NAXOS and the recording industry“There was a time, not so long ago, that Klaus Heymann was accused of trying to destroy the classical music industry. That was around the same time that the world realized that Naxos, Heymann’s budget-record label, was not just another series of CDs in the bargain bin. At first, nobody really knew what to make […]
Beethoven’s duetBeethoven was premiering his piano duet, March (op. 45) with duet partner Ferdinand Ries. When a young count spoke loudly to a lady friend in the room next door, Beethoven jumped up and shouted “I will not play for such swine.” Source: Arganbright, Nancy (2007) “The Piano Duet: A medium for Today”, The American Music […]
New art and the old formulaeAn art gathers new material usually by an original rejection of old formulae, a gesture of negation. At the beginning, this gesture is conscious, defiant, it lacks any other reason for existence than the very healthy one that dogma is death. In the turmoil of growth and expansion, this negation and denial loses its identity […]
Form and content“I think that one way toward a more intelligent and involved appraisal is through a connection with the pieces, and that one way to develop that connection is to talk about what the pieces mean to people who have spent a lot of time with them: the content, if you will. This approach can also […]
Nikolaj Zainder performs Elgar’s Violin Concerto on the original violinIn 2010, Violinist Nikolaj Znaider performed Elgar’s Violin Concerto on the same 1741 violin in which Kriesler premiered the work on a hundred years before. Znaider was not worried about comparisons to Kriesler’s original performance: “he way I think of music is that it really is something that is played in the moment – it’s […]
Some curious devicesIn the late nineteenth-century, some quite curious mechanical inventions were created to deal with the body with relation to pianists and conductors. The following is an account of a presentation by T. L. Southgate on The Physiology of Pianoforte Piano. The paper presented was written by W. Macdonald Smith. This account appeared in the […]
Study music profoundly“The advice I am giving always to my students is above all to study the music profoundly. Because the music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees, or the contrary.” Andrés Segovia, guitarist. Cited in: Cited in: Kimball, K., Petersen, R., Johnson, K. […]
Loneliness versus solitude“Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Johannes Tillich, German American theologian and philosopher
Forever I will Sing the Goodness of the Lord – Psalm 88 (89)Title: Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord (Setting I) Text: Psalm 88 (89) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and organ Related products: – Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord (SATB, brass, and organ) Product medium: PDF score and parts SAMPLE:
Capturing the pulse of the time"I try to put the pulse of my times into my music and do it in a lasting way." – George Gerswhin Cited in: Greenberg, Rodney (2008) George Gerswhin. New York: Phaidon Press, p.216. '