Philip Glass, “Metamorphosis Two.”
Played by Manon Clément.
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This is one of my favorite Philip Glass pieces.
I have never heard of Manon Clément. She has made quite a few recordings, but I could not find anything more about her by Googling her name. I like her clear, declarative style of playing.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
I have stated on the “About” page on this site, and elsewhere, that the music on this blog is downloadable. I thought it was.
I noted my desire “to share some rare recordings from my collection of classical music, which started with LP’s in the 1960’s.”
I tried to download a music track from this site today and found out that this was not doable.
After consulting with a WordPress tech support person, I have learned that the situation with music posted on this site is like YouTube. You can play it but you can’t download it.
This defeats a major purpose of mine in posting classical music on this site.
I am disappointed and wish the music could be downloaded; I do not, however, intend to delete the posts of music already here.
— Roger W. Smith
“Pictures at an Exhibition” (Russian: Картинки с выставки – Воспоминание о Викторе Гартмане; literally, “Pictures from an Exhibition – A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann”; French: Tableaux d’une exposition) is a suite of ten pieces (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for the piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский) in 1874.
The suite is Mussorgsky’s most famous piano composition. It has become further known through various orchestrations and arrangements produced by other musicians and composers, with Maurice Ravel’s arrangement being by far the most recorded and performed.
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As noted in a Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky
Contemporary opinions of Mussorgsky as a composer have varied from positive to ambiguous to negative. Mussorgsky’s eventual supporters, Stasov and Balakirev, initially registered strongly negative impressions of the composer. Stasov wrote Balakirev, in an 1863 letter, “I have no use for Mussorgsky. His views may tally with mine, but I have never heard him express an intelligent idea. All in him is flabby, dull. He is, it seems to me, a thorough idiot”, and Balakirev agreed: “Yes, Mussorgsky is little short of an idiot.”
Mixed impressions were recorded by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, colleagues of Mussorgsky who, unlike him, made their living as composers. Both praised his talent while expressing disappointment with his technique. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that Mussorgsky’s scores included “absurd, disconnected harmony, ugly part-writing, sometimes strikingly illogical modulation, sometimes a depressing lack of it, unsuccessful scoring of orchestral things… what was needed at the moment was an edition for performance, for practical artistic aims, for familiarization with his enormous talent, not for the study of his personality and artistic transgressions.”
While preparing an edition of Sorochintsï Fair [an opera], Anatoly Lyadov remarked: “It is easy enough to correct Mussorgsky’s irregularities. The only trouble is that when this is done, the character and originality of the music are done away with, and the composer’s individuality vanishes.”
Tchaikovsky, in a letter to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck was also critical of Mussorgsky: “Mussorgsky you very rightly call a hopeless case. In talent he is perhaps superior to all the [other members of The Five], but his nature is narrow-minded, devoid of any urge towards self-perfection, blindly believing in the ridiculous theories of his circle and in his own genius. In addition, he has a certain base side to his nature which likes coarseness, uncouthness, roughness. He flaunts his illiteracy, takes pride in his ignorance, mucks along anyhow, blindly believing in the infallibility of his genius. Yet he has flashes of talent which are, moreover, not devoid of originality.”
Western perceptions of Mussorgsky changed with the European premiere of Boris Godunov in 1908. Before the premiere, he was regarded as an eccentric in the west. Critic Edward Dannreuther, wrote, in the 1905 edition of The Oxford History of Music, “Mussorgsky, in his vocal efforts, appears willfully eccentric. His style impresses the Western ear as barbarously ugly.” However, after the premiere, views on Mussorgsky’s music changed drastically. Gerald Abraham, a musicologist, and an authority on Mussorgsky: “As a musical translator of words and all that can be expressed in words, of psychological states, and even physical movement, he is unsurpassed; as an absolute musician he was hopelessly limited, with remarkably little ability to construct pure music or even a purely musical texture.”
— Roger W. Smith
July 2017
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Movements
1 Promenade
2 No. 1 “The Gnome”
3 Promenade (2nd)
4 No. 2 “The Old Castle”
5 Promenade (3rd)
6 No. 3 “Tuileries (Children’s Quarrel after Games)”
7 No. 4 “Cattle”
8 Promenade (4th)
9 No. 5 “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks”
10 No. 6 “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle”
11 Promenade (5th)
12 No. 7 “Limoges. The Market (The Great News)”
13 No. 8 “Catacombs (Roman Tomb)”\
14. Con mortuis in lingua mortua
15 No. 9 “The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba Yaga)”
16 No. 10 “The Bogatyr Gates (In the Capital in Kiev)”
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968; b. Italy; d. USA) was an Italian composer. He was regarded as one of the foremost guitar composers of the twentieth century.
Posted below is his musical setting of the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s book in the form of a prose poem Platero y yo (Platero and I). The book is a simple, semi-autobiographical account about a poet and his donkey. It evokes the region of Andalusia in Spain and the town of Moguer, the author’s birthplace.
The musical setting by Castelnuovo-Tedesco was originally published in 1960 as “Platero y yo, per voce recitante e chitarra.” In other words, it was intended to be performed by guitar player with a narrator speaking the text. It is performed here on guitar without narration.
It consists of ten sections:
1 – Platero
2 – Golondrinas (Swallows)
3 – Angelus
4 – Retorno (Return)
5 – El Pozo (The Well)
6 – La Primavera (Spring)
7 – El Canario Vuela (The Canary Flies)
8 – La Arrulladora (Lullaby)
9 – Melancolia (Melancholy)
10 – A Platero en el cielo de Moguer (To Platero in the heaven of Moguer’s heaven)
— posted by Roger W. Smith
May 2017
The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31, is a song cycle written in 1943 by English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) for tenor accompanied by a solo horn and a small string orchestra. Composed during World War II, it is a setting of six poems by British poets.
It is comprised of eight movements, including “Elegy”, set to the poem “The Sick Rose” by William Blake.
— Roger W. Smith
May 2017
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The Sick Rose
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
This beloved work, completed in 1886, is popularly known as the Organ Symphony.
There is more to the German composer and organist Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), whose output included over 500 works, than his beloved Canon in D.
— Roger W. Smith
April 2017
Ensom vandrer (Solitary wanderer)
from Lyric Pieces, Book III, Op. 43
I hjemmet (In my homeland)
from Lyric Pieces, Book III, Op. 43
Erotikk (Erotikon)
from Lyric Pieces, Book III, Op. 43
Til våren (To spring)
from Lyric Pieces, Book III, Op. 43
Solveigs sang (Solveig’s Song)
from Piano Pieces after Original Songs, Op. 52
Heimweh (Homesickness)
from Lyric Pieces, Book VI, Op. 57
Takk (Gratitude)
from Lyric Pieces, Book VII, Op. 62
Hjemad (Homeward)
from Lyric Pieces, Book VII, Op. 62
Tungsinn (Melancholy)
from Lyric Pieces, Book VIII, Op. 65
Bryllupsdag på Troldhaugen (Wedding Day at Troldhaugen)
from Lyric Pieces, Book VIII, Op. 65
For dine føtter (At your feet)
from Lyric Pieces, Book IX, Op. 68
Bådnlåt (At the cradle)
from Lyric Pieces, Book IX, Op. 68
Sommeraften (Summer’s eve)
from Lyric Pieces, Book X, Op. 71
Efterklang (Remembrances)
from Lyric Pieces, Book X, Op. 71
The Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), himself a pianist, wrote hundreds of piano works, ranging from his well known Piano Concerto in A minor to a plethora of works for solo piano.
The works for solo piano are essentially tone poems, and Grieg is a master at painting scenes from daily life and depicting universal emotions that one can feel — it’s as if something auditory can be visualized or experienced with other senses (e.g., tactile).
I have posted here 14 of my personal favorites, focusing on pieces that exemplify Grieg’s genius for capturing a mood or depicting a scene. It seems to me that he comes close to being unrivaled in this respect. He does the same thing, by the way, in his lieder.
— Roger W. Smith
January 2017
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Addendum:
The Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has recorded Grieg’s piano works, including his Lyric Pieces. Many of them are on YouTube.
More wonderful religious music has been added here.
Mozart, “Maurerische Trauermusik” (Masonic Funeral Music), K. 477
Mozart, “Ave Verum Corpus,” K. 618
Mozart, Agnus Dei, from Missa Brevis in F, K. 192
Mozart, Laudamus Te, from Great Mass, K. 427
Mozart, Lacrimosa, from Requiem Mass, K. 626
Bach, adagio, from violin concerto in E Major, BMV 1042
– posted by Roger W. Smith
This is my favorite Schubert sonata. It demonstrates his brilliance so well. Passages from the middle of the second movement occurred to me this evening. I heard them, so to speak, in my mind.
The progression of chords — in the first movement, for example, is typically Schubertian.
Schubert, piano sonata in A major, D. 959
– posted by Roger W. Smith
December 2016; updated April 19, 2024
