Max Derrickson

By the second half of the 19th Century, Johann Strauss II came to be known as the “Waltz King.” His dance music became beloved the world over, but nowhere so much as in Vienna. The “other” Strauss, Richard (composer of the tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, and others), referred to Johann II as the “laughing genius of Vienna”; and Brahms, a close friend, never missed a performance of Johann II’s masterpiece operetta Die Fledermaus. Today, Strauss’s waltzes, like his famous The Beautiful Blue Danube, polkas and operettas enchant us as much as ever.

The Afro-American Symphony was composed in 1930 while Still was studying composition in New York with the modernist Edgar Varese. Still’s musical notebooks at the time show a fascinating process. Still sketched out hundreds of themes, all with descriptions, such as “joyful” and “mournful.” Many of the themes were labelled “voodoo,” “lament” or “spiritual” – as though Still was creating a musical vocabulary that could speak across racial divides. …

In 1955, when most African-American citizens in the South couldn’t even drink out of the same water fountain as their white neighbors, composer William Grant Still achieved a breakthrough – he was the first African-American to conduct the New Orleans Philharmonic. It was, certainly, only one of the many steps toward racial equality (in that same year, Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to obey bus segregation), but in the Deep South in 1955, Still’s accomplishment was nonetheless an extraordinary one. That 1955 program with him as the conductor highlighted several of Still’s own works, including his Afro-American Symphony (Symphony No. 1, 1930) in which Still was just mastering the technique of giving voice to folksong elements, specifically African-American song and rhythm, in the “classical” Neo-Romantic style. If George Gershwin started that idea in 1924 with his Rhapsody in Blue, Still carried it further into the concert hall and perfected it. Such is the case with his marvelous Panamanian Dances for string quartet which he premiered in 1948.

Bedřich Smetana(Born in Litomyšl, near Prague, in1824; died in Prague (Czech Republic) in 1884) “Vltava” (The Moldau), No. 2 from Má Vlast (My Homeland) Smetana is renowned as the Father of Nationalist Czech music – or, Bohemian, as it was called in his day.  He determinedly dedicated his life to creating such music, beginning with […]

When Sibelius began sketches for his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies in 1915, he had ideas too for his Seventh. It took nine more years to complete his Sixth, and all the while the Seventh continued to gestate as Sibelius re-imagined of the nature of a Symphony, its structure, its harmonic path, the essence of what a Symphony should or might be. In those nine long years he was trying to rethink the form, and he was also seeking music in the world around him, a sort of Music of the Spheres, that musica universalis, first described by Pythagoras (c. 570 – 495 BC). Sibelius wanted to capture what the Universe sounded like in its deep logic and structure. Likewise, in natural settings, Sibelius searched to hear its order as well as its sound, once mystifying a group of musicians from the University of Helsinki by describing the harmonics of a mountain meadow. … When his Sixth was completed in 1923, Sibelius was fired to return to his Seventh, which he completed almost immediately by 1924. It is the culmination of his symphonic career …

One of the most heralded Romantic writers in Schumann’s day was (Lord) George Gordon Byron (1788 – 1824). Byron’s writings seemed to epitomize the Romantic spirit, especially in the German literary movement known as “Young Germany.” These were the German Romantics who, as Schumann’s biographer Martin Geck wrote, “ … [were] convinced that their own fates were exceptional, they sought to lead lives that were a mixture of grandiosity, world weariness, lovesick repining, disgust with life, and an entanglement with black magic.” No other work captured this pathos as intensely as Byron’s Manfred (1817). Schumann was deeply moved by Manfred and wanted to bring it to the stage. He wrote an impressive series of incidental music for its performance, including chorus, songs and monastic chanting,…

Even as a young lad, Schubert was working on writing an opera. At the beginning of the 19th Century, opera was usually what made a composer famous, and Schubert very much wished for that fame. Although he eventually wrote eight operas, none of them has endured as his best works, but in the meantime Schubert found that his greatest successes were to be found in other musical genres, with chamber music, art songs, symphonies and in several of his operatic Overtures.

Gypsy music was prominent in Spain during Sarasate’s life – in fact, the music and dance of flamenco is essentially Gypsy music. But for Zigeunerweisen, Sarasate was charmed by Western Europe’s current love affair with the Gypsy music from Hungary, thanks both to Brahms and Liszt. But the underlying tunes are really simply vehicles for virtuosic splendor.

The Prelude to Rapsodie Espagnole is a perfect opening … – evocative of the sensuality and slight menace brought on by the fall of darkness. Ravel uses it as a color piece, with misty and suggestive orchestration, whispering of the dances and cavorting that will occur behind closed doors in Madrid that night. …

Samuel Barber   (b West Chester, PA, 9 March 1910; d New York, 23 Jan. 1981) Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14 1. Allegro 2. Andante 3. Presto in moto   [. . .]  There is a lyrical, vocal beauty about many of Samuel Barber’s works, which is supremely evident in his Violin Concerto.  As the […]