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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

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 […]

Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres”: Activity and Stasis March 4, 2026

Fratres, meaning “brothers” in Latin, has been described as “a mesmerizing set of variations on a six-bar theme combining frantic activity and sublime stillness.” Composed in 1977 by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935), Fratres is set in three parts, without fixed instrumentation. With the serene timelessness of medieval organum, a chant- […]

Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten: Sound and Silence March 2, 2026

“How we live depends on our relationship with death: how we make music depends on our relationship to silence,” writes Paul Hillier in his biography of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935). Sound and silence meet in Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, scored for string orchestra and a single bell, sounding on the pitch of A. Compo […]

Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat Major: Music Born of Friendship February 27, 2026

In his catalogue, Mozart referred to the Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat Major, K. 495 as “a hunting horn concerto for Leutgeb.” (“Ein Waldhorn Konzert für den Leutgeb”). Joseph Leutgeb (1732-1811) was Austria’s preeminent horn player. While employed as a court musician in Salzburg, he had known Mozart as a child. Later in Vienna, the two bec […]