The Passion of C. P. E. Bach
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
C. P. E. Bach wrote that “a musician cannot move unless he too is moved.” Lynn Harrell channels C.P.E.’s passions through his own interpretation of the Cello Concerto in A.
The Baroque doctrine of using affects to stimulate artistic experience sounds like a dry intellectual concept, until one hears Harrell’s cello singing along with the English Chamber Orchestra under Pinchas Zukerman.
Mussorgsky wrote his “Pictures at an Exhibition” after visiting a memorial showing of the paintings and designs by his recently deceased friend, the artist Vikto Hartmann. The work was conceived as a stroll through a gallery, with ten exhibits portrayed musically in a suite for piano. The work was all but forgotten until conductor Serge Koussevitsky commissioned Maurice Ravel to orchestrate it. Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra demonstrate why Ravel’s version became an instant hit, and has remained a favorite since its premiere in 1922.
Pianist Emil Gilels was born this day in Odessa in 1916. He nails the bravura demands of the Saint-Saens G-Minor Piano Concerto, a work that exploits all the coloristic possibilities of the piano, and whose second movement is described by Martin Cooper as “a thistle-down classic among scherzo subjects.”
The Baroque doctrine of using affects to stimulate artistic experience sounds like a dry intellectual concept, until one hears Harrell’s cello singing along with the English Chamber Orchestra under Pinchas Zukerman.
Mussorgsky wrote his “Pictures at an Exhibition” after visiting a memorial showing of the paintings and designs by his recently deceased friend, the artist Vikto Hartmann. The work was conceived as a stroll through a gallery, with ten exhibits portrayed musically in a suite for piano. The work was all but forgotten until conductor Serge Koussevitsky commissioned Maurice Ravel to orchestrate it. Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra demonstrate why Ravel’s version became an instant hit, and has remained a favorite since its premiere in 1922.
Pianist Emil Gilels was born this day in Odessa in 1916. He nails the bravura demands of the Saint-Saens G-Minor Piano Concerto, a work that exploits all the coloristic possibilities of the piano, and whose second movement is described by Martin Cooper as “a thistle-down classic among scherzo subjects.”
