Tag Archives: Tone Poem Tuesday

Today is the anniversary of D-Day. In their honor, here is John Williams’s Hymn to the Fallen.

I’ve featured this before, of course, because Alexander Borodin is a relatively newly-discovered favorite composer of mine. But I find myself returning to this work often, not only because of its beauty but because of its depiction of two groups … Continue reading →

Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy exists somewhere in the space between tone poem and concerto, with its prominent and technical part for solo violin. It’s not a concerto, however; its structure more casts it as a fantasy on a number of … Continue reading →

The waltzes of Johann Strauss Jr. are more than just waltzes. They’re much more than just dance music for an elegant age now gone by; they all contain some of the most wonderful tone painting that I know. It’s impossible … Continue reading →

Some years ago I wrote about the Oliver Stone movie Nixon, which is a sort of companion piece to his JFK. As in the earlier film, John Williams provided the score, and it’s an underrated standout in his long parade … Continue reading →

If you listen to this overture without knowing what it is, as I did the other morning when it came on the radio, you might think — especially at the end — that it’s a very British work. Something about … Continue reading →

I heard this work on the radio just the other day and I found it captivating. It is Im Sommerwind — “In the Summer Wind” — by Anton Webern. I am honestly not sure if I have ever heard anything … Continue reading →

Easter is coming, so in that vein, a concert overture by the great orchestral master Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His Russian Easter Festival Overture is a work that pays tribute to Easter and the Russian Orthodox liturgies. The composer actually uses a … Continue reading →

Like many a lover of classical music, I suspect, my knowledge of composer Paul Dukas can be summed up in one sentence: “He wrote The Sorceror’s Apprentice.” Which he did. The Sorceror’s Apprentice is pretty much the only work by … Continue reading →