Einojuhani Rautavaara is Finland’s best known composer, especially internationally. Rautavaara’s music has been described as a mixture of modernism and mystic romanticism - an attempt to define a compositional style that is unique, personal, and very hard to define. Among his finest works are 12 concertos, composed over the past four decades, and collected together in this 4-CD box on the Ondine label. Performers include violinist Elmar Oliveira, cellist Marko Ylonen, harpist Marielle Nordmann, organ player Kari Jussila, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and pianists Ralf Gothoni and Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Richard Strauss wrote some of the finest operas of the 20th century. Pieces like Elektra, Salome and Der Rosenkavalier helped push the limits of the operatic artform, and also established Strauss as one of the truly great composers for the media. In a few cases, he created orchestral suites from these stage works, and it’s this music that is featured in this podcast, including his suites for Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau Ohne Shatten and Josephs-Legende. JoAnn Falletta conducts the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in in this new Naxos CD.
Missa Salisburgensis is a mass Heinrich Ignaz von Biber wrote for 53 individual voices and instruments, composed to celebrate the 11-hundreth anniversary of the founding of the archdiocese of Salzburg. I was composed to be performed in the Salzburg Cathedral - 444 feet long, with a ceiling more than 100 feet high. For this piece, Biber placed the audience in the middle, with the musicians divided into 8 groups all around them. You might call it the original Surround Sound.
Zhou Long and Chen Yi studied together at the Beijing Conservatory of Music, and at Columbia University in New York. They are now both on the composition faculty at University of Missouri, Kansas City. This podcast looks at a new CD of their chamber music with the Beijing New Music Ensemble
Ge Gan-ru was the first avant garde composer in China, and now lives in the United States. In this podcast, he discusses his journey - from China to America, and from traditional Chinese music to being at the forefront of modern music while talking about the new recording of his String Quartets with ModernWorks.
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Einojuhani Rautavaara is Finland’s best known composer, especially internationally. Rautavaara’s music has been described as a mixture of modernism and mystic romanticism - an attempt to define a compositional style that is unique, personal, and very hard to define. Among his finest works are 12 concertos, composed over the past four decades, and collected together in this 4-CD box on the Ondine label. Performers include violinist Elmar Oliveira, cellist Marko Ylonen, harpist Marielle Nordmann, organ player Kari Jussila, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and pianists Ralf Gothoni and Vladimir Ashkenazy.
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