On Mark Carlson’s Piano Quartet
Piano Quartet by Mark Carlson: Composer, Teacher, Performer and Music Lover When I was a sophomore at UCLA and struggling with, among many things, the anxiety that comes with trying […]
On Steven Stucky’s Piano Quartet
by Jeannette Fang It was on Valentine’s Day of last year that Steven Stucky passed away. Brain cancer, they reported. “Steven Stucky, Composer Who Won a Pulitzer, Dies at 66” […]
On “Cruel ragtime” and Chopin nocturnes
Sometimes musical kinship between two vastly different composers isn’t readily apparent until you start practicing for a concert that you’ve programmed them on. One wouldn’t naturally find similarities between the […]
On Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet no.2 in E-flat
In our first rehearsal yesterday of Dohnanyi’s op.26 Piano Quintet, Juliette, who was unfamiliar with the work, remarked on how nostalgic it seemed. “Was it a late composition?” Meh, more […]
On Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on Music
Richmond homeboy Edgar Allan Poe will get the spotlight this coming Sunday with a couple of very cool works that you may not know about. More than a few composers […]
On the Artwork that inspired Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (part 2)
Okay, so the thing I find super cool about the pictures that inspired Mussorgsky’s composition is that they were mostly related to other works of art. Viktor Hartmann was an […]
On Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition is probably Mussorgsky’s most popular work, though he never had the satisfaction of knowing that. Plagued by severe depression, the composer basically drank himself to an early […]
On Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, D929
Before I start waxing poetic on Schubert’s great E-flat piano trio, I wanted to give you a quote from Stanley Kubrick, who had used this piece in scenes of Barry […]
Summer 2016 Finale: “All’s well that ends well”
I always have a hard time starting these posts because there are about 5000 thoughts and feelings buzzing around my head after a concert, and nearly zero that can really […]
Summer update: 8/22 – 8/28
this was me this weekend: because …. piano piano piano! but also…. 50 billion notes! 4 pianos + over-the-top epic rep = broken strings and lots of scampering The pianos […]
