A classical music website dedicated to Pacific Symphony
With such a plain spoken title, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (1888) has to be programmatic music, right? A retelling of stories from the Thousand and One Nights? Well, yes…and no. Richard Strauss, master of programmatic music, famously said “I could set
SIBELIUS: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39 Sibelius, like Brahms, waited to finish his first symphony. His career was well underway when he tackled the challenge in his early 30s. And, like Brahms, he paid attention to the
Rachmaninoff wrote his Piano Concerto No. 2 after he recovered from a severe case of writer’s block. He dedicated the work to the doctor who had helped him to overcome his fears and depression.
When Carl St.Clair and Pacific Symphony navigate their way through the dramatic terrain of Verdi’s Requiem June 5-8, they’ll be doing so with their long-time vocal partners, Pacific Chorale. Dr. Rob Istad, currently enjoying his eighth season at the Chorale’s helm, recently took some time to discuss his approach to the work: what it means to him, and how he prepares his singers….
Requiem Masses have long served as a way for nations to mourn their public figures…. The best known of course is Verdi’s Requiem Mass, but which public figure was it meant to honor? Therein lies a tale…
Is it wrong to wish Anton Bruckner had been a little more stubborn? Certainly it would have simplified the work of identifying the definitive performance scores for his symphonies if he’d just said, “Close enough” and moved on….
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is one of, if not THE, most familiar pieces of music in history. With so much cultural awareness attached to it, a conductor is posed with an interesting puzzle: how do you make it come alive for an audience that’s heard it 1,000 times before?
Richard Wagner began his monumental cycle of operas Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) in 1848, in the wake of the Age of Enlightenment…
If the apocalypse has a soundtrack, it’s “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana…
Sacred music takes as many forms as humanity has images of God. The majestic sovereign of Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus, the terrifying and wrathful god in the “Dies irae” of Verdi’s Requiem, the simple beauty of Bach’s “Sheep may safely graze”—all startlingly different from each other, and all capturing some facet of our perception of deity…