Tag Archives: Tone Poem Tuesday

The things you learn on the radio! This morning I heard this piece, and after it was done I learned why they played it: on this date in 1962, the lower deck of the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan … Continue reading →

Our local classical station, WNED, tends to be a bit heavy on the Dvorak. They play a ton of him. Like, a whole lot. Sometimes I think they need to tone down the Dvorak a little. Other times I choose to listen … Continue reading →

Sometimes I need to go back to the beginning of my classical music roots. I had heard a lot of classical music as a kid, thanks to my parents’ music-listening habits and my sister’s piano lessons, and then later my horn, … Continue reading →

It’s August! I think August would count at “Midsummer”, right? Thus, here is some Mendelssohn: the overture to his suite of incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  

Technically, this isn’t a tone poem; it’s right up-front about being a concerto. But what a concerto it is, and it’s a masterpiece of tone painting as well. It is also a programmatic work, intended to tell a story. The … Continue reading →

John Adams’s first orchestral work, written in 1979, came well before the operatic work that made him well-known in the 1980s. It’s an interesting listen: solemn and meditative, and yet shot through with an odd kind of mystical optimism. On … Continue reading →

Aaron Copland.  

A longer post breaking this unplanned hiatus is coming, but meantime…here’s Franz von Suppe! This is not an overture, though: It’s a march called Fatinitza.