Updates from the world's leading classical music label
Antar was the subtitle of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Second Symphony (1867–68), so when Ravel was asked in 1910 to write incidental music for a play about the 6th-century Arabic warrior-poet, he turned to the Russian maestro’s piece for inspiration. Ravel’s incidental music, however, needed a narrative cloak to make it suitable for the concert platform. This was Read More …
Shabbily treated at its première by Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned the work for his dance company Ballets Russes, Daphnis et Chloé went on to be hailed by ensuing generations as Ravel’s masterpiece; by Ravel himself as “a vast musical fresco”; and by general opinion as the epitome of impressionism in music. Raymond Bisha delves into Read More …
Raymond Bisha introduces four world première recordings of orchestral music by Celso Garrido-Lecca, one of Peru’s foremost classical composers who celebrates his 90th birthday this year. Like Peruvian culture in general, Garrido-Lecca’s music harmoniously blends European and Amerindian traits, in three classically conceived works that are suffused with the popular music of his homeland. In Read More …
Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein—names such as these are familiar friends. But what constituted the musical bedrock from which they sprang? In this week’s podcast, conductor JoAnn Falletta discusses with Mark Simmons the vital contribution that composer John Knowles Paine made to the burgeoning roots of American music in the run-up to the twentieth Read More …
