Saturday Symphony

The American composers of the Romantic era are an interesting bunch, because they exist in a kind of musical purgatory. Their music is not heard much, mainly because it’s all pretty firmly ensconced in the European symphonic tradition, and thus isn’t terribly interesting in any nationalistic sense. But a lot of their music is still quite good, and the trouble with musical purgatory — especially as time passes — is that it captures works that might not rank with the greatest masterpieces, but which also don’t deserve the sad obscurity that awaits most works of art. This symphony popped upDown the rabbit hole….

Still not ready to discuss Mahler’s Second yet, so meantime, we’ll go back 120 years or so to Mozart. Here is his Symphony no. 29 in A major. This performance is on period instruments, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. This symphony is a short and fascinating listen. Mozart was eighteen when he wrote this, and on the cusp of his mature period. The music has lot of forward momentum, as does much of his best music, and it also blends youthful optimism with hints of the profundity that is to come in his later works. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

I’m not ready to write about Mahler’s Second yet, so in the meantime, here is a repost of an AMAZING performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. I’m just letting Beethoven speak for himself here. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

OK, after much hemming and hawing, it’s time. The symphonies of Gustav Mahler represent perhaps the apex of the symphony itself as a musical form. These are enormous works that make enormous demands on the listener. They are dense in concept and epic in scope, with musical architecture that is so complex that it calls to mind the large-scale works of JS Bach. Mahler’s symphonies are also deeply human, reflecting the loves and hopes and dreams and despairs of one of classical music’s most driven and tortured figures. Mahler’s vision was almost Herculean, and there is scarcely a moment inDown the rabbit hole….

I keep promising Gustav Mahler, and I keep postponing Gustav Mahler. Alas! And no, no Mahler this week, either–but in a way, this week’s symphony does help pave the way a but. Instead we’ll revisit Hector Berlioz, because you can never have too much Berlioz. This is one of my handful of “desert island” works: if I were banished from society but I could have recordings of a few classical works to hear for the rest of my days while banished, this would make the cut. It’s Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette Symphony, which is one of several works he wroteDown the rabbit hole….

No Mahler yet–I want to do him justice!–but I’ll stick with ‘M’ composers. Here is Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, the “Scottish”. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

I’m still trying to get ahead on writing my Mahler posts — there’s a lot of work involved in listening to Mahler — so meantime, here’s Maestro Mozart and his Symphony no. 41 in C, the “Jupiter”. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

I don’t have a new work to post here (listening time was hard to come by this week), so I’ll revisit something old. Here’s one of the very greatest symphonies of all time, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major. The Seventh is one of the towering masterpieces of all music (and probably of all human art), and the performance I previously used in this series was a brilliant one from the Proms concerts, performed by a youth orchestra of young Israeli and Palestinian musicians. That performance is wonderful, but it’s interesting to hear the work as Beethoven might haveDown the rabbit hole….