Pax Americana
This week, for some reason, I started thinking about early American music. Being a born and bred Bostonian, I have long explored the music of the New England colonial period – remind me to tell you sometime about seeing the re-enactment of the Battles of Lexington and Concord for...
Vive La France!
It’s spring and I’ve been dreaming of a trip to France! Yes, I know this playlist is hitting on Cinco de Mayo – but, I’m in a mood for Paris…so, off we go! Vive La France! We start out with a really cool piece by Guillaume de Machaut, perhaps...
The Faust Bargain
Greetings! Well, our topic this week is Faust…Yikes, there’s sooooo many possible musical choices – I can only scratch the surface with this playlist! There’s probably no other single story/myth/legend that has inspired more artistic reactions; from plays, to concert music, to art song, to opera, to Broadway musicals,...
All Things Whitman
I’ve been thinking of Walt Whitman lately…actually, I almost always think of Whitman around Easter – usually due to the connection with his great Lincoln elegy ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’. It always evokes Spring and Easter for me, given that the elegy is describing the poet’s...
This Scepter’d Isle
An all-English playlist. We start with a sequence from Sir Patrick Stewart in the soliloquy John of Gaunt speaks in Richard II…and we’re off! This Scepter’d Isle The first work up is Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis – a work written to be performed in Gloucester Cathedral as...
Flatten the Curve
In a fun play on “Flatten the Curve”, I thought I’d include two preludes and fugues (in “F” and “C” – get it) from Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier – Book 2 as played by the incomparable Edward Aldwell. Ed was my counterpoint teacher at Curtis (he also taught for many years...
The First of Many…
This week’s playlist starts out with a work that I think is one of the most beautiful and moving of recent a cappella choral works: Eriks Ešenvalds’ Only in Sleep – in a gorgeous performance; and the video itself is so creative…love this! The First of Many Then follows William Byrd’s stunning a cappella motet...
MACE: American Composers Ensemble
Conducted by David Hayes, this special MACE presentation features a program of works by members of the Mannes Composition faculty. With a faculty that includes some of the most important voices of the 20th and 21st centuries, this special concert, showcases the creativity, originality, as well as the stylistic...
Hidden Mass
The concert opens with Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Chorus, now recognized as one of the great masterpieces of 20th century a cappella choral music. Swiss-born Martin was an extremely self-critical composer who would lock away his manuscripts for long periods, often hobbled by a belief that his work would never measure...
New York Choral Society Concert
Secrets: The Hidden Mass Frank Martin – Mass for Double Chorus (a cappella) Zoltán Kodály – Missa Brevis (chorus and organ) David Hayes, conductor Paolo Bordignon, organist Why hide a glorious piece of music in the bottom of a desk drawer for 40 years? What compels a composer to hide in a basement to write...