and come to life! The...
The great Johann Sebastian Bach early on made his mark as a composer and performer on the organ. The D minor Toccata and Fugue is one of his earliest organ works, probably written between 1705 and 1708. It has 2 main sections – an opening “toccata” (from the Italian...
Wolfgang on his hometown: “Salzburg is no place for me.” On its residents: “One can't have any proper social intercourse with those people.” On the court musicians for whom he composed: “Coarse, slovenly, dissolute…” On his employer, Hieronymus Colleredo (Prince...