Tag Archives: Tone Poem Tuesday

This week we have the second part of Dvorak’s trilogy of tone poems that he called “Nature, Life, and Love”: the “Carnival” overture. This overture launches into a dance-like rhythm from the very opening bars, and its energy almost never … Continue reading →

Let’s check in on Antonin Dvorak, shall we? He’s always good for a solid listen, and today’s work is no exception. It’s the concert overture In Nature’s Realm, which Dvorak composed as part of a trilogy of concert overtures. The … Continue reading →

Oddly, given my love of Sergei Rachmaninov, it’s odd that I’ve heard this particular work of his only a couple of times, and not at all in the last five or six years. “The Rock” is a tone poem Rachmaninov … Continue reading →

After the month of dark and grim and scary and brooding music, let’s return to something a bit lighter, shall we? This duofold selection is one of the most beloved opera extracts of all time; in fact, this selection is … Continue reading →

Time for a departure for this series: instead of an orchestral work, a solo piano work! This is the Piano Sonata No. 9 by Alexander Scriabin, a single-movement work that is highly unsettling and even delirious as it moves through … Continue reading →

My October tradition in this series is to feature works of music that are dark, or macabre, or outright tinged with terror. This one is a melancholy meditation, a brooding work on the journey to death. Here is Sergei Rachmaninov’s … Continue reading →

It’s October, so it’s time to feature spooky stuff here! First up, some film music: A suite from John Williams’s score to The Fury, a Brian De Palma-directed horror movie from 1978. This was right in the middle of Williams’s … Continue reading →

A repeat today, but one I haven’t posted in nearly two and a half years, so I don’t feel so bad about it. It’s a work by Jules Massenet called Visions, and I know nothing more about it now than … Continue reading →

It’s always been interesting to me that so few great and enduring works of classical music have been inspired by the Arthurian legends (or “the Matter of Britain”). There’s some crossover in the operas of Richard Wagner, mostly in his … Continue reading →