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Latest Listeners’ Club Posts

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 […]

Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” Finale: “Entry of the Gods into Valhalla” October 29, 2025

Listen to the cosmic, elemental opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, and you may be reminded of contemporary music, from the atmospheric soundscapes of John Luther Adams, to the minimalist arpeggios of Philip Glass. Beginning as a low rumble in the depths of the orchestra, the Prelude to Das Rheingold features a pure E-flat major chord which […]

Handel’s “Berenice” Overture: “Happy and Pleasing to an Uncommon Degree” October 27, 2025

Set in Egypt around 80 BC, Handel’s Berenice tells the story of the Egyptian Queen’s involvement in a convoluted romantic web which is happily resolved in the end. The three-act opera premiered at London’s Covent Garden Theater on May 18, 1737, but proved to be unsuccessful, and closed after only four performances. In the Baroque period, th […]