February 1, 2010

Franz Schubert, the great Austrian composer, was born on January 31, 1797 in Alsergrund, which is now a part of Vienna. He lived most of his life in that city and died a short 31 years later. Still, he left us with a large body of work of supreme quality, including more than 600 Lieder, great piano sonatas and other instrumental music, and nine symphonies. We created a small playlist to celebrate Schubert’s birthday. First, you’ll hear Impromptu Op. 90 No. 3, played by the pianist Xiang Zou; then an arrangement for the violin of the song Ave Maria, played by Albert Markov. We follow with two Lieder: Der Wanderer an den Mond, sung by the baritone Thomas Meglioranza, and Im Frühling, performed by the soprano Hyunah Yu. We’ll finish with the Wanderer Fantasy, played by the pianist Alon Goldstein. To listen, click here.

January 25, 2010

Jeffrey Biegel is one of today's most respected artists, having created a multi-faceted career as a pianist, composer and arranger. His recent recordings include Leroy Anderson's 'Concerto in C,' conducted by Leonard Slatkin with the BBC Concert Orchestra and his own Vivaldi transcriptions for piano, both on the Naxos label. He also recorded the complete Sonatas by Mozart for the e1 label. Mr. Biegel is currently assembling a global commissioning project for Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's next work for piano and orchestra for the 2011-13 seasons. In 2010, Naxos will release Mr. Biegel's world premiere recording of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Millennium Fantasy (2000) and Peanuts Gallery. Mr. Biegel joined 18 co-commissioning orchestras for Lowell Liebermann's Concerto no. 3 for Piano and Orchestra, composed exclusively for him for the 2006-07-08 seasons.

We have a large selection of Mr. Biegels’s recordings, but today we’re presenting just one piece, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in d minor. To listen, click here.

January 18, 2010

Gary Noland’s music has received very high praise from some of this era’s leading musicians. He was born in Seattle in 1957 and raised in Berkeley, next to the famous People’s Park. As an adolescent, Gary lived for a time in Salzburg and Garmisch-Partenkirchen (home of Richard Strauss), where he absorbed many musical influences. He studied music at U.C. Berkeley, then at the Boston Conservatory, and finally Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. Gary confesses to having “very restless tonal ears” and feels closest to composers with “all-encompassing” harmonic palettes, such as Strauss, Mahler, Korngold, Hugo Wolf, Ernst von Dohnanyi, David del Tredici, Frederic Rzewski and György Ligeti, to name just a few. He’s not terribly fond of “harmonically limited” music... We create a playlist consisting of the following works: Fantasy in E Minor for cello & piano (Op. 24), Humoresque for piano (Op. 3), Romance for viola & piano (Op. 10), Grande Rag Brillante (Op. 15), and Septet for clarinet, alto sax, French horn, two violins, double bass, and piano (Op. 43). To listen, click here.

January 11, 2010

The pianist Beth Levin is an acclaimed recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and recording artist. Her repertory is broad, from Bach's Goldberg Variations to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, to the romantics such as Schubert and Chopin. You can listen to the Diabelli in our library, but today we decided to present a selection from the recently uploaded complete set of 24 piano Preludes Op. 28 by Frédéric Chopin. Here are eight of them: no. 4 in e minor; no.7 in A major, no. 8 in f-sharp minor, no. 11 in B major, no. 12 in g-sharp minor, no. 13 in F-sharp major, no. 15 in D-flat major ("Raindrop Prelude"), and no. 19 in E-flat major. To listen, click here.

January 4, 2010

This week is especially rich in birthdays. Five talented composers were born between January 3 and January 9: Giovanni Pergolesi, Nikolai Medtner, Max Bruch, Alexander Scriabin and Francis Poulenc. We could play the music of these composers for many hours, but we have to be reasonable. So here is this week's playlist: we'll start with Medtner's Canzona serenata, from Forgotten Motives Op. 38, played by the Russian pianist Dmitry Paperno. Medtner is not particularly popular these days, but together with Scriabin and Rachmaninov, he was one of the most important Russian composers of the early 20th century. Then we'll hear two etudes by Scriabin: Etude in c-sharp minor, Op. 2, No. 1, played by the pianist Soyeon Lee; and Etude in c-sharp minor, Op. 42 No. 5, in Daniil Trifonov's interpretation. After these three Romantic pieces, we'll hear a very different performance: Poulenc's Sonata for Clarinet and Piano played by Alexander Fiterstein. To listen, click here.

December 28, 2009. From recent uploads.

The New York-based pianist and composer Jeffrey Biegel uploaded a number of performances, including three piano concertos: the Tchaikovsky First, Rachmaninov Third, and Prokofiev Third. Just as a sample, we included Franz Liszt's Sonetto del Petrarca no. 104 in E Major in the playlist. There's much more in the library, so please browse. The pianist Beth Levin uploaded a major piece: Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Op. 120, his last large-scale piano composition. (Don't miss Ms. Levin's very interesting liner notes to the Diabelli, which are on the Details page). Lasting about 60 minutes, the Diabelli requires a separate hearing, but Ms. Levin also uploaded an encore, Mozart's Fantasy no. 3 in d minor, which we also included in the playlist. And to conclude, from a recent concert by the flutist Jessica Warren-Acosta, Henri Dutilleux's Sonatine. To listen, click here.