Musicon / Saint Saens / Jean-Yves Thibaudet: Saint-Saens is great fun!
“I actually regard playing a concerto almost like it’s chamber music. That’s why I enjoy it so much,” pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet says. As a concerto soloist, “I don’t feel I’m playing and not listening to the orchestra while they follow me. Music is ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Inventing Bonds of Union in Symphonies
The desire of composers to have their symphonies accepted as unities instead of compages of unrelated pieces has led to the adoption of various devices designed to force the bond of union upon the attention of the hearer. Thus Beethoven in his symphony in C minor not only connects the third and ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Trombone
Mendelssohn is quoted as saying that the trombones “are too sacred to use often.” They have, indeed, a majesty and nobility all their own, and the lowest use to which they can be put is to furnish a flaring and noisy harmony in an orchestral tutti. They are marvellously expressive ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Bassoon – The grave voice of the oboe
The grave voice of the oboe is heard from the bassoon, where, without becoming assertive, it gains a quality entirely unknown to the oboe and English horn. It is this quality that makes the bassoon the humorist par excellence of the orchestra. It is a reedy bass, very apt to recall to those who ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Romanticism is against formalism
As applied to literature Romantic was an adjective affected by certain poets, first in Germany, then in France, who wished to introduce a style of thought and expression different from that of those who followed old models. Intrinsically, of course, the term does not imply any such opposition but ::More
