Category: Music

This is yet another much-played tune on CBC Radio!  Wish there was a better recording than this, but this is all I could find!

Not the best recording, but still, if you have ten minutes, it will be well-worth your time and attentions!

This is Franz Peter Schubert’s (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828) Symphony No. 8 in B minor (sometimes renumbered as Symphony No.), commonly known as the “Unfinished Symphony” (German: Unvollendete), D.759, was started in 1822 but left with only two movements known to be complete.

Although he died at the impossibly young age of 31, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous “Unfinished Symphony”), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in Schubert’s work increased dramatically in the decades following his death at the age of 31. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th Century. Today, Schubert is admired as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.

This is how the winter season ought be received: the way Vivaldi conceives and composes it in his Four Seasons.

This set of music was published as the first four concertos in a collection of twelve, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione, Opus 8, published in Amsterdam by Le Cène in 1725 by Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678 – July 28, 1741), nicknamed il Prete Rosso (The Red Priest).

So, for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere bracing for the big blizzard that is coming our way later today, play some Vivaldi, especially this Winter concerto and celebrate the beauty of this season!

Yo-Yo Ma’s lovely rendition set to an interesting collage of images.

The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach are some of the most performed and recognizable solo compositions ever written for cello. They were most likely composed during the period 1717–1723, when Bach served as a Kapellmeister in Cöthen.

The suites contain a great variety of technical devices, a wide emotional range, and some of Bach’s most compelling voice interactions and conversations. It is their intimacy, however, that has made the suites amongst Bach’s most popular works today, resulting in their different recorded interpretations being fiercely defended by their respective advocates.

Alexander’s Feast (HWV 75) is an oratorio with music by George Frideric Handel set to a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton. Hamilton adapted his libretto from John Dryden’s ode Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music (1697) which had been written to celebrate Saint Cecilia’s Day. Jeremiah Clarke (whose score is now lost) set the original ode to music.

Handel composed the music in January 1736, and the work received its premiere at the Covent Garden Theatre, London on 19 February 1736. In its original form it contained three concertos: a concerto in B flat major in 3 movements for “Harp, Lute, Lyrichord and other Instruments” HWV 294 for performance after the recitative Timotheus, plac’d on high in Part I; a concerto grosso in C major in 4 movements for oboes, bassoon and strings, now known as the “Concerto in Alexander’s Feast” HWV 318, performed between Parts I and II; and an organ concerto HWV 289 in G minor and major in 4 movements for chamber organ, oboes, bassoon and strings performed after the chorus Let old Timotheus yield the prize in Part II. The organ concerto and harp concerto were published in 1738 by John Walsh as the first and last of the Handel organ concertos Op.4. Handel revised the music for performances in 1739, 1742 and 1751. Donald Burrows has discussed Handel’s revisions to the score.[1][2]

The work describes a banquet held by Alexander the Great and his mistress Thaïs in the captured Persian city of Persepolis, during which the musician Timotheus sings and plays his lyre, arousing various moods in Alexander until he is finally incited to burn the city down in revenge for his dead Greek soldiers.

The piece was a great success and it encouraged Handel to make the transition from writing Italian operas to English choral works. The soloists at the premiere were the sopranos Anna Maria Strada and Cecilia Young, the tenor John Beard, and a bass called Erard (first name unknown).

Beautiful rendition!

Brilliant Bach!

Get your Must Kulunda on!