On Vulnerability
On Vulnerability Francis Yun “A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humor will stimulate … Continued
(Cellist Post) On Mark Carlson’s Piano Quartet
Piano Quartet by Mark Carlson: Composer, Teacher, Performer and Music Lover by Isaac Melamed When I was a sophomore at UCLA and struggling with, among many things, the anxiety that comes with trying to decide if a career as a … Continued
On Steven Stucky’s Piano Quartet
It was on Valentine’s Day of last year that Steven Stucky passed away. Brain cancer, they reported. “Steven Stucky, Composer Who Won a Pulitzer, Dies at 66” was the boiled down headline of the NYT, where his numerous life’s accomplishments … Continued
On “Cruel ragtime” and Chopin nocturnes
Sometimes musical kinship between two vastly different composers isn’t readily apparent until you start practicing for a concert that you’ve programmed them on. One wouldn’t naturally find similarities between the madcap William Albright and Frederic Chopin, considering that a good … Continued
On Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet no.2 in E-flat
In our first rehearsal yesterday of Dohnanyi’s op.26 Piano Quintet, Juliette, who was unfamiliar with the work, remarked on how nostalgic it seemed. “Was it a late composition?” Meh, more like middle period. He was 37. But I understood what … Continued
On Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on Music
Richmond homeboy Edgar Allan Poe will get the spotlight this coming Sunday with a couple of very cool works that you may not know about. More than a few composers have found the visceral horror of Poe’s stories to be … Continued
On the Artwork that inspired Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (part 2)
Okay, so the thing I find super cool about the pictures that inspired Mussorgsky’s composition is that they were mostly related to other works of art. Viktor Hartmann was an architect and designer in addition to being a painter, and … Continued
On Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition is probably Mussorgsky’s most popular work, though he never had the satisfaction of knowing that. Plagued by severe depression, the composer basically drank himself to an early death at age 42, leaving many works unrevised for publication. … Continued
On Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, D929
Before I start waxing poetic on Schubert’s great E-flat piano trio, I wanted to give you a quote from Stanley Kubrick, who had used this piece in scenes of Barry Lyndon to express what dialogue could not convey. “Barry and … Continued