It was love at first sight—or hearing—for me with Josef Suk’s Scherzo fantastique, a lively 15-minute composition that bears a stylistic resemblance to my other faves, Khachaturian’s Masquerade waltz and Saint Saëns’ Danse Macabre, not to mention elements from Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which I wrote about HERE. But only when I started delving deeper into research for an essay on Scherzo fantastique (note: [...]
Rest in peace, Michael Tilson Thomas. From those of us in the San Francisco Bay Area (and well beyond) who so enjoyed your years as music director, conductor, and the glorious face of the San Francisco Symphony, know that you will never be forgotten. I hate deaths. At the risk of stating the obvious, they [...]
It seems we can all use a little extra cheer in life these days, so what fun to get other people interested in and excited about Clara Wieck Schumann: child prodigy, piano virtuoso, mother of eight, wife and partner to the better-known Robert Schumann. The only reason I chanced upon Clara Schumann’s compositions was a [...]
By 1741, George Frideric Handel had fallen deeply into debt, and was even threatened with debtors’ prison. Instead, he departed to Ireland for a sabbatical, where he wrote his "Messiah" in just twenty-four days. While Handel’s Messiah is, for many, an annual Advent spectacle, in the Classical Girl household, the 1741 oratorio gets pulled out during [...]
From the moment of hearing those opening notes, everything in me scrambled and resettled, catapulting me back to 1978. Then, like now, it amazed me how immersive it all was, from the moment the clarinets, accompanied by the softest of strings, set off on their journey, like an enormous ship leaving the pier on a [...]
No piece of classical music grips my ballet-dancer’s imagination like Aram Khachaturian’s “Waltz” from his Masquerade suite. Like his Piano Concerto that I wrote about HERE in 2017, it doesn’t start so much as drop the listener smack into a musical extravaganza, where the lines between listener and music have been erased and, oh Lord, I’m inside it and [...]
In 1900, Jean Sibelius revised his patriotic tone-poem, “Finlandia,” and its popularity grew in leaps and bounds. Suddenly the world knew about Sibelius, “Finlandia,” and Finnish national pride. Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius’ tone-poem, Finlandia, wasn’t supposed to be the program headliner that Saturday night at the San Francisco Symphony. The main draw was the Sibelius Violin [...]
Here are ten glorious pieces of music for Holy Week that will remind you that there is beauty in this world. As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve always taken Holy Week seriously in a personal way, and the reading of “The Passion of the Lord” on Palm Sunday always deeply affects me. You’d think I’d never heard the [...]
Many classical music purists today consider Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music to be excessively sentimental, admittedly lush but too similar-sounding once you’ve heard one concerto. But is this a fair assessment? Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op 18 is the kind of music that grips you by the collar and draws you into its world instantly, [...]
Einojuhani Rautavaara Yuja Wang was the star we’d all come to seeat San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall last Sunday afternoon. A change in programming had rewarded us in dividends; she’d be performing not just one but two piano concertos. For most of the audience, I’m guessing, it was Ravel’s intense Piano Concerto for [...]
Franz Schubert composed his “Death and the Maiden” quartet—one of the most compelling, soulful, profound, irresistible pieces of classical music—while battling syphilis and depression. It’s not just the maiden that Death is after in the music. It’s Schubert. I don’t consider myself to be someone easily seduced, much less by Death, but Franz Schubert’s “Death [...]
Here’s what makes Samuel Barber stand out in this era of increasing atonalism in classical music: He didn’t adhere to any one school or philosophy of composition. He maintained a Romantic, lyrical sound, ignored the twelve-tone racket, yet incorporated a dissonant angularity into his works that produced a decidedly 20th century result. The list must begin [...]
It’s October, and the urge for theatrical, spooky music always arises for me right about this time. Cue a visit to the essay I wrote years back, “Ten Spooky Classical Faves for Halloween.” Each year, it seems, I have a different relationship with the music and its composers. This year, I’m taking a particular interest [...]
There is something immoderate about Sibelius’ Violin Concerto—something vulnerable and unspeakably beautiful, right there along something dark and brooding. The piece illustrates that not only do darkness and beauty coexist, they enhance each other. It’s complex, gripping, devilishly complicated, and sounds like no other concerto in the violin repertoire. Listening to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ violin concerto, [...]