SUNDAY MORNING CLASSICS ON TBP

A collaboration of: “The Classic Music Mafia”
nkit, and Steve C.

Every Sunday morning we present selections for our TBP family to enjoy.

We present symphonies, ensembles, quartets, octets, etc.

Not all of our music is strictly ‘classical’. We may stray a little, but we strive to make all of our selections ‘classy’.

We offer tips on proper ‘symphony etiquette’ and even some selections that are a bit light-hearted and fun aimed at a younger audience. Those pieces will be so designated, and might be a good way to introduce kids to a world of music that they might not have been exposed to or think of as old and ‘stuffy’.

A full symphony will run as long as it will. We don’t want to cut a symphony short. However, we also include some shorter pieces that we try to keep under fifteen minutes in length. You can sample each and hopefully find one or more that pleases you.

We hope that you enjoy our Sunday selections.


Steve C.

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1

Martha Argerich (piano) plays Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk. The concert was performed on August 27, 2010 at the Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) composed his first piano concerto in 1830. At the time, he was still living in his native Poland and was just 20 years old. The premier of Piano Concerto No. 1 took place in October of the same year at Warsaw’s National Theater, with Chopin himself playing the challenging piano part.

Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 11 was popular with audiences from the very beginning. But it also had its critics, who complained that the orchestra was only given a supporting role to the piano, which was the star of the show. And it is true that the orchestra serves merely to add atmosphere to the piano as the main part. Chopin based the piano part on the Belcanto singing of Italian operas. That’s where the many decorative artistic details come from. The musical motifs of Piano Concerto Op. 11 are based on many traditional Polish melodies. That makes the concert very memorable. It is also very romantic in character.

Almost all great piano virtuosos have played Frédéric Chopin’s first Piano Concerto. Martha Argerich, for example, performed and even recorded it many times. To everyone’s surprise, Argerich discovered new facets of the concerto each time she performed it. This is of course thanks to her virtuosity as a piano performer but also due to her temperament and her surprising spontaneity.

Martha Argerich plays Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1: The tried and tested combination for audiences to enjoy a wonderfully romantic concert!

(00:00) I. Allegro maestoso
(20:53) II. Romanze – Larghetto
(30:46) III. Rondo – Vivace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUTFVNAa2_E

The Next Three Come To Us Thanks To ursel doran.

Yuja Wang: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1

Gents, THANKS AGAIN AND AGAIN for all your diligent work to bring us this opportunity to worship the music on a Sunday morning.

I submit for your consideration some Rachmaninov by her gloriousness, Yuja!

Favorite selections I enjoy over and over.

Yuja Wang does Rachmaninov Concerto #1

Yuja Wang: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30

Yuja Wang Rachmaninov concerto #3

Khatia Buniatishvili: Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23

Tchaikovsky was feeling a bit neglected with only Rachmaninov getting attention.

So here is the other personification of goodness truth and BEAUTY with her new diamond necklace.

“Greater Love hath no man.”

The Next Eight Selections Come To Us From Anonymous.

10-Year Old Opera Singer Sets a Guinness World Record

Pennsylvania girl, 10, is named world’s youngest opera singer

Amazing 7-Year-Old girl Guitarist – Konstantina Andritsou performs @ Megaro

Handel – Chaconne in G major HWV 435

Chopin Etudes Op.10+25 complete with score – Valentina Lisitsa, piano

András Schiff – Bach. Italian Concerto in F BWV971

Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (Unfinished) : II. Scherzo. Vivo – Trio. Moderato

Vivaldi / David and Igor Oistrakh, 1961: Concerto Op. 3 No. 8 A Due Violini, “L’Estro Armonico”

nkit

Hilary Hahn plays J.S.Bach Violin Concerto No.1 in a minor BWV1041-Deutsche Kammerphil. Bremen

Today, we are going to listen to the violin of Hilary Hahn.

Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is an American violinist. She has performed throughout the world as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors and as a recitalist. She is an avid supporter of contemporary classical music. She began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday.

In 1991 at age eleven, she made her orchestral debut with The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Soon after she appeared with the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras as well as with The New York Philharmonic. She has a long and storied career.

We’ll kick this off with a version of Hilary playing J.S. Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor in Bremen. (Just a bit of Bach for Austrian Peter.)

Hilary Hahn plays Bach Violin Concerto No.2 in E Major BWV 1042- Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

We’ll follow that with Ms. Hahn playing Bach’s Violin Concerto No.2 in E major.

Johann Sebastian Bach – Chaconne, Partita No. 2 BWV 1004

Next, staying with Bach, she plays Chaconne Partita No.2.

“”In 1999, Hahn said that she played Bach more than any other composer and that she had played solo Bach pieces every day since she was eight. “Bach is, for me, the touchstone that keeps my playing honest. Keeping the intonation pure in double stops, bringing out the various voices where the phrasing requires it, crossing the strings so that there are not inadvertent accents, presenting the structure in such a way that it’s clear to the listener without being pedantic — one can’t fake things in Bach, and if one gets all of them to work, the music sings in the most wonderful way.” — Hilary Hahn, Saint Paul Sunday

In a segment on NPR entitled “Musicians in Their Own Words”, Hahn speaks about the surreal experience of playing the Bach Chaconne (from the Partita for Violin No. 2) alone on the concert stage.

The Partitas are generally more extended, and of unorthodox formal design (as perhaps is implied by their more wide-ranging generic title), and by the more exploratory, improvisatory feel of the music even as they consist of sequences of Baroque dances. The awesome and eloquent Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004, seems for the most part to follow the conventional outline of the Baroque suite.

The concluding movement of Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 emphasis the most labyrinthine and intellectually powerful single movement ever devised for an unaccompanied string instrument. This is Bach’s famous Chaconne (originally “Ciaccona”), a colossal arched series of 64 stunning variants upon the stark, open-ended four-measure phrase heard at the beginning. Two monumental outer sections in the minor enclose a major-key central episode, and this great structure encompasses every aspect of violin-playing technique and contrapuntal ingenuity that would have been known in Bach’s day. The Chaconne, whose duration exceeds 15 minutes (and is thus longer than the rest of the work put together) is often performed as a free-standing movement and has also been widely transcribed for other instruments.

Hilary Hahn – Mozart Violin Concerto No. 3 (New Cadenzas)

We’ll close this out with her playing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.3 for solo violin.

I hope that you have enjoyed her excellent violin skills.

Have great Sunday.

Steve C.

Wagner: Tristan and Isolde – Prelude and Liebestod

They’re the two most famous sections of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde): The first act prelude, and Isolde’s ‘Liebestod’ from the third act. They’re presented here by an extraordinary lineup: Daniel Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Waltraud Meier singing Isolde’s Liebestod. The much-loved pieces were performed in the year 2006, in a concert encore at the Berliner Philharmonie.

The prelude alone of Tristan und Isolde wrote musical history. It begins with the legendary ‘Tristan chord’ – so harmonically ambiguous that, with it, Wagner had broken with every conventional theory of harmony in one fell swoop. The chord creates an ominous suspense that cries out for harmonious resolution, yet every move to resolve it only further compounds the initial tension. This creates a perpetual, musical limbo. The opening motif of the Tristan chord is woven all throughout the opera’s prelude – leading it to be characterized as “desire, made into music”.

Desire is certainly the overarching theme of Tristan und Isolde: It is the essence of the love story between the two. In worldly life, this love not only remains unfulfilled, but ends tragically. On the metaphysical level, however, love is celebrated as rarely before: As Isolde holds the dead Tristan in her arms, she sings one of the most sensual love songs ever written. Her ‘Liebestod’ – literally ‘love-death’ – is a purging of all things earthly; a glorification of ecstatic union with the beloved.

Waltraud Meier, one of the world’s pre-eminent Wagner performers, is filled with fervor and devotion as she sings the part. The choir members, standing behind her, observe the magnificent mezzo-soprano with bated breath. A more stirring vocal performance could not be found.

Whether you’re a lover of Wagner or no: Enjoy these two milestones of musical history!

(00:00) Introduction
(00:19) Prelude
(10:44) Liebestod

Wagner: “Tannhäuser” Overture / Claudio Abbado – Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra (1998)

Claudio Abbado, conductor

Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra

Recorded live in Salzburg, 1998

The Classic Music Mafia – Adding some class to this joint one Sunday at a time.

Heaven help us…

Click to visit the TBP Store for Great TBP Merchandise