If we did a quiz and I asked you to name as many pieces of music by Beethoven that you could think of, I suspect that this overture would be well down the list! It was, however, the first orchestral work of Beethoven that I ever played.
Year: 2020
High Horn
I’ve been neglecting the horn players recently 😃
Some Fireworks Today
The music of the baroque period covers so many great composers – and can be very exciting. This performance is really good – and on period instruments making it sound more like it might have done originally.
A Trumpeter Using His Voice
Just one instrument in today’s performance – well, I guess two since Wynton Marsalis also uses his voice to speak before playing his trumpet. Recorded just about a month ago I thought this was well worth sharing.
Autumn
Definitely an autumnal feel to the weather and plenty of leaves in the garden – so today we have Autumn from the Four Seasons – not Vivaldi’s – the one by Glazunov.
A Meditative Walk
The paintings accompanying the music in this video have nothing whatsoever to do with the original context of the music – but they do capture and enhance the mood of contemplation rather well. I also have to admit that my knowledge of the world of paintings is so sparse that I had never even heard of the artist before finding this video 😃
Yet More Bernstein
Time for something a bit more lively – I attended many outdoor concerts in Wien during the summers that I was there but never one at Schloss Schönbrunn – what a great place for a concert! I see from the comments that this annual concert commenced in 2008 – I was there too early😃
A Moment of Remembrance
My music for Remembrance Day was not written specifically for the purpose of commemorating WW1, however it was written few years after the end of the war and was very much Vaughan Williams’ reaction to the war. Wikipedia suggests that it “has gained the reputation of being a subtly beautiful elegy for the dead of World War I and a meditation on the sounds of peace”.
Young Lives Lost
One of the millions killed during the first World War was the composer of this piece – George Butterworth. Tranquil music that was written before the outbreak of war.
Not a Happy Symphony
This seems the ideal “big piece” for this Monday in the ‘remembrance season’. This is not something written specifically for such a purpose – but it does reflect on the effect of wars.