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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

“The Two of You”: Early Sondheim March 20, 2026

Sunday marks the 96th anniversary of the birth of American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021). In 1952, long before musicals such as West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods brought him fame, the 22-year-old Sondheim submitted a song to Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a popular television show involving puppets. Broadcast fr […]

Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel”: Excerpts from a Dark Fairytale Opera March 18, 2026

Completed in 1907, The Golden Cockerel was the last opera of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Based on an 1834 poem by Alexander Pushkin, its fairytale plot unfolds over three acts, bookended by a prologue and epilogue. The story involves the bumbling Tsar Dodon. “Advised by an Astrologer, Dodon uses a magical cockerel (a young male rooster) to war […]

Remembering Hjálmar Helgi Ragnarsson March 16, 2026

Icelandic composer Hjálmar Helgi Ragnarsson passed away last Friday, March 13. He was 73. Ragnarsson left behind a wide range of music including symphonic works, operas, incidental music, songs, and film scores. He was a respected music theorist, and served as president of the Federation of Icelandic Artists, and rector of the Iceland Unive […]

Vaughan Williams’ “Rest”: A Choral Setting of Christina Rossetti March 13, 2026

Christina Rossetti’s sonnet, Rest, presents death as a serene eternal sleep which provides relief from earthly pain. It is part of her collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, published in 1862. In 1902, Ralph Vaughan Williams set the poem for a cappella chorus. It unfolds in a gentle, flowing 3/4 time. At the poem’s midpoint, the word “p […]

Barber’s Violin Concerto: Aaron Rosand’s 1960 New York Philharmonic Debut March 11, 2026

“Romanticism on the violin had a rebirth last night in Carnegie Hall,” wrote New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg in 1970, following a recital by American violinist Aaron Rosand (1927-2019). A decade earlier, in October of 1960, Rosand made his New York Philharmonic debut, performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. Leonard Bernstein w […]

Barber’s “Excursions”: A Celebration of American Musical Vernacular March 9, 2026

Completed in 1944, Excursions, Op. 20 was Samuel Barber’s first published work for solo piano. Using traditional compositional forms such as the rondo and theme and variations, its four brief movements venture deep into American musical vernacular. Barber referred to the collection as “nothing but bagatelles.” He wrote, These are ‘Excursion […]

Aulis Sallinen’s “Winter Was Hard”: Ode to a Bleak Finnish Landscape March 6, 2026

Humor, stoicism, and Scandinavian winter gloom emerge in the brief song, Winter Was Hard, Op. 20 (Vintern var Hård) by Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935). Composed in 1969, the song became the title track of a 1988 album by the Kronos Quartet. Their version, featuring the San Francisco Girls Chorus, includes a pump organ: Here is ano […]