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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

Beethoven’s String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3: The Apex of a Genre November 30, 2022

In November of 1792, the young Ludwig van Beethoven left Bonn, the provincial city of his birth, to resettle in glittering, cosmopolitan Vienna. Two years after this momentous move, Beethoven completed the String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3. The piece marked the 24-year-old composer’s first foray into the genre. A successor to the Baroque t […]

Anna Clyne’s “This Midnight Hour”: A Cinematic Journey Through the Night November 28, 2022

This Midnight Hour, an evocative tone poem by the English composer, Anna Clyne (b. 1980), suggests the shadowy nocturnal world of film noir. Written in 2015, the single movement orchestral work unfolds as a haunting cinematic journey. Growling low strings initiate a spine-chilling “chase” down desolate alleyways. Amid the throb of an elevat […]

Saint-Saëns’ “The Carnival of the Animals”: A Zoological Romp November 25, 2022

In February of 1886, Camille Saint-Saëns set aside work on his Third Symphony to engage in a brief burst of compositional frivolity. He admitted to his publishers that it was “such fun” he could not resist. The piece in question was The Carnival of the Animals, a humorous musical suite made up of fourteen short, parody-filled movements. Eac […]

Telemann’s Sonata in D Major, TWV 44:1: Bremer Barockorchester November 23, 2022

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) was one of the most prolific composers of all time. The German Baroque composer produced 3,000 compositions, half of which have been lost. These include 1,700 cantatas, 600 orchestral suites, and numerous operas and concertos. Telemann was the godfather of J.S. Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Telemann in […]

Remembering Ned Rorem November 21, 2022

Ned Rorem, the American composer and diarist, passed away on November 18 at his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He was 99. Born in Richmond, Indiana, Rorem composed three symphonies, numerous concertos, and other orchestral works, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Air Music (1974). Additionally, he contributed a host of operas, chor […]

Fauré’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” Suite: Incidental Music for a Symbolist Play November 18, 2022

Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1898 French symbolist play, Pelléas and Mélisande, centers around a doomed love triangle. Set in an ancient ruined castle and a dense forest, it “expresses a sense that human beings understand neither themselves nor each other nor the world.” (Bettina Knapp) Joan Pataky Kosove writes, Pelléas et Mélisande tells the sto […]

Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor: “The Sorrows of Young Werther” November 16, 2022

In 1875, Johannes Brahms sent the newly completed score for his C minor Piano Quartet to his publisher, Fritz Simrock, with the following message: On the cover you must have a picture, namely a head with a pistol to it. Now you can form some conception of the music! I’ll send you my photograph for the purpose. Since you seem to like color p […]