It’s Oh So QuietIn 1995, Bjork released a big band jazz cover of Betty Hutton’s 1948 hit “Blow a Fuse”. This was a cover of an Austrian song “Und jetzt ist es still” by Hans Lang and Erich Meder. Bjork said of the song: Isn’t that the best song you’ve heard for five years? In a way it […]
A matter of tempoBruno Walter, Friedrich Buxbaum, and Arnold Rosé were to perform Erich Korngold’s Piano Trio in D in 1910. Korngold was only 13 at the time. These three great musicians were to remain Korngold’s devoted friends and admirers, and they frequently performed his subsequent works. Previous to this performance, Bruno Walter had known of the boy’s […]
Richter on small concerts“Put a small piano in a truck and drive out on country roads; take time to discover new scenery; stop in a pretty place where there is a good church; unload the piano and tell the residents; give a concert; offer flowers to the people who have been so kind as to attend; leave again.” […]
“Didn’t you like it?”Leonard Bernstein and Mildred Spiegel attended the Boston Symphony Orchestra season in 1933. They sat, she remembers, in the second balcony “under one of the male Greek nude statues.” One evening, during a standing ovation for the orchestra’s music director, Serge Koussevitzky, Lenny “just sat there” clapping very softly. “What’s the matter,” I asked, “didn’t […]
The cleansing power of musicEach art endeavors to isolate itself, to remain independent of all others. But a play without music is like a feast without wine. Music cleanses the soul from the dust and dross of every day life and seems to say to every one: ‘You are no longer in your office, in the barracks, or in […]
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. […]
Mighty Like a MooseTitle: Mighty Like A Moose (silent film soundtrack) Composer Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score (34 pages) Background: Written by: Charley Chase & H. M. Walker Starring: Charley Chase, Vivien Oakland, Gale Henry, Charles Clary, Ann Howe, Malcolm Denny Directed by: Leo McCarey Film released: 1926 SAMPLE:
Stravinsky and Charlie ParkerThere is a story that Igor Stravinsky went to the New York jazz club Birdland one evening in 1951. Whispers went round that the great composer was in the house. When Charlie Parker came on with his quintet, he didn’t acknowledge Stravinsky in person, but seamlessly quoted The Firebird in his first number, the furiously […]
Franz Schubert: Six Moments Musicaux (Musical Moments), op.94(i) Moderato (C major) (ii) Andantino (A-flat major) (iii) Allegro moderato (f minor) (iv) Moderato (c-sharp minor)/ (v) Allegro vivace (f minor) (vi) Allegretto (A-flat major) In 1929, Oscar Bie reflected on Schubert: That face! . . . It is the face of a teacher, but not of a strict one. The hair curls about […]
The potential of music to spread peaceA German proverb says: Bose Menschen haben keine Lieder (bad men don't sing) . It is not impossible that out of a tremendous movement of amateur community music a peace movement could spread over the world. Could it not be supported by our high dignitaries? Instead of the president of the United States solitarily playing […]
