More Romeo and Juliet: Berlioz: Queen Mab Scherzo – Toscanini – NBC – Live 1951 , great compositions/performances

Berlioz: Queen Mab Scherzo – Op 17 Toscanini – NBC – Live 1951

goodmanmusica

Uploaded on Sep 3, 2011

Berlioz Queen Mab Scherzo ( Romeo and Juliette) – Toscanini
NBC – Live 10 Nov. 1951

Claudio Abbado Conductor: “Haydn Variations” Brahms, great compositions/performances

Claudio Abbado “Haydn Variations” Brahms

Ulrich Dünnebach

Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, op 56a
by Johannes Brahms
Staatskapelle Dresden
Claudio Abbado, conductor

 

Mengelberg – Grieg – Two Elegiac Melodies for Orchestra, Op 34, great compositions/performances

Mengelberg – Grieg – Two Elegiac Melodies for Orchestra, Op 34

2ndviolinist

Published on Oct 22, 2010

1. The wounded heart
2. Last Spring

Willem Mengelberg
Born: March 28, 1871 – Utrecht, Holland
Died: March 21, 1951 – Chur, Switzerland

Grieg(1843-1907)

In the late 1860s Grieg married his cousin, Nina Hagerup, and settled in Christiania (now much less charmingly named Oslo). Life couldn’t have been easy, eking out a living from teaching and conducting, particularly as his over-zealous studies in Leipzig had permanently damaged his health. Then, in 1874, still aged only 31, came a stroke of good fortune: he was awarded a life annuity from the Norwegian government (nice work if you can get it!). Maybe he isn’t exactly a “front rank” composer, but his music is equally capable of charming the simple soul (like me) as it is the not so simple (like Liszt).

A composer of several choral works, reams of piano pieces, some chamber music, and a fair stack of orchestral music, Grieg generally shunned larger-scale forms (his celebrated Piano Concerto being the best-known exception), believing that his strengths lay in the more intimate forms associated with his native Norwegian folk culture. On the alter-stone of this credo he lay over 120 songs, many of which were inspired not only by Norway but also by Nina who, being a soprano, was equally often the intended interpreter.

The Two Elegaiac Melodies op. 34 are an arrangement for string orchestra of two songs from his op. 33. Shorn of their vocal element, both nevertheless reveal their provenance through the richly-inflected speech-rhythms of their melodic lines, simple and direct in their appeal to the listener’s emotions. Heart’s Wounds is the more overtly passionate, developing a strong compulsion in its central episode, while Last Spring (that’s “Last” as in “final” rather than “previous”) is generally more circumspect, tender, and achingly regretful.

Beethoven | Piano Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major | Daniel Barenboim, great compositions/performances

Beethoven | Piano Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major | Daniel Barenboim

OndaCC

beethoven:  Piano Sonata No. 12

*****From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia*****

Portrait Ludwig van Beethoven when composing the Missa Solemnis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Piano Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major, Op. 26, in 1800–1801, around the same time as he completed his First Symphony. He dedicated the sonata to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, who had been his patron since 1792.

Consisting of four movements, the sonata takes around 20 minutes to perform.

1. Andante con variazioni 3/8
2. Scherzo, allegro molto 3/4 A-flat major, D-flat major, A-flat major
3. Maestoso andante, marcia funebre sulla morte d’un eroe 4/4 A-flat minor, A-flat major
4. Allegro, Rondo form 2/4 A-flat major

The structure of the sonata is unconventional in that the piece opens with a relatively slow movement in the format of theme and variations. In contrast, the remaining movements of the sonata proceed according to classical principles in fast-slow-fast alternation. The third movement incorporates a funeral march, clearly anticipating the watershed of the Eroica Symphony that Beethoven wrote in 1803-1804. This is the only movement from his sonatas that Beethoven arranged for orchestra, and was played during Beethoven’s own funeral procession in 1827.

This sonata is also unusual in that none of its four movements is in sonata-allegro form.

In most of Beethoven’s four-movement sonatas, the third movement is in 3/4 and in ternary form, while the second movement is slow and in a different key from the other movements. In this sonata, the second and third movements have switched roles, where the second movement is the ternary scherzo and trio, while the third movement is the slow movement in the tonic minor.

The main theme of Schubert‘s Impromptu in A-flat major, Op. 142 No. 2 is strikingly similar to the theme in the first movement of Beethoven’s sonata. The four-bar phrases that open these pieces are almost identical in most musical aspects: key, harmony, voicing, register, and basic as well as harmonic rhythm. Another less immediate connection exists with the main theme, also in A-flat major, of the Adagio movement in Schubert’s piano sonata in C minor, D. 958. Indeed, Schubert may have borrowed these themes from Beethoven, as he often did in his compositions.

This sonata was greatly admired by Chopin, who repeated its basic sequence of scherzo, funeral march with trio, and perpetuum mobile finale in his own Piano Sonata in B-flat minor.^[1] His first movement, however, is also animated and in sonata form, unlike Beethoven’s Andante con variazioni.

Ludwig van Beethoven – Triple Concerto Op.56 Isaac Stern – Beethoven, Triple Concerto For Piano, Violin, Cello & Orchestra Op.56

Ludwig Van Beethoven [ 1770 – 1827 ],
Concerto For Piano, Violin, Cello & Orchestra
In C Major Op.56 ‘Thriple Concerto’I. Allegro
II. Largo – attacca
III. Rondo Alla Polacca 

Violin ; Isaac Stern [ 1920 – 2001 ]
Piano ; Emanuel Ax [ 1949 – ]
Cello ; Yo-Yo Ma [ 1955 – ]
Conducted By ; Michael Stern
London Symphony Orchestra
Narrated By ; Gregory Peck

From Album [ 1992, Sony Classical LD ]
Isaac Stern A Biography In Music
Live At Royal Festival Hall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C major, Op. 56, more commonly known as the Triple Concerto, was composed in 1803