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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

Couperin’s Concert Royale No. 4, Forlane: Gottesauer Ensemble November 14, 2025

The Concerts royaux are a set of four chamber music suites, composed in 1714 by François Couperin (1668-1733) for the court of Louis XIV. An exuberant Forlane closes the final suite. Introduced to France in 1697, the Forlane originated as a rapid Italian folk dance in 6/8 time. Maurice Ravel may have had this music in mind when he composed […]

Bruckner’s “Locus iste”: A Motet for a Sacred Space November 12, 2025

The symphonies of Anton Bruckner have been compared with the architecture of a great cathedral. Unfolding in an ABA da capo form, the brief motet, Locus iste (“This Place”), exhibits a similar sense of structure and divine mystery. Commentator Peter Strasser has observed that the work’s motifs function as architectural building blocks. The […]

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony: A Tragic, Expectation-Shattering Farewell November 10, 2025

For first-time listeners, Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E minor can be shocking and expectation-shattering. Composed in 1884, Brahms’ final symphony does not take the journey from darkness to light (a minor key to a major key) charted by so many Romantic symphonies, beginning with Beethoven’s Fifth. Negating the heroic transformation o […]

Ravel’s “Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn”: An Homage in Code November 7, 2025

In 1909, the Revue musicale mensuelle de la Société Internationale de Musique commissioned six French composers to write pieces in commemoration of the centenary of the death of Franz Joseph Haydn. Ravel’s 54-bar-long minuet is built on a five-note motif outlining Haydn’s name. The French system for musical cryptograms involves the entire a […]

Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony: Alain Altinoglu and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony November 5, 2025

Composed during the war-torn summer of 1943, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 in C minor attempts to take a journey from tragedy to triumph. It is the same C minor to C major trajectory we encounter in Beethoven’s Fifth, Brahms’ First, Bruckner’s Eighth, and Mahler’s Second. Yet for many listeners, the victory feels hollow. Perhaps there is ev […]

Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin”: Jaime Martín and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony November 3, 2025

Composed in 1917, initially as a suite for solo piano, Le Tombeau de Couperin was Maurice Ravel’s musical response to the devastation of the First World War. The 17th century word, tombeau, refers to “a piece written as a memorial.” Ravel dedicated each of the suite’s movements to the memory of a friend who was lost in the war. The title re […]

Ives’ “Hallowe’en”: Mischief Around a Polytonal Bonfire October 31, 2025

Composed in 1906, Charles Ives’ Hallowe’en evokes childhood memories of a growing bonfire and playful mischief. Ives wrote, It is a take-off of a Halloween party and bonfire – the elfishness of the little boys throwing wood on the fire, etc, etc… it is a joke even Herbert Hoover could get. Scored for “string quartet, piano and optional drum […]