Camille Saint-Saëns as a youth
Source: Le Courrier musical, 1906, vol. 9, n° 11, 1 juin 1906, p. 370. / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Although written only 60 years later, my next pick seems to have beamed in from another planet. It’s Herzgewächse (Foliage of the Heart) for coloratura soprano, celesta, harmonium and harp by Arnold Schoenberg. The conductor on our recording is Robert Craft, who introduces the work as follows:

Harmonium stops
Source: Anke Arnold / via Pixabay

Herzgewächse (8.557523)

Franz Doppler, 1853
Source: Auguste Alexis Canzi / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Östlind and Almqvist Orgel harmonium (1910)
Source: Musik- och teatermuseet / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Wilhelm Fitzenhagen
Source: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Ave Maria (OC702)

The post A hum of harmoniums? appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

So, here’s a mini-challenge. I’ve chosen pieces from around the turn of each century, starting circa 1400, and invite you to compare and contrast them with reference to those elements of music that principally include tonality, tempo, texture, timbre, pitch, rhythm, dynamics, metre and form. Then you can throw in the notion of who the pieces were written for – deities, nobility, citizens, bank managers, and so on – to get the feel of what it was like to be instrumental, so to speak, in the process of musical birth. If I mixed all the extracts up, would you be able to put them in chronological order and explain your reasoning?

I live in the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, UK. So, my first piece is by the English composer Leonel Power, who died in 1445. Although few details are known about his life, we do know that in 1423 he joined the religious fraternity of Christ Church Canterbury and almost certainly served as choirmaster of the cathedral. Here’s a performance of his Beata progenies, more redolent of an outdoor pilgrimage than a cloistered devotion.

Beata progenies unde Christus natus est;
quam gloriosa est virgo que caeli regem genuit.

Blessed is the parent from whom Christ was born;
O how glorious is the virgin who brought forth the King of heaven.

Beata progenies (8.553132)

A more widely documented musician from that same period of transition between the Mediaeval and Renaissance periods is the first truly great English composer, John Dunstable (c. 1390–1453). Writing some 20 years after his death, the musicologist Tinctoris singled him out as the transformer of the old musical style into a “new art”, the forefather of the musical Renaissance. At the same time, the poet Martin le Franc famously described how Dufay (c. 1393–1474), the eminent Franco-Flemish composer, had adopted the English manner championed by Dunstable, la contenance Angloise, that sounded so fresh and joyful to continental ears. We listen to Dunstable’s short motet Quam pulchra es. The text is taken from The Song of Solomon.

Quam pulchra es et quam decora, carissima in deliciis.
Statura tua assimilata est palme, et ubera tua botris.
Caput tuum ut Carmelus, collum tuum sicut turris eburnea.
Veni, dilecte mi, egrediamur in agrum, et videamus si
flores fructus parturierunt, si floruerunt mala Punica.
Ibi dabo tibi ubera mea.
Alleluia.

How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!
This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters [of grapes].
Thine head upon thee [is] like Carmel.
Thy neck [is] as a tower of ivory.
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field … let us see if … the tender grapes appear, [and] the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.
Alleluia.

Quam pulchra es (8.557341)

Josquin des Prez
© HNH International

Absalon fili mi, fili mi Absalon.
Quis det ut moriar pro te,
fili mi Absalon?
Non vivam ultra,
sed descendam in infernum plorans.

Absalom my son, my son Absalom.
Who could grant me to die for you,
my son Absalom?
I shall live no longer,
but shall go down into hell weeping

Absalon fili mi (8.553428)

On now to the turn of the 17th century and to Emilio de’ Cavalieri (c. 1550–1602), a versatile musician, diplomat and courtier who is credited with the earliest surviving stage work that is set to music throughout: his Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo (Representation of Soul and Body), a morality presentation first performed at the Oratorio del Crocifisso in Rome in 1600. It’s regarded as the prime forerunner to the genre of opera that was soon to be born. Even his rival Jacopo Peri had to graciously allow that “Signor Emilio de’ Cavalieri, before every other that I know, with marvellous invention had introduced this new method of stage music.” Here’s Act II, Scene 4 of Cavalli’s oratorio, Chi gioia vuol (He who wants joy), featuring the allegorical figures of Pleasure, with Two Companions, Body and Soul.

Chi gioia vuol (8.554096-97)

John Dowland
Source: Intankabilis / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Flow my tears, fall from your springs,
Exil’d for ever let me mourn
Where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

Down, vain lights, shine you no more,
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their last fortunes deplore,
Light doth but shame disclose.

Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled,
And tears, and sighs, and groans, my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.

From the highest spire of contentment,
My fortune is thrown.
And fear, and grief, and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes since hope is gone.

Hark, you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light,
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world’s despite.

Flow my tears (8.553381)

C.P.E. Bach

Dating from 1700, here’s part of Arcangelo Correlli’s Sonata IX in A major for violin and continuo. It’s exceptional in that we also have a full set of ornaments by Corelli’s pupil Francesco Geminiani with the repeats notated in full, clearly exemplifying what was expected of a performer’s skill in embellishment. It also suggests a growing equal respect for both composer and performer. Here’s the first movement.

Sonata IX in A major for violin and continuo (8.557799)

J.S. Bach
© HNH International

Partite diverse sopra Christ, der du bist der helle Tag (8.553134)

Adalbert Gyrowetz
Source: Bwag at German Wikipedia / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s the second movement of Gyrowetz’s Divertissement in A Major, Op. 50, for piano, flute and cello, first published c. 1800.

Divertissement in A Major, Op. 50 (C10398)

Johann Simon Mayr

Regina coeli laetare, alleluja:
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluja:
Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluja:
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluja.

Queen of Heaven rejoice, alleluia.
For he whom thou wast worthy to bear, alleluia:
Has risen, as he said, alleluia:
Pray for us to God, alleluia.

Regina coeli (8.573909)

Giacomo Puccini
© HNH International

Vissi d’arte (8.578188)

Magnus Lindberg
Source: Laivakoira2015 / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Jubilees V. quarter note = 162 (8.570542)

Einojuhani Rautavaara
Photo: Reikki Tuuli

“Adagio Celeste was prompted – like so many of my works – by a bit of text, in this case verses by Lassi Nummi written in 1982. I believe that the poem itself can say more about the music than the twelve-tone row upon which it is built.”

Then, that night, when you want to love me in the
deep of night,
wake me.
Our sheets are cool, white
like the snow outside in the twilit landscape.
I may have been waiting, may be tired of waiting,
come.
Do not grow petrified, supporting the world, like a black tree
standing alone,
come. Wake me. Let me wake
through old age and death, and wake yourself,
come like the snow, join us
to the communion of the world.

Adagio Celeste (ODE1064-5)

The post Probing the naughties appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Source: Irasutoya

Béla Bartók
© HNH International

Mosquito Dance (8.550868)

Mily Balakirev

Ge Gan-ru
Photo: Phillip Li-Fu Tsai

Flies Chase a Bald Head (8.570609)

Mihály Mosonyi
Source: József Borsos / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bohuslav Martinů
© Bohuslav Martinů Institute Prague

All the forest’s flies came riding with the gnat’s bride,
He’d invited every bird, bar the owl.
Once the owl had heard, it flew to the wedding,
Perched on the edge of the range, it sang.
Three songs it sang, then it burst into tears.
Sparrow took it dancing, stepped on its toe:
“If there weren’t so many people I would give you grief,
But since they are the guests, I will let you live.”

The Gnat’s Wedding (8.572588)

Dmitry Shostakovich
© HNH International

The post A buzzin’ half-dozen appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Source: After Amelia Curran, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Music, When Soft Voices Die (9.81210)

Roger Quilter
Source: Herbert Lambert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Quilter: Music, When Soft Voices Die (8.557116)

Charles Ives
© HNH International

A dirge
Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, –
Wail, for the world’s wrong!

Ives: Rough Wind (8.559273)

Paul Hindemith
© HNH International

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp’d in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

Hindemith: The Moon (C156861A)

Staying with that piece of verse, we move to American composer Joseph Turrin (b. 1947), who wrote Equinox in 2010. Scored for mixed chamber ensemble, the composer introduces the work as follows:

Joseph Turrin

[In 2020] I decided to include some poetry that may be recited before each of the five movements, which I felt would add to the overall experience of the piece. These poems include To the Moon by Percy Bysshe Shelley.”

Here’s the third movement of Equinox, titled Luna.

Turrin: Luna (8.559896)

Benjamin Britten
© HNH International

On a poet’s lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the areal kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!

Britten: On a poet’s lips I slept (8.557199)

Richard Rodney Bennett
Photo: Katie Vandyck

On a more parochial level he was also able to write music that connected readily with amateur singers and choirs, as exemplified by his two short collections of songs The Insect World and The Aviary. The latter was written in 1965 and the fourth of its five songs, The widow bird, sets text from Shelley’s Charles I, a historical drama left unfinished at his death.

A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s sound.

Richard Rodney Bennett: The widow bird (8.557129)

The post Percy Bysshe Shelley. Musical moments of a Romantic radical. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Les Tuileries
Source: Dalbera / Wikimedia CC-BY-SA-2.0

Let’s listen to the depiction of the Tuileries first in Ravel’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), in which Tuileries represents children at play and quarrelling while nursemaids gossip; then follow with part of English composer Haydn Wood’s Meditation: In the Tuileries Garden (1935), which portrays a much calmer aspect.

Mussorgsky: Tuileries (8.555924)

Wood: Meditation: In the Tuileries Garden (8.223605)

My next extract is taken from a piece written in 2004 by another English composer, Judith Bingham. Commissioned for performance at the BBC Proms that year, and titled The Secret Garden, it’s an intriguing work in which Bingham imagines what the Garden of Eden was like after Adam and Eve’s expulsion, and whose central image is the synergy that exists between plants and insects. Scored for chorus and organ, the composer introduces the work as follows:

“This is meant to be a magical and intriguing piece. It has a Christian framework with its opening and closing quotations from Genesis and Matthew, and in the second and third movements the Star of Bethlehem orchid rises like a prophecy. In this way it could be seen as a work about redemption and forgiveness. But the piece also seems to wonder whether the world is better off without humans, and that, should humans ever cease to exist, Paradise would very soon re-establish itself, in a world without blame, denial or shame. The poem, which I wrote myself, includes many Latin names of plants and moths, and this led to the subtitle of Botanical Fantasy.”

Here’s the third movement, titled Vol de nuit, that sets the following text:

Star of Bethlehem Orchid
Source: Jeffdelonge / Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0

Judith Bingham: The Secret Garden (8.570346)

Source: Scott Wylie from UK / Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0

Jenkins: All in a Garden Green (8.550687)

Now to visit what one might term a ‘wild’ musical garden, as opposed to a neatly ‘cultivated’ one. It’s titled Garden of Spaces and was written by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016). Rautavaara himself described the genesis of the work:

Einojuhani Rautavaara
Photo: Reikki Tuuli

Here’s an extract from the piece that shows how the work was cultivated by the hands of conductor Leif Segerstam.

Rautavaara: Garden of Spaces (ODE1041-2)

Edward Gregson
Photo: Simon McComb

Monet’s Le Jardin de l’artiste à Giverny
Source: Wikimedia – Public Domain

Edward Gregson: Le Jardin à Giverny (8.574223)

The post How does your garden go? appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Paul Dukas
Source: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One reads that Dukas was a perfectionist for whom no detail was too small. He revised and modified many of his orchestrations, even after publication. To this day, there is no definitive edition of his orchestral works, and while preparing for the recording we’re about to hear, it became apparent how much the existing editions for the works on the programme diverged from one another on numerous key points of orchestration, tempo and even harmony. So, in order to produce an authoritative reading that reflected the composer’s original intentions as closely as possible, the producers went back to the available manuscript sources.

The Symphony in C major is in three movements. Here’s the exposition section of the opening movement in which you’ll hear three distinct thematic sections that progress harmonically from C major, to A minor, to F major.

Symphony in C major / Dukas (8.573296)

Hans Pfitzner
© HNH International

Symphony in C major / Pfitzner (8.572770)

Richard Wagner
© HNH International

Heinrich Dorn
Source: August Weger, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s listen to part of the slow, second movement of Wagner’s Symphony in C major, which is clearly based on the Allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, from its melody to the funereal harmonies beneath.

Symphony in C major / Wagner (8.573413)

Georges Bizet
© HNH International

Here’s the third movement in its entirety, a neatly balanced Scherzo and Trio.

Symphony in C major / Bizet (8.553278)

Igor Stravinsky

Robert Craft

The second movement, Larghetto, was begun there on April 27th. It employs a reduced orchestra, omitting the tuba, trombones, timpani, two of the horns, and one of the trumpets… The full draft was finished on July 19th, after very little trial-and-error sketching. The music is elegiac, with long-line, elegantly embellished melodies. The duets between the oboe and violins are graceful and refined beyond any music of the twentieth century known to this writer, and even the agitato middle section is soft and subdued. The composer conducted the premiere [of the symphony] with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on November 7th, 1940.”

We end by joining that second movement part-way through.

Symphony in C / Stravinsky (8.553403)

The post C Symphonies appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Karol Szymanowski
© HNH International

Taniec (C480981A)

Frederic Curzon
Source: Discogs.com

Here’s Frederic Curzon’s Dance of an Ostracised Imp. It dates from some the darkest days of the Second World War, in 1940, and may be seen as a welcome antidote to the grimness of those times. It uses a gem of a melody, ascending quite normally but descending via whimsical chromatic byways. Where the title came from is anyone’s guess, although it seems that Curzon may simply have been following the example Ravel set with Pavane pour une infante défunte in that he just liked the sound of it!

Dance of an Ostracised Imp (8.555172)

Geirr Tveitt
Photo: Gyri and Haoko Tveitt

Garsvoren dansar (8.572095)

Now to an orchestral arrangement by English composer Colin Matthews (b. 1946). It’s one of a set he made of Debussy’s Préludes for piano, La danse de Puck (Puck’s Dance), after an Arthur Rackham illustration for the mischievous fairy in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is almost a miniature tone poem, which changes direction every few bars. The composer explains the motivation for his arrangements:

Colin Matthews
Source: CollinMatthews.net

This initial venture seemed to work: the Hallé asked for more (I had been appointed their associate composer), and gradually I realised that I was going to have to transcribe all twenty-four preludes. Why undertake such a project? In my own (very inadequate) playing of the pieces I had always heard the sounds of the orchestra, and had in fact annotated two of them (Voiles and La sérénade interrompue) with possible instrumentation some time in the 1970s. I have always enjoyed working with the music of other composers and the insights that this brings, and the challenge of adding around ninety minutes to Debussy’s orchestral sound-world proved irresistible.”

La danse de Puck (9.70215)

A lighthearted interlude now referencing the fairy-tale world of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in this 1938 recording by The Comedy Harmonists, a celebrated German close-harmony group of the time. This is their take on Hi Ho Hi Ho , Its Off To Work We Go!! – the dwarfs’ original song from the 1937 animated Disney film – titled Dwarf’s Yodel Song.

Dwarf’s Yodel Song (8.120613)

Hugo Alfven
© HNH International

Alfven used the sounds available from the later romantic orchestra in highly resourceful ways for his ballet-pantomime Bergakungen (The Mountain King) which he completed in 1923. The ballet is based on the legend of Den Bergtagna, the shepherdess who is abducted by the mountain king and rescued by her beloved. They are aided by a troll, who is nonetheless indignant at not getting the girl himself and lets them die in a snow-storm.

The premiere took place at the Stockholm Opera in 1923 with choreography by Jean Borlin. When the work later fell from the repertory Alfven constructed a concert suite from the score, the second movement of which is titled Trollflickans dans (Dance of the Troll Maiden) and is worth hearing in full.

Trollflickans dans (8.555852)

Edward German
Photo: David Russell Hulme and the Edward German Archive

One day a venturesome little Sprite entered a Giant’s Castle, and while prying about, the Giant went out and locked the door. The Sprite then commenced his revels, when in the midst of enjoying them the lock was turned, the Giant’s step heard, and the Sprite had gone.

The Sprite’s Dance (8.573407)

The post Playing fairies appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Felix Blumenfeld
Source: Ivan Velikii at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Although Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is probably the work that first springs to mind in relation to such repertoire, this blog has lined up a short selection of other pieces for the medium, starting with a Study for Left Hand Alone by the Russian composer Felix Mikhailovich Blumenfeld (1863–1931). He was a concert pianist (his pupils included Horowitz), conductor (he directed the first Paris performance of Mussorsky’s Boris Godunov in 1908) and composer. Blumenfeld’s piano compositions show the influence of Chopin and Anton Rubinstein. He wrote his study for the left hand in 1905; here’s an extract.

Study for Left Hand Alone (8.223656)

There’s a link between that piece and my next pick, written in 1976 by American composer John Corigliano Jnr (b. 1938). I’ll let the composer explain:

John Corigliano Jnr

That curiosity led me to the idea of my own left hand étude and taught me why the left hand is really better for solo work than the right. Unfortunately, I realized, one can only play the left hand alone for so long nonstop, and so my ‘major work’ would be quite shorter than the commission expected; however, what about a suite of études in the form of a fantasy, of which the left-hand study would be the first and germinal?”

Corigliano’s 5-movement Étude Fantasy was the result. Here’s the left-hand study that provides the first movement. Music critic Harold C. Schonberg once wrote that it made the Ravel left-hand concerto look like “child’s play”.

Étude Fantasy (8.559930)

Gustave Samazeuilh
Photo: Studio Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet

An excellent pianist, Samazeuilh is still known today for the hundred or so transcriptions for solo piano or piano four hands commissioned from him by composers and publishers. He wrote his Quatre Esquisses (Four Sketches) in 1944. Of the four short movements, the third is titled Sérénade (pour la main gauche seule). With Hispanic accents and endless changes of tempo, it’s based on a guitar work written in 1925 and dedicated to Andrés Segovia.

Quatre Esquisses (GP669)

Paul Wittgenstein
Source: BFMI, CC BY 3.0 NL , via Wikimedia Commons

Karl Weigl
Photo: Weigl Foundation

Concerto for Piano (left hand) (C5232)

Leopold Godowsky
© HNH International

Godowsky’s Prelude and Fugue for the left hand alone was published in 1930, with a dedication to the American pianist Arthur Loesser. The elaborate Prelude is followed by an intricate Fugue on the notes B-A-C-H (German nomenclature for B flat–A–C–B natural), a favourite motif among composers that pays homage to the legacy of J. S. Bach.

Fugue for the left hand alone (8.225350)

Takashi Yoshimatsu
Source: T. Yoshimatsu Symphony Studio

To play out, I’ve selected a movement from his Gauche Dances, which the composer himself introduces as follows:

“Gauche Dances is a work filled with pop and rhythmical idioms. The work consists of four styles of music. Rock creates heavy and low beats. Blues sounds like luscious jazz music. Tango is the musical style which Mr Tateno is privately fond of. Boogie Woogie brings frenzied rhythms of joy. Anything can happen in these hot dances!”

Here’s that last movement.

Boogie Woogie (8.579121)

The post Left to its own devices appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Edward Elgar
© HNH International

Sospiri is a short work for strings, harp and harmonium. In most performances of the piece, however, conductors choose to replace the harmonium with an organ (but not on our selected recording). It’s not unreasonable to suppose that the emotional intensity of the work reflects the shadow of war that was gathering in Europe at the time of its composition, giving good reason to indulge in some sighing.

Sospiri (8.573250)

Samuel Sebastian Wesley
Source: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Wilderness (8.570318)

Carlo Gesualdo
Source: From the 1926 book by C. Gray and P. Heseltine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By the time of his Fifth Book of Madrigals, Gesualdo was exploring a new relationship between text and music. Progressing from simply reflecting the superficial atmosphere of a text and the passing application of word-painting, he plumbs the deeper essence of single words, not least the word sospiri (sighs) at the opening of his madrigal Itene, o miei sospiri.

Itene, o miei sospiri,
precipitate’l volo,
a lei che m’è cagion d’aspri martiri,
ditele, per pietà, del mio gran duolo;
c’hormai ella mi sia
come bella ancor pia,
che l’amaro mio pianto
cangerò, lieto, in amoroso canto.

Begone, o my sighs,
hurry your flight
to she who is the cause of my bitter torment,
tell her, for pity’s sake, of my great suffering;
that henceforth she may show me
both beauty and compassion,
and that my bitter tears
may change, with joy, into a song of love.

Itene, o miei sospiri (8.573147-49)

Johann Strauss I

Johann Strauss II
© HNH International

Ligourianer Seufzer, Scherz-Polka (8.223216)

Gerald Finzi
Photo: Boosey and Hawkes

At the heart of The Sigh is a question: did the poet’s beloved harbour love for another man rather than himself? Finzi, in the piano’s introduction, creates an equivalent musical image for the woman’s ‘sigh’, which, in varied form, sets the closing lines of each stanza, as though resonating with the nagging question that haunts the man over the years. What do you think the answer is?

The Sigh (8.570414)

Little head against my shoulder,
Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,
And up-eyed;
Till she, with a timid quaver,
Yielded to the kiss I gave her;
But, she sighed.

That there mingled with her feeling
Some sad thought she was concealing
It implied.
– Not that she had ceased to love me,
None on earth she set above me;
But she sighed.

She could not disguise a passion,
Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion
If she tried:
Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,
Hearts were victors; so I wondered
Why she sighed.

Afterwards I knew her throughly,
And she loved me staunchly, truly,
Till she died;
But she never made confession
Why, at that first sweet concession,
She had sighed.

It was in our May, remember;
And though now I near November
And abide
Till my appointed change, unfretting,
Sometimes I sit half regretting
That she sighed.

The post Trying sighing appeared first on The Naxos Blog.

Photo: Pixabay / Pexels

Opening the programme is a gentle, condensed nod to Mary Howitt’s 1829 poem The Spider and the Fly, the one that starts as follows:

Source: Irasutoya

We hear the take on the poem by Fats Waller (1904–1943), one of America’s jazz greats whose extensive musical talents were often accompanied by a side dish of comedy.

The Spider and the Fly (8.120692)

Source: La Gazzetta Italianna

Shostakovich: Tarantella (C71087-88)

Source: George Chernilevsky / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Benjamin Britten

Britten’s score for the J. B. Priestley play Johnson over Jordan was composed during February 1939. Featuring some 35 minutes worth of music, it was one of the longest commercial theatre scores that Britten ever produced. Paul Hindmarsh compiled a 6-movement suite from the score in 1990, the fourth of which is titled The Spider and the Fly, an irresistible 1930s dance-band number written to accompany and reflect a night-club scene.

Britten: The Spider and the Fly (8.557197)

Albert Roussel
Source: Agence de presse Meurisse / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

He wrote Le festin de l’araignée (The Spider’s Banquet) in 1912. Designated a ‘ballet-pantomime’ it depicts the lives of insects in a garden, their relationships tacitly though insistently likened to that of the human domain. The section titled The Spider rejoices – Dance of the Spider is alternately quietly restrained then loud and boisterous as the arachnid contemplates and then celebrates its catch.

The Spider rejoices– Dance of the Spider (8.572243)

Ernst Toch
Photo: Eckhard Joite

Die Spinne (8.559716)

Source: Cristian Bortes / bortescristian, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Spider-Man (8.570505)

The post Music from the web. appeared first on The Naxos Blog.