Entries from October 2009

October 26, 2009

100 years later, Schoenberg’s ‘Pieces’ still leave audiences grumpy

The four-hand piano reduction of part of the first of the Five Pieces for Orchestra, by Arnold Schoenberg.

This year marks another centenary besides that of Vagn Holmboe: the writing of the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, of Arnold Schoenberg.
Saturday night I went to a concert by the local Lynn Philharmonia, the music conservatory orchestra [...]

October 23, 2009

Vine’s first sonata, and the future of piano writing

Earlier this month I attended a piano recital by Christopher Atzinger, at which the American pianist played for his encore the first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 1 of the Australian composer Carl Vine (at right).
I wasn’t familiar with Vine’s music, though there were some music lovers at the recital who were, and urged [...]

October 15, 2009

Neglected pages, overlooked composers

An aria from Stephen Storace’s The Siege of Belgrade (1791).
I could probably write about neglected composers almost every day, which isn’t such a bad idea, as long as a lot of good music gets uncovered.
I heard two things back to back the other day that reminded me again how much nifty music is out there [...]

October 7, 2009

Arts journalism summit slighted still-potent power of print

Last weekend, the good folks at the Annenberg School on the campus of the University of Southern California hosted the first-ever National Arts Journalism Summit.
I entered Palm Beach ArtsPaper in the summit contest (hey, we could use the money), but didn’t win; still, we hosted the live stream from the summit on our Website for [...]