It was a busy summer for the Classics a Day team. In June, we marked African-American Music Appreciation Month. In July we celebrated national holidays in the U.S. and Canada. So that just left August to have a summer theme. For my part, I chose to choose anything except Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” In the process, […]
Franz Joseph Haydn
-
-
McDermott Delivers Intimate Performances of Haydn Sonatas
This release is a follow-up to McDermott’s 2014 release of Haydn Piano Concertos and Sonatas. This time, Anne-Marie McDermott presents an entire program of solo sonatas. Haydn’s sonatas have a deceptive simplicity to them. The technical demands are modest (compared to sonatas by Beethoven and later composers). But that doesn’t mean they’re insubstantial. McDermott performs […]
-
#ClassicsaDay #ClassicalWinter Week 1
For January 2019, #ClassicsaDay went with a winter theme. December’s theme, #ClassicalChristmas centered around sacred works of the season. #ClassicalWinter is about sharing secular compositions. that have a snow or winter theme. Here are my Classical Winter posts for the first week of January. Giacomo Puccini – “Che gelida manina” (What a cold little hand) […]
-
#ClassicsaDay #FamousLastWorks Week 1
For the month of October, the #ClassicsaDay team (of which I’m a part), decided to go with a Halloween theme. The idea is to share works marked in some way with the composer’s demise. It can be the last piece a composer completed before death, or one left incomplete at death. For my part, I […]
-
#ClassicsaDay #Bernsteinat100 Week 4
August 2018 is the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. Many classical radio stations, performance groups, and writers marked the occasion. And so did #ClassicsaDay. Bernstein was known as a composer, conductor, performer and an educator. Since #ClassicsaDay is primarily a music feed, I concentrated on the first two of those roles (and occasionally the third). […]
-
Alec Frank-Gemmill Shows Merit of Horn Concertos Before Mozart
Alec Frank-Gemmill is making a point with this recording. For many horn soloists, Mozart’s concertos are the earliest works in their repertoire. Frank-Gemmill contends that there was plenty of good material that predated them. Frank-Gemmill opens with a 1740 concerto by Christoph Förster. Although primarily an organist, Förster wrote about 50 concertos. He was also […]
-
Discovering the Classical String Trio
As the Vivaldi Project points out in the liner notes for this release, string trios from the classical era are woefully under-represented in the performing and recording repertoire. It’s not because instrumental grouping’s unusual — there were hundreds of string trios written between 1750 and 1827 (the approximate dates of the classical era). And, as […]
-
Charming duos for Flute by Haydn
The Six Duo Concertantes on this release were all originally composed by Haydn — just not in this form. These duos for violins were transcribed for two flutes and published in 1801 by a Parisian firm. And as flute duos, the music works very well. Ginevra Petrucci and Gian-Luca Petrucci perform with modern instruments. Yet […]
-
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet performs Haydn Concertos
Pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet partners with conductor Gábor Tákacs-Nagy to create some truly individualistic performances of three Haydn concertos. The use of a chamber orchestra (in this case, the Manchester Camerata) is a good one. Haydn’s keyboards concertos have much different character than Beethoven’s, and are well-suited to the smaller, more intimate sound of a chamber […]