Popular classical music is great too

“A lot of what you call the great repertoire is popular, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great work. I mean, come on. Rachmaninoff 3 is great. There shouldn’t be ‘If this work is so popular, then don’t do it.’ In the art world it is only what you feel right to perform.”

Lang Lang, pianist

Marcia Adair, “Lang Lang: Popular classical music is great, too”, Los Angeles Times, 28 April 2013.

Click here to read article.

 

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

,

Featured Content

Abstraction VII
Title: Abstraction VII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLES:
Growth by dreams
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to […]
Discovery
“Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.” Albert Szent-Györgyi , American bio-chemist.
The importance of rejuvenation
"Human beings, by change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden." Johann Wolfgang Goethe, German writer, philosopher and scientist.
Gershwin and Ravel
Ravel, touring America in 1928, was approached by George Gershwin for composition lessons.  Ravel refused, stating “you would only lose your own spontaneity and end up by writing bad Ravel!” Cited in:  James, Burnett (1983) Ravel: His Life and Times.  New York: Midas Books, p.120
Richter on Scriabin
“Scriabin isn’t the sort of composer whom you’d regard as your daily bread, but is a heady liqueur on which you can get drunk periodically, a poetical drug, a crystal that’s easily broken.” -Sviatoslav Richter, pianist Monsaingeon, Bruno (2001). Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations. Princeton University Press, p.267 Cited at: Wikipedia
Ganymed (Schubert)
Title: Ganymed (Op. 19, No. 3)Composer: Franz SchubertArranger: Greg SmithInstrumentation: Cello and pianoProduct medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Anecdotes
QUICK LINKS Composers Instruments Interesting facts Performers and performances Personalities of the musicians See also: QUOTES COMPOSERS Quick links INTERESTING FACTS Quick links INSTRUMENTS Quick links PERFORMERS AND PERFORMANCES Quick links PERSONALITIES OF THE MUSICIANS Quick links
Ode I
Title: Ode I Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE: Your browser does not support the audio element.
Beethoven our artistic brother
It is the function of art to bring to us emotions, thoughts, states of mind and heart which are larger and more exalted and more intense than those we can produce ourselves, but which we can still recognize as possible within the compass of our imagination, still lying within our capacity for thinking and feeling. […]