Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

There are many reasons why Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony remains a mystery to this day -  the literally unfinished form, the unusual way of the symphony's emergencee into public consciousness, and probably most importantly, the character of the music itself, which seems to inhabit a different realm altogether, whether in its brooding first movement or the heavenly second movement.  When Schubert’s half-finished symphony was discovered, it had been sitting in a drawer of the minor composer Anselm Huttenbrenner for 43 years, unmissed and unheard by anyone.  The score was discovered by the conductor Johann von Herbeck.  Herbeck naturally considered the moment where he first held the score unforgettable, quickly organized a performance, and 37 years after Schubert’s death, the Unfinished symphony was heard for the first time.  But, the truth is that the fact that the symphony is unfinished isn’t really that special.  Composers started and failed to finish works all the time, whether they were songs, symphonies,

Brahms’ two piano concertos could not possibly be any more different.  The first, written when Brahms was just 25, is dramatic, stormy, and impulsive.  This makes sense seeing at it was written practically as a direct response to the attempted suicide of his friend and mentor Robert Schumann.  The second, written 22 years later when Brahms was a seasoned and mature composer at the height of his abilities, was not, as far as we know, inspired by any specific event.  It is a warm, almost sun-tanned piece, but it also does something that makes it both the perfect piece to analyze on a show like this, but also makes it a rather elusive one that takes some baking to really understand and appreciate.  What Brahms does in the 2nd piano concerto is to distill everything that makes Brahms really Brahms into one 50 minute piece of music.  There’s continuous development, gorgeous melodic lines, contrasts of character, stern willful music immediately followed by tenderness, Hungarian music, light music - it’s ALL there -

How do you orchestrate a painting? How do you take the detail and the visual imagery of a painting and translate that into something that is so vivid that even if you’ve never seen the painting before in your life, you can picture it as clearly as if it was right in front of you? Most people look at a painting for no longer than a minute or two at a museum, so how do you sustain that image over nearly 20 minutes of music? Well, to answer all of these questions, all you need to do is look at Rachmaninoff’s brilliant tone poem, The Isle of the Dead, which he wrote in 1908.  In 1907 Rachmaninoff saw a black and white reproduction of a painting by the Swiss artist Arnold Bocklin entitled The Isle fo the Dead. This painting had cause a storm of interest all across Europe. Vladimir Nabokov said that prints of the painting were found in every home of Berlin, Sigmund Freud owned a copy, as did Lenin. Bocklin painted 5 different version of the piece, but they all had the same theme - a desolate haunting image of a lar

While the inspiration for the show today is likely obvious, I’m also very happy to get the chance to share this wonderful music with you, separate from the current horrors going on right now. Here’s a little quiz for you - name a Ukrainian composer. Were you stumped? Well, so are many people by that question. Despite a long line of brilliant composers throughout history, the music of Ukrainian composers has not entered the standard repertoire, except if you consider the contemporary composer Valentin Silvestrov. But Ukrainian music has a long and fascinating history, from the so called Big Three of the 18th and 19th centuries who were heavily influenced by the legendary Austro German composers but wrote in a highly unique style, to the nationalistic and folk inspired music of Lysenko, to the wild experimentation of Lyatoshinsky in the 20th century, all the way to the contemporary era  and the post modern work of Silvestrov.  Today on the show I’m going to take you through a history of Ukrainian classical musi

In 1888, Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony was premiered. It was enthusiastically received by the audience, and by Tchaikovsky’s friends. But Tchaikovsky’s nemesis, the critics, were not so happy with the piece.   One utterly tore apart the symphony, writing after a performance in Boston: "Of the Fifth Tchaikovsky Symphony one hardly knows what to say ... The furious peroration sounds like nothing so much as a horde of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker. Pandemonium, delirium tremens, raving, and above all, noise worse confounded!” Another wrote: “Tchaikovsky appears to be a victim of the epidemic of the Music of the Future, that in its hydrophobia, scorns logic, wallows in torpor, and time and again, collapses in dissonant convulsions. Of basic inspiration in these people, who present interest at most as pathological cases, there is very little indeed.”  Usually this is the moment where I quote Sibelius’ brilliant: “no one ever built a statue to a critic” line, but for o

In 1902, the great French composer Gabriel Faure said this: “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.  As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different." Faure’s requiem is part of a long tradition of master composers addressing death through Requiems. Mozart, Brahms, Verdi, Britten, Berlioz, Beethoven(to a certain extent), and many many other composers all tried their hands at the Requiem, some of them keeping to Requiem Mass traditions, and some striking out completely on their own. Most notably, Brahms barely followed the traditional Requiem mass at all, preferring to use his own favorite biblical texts. Faure was also a

The year is 1910. Imagine that you are a young composer, and the music world is in flux all around you. Mahler is dying, and with his death many agreed that the great Austro-German symphonic tradition that stretched from the late 18th century with Haydn all the way through Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schubert and more, was over and done with. Wagner’s music dramas had inspired an entirely new style of music, and composers like Strauss, Liszt, and Berlioz had blown open the possibilities of what music could portray. But even their experiments had seemed to have reached a breaking point. For many composers, there seemed to be nowhere to go.  As the great Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt said: “There was nothing to be done all the great melodies had all been written - what could one do. There was so much wonderful music but composers had to regroup and develop their own language and that wasn’t easy in 1910. Stravinsky found his own method inspired by Russian culture, Bartok was similar, Hindemith

Rimsky-Korsakov, above anything else, is regarded as a master of orchestration, the art of creating orchestral sound and color. As Rachmaninoff said about Rimsky-Korsakov’s music: "When there is a snowstorm, the flakes seem to dance and drift. When the sun is high, all instruments shine with an almost fiery glow. When there is water, the waves ripple and splash audibly throughout the orchestra … ; the sound is cool and glassy when he describes a calm winter night with glittering starlit sky." Nowhere is this gift more on display than in one of Rimsky-Korsakov’s seminal works, Scheherezade. But this work is far more than only orchestration. It is a shining example of a number of complicated facets of both Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Russian Nationalist music of the time. It also displays so many of the contradictions that marked this era of classical music, and in particular, Russian classical music. Rimsky-Korsakov originally gave the piece a clear narrative, but then withdrew it angrily, saying that any programmat

In May of 1937, R. Nathaniel Dett’s oratorio “The Ordering of Moses” was premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony. The performance was carried live on national radio by NBC, but about 3/4’s of the way through the piece, the broadcast was halted due to unspecified scheduling conflicts, the origins of which remain mysterious and highly speculated on. And since its premiere, The Ordering of Moses has been performed only a handful of times, and never, as far as I can tell, outside of the United States. Well, that is going to change this February, as I’ll be conducting the UK premiere of the Oratorio with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soloists Rodrick Dixon, Chrystal Williams, and  Eric Greene. Today on the show I’m going to tell you all about Dett’s remarkable story, his passionate advocacy for black folk music and spirituals, and the profoundly moving music that runs all the way through The Ordering of Moses. You won’t regret jumping into this rarely heard and rarely talked about gem of a

“I never really thought of them as walls. I thought of them more as boundaries. Walls are a much more serious matter. You're not supposed to be able to get through, while boundaries at least you can crossover and I think the whole crossover thing is basically what the history of music in the second part of this century is about. It's about crossing over these boundaries.” If there’s one quote that could sum up the music of the composer Ingram Marshall, it might be this one. Last week I talked about Sibelius and our inability to place him in the typical classical music eras of Romantic or Modernist music. Well, Ingram Marshall’s music follows very much on that discussion, and it’s no surprise that Sibelius is one of Marshall’s favorite composers. I imagine most of you listening to the show today are not familiar with Ingram Marshalls’ music, so today on this Patreon Sponsored episode, I’m going to briefly give you a background on this remarkable modern composer, and then we’ll finish the show with both an inte

Sibelius never gets mentioned on “most” lists, the most innovative, modernistic, romantic, beautiful, conservative, ugly, violent, peaceful etc. In fact, no one is ever sure where to put him on these lists, and that’s partly due to that lifespan that began when Brahms was 32 and ended when Pierre Boulez was also 32 years old. And this uncomfortable place between Romantic and Modernist is exactly why Sibelius is, to me, one of the most interesting topics to cover on this show - and the perfect vehicle to explore Sibelius further is the 5th symphony, one of the most remarkable fusions of modernism and romanticism I’ve ever heard.

Last week I told you the story of the genesis of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony. We talked politics, but we also talked about just the music itself. Today, I’ll take you through the second half of the symphony, again first from a musical point of view. But by the end of the piece, the political conversation and the debate over the ending itself becomes unavoidable. There is no other piece whose character or even tempo is as debated as the ending of Shostakovich’s 5th, so we're going to have it out! Join us!

Shostakovich’s life and career was so wrapped up with his relationship to the Soviet government that it is sometimes hard to appreciate that, all else aside, he was one of the great 20th century composers. His 5th symphony is the meeting point between Shostakovich's music and the political web he was often ensnared in, and it is a piece that is still being vociferously debated. This week we’re going to tell the story of the piece’s genesis, and then we’ll explore the first two movements of the symphony.

If you’re not a violinist, you might not be familiar with the name Eugene Ysaye. But this violinist and composer was called “The King of the Violin” at the turn of the 20th century. Ysaye’s biggest compositional achievement was inspired by a performance by the legendary Joseph Szigeti in 1923. Enraptured, Ysaye went into his studio and 24 hours later (!), he emerged with 6 solo violin sonatas, each dedicated to one of his favorite violinists. Dive in with us this week to learn all about these amazing works!

This week, on part 2 of this look at Mahler 1, we're going to take a deep dive into the third and fourth movements of this massive and massively ambitious symphony. We'll talk about Frere Jacques, bizarre woodcuts, Klezmer bands, cries of wounded hearts, the most touching consolation, terror, rage, standing horn sections, and one of the most exhilarating endings of any symphony. Mahler's 1st symphony was one of the most ambitious statements a young composer ever made, so let's finish the journey together!

No one makes a grand statement quite like Gustav Mahler, and his first symphony, nearly an hour long, was one of the boldest statements ever made by a young composer. Today I’ll take a look at the history behind the early inspirations behind the piece, Mahler’s turbulent life, and the first two movements of the symphony. As the great Bernard Haitink said, Mahler had a talent for suffering, but this symphony is often full of a naivete and joy missing from Mahler's later works. Join us to find out more!

There are composers whose influence outstrips their popularity. The Baroque composer Heinrich Schutz falls into this group, due to his total focus on writing sacred vocal music. But for those who know his music, he is essential. He was the most important German composer before Bach and was vital to the development of music. Today I’m going to take you through some of Schutz’s greatest musical achievements, including his Muskalische Exequien, the piece that very likely inspired the Brahms Requiem. Join us!

Bartok’s Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste is a perfect encapsulation of Bartok’s musical output. Each movement provides us with a magnifying glass into some of the qualities that made Bartok one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. But for how spectacular a piece it is, it isn’t played as often as it should be, partly because of its extreme difficulty. Today, I’m going to talk you through what is perhaps Bartok's greatest piece, the unforgettable Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste.

Arrangements of Bach's music have been happening essentially since his music was “rediscovered” by Mendelssohn in the 19th century. But Mozart and Beethoven arranged Bach's music too, and Bach himself would recycle works for different groupings of instruments. Today, I'm going to take a look at some of those arrangements, and what kind of insights we can gain into Bach's music, the styles of the times in which these arrangements were done, and even(!) whether we might prefer these new flavors. Join us!

Mendelssohn was only 20 years old when he wrote to his friend Karl Klingemann: "...I am going to Scotland, with a rake for folk songs, an ear for the lovely, fragrant countryside, and a heart for the bare legs of the natives.” Over two months in 1829, Mendelssohn traveled through much of the Scottish Highlands, and it was on this trip that he found the inspiration for his beloved Scottish Symphony. But is this symphony all about Scotland? And how should we interpret this symphony in 2021? Join us this week!