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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

Mahler’s Adagietto: Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra April 27, 2026

From 1988 to 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas served as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Claudio Abbado. His first association with the ensemble came in 1970 when he stepped in as a last minute replacement for Gennady Rozhdestvensky. In a recent obituary published by the London Symphony Orchestra, violinist Sarah […]

Remembering Michael Tilson Thomas April 24, 2026

American conductor, composer, and pianist Michael Tilson Thomas passed away at his home in San Francisco last Wednesday following a battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was 81. Known widely as “MTT,” Tilson Thomas served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years. He is credited with elevating t […]

Debussy’s “La Puerta del Vino”: A Dreamy Habanera April 22, 2026

Dreamy and seductive, La puerta del Vino (“The Gate of Wine”) is the third piece in Claude Debussy’s Préludes, Book 2 for solo piano, published in 1913. The work is said to have been inspired by a postcard Debussy received from Spanish composer Manuel De Falla, depicting a Moorish gate at the Alhambra Palace in Granada. For the performer, D […]

Mendelssohn’s “Ruy Blas” Overture: Thrilling Music for a “Ghastly” Play April 20, 2026

Set in Romantic verse, Victor Hugo’s 1838 drama, Ruy Blas, involves a nasty practical joke with tragic consequences. Ruy Blas is a common poet who is forced to disguise himself as a nobleman to fulfill the vengeful plot of his aristocratic master. He falls in love with the Queen of Spain, who appoints him Prime Minister. When the deceit is […]

“Polichinelle”: A Fritz Kreisler Miniature April 17, 2026

Derived from the Italian “Pulcinella,” Polichinelle is a French puppet character. A staple of French street theater since the late 1500s, he is known to be a vulgar prankster. There is no vulgarity in Fritz Kreisler’s charming miniature for violin and piano, Polichinelle—only an undercurrent of scherzando mischief. Kreisler (1875-1962) wrot […]

György Kurtág’s “Stele”: A Musical Epitaph April 15, 2026

If Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio, is a story of imprisonment and heroic rescue, Hungarian composer György Kurtág (b. 1926) takes us deeper into the dungeon in his 1994 orchestral work, Stele, Op. 33. Stele is a Greek word for a decorated slab used as a tomb stone or commemorative monument. Set in three brief movements which unfold without paus […]

Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 2: From Imprisonment to Freedom April 13, 2026

Beethoven was a composer who worked and reworked musical ideas in a painstaking series of sketches. His only opera, Fidelio, provides the most extreme example. Beethoven labored over it for over ten years, creating three distinct versions (1805, 1806, and 1814), and four different overtures. The overture we know as Leonore No. 2, Op. 42a op […]