Musically Speaking

The second program of our 29th season reminds me of many different beginnings in my own life: Haydn, as the “father of chamber music”, the Dohnányi Serenade as one I first performed on many tours in a trio with the man who was to become founder of BCMS, Ronald Thomas; the Bloch Two Pieces–first heard [...]

In 1822 Schubert set Rückert’s five-verse poem, Sei mir gegrüßt (I greet you), to music, and it became one of the most exquisite of his love songs. Five years later, it found its way to the slow movement, a set of variations, of his Fantasy for Violin and Piano.
On Youtube you may find many different interpretations of [...]

Chuck Aule (Ruffalo): “Is it Brahms?”
Ted Daniels (DiCaprio): “No, it’s Mahler.”
–from Martin Scorsese’s movie “Shutter Island”
It is Mahler’s early Piano Quartet, featured in BCMS’s March 28 concert at Sanders Theatre.
Further reading: a post by Richard Brody on The New Yorker blog.

BCMS pianists Mihae Lee and Randall Hodgkinson recently sat down with Andrew Watts, a BCMS intern and young composer currently enrolled at the New England Conservatory, to talk about Mozart’s Fantasia in F minor, K. 608 (originally written for Mechanical Clock!) and Beethoven’s own piano four hands arrangement of the Great Fugue. Both pieces are [...]

Johann Sebastian Bach typically composed works in groups – six Brandenburg Concertos, fifteen three-part Sinfonias, six Sonatas for violin and harpsichord, etc. He composed for the flute, although not in such tidy groupings; and he wrote exactly one piece for flute alone, the Partita.
Before 1717 all of Bach’s compositions involving the “flute” were actually composed [...]

Well, this has been fun. We decided, since we could, to enjoy this as a long project. It’s a long and many faceted piece, and a miracle of imagination and ingenuity, so it deserves months of marinating. Not that it is new to all of us — our cellist, Natasha, spent years rehearsing, performing and [...]