Musicon / Bach / Beethoven / Brahms / Chopin / Purcell / Quick notes on works by Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven, Purcell and Bach
Chopin’s Preludes with Argerich, intense, but Pollini is more balanced. I will be also listening to Cortot of course, hoping that sound quality won’t prove totally repulsive. – Disappointed by Brahms’ Piano Quartets with Rubinstein and the Guarneri Q. Check this great ::More
Musicon / Beethoven / Musical education / Significance of the piano
To follow the progressive development of the mechanical principles underlying the piano, one would be obliged to begin beyond the veil which separates history from tradition, for the first of them finds its earliest exemplification in the bow twanged by the primitive savage. Since a recognition ::More
Musicon / Beethoven / Musical education / Serenades
A form which is variously employed, for solo instruments, small combinations, and full orchestra (though seldom with the complete modern apparatus), is the Serenade. Historically, it is a contemporary of the old suites and the first symphonies, and like them it consists of a group of short ::More
Musicon / Beethoven / Musical education / Appearance of the Symphony
I have known a professional writer on musical subjects to express the opinion that a symphony was nothing else than four unrelated compositions for orchestra arranged in a certain sequence for the sake of an agreeable contrast of moods and tempos. It is scarcely necessary to say that the writer ::More
Musicon / Beethoven / Musical education / A theatrical play on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations
Why did Beethoven, during the difficult last decade of his life, when he was deaf, chronically ill and often in financial straits, become nearly obsessed with writing an extensive and complex set of variations on a dumpy little waltz, a theme he had first dismissed as a “cobbler’s patch”? ::More
