Classical Music

**osnunez** · 12-14-2008

Franz Schubert - Impromptu No.3, Op.90

(played by Krystian Zimerman)

**Hadamar** · 12-17-2008

Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures from an Exhibition, XIV: The Great Gate of Kiev -
Sviatoslav Richter

**osnunez** · 12-17-2008

^ Cool video.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Bella mia fiamma, addio

(singer: Cecilia Bartoli)

Josepha Duschek was an outstanding soprano singer of the Classical era. She was a friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote a number of works for her to sing.

During the 1787 visit, Mozart wrote the concert aria "Bella mia fiamma, addio," K. 528 (it is dated 3 November 1787). The composition of this aria was somewhat unusual; the following tale is attributed to Mozart's son Karl Thomas:

Petranka is well-known as the villa in which Mozart enjoyed staying with his musician friends, the Duscheks, during his visit to Prague, and where he composed several numbers for his "Don Juan" (Don Giovanni). On the summit of a hill near the villa stands a pavilion. In it, one day, Frau Duschek slyly imprisoned the great Mozart, after having provided ink, pen, and notepaper, and told him that he was not to regain his freedom until he had written an aria he had promised her to the words bella mia fiamma addio. Mozart submitted himself to the necessary; but to avenge himself for the trick Frau Duschek had played on him, he used various difficult-to-sing passages in the aria, and threatened his despotic friend that he would immediately destroy the aria if she could not succeed in performing it at sight without mistakes.

Bernard Wilson, commenting on the story, adds:

There seems to be some corroboration of this account in the aria itself. The words Quest' affano, questo passo è terribile per me are set to an awesome tangle of chromatic sequences artfully calculated to test the singer's sense of intonation and powers of interpretation. Apparently Mme. Duschek survived the passo terribile, since the autograph bears her name in Mozart's hand.

In 1789 Duschek sang the work along with other arias at concerts given by Mozart in Dresden and Leipzig, during his German tour of that year.

**brett** · 12-27-2008

John Adams - Chorus of Exiled Palestinians

My father's house was razed
In nineteen forty-eight
When the Israelis passed
Over our street.
The house was built of stone
With a courtyard inside
Where on a hot day one
Could sit in shade
Under a tree, and have
A glass of something cool.
Coolness rose like a wave
From our pure well.
No-one was turned away...

No-one was turned away - except for the [American born] composer of this piece,
who is singled out for ‘special’ treatment when trying to re-enter his home country.

**Hadamar** · 01-11-2009

Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One) (Danse sacrale (l'Élue)) - BBC Symphony Orchestra, The Finnish National Ballet, from The Riot at the Rite (BBC, 2006)

**osnunez** · 01-11-2009

^ Beautiful!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 9 "Jeunehomme" 2nd movement: Andantino

The Piano Concerto No. 9 "Jeunehomme" in E flat major (K. 271) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was written in Salzburg in 1777, when Mozart was 21 years old.

The work has long been known as the "Jeunehomme" Concerto. It was said that Mozart wrote the piece for a French pianist "Jeunehomme" when she visited Salzburg. But scholars couldn't identify the woman for whom he actually wrote it. Recently, the musicologist Michael Lorenz has argued that the woman was actually Victoire Jenamy (1749 - 1812), a daughter of Jean-Georges Noverre, a famous dancer who was one of Mozart's best friends.

The work is scored for solo piano, two oboes, two horns, and strings.

It consists of three movements:

1. Allegro.
2. Andantino.
3. Rondo (Presto).

The first movement opens, unusually for the time, with interventions by the soloist, anticipating Beethoven's Fourth and Fifth Concertos. As Girdlestone (1964) notes, its departures from convention do not end with this early solo entrance, but continue in the style of dialogue between piano and orchestra in the rest of the movement. Mozart wrote two cadenzas for this movement.

The second movement is written in a minor key. In only five of Mozart's piano concertos is the second movement in a minor key (K. 41, K. 271, K. 456, K. 482, and K. 488. K. 41 is an arrangement). Mozart wrote two cadenzas for this movement.

The third movement which opens with the solo piano is in a rondo form on a large scale. It is interrupted, surprisingly, by a slow minuet section (a procedure Mozart would repeat with his 22nd concerto, 1785). The work ends in the original tempo.

**osnunez** · 01-19-2009

Johann Sebastian Bach - Concerto for 3 Harpsichords in D minor

Played by The Amsterdam Baroque Orquestra

**Hadamar** · 02-01-2009

Ludwig van Beethoven - Coriolan, Op. 62 - Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players

**osnunez** · 02-19-2009

Johann Sebastian Bach - Cantata "Ich Habe Genug" (BWV 82)

(singer: Nancy Argenta)

Find the ensemble here: http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Cantatas/dp/B000031WJH

**smalandian** · 02-19-2009

Thanks a lot osnunez and hadamar. You dig up some familiar and some unfamiliar music. Great.

osnunez. You gave me the impuls to dig up this. VVVV

3.Allegro - Concerto For Four Harpsichords In A Minor BWV 1065

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apbf5lcyO-s

**osnunez** · 02-19-2009

Thanks!

Ludwig van Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op 57 (Appassionata)

(played by Myra Hess, 1945)

During the war years, and the blitz, Dame Myra Hess organized over a thousand concerts at the National Gallery. The Gallery had removed all their paintings, keeping just one on display each month as thousands of folks (many not regular concert goers) came to hear, be inspired, and maybe gain a little hope by these wartime concerts.

Andrew ****son wrote in his blog at the "Guardian": "the monumental Appassionata - always associated in my mind with a wartime film of Myra Hess at the National Gallery, playing those crashing F minor chords at with a stubborn intensity that takes on all the death and mayhem around."