Welcome to ClassicalConnect - the free classical music site!
ClassicalConnect is your virtual concert hall. It offers independent classical musicians the opportunity to be heard around the world while providing music lovers with a large selection of music performed by some of the most interesting musicians around. More...
If you are a musician, we urge you to sign up and upload your performances. Our site is a great way to share your music with the rest of the world! (For technical details, please click here)
If you are a casual music lover, you can listen to our playlists or browse through the music, selecting your favorite instruments. We have a great library of complete performances, from fleeting mazurkas to long sonatas and concertos. The library grows continuously with uploads from all over the world. Some of the compositions have been recorded by different performers, which we think creates a wonderful opportunity for comparing the music's different interpretations: our site has a unique feature created specifically for this purpose.
Once you have set up your account, you'll be able to select the type of music that plays when you enter the site. If you prefer a specific musical instrument, you could either select the most popular performances, or allow the system to pick the selection for that particular instrument. We call these lists "Top" and
"Serendipity." Piano music lovers, for example, could either make the "Top Piano" or "Piano: Serendipity" playlists as their starting point. Even if you don't have a preferred instrument, you could still select the option of playing the most popular performances among all the musical categories. Or, you could simply have the system make the choice for you.
After logging in, feel free to comment on any performance (just remember that artists can be very sensitive!). And of course, your vote counts on ClassicalConnect, so rate any piece using our 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) scale. May we recommend that you reserve 10s for truly great performances and 1s only for the really awful ones?
As the ClassicalConnect community grows, you will be able to connect to fellow music lovers and musicians. You could send messages to your friends or join discussions. It's very easy to share an interesting performance with other users: simply click the Share button on the player and select the ID of your friend. You could even send a performance to friends who never visited the site: just copy the URL of a particular Performance Details page into an e-mail and send it (Performance Details is the page that appears when you click on the Details button in the Player or on the title of the piece when you search or brows the library). When your correspondent receive the e-mail, he or she will click on the Play button, the Player will appear and start that particular performance. Try it!
In the near future, we plan to add several interesting features that we hope will only enhance your experience. We will keep you informed about all new developments.
We appreciate all your ideas and comments, so please let us know what you think: just use the Site Functionality and Issues forum, or send us a message.
Enjoy!
ClassicalConnect
Less...
At the moment, our site only accepts MP3 files, so if you have a CD recording, you can rip and upload it in this format. For higher quality, we recommend using a bit rate of 128 kbps, audio sample rate of 44 kHz, and a two-channel (stereo) format.
To upload, enter the complete title of the piece, including its key, number, opus, etc. For example, the title of Beethoven's Sonata No. 21 would be identified as Sonata No. 21 in C Major, Op. 53. "Waldstein" is optional - especially considering that in some countries, it is known as "L'Aurora." You can also leave comments about your own performance.
Please do not upload parts of a composition. Think of ClassicalConnect as your virtual concert hall: upload only the things you would play in a real one.
If you have any questions, please contact us by clicking here and sending us an e-mail. We'll make every effort to respond as quickly as possible.
Less...
From our Historical Interviews:
Bruce Duffie talks with the oboist Alex Klein
Bruce Duffie: ...When someone plays a recording, it will be exactly the same thing every time it’s played. Is there any ambiguity for you when you make a recording? Alex Klein: My recordings are not as authentic as a live performance, because I realize it’s going to be listened to several times, and analyzed as a document. A recording is a document. It’s something that I write down in my computer, and then I do a spell-checker, and then I come back to the next day and revise one paragraph. We cut and paste. We say, “Well in this passage, by the time we played it the fifth time it got a little bit better, so let’s paste that one in.” So we create a document that can be published. It lacks the authenticity, but it still carries a lot of information. If people like the recording, they’ll probably like a live performance better in terms of carrying emotions. But a live performance can never carry as much information as a document. BD: So they’re two separate things that should exist in parallel? AK: Yeah, exactly....
From our Historical Interviews:
Bruce Duffie talks with the composer Aaron Jay Kernis
Bruce Duffie: Has winning those prizes put an undue expectation, either on your part or on our part, for each successive piece? Aaron Jay Kernis: ... The problem with the Pulitzer Prize was that initially, it gave me this sense of worry, of, “Oh, had I just written my best piece, and could I not do anything more? Was that it?” And it gave a kind of too much of an expectation, as you said, for the next piece. I had to let go of that, of course, or otherwise I would just worry about that incessantly... BD: ... Are you pleased with the recordings that are out?.. AJK: Very pleased! I’m very pleased with the recordings that have come out, and I’m only sorry that there aren’t more. There are quite a few, but with the kind of near-collapse of the recording industry, the first thing to go were any of the major recording labels recording new music, and particularly American new music. At least in Europe they could afford to pay those ensembles, but here it’s been harder. I was very fortunate; I had a very wonderful situation with Argo label, which, you know, did wonderful things for five or seven years, and then has stopped. AJK: ...The most pleasurable part for me is when a piece is done and I really feel at home with it, and know that it’s really finished and that I’ve done my best and I can go on. There are only a handful of pieces that I just feel pleasure hearing, and have a sense that I accomplished what I had set out to do.
From our Historical Interviews:
Bruce Duffie talks with the composer Lowell Liebermann
Bruce Duffie: Do you feel, though, that it's a collaborative art between you and the performer?
Lowell Liebermann: No.
BD: You don’t want the performer to put anything into it?
LL: No. They should bring something to it, but it’s not like the performer is taking your piece and then layering over their own ideas on it. Not at all, because they might as well just rewrite the notes while they’re at it. To a composer, almost the whole dynamic framework comes before the notes. It’s almost like the notes are what are being filled in when you compose, not the dynamics and the articulations. A lot of performers do think that the notes are sacred, but beyond that they can sort of do anything they like to a piece. I think the act of performing and interpreting a piece is trying to come as close as one can to what was in the composer’s imagination. Now, more often than not, that’s not entirely clear, and you have to interpret and figure out what did the composer mean in a lot of respects. But no, I don’t feel it as sort of a collaborative thing where the performer is an equal.... To me, it’s the bad performers that impose their own personality onto the music and end up with something that is not what the composer intended, necessarily.
Excerpts from the pianist Jorge Federico Osorio's Interview with Bruce Duffie
BD: How far back do you go in music? Do you play some Bach and Scarlatti? JFO: Yes, Bach, of course. Scarlatti, yes. It’s from then on, really, that I play. BD: All on the modern piano? JFO: On the modern piano, yes. I enjoy his music tremendously on the modern piano! BD: Do you have any feelings about people who insist on doing it only on the old instruments? JFO: It’s interesting, but I’m not that convinced by it. I think it sounds so expressive on the piano. That’s just the way I feel. I don’t think I would go and get myself an instrument just to see. We really don’t know, really, what was in their minds. At that time, those were the instruments that were available, but it’s not to say that they were stuck with that! I think the music is much greater than that. It transcends all that, so it’s fine with me to play Bach on the piano.... Like Beethoven, also. In his last sonatas you really get a feeling that he was searching for something new, something he was really trying to get out of there. And when you hear these on instruments that were there when he was alive, I don’t think it has the same impact. I’m not all that for it.
Excerpts from the composer Easley Blackwood's Interview with Bruce Duffie
Easley Blackwood: There was a great deal of exploration done in this [atonal polyrhythmic] idiom, not in one exactly like the one that I was using, but in what you'd call atonal polyrythmic texture which starts out shortly after the close of World War II and comes to a big peak with the Darmstadt school, and then gradually begins to fall into a decline somewhere in the middle of the 1960s. By the 70s, it's been, to a large extent, abandoned except by some die-hards, and you find that it was replaced by aleatoric music. Then a little bit later, minimalists come into it. At the same time, when other people were losing interest in it, I was engaged in a big research project about chord progressions within equal tunings where the number of notes is different from 12. What I was particularly interested in was chord progressions that would give a sensation either of modal coherence or else of tonality. That is to say you can actually identify subdominants, dominants, tonics, and keys. In the process of doing that, plus having taught traditional harmony since I came to the University of Chicago in 1958 and writing the microtonal etudes to illustrate these chord progressions, I got, for the first time, firsthand sensation of what it was to write music in tonal idioms. I must say I found that it was rather more amusing than writing in the atonal polyrhythmic idiom that I'd been using.
BD: So is this the purpose of music? To provide amusement for the composer?
EB: Well, I think it is to provide high class entertainment for somebody. That's at least one purpose of it. There are others. I know it's very fashionable these days to indulge in political or social commentary, but if I look at the history of music, I see a vast repertoire where that's not the case at all.
Excerpts from the violinist Jennifer Koh's Interview with Bruce Duffie
Jennifer Koh: ...One of the most amazing concerts that I did was a couple days after September 11th, 2001. The National Symphony in Washington D.C. decided to still present a concert. I think it was on a Friday, and September 11th was on a Tuesday. I went there, and part of the reason that I felt that I could do this was because it was an all-Beethoven concert ... It was the kind of music that I felt was, in a way, the most appropriate for this time. So we had rehearsals and it was still very chaotic at that time.... They'd see a paper bag and they'd think it's a bomb, so the Kennedy Center would lock down, rehearsal would stop and everybody would vacate the building. So it wasn't the most ideal rehearsal situation. When the concert came, it was amazing. It was completely sold out, and after I finished playing, people were just weeping! Music is about communicating when you can’t find the words. It’s about spirituality, in a sense. It’s about the human soul. It’s about ... being able to take all the sides of humanity and turn it into something amazingly beautiful and profound...
February 8, 2010. John Ferguson is a pianist whose performances have been praised for their “proselytizing zeal” and "impressive qualities of pianistic brilliance.” He’s also a composer, conductor and founder of American Voices, an organization dedicated to furthering the understanding of American performing arts and culture around the world. His recitals feature some of the most difficult works in keyboard literature, including Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata, Bach's Art of Fugue, and Rzewski's The People United Will Never be Defeated. Ferguson's performances have also included such rarities as Liszt's arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies, music from the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, and a wide range of contemporary music, including his own compositions. We’ll hear Franz Liszt’s Legend no. 2 "St. Francis Walking on the Waves," then Allegretto from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, arranged for the piano by Liszt. We’ll continue with Mr. Ferguson’s own composition, Duo for Piano and Vibraphone. We’ll then hear Sonata V for prepared piano by John Cage’s and will conclude with Anton Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10, with Mr. Ferguson conducting. To listen, click here.
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.
December 21, 2009. Season's greetings! We wish all our listeners and all the talented musicians who contribute their music to our site a joyous holiday season! In this spirit, we present three pieces. First, The National_Collegiate_Chorale_of_Scotland sings O Magnum Mysterium by the American composer Morten Lauridsen. Then the pianist Minju Choi plays Regard de première communion de la Vierge, from Vingt Regard sur l'Enfant Jésus by Olivier Messiaen. And we'll finish with the wonderful kids of Brighton School Chamber Choir singing Benjamin Britten's Wolcum Yule. Happy Holidays – and click here to listen!
December 14, 2009. This week the whole music world commemorates Ludwig van Beethoven's birthday. Beethoven was baptized in Bonn, Germany, on December 17, 1770, so traditionally his birthday is celebrated on December 16. It is our pleasure to join these celebrations. We'll begin with the Piano Sonata No. 21 ("Waldstein"), played by Michael Mizrahi. Then Christina Castelli and Grant Moffett perform Sonata No. 9 ("Kreutzer") for piano and violin. Following that, Atlantic Piano Trio plays Trio Op. 11 for piano, violin and cello. We conclude with the finale (Allegro) of Symphony No. 5, with Pascal Verrot leading The Texas Festival Orchestra. These are just a few of our selections; we have much more Beethoven music in our library. To listen, click here.
December 7, 2009. From recent uploads. This week we feature three performances that were recently added to our library. First we'll hear Maurice Ravel's Tzigane. It is performed by the violinist Dmitri Berlinsky, who is accompanied by the pianist Elena Baksht. Then the flutist Kristin Paxinos plays Sonatine by the French composer Pierre Sancan. Sancan died just a year ago but the style of this piece, written in 1946, harkens back to Ravel's time. And lastly, Irina Kotlyar - Gregory Shifrin Piano Duo plays Schubert's masterpiece, his Fantasia in F Minor, D. 940. To listen, click here.
New! Live Interview Podcasts!
Musicians discuss their art and careers
Welcome to ClassicalConnect - the free classical music site!
ClassicalConnect is your virtual concert hall. It offers independent classical musicians the opportunity to be heard around the world while providing music lovers with a large selection of music performed by some of the most interesting musicians around. More...
If you are a musician, we urge you to sign up and upload your performances. Our site is a great way to share your music with the rest of the world! (For technical details, please click here)
If you are a casual music lover, you can listen to our playlists or browse through the music, selecting your favorite instruments. We have a great library of complete performances, from fleeting mazurkas to long sonatas and concertos. The library grows continuously with uploads from all over the world. Some of the compositions have been recorded by different performers, which we think creates a wonderful opportunity for comparing the music's different interpretations: our site has a unique feature created specifically for this purpose.
Once you have set up your account, you'll be able to select the type of music that plays when you enter the site. If you prefer a specific musical instrument, you could either select the most popular performances, or allow the system to pick the selection for that particular instrument. We call these lists "Top" and "Serendipity." Piano music lovers, for example, could either make the "Top Piano" or "Piano: Serendipity" playlists as their starting point. Even if you don't have a preferred instrument, you could still select the option of playing the most popular performances among all the musical categories. Or, you could simply have the system make the choice for you.
After logging in, feel free to comment on any performance (just remember that artists can be very sensitive!). And of course, your vote counts on ClassicalConnect, so rate any piece using our 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) scale. May we recommend that you reserve 10s for truly great performances and 1s only for the really awful ones?
As the ClassicalConnect community grows, you will be able to connect to fellow music lovers and musicians. You could send messages to your friends or join discussions. It's very easy to share an interesting performance with other users: simply click the Share button on the player and select the ID of your friend. You could even send a performance to friends who never visited the site: just copy the URL of a particular Performance Details page into an e-mail and send it (Performance Details is the page that appears when you click on the Details button in the Player or on the title of the piece when you search or brows the library). When your correspondent receive the e-mail, he or she will click on the Play button, the Player will appear and start that particular performance. Try it!
In the near future, we plan to add several interesting features that we hope will only enhance your experience. We will keep you informed about all new developments.
We appreciate all your ideas and comments, so please let us know what you think: just use the Site Functionality and Issues forum, or send us a message.
Enjoy!
ClassicalConnect
Less...At the moment, our site only accepts MP3 files, so if you have a CD recording, you can rip and upload it in this format. For higher quality, we recommend using a bit rate of 128 kbps, audio sample rate of 44 kHz, and a two-channel (stereo) format.
To upload, enter the complete title of the piece, including its key, number, opus, etc. For example, the title of Beethoven's Sonata No. 21 would be identified as Sonata No. 21 in C Major, Op. 53. "Waldstein" is optional - especially considering that in some countries, it is known as "L'Aurora." You can also leave comments about your own performance.
Please do not upload parts of a composition. Think of ClassicalConnect as your virtual concert hall: upload only the things you would play in a real one.
If you have any questions, please contact us by clicking here and sending us an e-mail. We'll make every effort to respond as quickly as possible.
Less...From our Historical Interviews:
Bruce Duffie talks with the oboist Alex Klein
Bruce Duffie: ...When someone plays a recording, it will be exactly the same thing every time it’s played. Is there any ambiguity for you when you make a recording?
Read more: 1 2 3 4Alex Klein: My recordings are not as authentic as a live performance, because I realize it’s going to be listened to several times, and analyzed as a document. A recording is a document. It’s something that I write down in my computer, and then I do a spell-checker, and then I come back to the next day and revise one paragraph. We cut and paste. We say, “Well in this passage, by the time we played it the fifth time it got a little bit better, so let’s paste that one in.” So we create a document that can be published. It lacks the authenticity, but it still carries a lot of information. If people like the recording, they’ll probably like a live performance better in terms of carrying emotions. But a live performance can never carry as much information as a document.
BD: So they’re two separate things that should exist in parallel?
AK: Yeah, exactly....
From our Historical Interviews:
Bruce Duffie talks with the composer Aaron Jay Kernis
Bruce Duffie: Has winning those prizes put an undue expectation, either on your part or on our part, for each successive piece?
Read more: 1 2 3 4Aaron Jay Kernis: ... The problem with the Pulitzer Prize was that initially, it gave me this sense of worry, of, “Oh, had I just written my best piece, and could I not do anything more? Was that it?” And it gave a kind of too much of an expectation, as you said, for the next piece. I had to let go of that, of course, or otherwise I would just worry about that incessantly...
BD: ... Are you pleased with the recordings that are out?..
AJK: Very pleased! I’m very pleased with the recordings that have come out, and I’m only sorry that there aren’t more. There are quite a few, but with the kind of near-collapse of the recording industry, the first thing to go were any of the major recording labels recording new music, and particularly American new music. At least in Europe they could afford to pay those ensembles, but here it’s been harder. I was very fortunate; I had a very wonderful situation with Argo label, which, you know, did wonderful things for five or seven years, and then has stopped.
AJK: ...The most pleasurable part for me is when a piece is done and I really feel at home with it, and know that it’s really finished and that I’ve done my best and I can go on. There are only a handful of pieces that I just feel pleasure hearing, and have a sense that I accomplished what I had set out to do.
From our Historical Interviews:
Bruce Duffie talks with the composer Lowell Liebermann
Bruce Duffie: Do you feel, though, that it's a collaborative art between you and the performer?
Lowell Liebermann: No.
BD: You don’t want the performer to put anything into it?
LL: No. They should bring something to it, but it’s not like the performer is taking your piece and then layering over their own ideas on it. Not at all, because they might as well just rewrite the notes while they’re at it. To a composer, almost the whole dynamic framework comes before the notes. It’s almost like the notes are what are being filled in when you compose, not the dynamics and the articulations. A lot of performers do think that the notes are sacred, but beyond that they can sort of do anything they like to a piece. I think the act of performing and interpreting a piece is trying to come as close as one can to what was in the composer’s imagination. Now, more often than not, that’s not entirely clear, and you have to interpret and figure out what did the composer mean in a lot of respects. But no, I don’t feel it as sort of a collaborative thing where the performer is an equal.... To me, it’s the bad performers that impose their own personality onto the music and end up with something that is not what the composer intended, necessarily.
Read more: 1 2 3 4Excerpts from the pianist Jorge Federico Osorio's Interview with Bruce Duffie
BD: How far back do you go in music? Do you play some Bach and Scarlatti?
Read more: 1 2 3 4JFO: Yes, Bach, of course. Scarlatti, yes. It’s from then on, really, that I play.
BD: All on the modern piano?
JFO: On the modern piano, yes. I enjoy his music tremendously on the modern piano!
BD: Do you have any feelings about people who insist on doing it only on the old instruments?
JFO: It’s interesting, but I’m not that convinced by it. I think it sounds so expressive on the piano. That’s just the way I feel. I don’t think I would go and get myself an instrument just to see. We really don’t know, really, what was in their minds. At that time, those were the instruments that were available, but it’s not to say that they were stuck with that! I think the music is much greater than that. It transcends all that, so it’s fine with me to play Bach on the piano.... Like Beethoven, also. In his last sonatas you really get a feeling that he was searching for something new, something he was really trying to get out of there. And when you hear these on instruments that were there when he was alive, I don’t think it has the same impact. I’m not all that for it.
Excerpts from the composer Easley Blackwood's Interview with Bruce Duffie
Easley Blackwood: There was a great deal of exploration done in this [atonal polyrhythmic] idiom, not in one exactly like the one that I was using, but in what you'd call atonal polyrythmic texture which starts out shortly after the close of World War II and comes to a big peak with the Darmstadt school, and then gradually begins to fall into a decline somewhere in the middle of the 1960s. By the 70s, it's been, to a large extent, abandoned except by some die-hards, and you find that it was replaced by aleatoric music. Then a little bit later, minimalists come into it. At the same time, when other people were losing interest in it, I was engaged in a big research project about chord progressions within equal tunings where the number of notes is different from 12. What I was particularly interested in was chord progressions that would give a sensation either of modal coherence or else of tonality. That is to say you can actually identify subdominants, dominants, tonics, and keys. In the process of doing that, plus having taught traditional harmony since I came to the University of Chicago in 1958 and writing the microtonal etudes to illustrate these chord progressions, I got, for the first time, firsthand sensation of what it was to write music in tonal idioms. I must say I found that it was rather more amusing than writing in the atonal polyrhythmic idiom that I'd been using.
BD: So is this the purpose of music? To provide amusement for the composer?
EB: Well, I think it is to provide high class entertainment for somebody. That's at least one purpose of it. There are others. I know it's very fashionable these days to indulge in political or social commentary, but if I look at the history of music, I see a vast repertoire where that's not the case at all.
Read more: 1 2 3 4Excerpts from the violinist Jennifer Koh's Interview with Bruce Duffie
Jennifer Koh: ...One of the most amazing concerts that I did was a couple days after September 11th, 2001. The National Symphony in Washington D.C. decided to still present a concert. I think it was on a Friday, and September 11th was on a Tuesday. I went there, and part of the reason that I felt that I could do this was because it was an all-Beethoven concert ... It was the kind of music that I felt was, in a way, the most appropriate for this time. So we had rehearsals and it was still very chaotic at that time.... They'd see a paper bag and they'd think it's a bomb, so the Kennedy Center would lock down, rehearsal would stop and everybody would vacate the building. So it wasn't the most ideal rehearsal situation. When the concert came, it was amazing. It was completely sold out, and after I finished playing, people were just weeping! Music is about communicating when you can’t find the words. It’s about spirituality, in a sense. It’s about the human soul. It’s about ... being able to take all the sides of humanity and turn it into something amazingly beautiful and profound...
Read more: 1 2 3 4February 8, 2010. John Ferguson is a pianist whose performances have been praised for their “proselytizing zeal” and "impressive qualities of pianistic brilliance.” He’s also a composer, conductor and founder of American Voices, an organization dedicated to furthering the understanding of American performing arts and culture around the world. His recitals feature some of the most difficult works in keyboard literature, including Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata, Bach's Art of Fugue, and Rzewski's The People United Will Never be Defeated. Ferguson's performances have also included such rarities as Liszt's arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies, music from the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, and a wide range of contemporary music, including his own compositions. We’ll hear Franz Liszt’s Legend no. 2 "St. Francis Walking on the Waves," then Allegretto from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, arranged for the piano by Liszt. We’ll continue with Mr. Ferguson’s own composition, Duo for Piano and Vibraphone. We’ll then hear Sonata V for prepared piano by John Cage’s and will conclude with Anton Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10, with Mr. Ferguson conducting. To listen, click here.
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.
December 21, 2009. Season's greetings! We wish all our listeners and all the talented musicians who contribute their music to our site a joyous holiday season! In this spirit, we present three pieces. First, The National_Collegiate_Chorale_of_Scotland sings O Magnum Mysterium by the American composer Morten Lauridsen. Then the pianist Minju Choi plays Regard de première communion de la Vierge, from Vingt Regard sur l'Enfant Jésus by Olivier Messiaen. And we'll finish with the wonderful kids of Brighton School Chamber Choir singing Benjamin Britten's Wolcum Yule. Happy Holidays – and click here to listen!
December 14, 2009. This week the whole music world commemorates Ludwig van Beethoven's birthday. Beethoven was baptized in Bonn, Germany, on December 17, 1770, so traditionally his birthday is celebrated on December 16. It is our pleasure to join these celebrations. We'll begin with the Piano Sonata No. 21 ("Waldstein"), played by Michael Mizrahi. Then Christina Castelli and Grant Moffett perform Sonata No. 9 ("Kreutzer") for piano and violin. Following that, Atlantic Piano Trio plays Trio Op. 11 for piano, violin and cello. We conclude with the finale (Allegro) of Symphony No. 5, with Pascal Verrot leading The Texas Festival Orchestra. These are just a few of our selections; we have much more Beethoven music in our library. To listen, click here.
December 7, 2009. From recent uploads. This week we feature three performances that were recently added to our library. First we'll hear Maurice Ravel's Tzigane. It is performed by the violinist Dmitri Berlinsky, who is accompanied by the pianist Elena Baksht. Then the flutist Kristin Paxinos plays Sonatine by the French composer Pierre Sancan. Sancan died just a year ago but the style of this piece, written in 1946, harkens back to Ravel's time. And lastly, Irina Kotlyar - Gregory Shifrin Piano Duo plays Schubert's masterpiece, his Fantasia in F Minor, D. 940. To listen, click here.