Jefferson Hotel 2012

Here are photos from our November 28, 2012 performance for “Music at Midday” at Richmond’s landmark Jefferson Hotel.

Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

John Corigliano’s “Voyage”: Sailing into a World of Obsessive Imagination March 3, 2021

Regarding the dreamy and sensuous Voyage for Flute and String Orchestra, the American composer John Corigliano (b. 1938) writes, Voyage for flute and string orchestra (1983) is an instrumental version of a 1971 a cappella choral work that was a setting of Richard Wilbur’s translation of Baudelaire’s famous L’Invitation au voyage. Wilbur’s p […]

Chopin’s Four Ballades: Poetry in Music March 1, 2021

The solo piano Ballade originated with Frédéric Chopin. In the early nineteenth century, the title carried literary connotations. In his Henle forward, the musicologist Norbert Müllemann defined the folk ballade as “a strophically-constructed poem that described a dramatic, often also a demonic or mystical scenario within a comparatively re […]

Chick Corea’s “Children’s Songs”: Simplicity as Beauty February 26, 2021

The late jazz pianist Chick Corea began writing the solo piano collection, Children’s Songs, in 1971. The set of twenty short songs follows the model of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos. In the preface, Corea wrote that the music was intended “to convey simplicity as beauty, as represented in the Spirit of a child.” Each of the twenty songs opens up a […]

Stravinsky’s “Orpheus”: Melancholy, Love, and Mystery February 24, 2021

“Myths never were, but always are,” wrote the 4th century Roman commentator, Sallustius. So it is with the story of Orpheus, which inspired Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine in mid-twentieth century Hollywood as deeply as it did Claudio Monteverdi in 1607 and the lyric poet Ibycus in the 6th century BC. In 1946, Stravinsky received a co […]

“Possente Spirto” from Monteverdi’s “Orfeo,” Scherzi Musicali February 22, 2021

Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was created in 1607 at the dawn of opera. It remains the earliest work in that rich genre to be performed regularly. Set in five acts, it is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, who descends into Hades in an unsuccessful attempt to bring his dead bride, Eurydice, back to the living world. The aria, Possente spi […]

Liszt’s “Les Adieux”: A Fantasy on Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” February 19, 2021

On April 27, 1867, Charles Gounod’s five act opera, Roméo et Juliette, was premiered at Paris’ Théâtre-Lyrique Impérial du Châtelet. The same year, Franz Liszt composed Les Adieux (“The Farewell”), a solo piano work described as “a Rêverie on a motif from Gounod’s opéra Roméo et Juliette.” As the pianist and musicologist Leslie Howard write […]

Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony, “With Organ”: Scaling the Summit February 17, 2021

Following the completion of his Third Symphony in 1886, Camille Saint-Saëns made the following statement: I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again. Indeed, Symphony No. 3 in C minor takes us on an extraordinary dramatic journey which scales a mighty summit. It augments the sound w […]