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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

Bizet’s “Carmen”: Three Celebrated Excerpts September 17, 2025

Filled with infectious melodies and sultry exoticism, Georges Bizet’s 1875 Carmen is one of the most popular and performed operas. Set in Seville, Spain, it tells the tragic story of a free-spirited Romani woman (Carmen) who seduces the soldier, Don José. He leaves his fiancée and deserts the army to be with her, but Carmen soon grows tired […]

Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns: A Novel Showcase for an Instrument Reborn September 15, 2025

In the early 19th century, valves began to appear on horns. It was an innovation which expanded the instrument’s virtuosic possibilities. Previously limited to a series of pitches based on the harmonic series, the horn could now glide up and down the chromatic scale. Robert Schumann took notice and was eager to exploit the new technology. H […]

“Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit”: György Kurtág’s Sublime Transcription of Bach September 12, 2025

In an interview, the Hungarian composer György Kurtág (b. 1926) was asked if he is a believer. His answer was uncertain: I do not know. I toy with the idea. Consciously, I am certainly an atheist, but I do not say it out loud, because if I look at Bach, I cannot be an atheist. Then I have to accept the way he believed. His music never stops […]

Remembering Christoph von Dohnányi September 10, 2025

Christoph von Dohnányi, the German conductor and longtime music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, passed away last Saturday, September 6, two days shy of his 96th birthday. Dohnányi was born in Berlin into a high profile family. His grandfather was Ernst von Dohnányi, a Hungarian composer and pianist. His uncle was the Lutheran theologi […]

Bach’s Cantata, BWV 106, “Actus Tragicus”: Death and Redemption September 8, 2025

Bach’s Cantata, BWV 106 is a gentle and intimate reflection on death and redemption. It is titled, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (“God’s time is the best time”), with the subtitle Actus Tragicus. The Cantata is scored for an unusual combination of instruments which the Netherlands Bach Society calls famous, idiosyncratic, exceptionall […]

Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata: Zino Francescatti and Robert Casadesus September 5, 2025

Beethoven composed ten sonatas for violin and piano. The giant of the set, in terms of technical demands and dramatic weight, is Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47, the “Kreutzer” Sonata. The work was dedicated to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer who called it “outrageously unintelligible” and never performed it. Beethoven and the Afro-E […]

Chausson’s Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet: A Glorious Hybrid September 3, 2025

Completed in 1891, Ernest Chausson’s Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, Op. 21 is a glorious hybrid. With the violin and piano functioning as solo protagonists set against the larger ensemble of the quartet, its musical dialogue resembles the Baroque concerto grosso. Brimming with bold virtuosity, it takes us on a dramatic journ […]