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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

Orlando Gibbons’ Three Royal Fantasies for Viols: Sit Fast October 3, 2022

The music of the English composer, Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), bridges the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Based in Cambridge and then at the Chapel Royal for much of his life, Gibbons became organist at Westminster Abbey in 1623. He enjoyed the patronage of King James I and his successor, Prince Charles. In addition to writing […]

Ligeti’s “Lontano”: Harmonic Alchemy September 30, 2022

In Italian, Lontano means, “in the distance.” This is the title of a haunting orchestral dreamscape, written by the avant-garde Hungarian-Austrian composer, György Ligeti, in 1967. The piece unfolds in vast sonic waves. Tone clusters form and dissipate in a gradually shifting kaleidoscope of color. Terrifying dream images emerge and dissolv […]

Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony: An Expression of Nature’s Divine Logic September 28, 2022

Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major begins with the breadth and majesty of a vast, unfolding Nordic landscape. A mystical horn call rises and falls in an expansive arc, which opens the door to all that follows. Picked up by the woodwinds, the motif begins to fragment, spin, and develop with a sense of self-organizing inevitability […]

Bach’s Partita No. 5 in G Major, BWV 829: An Exercise in Spiritual Delight September 26, 2022

J.S. Bach’s Six Partitas, BWV 825-830 were conceived as exercises for the body, mind, and spirit. Composed between 1725 and 1731, these were the last of Bach’s keyboard suites. Yet, they were published by the Leipzig-employed composer as “opus 1,” and offered “to music lovers in order to refresh their spirits.” This collection of Partitas ( […]

Pēteris Vasks’ “The Fruit Of Silence”: VOCES8 September 23, 2022

The Latvian composer, Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946), began as “a young, angry and avant-garde” modernist. Over time, his music evolved to embrace consonance, simplicity, spirituality, Latvian folk influences, and “echoes of bird songs.” Composed in 2013, Vasks’ The Fruit of Silence is a choral setting of a prayer by Mother Teresa: The fruit of s […]

Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy”: Two Legendary Heifetz Recordings September 21, 2022

The German composer, Max Bruch (1838-1920), had a longstanding fascination with the “exotic” culture and rugged, enchanting topography of Scotland. Bruch read German translations of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and created musical settings for several poems by Robert Burns. The Scots Musical Museum was an influential collection of Scottis […]

Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides” Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”): Painting in Tones September 19, 2022

In the spring of 1829, Felix Mendelssohn embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe. This was a customary educational practice for young men born into affluent families in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the time, Mendelssohn was already a prodigious rising star, having composed works including the Octet, Op. 20 and the famous […]