Sunday Music Treat

Well, it certainly doesn't feel like autumn in these parts, but perhaps this piece will get you in the mood just in time for the Vernal Equinox, which took place this past Thursday, September 22. It's the first movement of the "Autumn" concerto from Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, featuring violinist Joshua Bell with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields:

 

Sunday Music Treat

Yesterday was National Astronomy Day (actually there are two, one in spring and one in fall). English composer Gustav Holst composed the suite The Planets between 1914 and 1916, with eight movements, one for each planet in our solar system as known at the time (Pluto wasn't found until 1930 and has since been reclassified as a "plutoid"). I included the Mars section a couple of weeks ago and now, here's the movement for Jupiter, "The Bringer of Jollity," with Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic:

 

Fans of piano music and Scott Drayco will also be happy to know Holst also composed a version for two pianos, actually before the orchestrations, played here by Richard Markham and David Nettle:Richard Markham and David Nettle

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

I want to thank a couple of readers of Played to Death who pointed out something that seemed to be an error but was more a miscommunication on my part. It's a good case in point of how sometimes the vision in a writer's mind doesn't make it to the page in a coherent way.

In Played to Death, Scott Drayco says that the first time he sat at a piano when he was a small child, he picked out Count Basie's "Take the A Train." Now, the classic jazz piece was composed by Billy Strayhorn, who played piano and wrote arrangements for Duke Ellington's band. But what I didn't point out was that Drayco had heard the piece in the later Count Basie version. My grandfather was a drummer in a Dixieland band, and Basie was also a drummer, so that seemed fitting. Plus, Basie learned how to play the piano from his mother, just like Drayco did.

Anyway, here's the original Duke Ellington version, followed by Count Basie's version and finally Oscar Peterson's solo piano version, which would be more like what Drayco played (in fact, it's fun to image a young Drayco, his feet not able to reach the floor, playing this piece):

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

Mars has been in the news a lot lately, with the movie The Martian based on Andy Weir's book, as well as continued missions such the continuing work of the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. In honor thereof, I think it's fitting we hear the "Mars" section from The Planets by Gustav Holst, always one of my favorite pieces, played here by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Sir Charles Mackerrras:

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

Four men's voices, tam-tam, tubular bells, bass drum, and organ = a truly haunting piece that is a little miracle of text painting. It's De Profundis ("Out of the Depths") composed by Estonian Arvo Pärt and first performed by the Hilliard Ensemble in 1980 (who we hear in this recording). I still remember the first time I heard it and how it blew me away.

 

Sunday Music Treat

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of French composer Claude Debussy (August 22, 1862 - March 25, 1918), the famous French impressionist. Here's one of the composer's best-known works, the ethereal piano piece, "Clair de lune" (referenced in my second Scott Drayco novel, Requiem for Innocence), as played by Menahem Pressler when he was almost 90 years old:

 

Sunday Music Treat

Music is naturally subjective, but I probably won't get much argument that one of the most sublimely lovely pieces ever composed is Beethoven's Piano Concerto #5 ("The Emperor"), with the middle movement being particularly haunting (it's one of Scott Drayco's favorites, and Beethoven is featured prominently in the next Drayco mystery, Lethal Lament). Here's a version played by the late Van Cliburn in Moscow in 1962 (the movement ends attaca into the 3rd, so if you want to "see how it ends," try this link):

 

Sunday Music Treat

What does it sound like when 1,000 high school choir students pay tribute to Prince? Tesfa Wondemagegnehu was in Los Angeles, California, a few years ago guest-conducting the Los Angeles Master Chorale's annual High School Choir Festival, which brought the high school singers to a concert at Disney Hall. This "Purple Rain" tribute was part of the evening's festivities:

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

Violinist Joshua Bell is on a concert tour of the U.S. during August beginning tonight with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Then off to Atlanta, Georgia on the 16th; Madison, Wisconsin, on the 18th; Portsmouth, New Hampshire on the 20th; Costa Mesa, California on the 24th; and Detroit, Michigan on the 26th. And seeing as how the U.S. is still much in the heat of the summer months, here's Bell playing the Presto section from the "Summer" movement from Vivaldi's Four Seasons with musicians of the Academy of St.Martin in the Fields:

 

Your Sunday Music Treat

It's hard not to be cheered by this video featuring Luciano Pavarotti (who was one of my favorites) and an unusual singing partner:

 

 

Your Sunday Music Treat

I never cease to be amazed by child prodigies. By now, you've hopefully had the chance to hear violinist Joshua Bell as an adult, but here's a peek at what he sounded like as a youngster way back in 1982 at a master class with Josef Gingold:

 

 

Your Sunday Music Treat

I was working at a radio station when the Challenger shuttle disaster happened. A fellow announcer programmed "Nimrod" from the Elgar's Enigma Variations by way of a memorial, and I can't help but think of that tune every time there are other tragedies in this world. The recording below of this music by an English composer is played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Baremboim, who holds passports from Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain, and seems to sum up the universality of music to share our joys and sorrows with one another:

 

Your Sunday Music Treat

Sometimes "happiness is a sad song" (usually in a minor key), but did you know that works in a major key can be sad? Or at least, wistful and a touch mournful, like one of Scott Drayco's favorite pieces (and mine), the Intermezzo in A Major from Opus 118 by Johannes Brahms, played here by Nikolai Lugansky:

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

In honor of the Fourth of July next weekend, I thought it would be nice to showcase some American music, and I dug around for footage of George Gershwin himself playing his own music.Thanks to the YouTube gods, I found this clip of Gershwin playing "I Got Rhythm" in 1930:

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

Brazil's most famous composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), was quite prolific, with over 2000 orchestral, vocal, and chamber works, many inspired by Brazilian folk music mixed with European traditions, most notably Bachianas Brasileiras, a series of nine suites written for various combinations of instruments and voices.

Here's Festa no Sertão ("Party in the Country"), played by Brazilian-born pianist Clelia Iruzun:

And here's arguably the composer's best-known work, "Aria" from the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, sung by Anna Moffo:

 

Sunday Music Treat

If you watch a lot of movies and TV, you've probably heard the music of Dmitri Shostakovich and didn't even know it. The Russian composer was was one of the giants of 20th century classical music. Despite his tortured life that pitted him against the Soviet Union, his music lives on in ways he probably couldn't even have imagined (although one of Shostakovich's songs was sung by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin over the radio from his spacecraft to Mission Control down on earth). You can check out this list of movies/shows that have used his music.

Here's the watlz from the Second Jazz Suite, which was used in Stanley Kubrick's movie Eyes Wide Shut:

And here's the composer himself playing the Andante movement form his Piano Concerto #2, excerpts of which were used most recently in the Cold War film Bridge of Spies starring Tom Hanks:

Sunday Music Treat

Yma Sumac (1922-2008) had a name as exotic as her voice and career. The Peruvian soprano became an international success based on her extreme vocal range, said to be well over five octaves at the height (pardon the pun) of her career. She had a bit of a resurgence in the 1990s, thanks to her song "Ataypura" being featured in the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski. Here's Yma singing "Gopher Mambo" (Capitol Records 1954):

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

Hurricane season is approaching, which puts me in a rather stormy frame of mind, so I thought it was appropriate to feature the "Storm" section from Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes (extracted from the opera Peter Grimes). I think it has to be the best musical representation of a storm in all of classical music. This performance is by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Paavo Järvi:

 

Sunday Music Treat

Sergei Rachmaninoff is one of the most celebrated composers of the Romantic period, with many of his works still popular even today. They aren't always easy to play, thanks to the composer's legendary hand-span, his fingers able to stretch across a full 13th on the keyboard (a lot of folks are lucky if they can do that with two hands). Scott Drayco, the crime consultant protagonist of my books (himself a former concert pianist), enjoys playing Rachmaninoff whenever his partially-mangled arm will allow. This piece, Rachmaninoff's Elegie in E-flat minor, makes an appearance in the latest Drayco installment, Elegy in Scarlet (played here by the composer himself, taken from a piano roll): 

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

Most people know Andrew Lloyd Webber for his mega-blockbuster musicals, but did you also know he wrote a Requiem? Here's the "Pie Jesu" section performed by Sarah Brightman, Paul Miles-Kingston, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the Winchester Cathedral Choir, conducted by Lorin Maazel (in a music video created in 1985):