Such joyous sight-reading! Such wonderful music making! Thanks Emily for pointing me towards this 6-part series about her life.

David Finckel and Wu Han inaugurated their 2010-11 duo season with a performance of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for piano and cello on the Cal Performances series at UC Berkeley. It was the duo’s second appearance for the distinguished Bay Area series, and the duo’s fifth performance of the Beethoven cycle this year, following New Orleans, New York’s Alice Tully Hall (for CMS), the Aspen Music Festival, and Music@Menlo.

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in David’s words…
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Cal Performances, founded in 1906 at the University of California, Berkeley, has steadily grown to become the most comprehensive performing ...

It seems fair for once to say that I am truly approaching a milestone in my life- in about a month, I will be making my first recording of a work by Gustav Mahler. On November 19 and 20,  I’ll be going into the studio with my colleagues at Orchestra of the Swan, three wonderful singers (tenor Brennen Guillory, contralto Emma Curtis and baritone David Stout) the Somm Records recording team, led by producer Siva Oke. Our mission is to record the chamber versions of Mahler’s first and last great song cycles, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) and Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth).

Mahler’s music has been an important part of my life for a long time, and an important part of this blog ...

Most pianists find themselves playing electronic keyboards from time to time.  To my mind, the way we think about that makes a difference.

Of course there are “keyboardists” ~ that’s what they do.  That’s how they describe themselves.  And that’s fine!  My take is somewhat different.

Having spent several years in the “pianist” niche, I think of myself as a pianist who also plays keyboard.  Some pianists are reluctant to go there.

My first experience playing a keyboard was with the Norman Luboff Choir.  We used a keyboard for the first half of each concert.  For Monteverdi and Schütz, a small organ sound was needed.  ...

Anyone heard of a contraforte? I’m guessing so … I seem to be the last to know about things like this. Heck, I’m the last to know I should own and English horn with a low A♯ … go figure!

Anyway, check this out … read all about it!

Here’s a snippet to get you interested:

A few years ago, when the National Symphony Orchestra was rehearsing at the Kennedy Center for a performance of Stravinsky’s “Petrushka,” a funny thing happened to the orchestra’s contrabassoonist, Lewis Lipnick. He was playing a solo passage on his instrument, which is known for its erratic, sometimes flatulent sound. It must have sounded particularly gassy that day. Someone in the trumpet section threw a ...

I have just now discovered the wonders of Benjamin Britten's string quartet writing, and thought I would share this example as proof in spades that the physical experience of the musicians who are playing a piece can be as important as the musical material itself. In this case, and without the intrusion of any non-functional theatrics, they are pretty much one in the same.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra announced the winners of the Project 440 competition last night. The four winners will create new works for Orpheus to be premiered in 2012. They are (clockwise from top left) Alex Mincek, Clint Needham, Andrew Norman, and Cynthia Wong:

 

 

Mental toughness is a popular buzzword not just among athletes, coaches, and sport psychologists, but in the popular media as well. From Men’s Fitness to Forbes to NPR, many are talking about the benefits of mental toughness.

In a 1987 study of college wrestling for instance, 82% of the coaches involved rated mental toughness as the most important psychological attribute of successful wrestlers.

Consider that for all of Tiger Woods’s physical skills, he is lauded more for his mental toughness than anything else.

Remember Michael Jordan’s performance against the Utah Jazz in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals (a.k.a. “the flu game” – click here for a 5-minute reminder)?

Then there is what some ...

AH: Good morning, Gene, thanks very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me. Let me start out by saying that I first heard the Emerson about 30 years ago at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC. You were my introduction to live chamber music and I think I was spoiled by starting out with such a marvelous group. Can you tell me about your relationship with the Smithsonian system?

ED: Yes. For the first four seasons, almost all the concerts in that series were on weekends at the Renwick Gallery. As our time on the weekends became increasingly valuable, we eventually moved to Baird Auditorium at the Natural History Museum, because it seats about 600 people. During our time in DC we were part of a larger ...

“Playing Beethoven only gets more challenging”

That statement and its many variants is one of those musical truisms one hears so often, one almost ceases to be aware of what it means.

It’s not a statement I would make about every composer- demanding as it is, Richard Strauss’s music gets easier as you get to know it. Find a good fingering, do some slow practice, live with it a while, and those impossible-looking tone poems start to feel much less daunting.

But we’re talking about Beethoven.

Is it true?

And if so, why so?

My old cello teacher, Lee Fiser from the La Salle Quaret, used to liken the physical challenge of cello playing to pouring water through a funnel the wrong way. If you can be precise ...