Day after Easter, 2024

This Week in Classical Music: April 1, 2024. Easter Sunday was yesterday. Here is the first chorus of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, "Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen" (Come ye daughters, join my lament). Collegium Vocale Gent is conducted by Philippe Herreweghe.

Two composers (great pianists both) were born on this day: Ferruccio Busoni in 1866 and Sergei Rachmaninov in 1873.

Hiatus 3. 2024

This Week in Classical Music: March 25, 2024. Maurizio Pollini, one of the greatest pianists of the last half century, died two days ago, on March 23^rd in Milan at the age of 82. His technique was phenomenal, even though he lost some of it in the last years of his life (he performed almost till the very end of his life and probably should’ve stopped earlier). His Chopin was exquisite (no wonder that he won the eponymous competition in 1960), as was the rest of the standard 19^th-century piano repertoire, but he also was incomparable as the interpreter of the music of the Second Viennese School, and even more so as the performer of the contemporary music, much of it written by his friends: Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Maderna, and many other. He will be sorely missed. Speaking of Pierre Boulez: his anniversary is this week as well: he was born on March 26^th of 1925.

Also this week: Franz Joseph Haydn, born March 31^st of 1732; Carlo Gesualdo – on March 30^th of 1556; Johann Adolph Hasse, onMarch 25 of 1699; and one of our favorite composers of the 20^th century, Béla Bartók, on March 25^th of 1881.

Hiatus 2, 2024

This Week in Classical Music: March 18, 2024. Classical Connect is on a hiatus. Johann Sebastian Bach was born this week, on March 21^st of 1685 (old style), in Eisenach. Here is the first part of Bach’s St. John Passion, one of his supreme masterpieces.

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