97. The Legend of Zelda Series by Koji Kondo

It’s a melody that we first heard through an 8-bit synthesizer when we turned on our Nintendo Entertainment Systems, and a melody that still makes us want to embark on an epic quest across the land of Hyrule. You play as Link, a young adventurer who must collect the pieces of the Triforce and rescue Princess Zelda from Gannon. Like the music from Super Mario Brothers and Tetris, this is perhaps one of the most iconic musical themes in video games.

135. Final Fantasy Series by Nobuo Uematsu

Across over 15 mainline entries in the Final Fantasy franchise, Nobuo Uematsu’s melodies are instantly recognizable. He’s perhaps the longest-running video game music composer on the Classical California Ultimate Playlist, beginning his tenure with the series in 1987. Since then, he has built the musical framework that his successors have continued to work from.

204. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim “Dragonborn Theme” by Jeremy Soule

Since 1994, players have been exploring the medieval world of Tamriel in The Elder Scrolls game series. In 2011, we were introduced to the hilly, sprawling region of Skyrim – a land crawling with ghosts, monstrous insects, and dragons. Jeremy Soule’s epic score for the game instantly makes you feel like a hero as you learn to speak with and fight dragons.

219. Fallout 4 “Main Title” by Inon Zur

Like Uncharted, Fallout will soon be headed to more screens as a television version of it is in development. Set in an alternate timeline, Fallout is a story-driven series of games where you explore war-devastated regions of the United States and if you so choose, try to make things better. Inon Zur kept his score moody and sparse like the landscape around you. In our interview, he revealed that he created improvised instruments out of things that you would find in Fallout’s wasteland.

But that’s not all! There are a handful that just missed the list this year or made the list last year including…

Civilization VI by Christopher Tin

American composer Christopher Tin has found amazing success in the video game world after getting his big break in 2005 when he composed the main theme “Baba Yetu” for world building simulator Civilization IV.  In 2016, he returned to the Civilization franchise, creating the stunning “Sogno di Volare” or “The Dream of Flight” for Civilization VI which he says captures “the essence of exploration; both the physical exploration of seeking new lands [and] the mental exploration of . . . science and philosophy.”

Detroit: Become Human “Hopeful/Opening Credits” by David Cage

In 2018, developer Quantic Dream took us to a near-future version of this country, one in which androids have replaced humans in most blue-collar jobs. One day the androids become self-aware and begin to fight for their freedom. This is a story that develops through your choices, and the music follows you on that journey. The score combined the talents of three composers, but it would be the opening title music from the game’s creator David Cage that immediately pulls you in as you follow android Kara through the city streets of 2038 Detroit.

And here are 7 scores to consider for next year’s list!

The Outer Worlds by Justin E. Bell

The Last of Us by Gustavo Santaolalla

Horizon: Forbidden West by Joris de Man

Eastshade by Phoenix Glendinning

Starfield by Inon Zur

Pentiment by Alkemie Early Music Ensemble

11-11 Memories Retold by Olivier Deriviere

Is there a video game musical score that you’d love to hear on the station? Make a request!

The post The Classical California Ultimate Playlist Goes to the Arcade! appeared first on Classical KUSC.

Our first entry on the Classical California Ultimate Playlist…
Coming in at #237, Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven

220. Yann Tiersen’s Amelie

201. Ennio Morricone: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

186. Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso

163. Bernard Hermann’s Vertigo

119. Michael Giacchino’s Up

115. Tan Dun’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

108. John Williams’s Schindler’s List

106. Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt: Pirates of the Caribbean

90. John Williams’s Harry Potter

76. John Williams’s E.T.

69. Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek

52. Joe Hisaishi’s Spirited Away

47. John Williams’s Raiders of the Lost Ark

34. John Williams’s Jurassic Park

31. Ennio Morricone’s The Mission

26. John Barry’s Out of Africa

23. Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story

18. Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings

Without further ado, #14 on the Classical California Ultimate Playlist: John Williams’ Star Wars

Hungry for more movie music? Now you can stream the Classical California Movie Music Playlist.

The post Your 20 Favorite Movie Scores appeared first on Classical KUSC.

What do I love about The Moldau? This dreamy symphonic poem by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana somehow lifts us out of our home office chair, our couch, our doldrums, and transports us to the lush Bohemian woods, where a pair of tiny springs come together, gradually forming the country’s most majestic river. That river, upon which we seem to be floating, flows through the vast Czech countryside into Prague, where it is crossed by 18 bridges, including the magnificent Charles Bridge.

The Charles Bridge | Photo by Sergey Ashmarin

As is so often the case, the circumstances of the work’s composition belie its uplifting spirit. As he was writing The Moldau in 1874, Smetana was becoming completely deaf. But, like Beethoven, he didn’t let that silence him, composing until almost right up to his death at the age of 60 in 1884 in a Prague mental asylum.

That same year, 1884, 22-year-old Englishman Frederick Delius, who abhorred the family wool business and had proven no good at it, was dispatched by his father to Florida to manage an orange plantation. The grove ran along the St. John’s River south of Jacksonville. This two-year sojourn inspired the nature-loving composer’s Florida Suite.

You could say it was a kind of protest song; the composer’s father had disdained his son’s musical passion, yet the Suite written in “exile” became one of his most famous works. Here’s the second movement, By the River:

Our last dip into musical rivers was inspired by a present-day odyssey: in 2009, noted American composer Eve Beglarian, who was raised in Los Angeles, embarked on a four-month trip by kayak and bicycle down the Mississippi River. In subsequent years she composed BRIM: The River Project, a wide-ranging collection of works based on that journey. Its deep waters include traditional song arrangements, original works, prose, and videos. Since then, Eve’s traveled back up the river, sharing her creations with the people that inspired them.

Eve Beglarian | Photo by Lori Gum

In her 2017 list of the top 35 contemporary American woman composers, Washington Post writer Anne Midgette wrote of Eve Beglarian: “an experimental composer and performer, Beglarian writes genre-defying, intimate music that resists categorization: a collage of sound and effect, voice and electronics, written for everything from a rock band to a found recording.”

It’s always exciting to hear what’s just around the bend from this adventurous composer with strong ties to USC. Eve’s father, composer Grant Beglarian, was the much-beloved Dean of the USC School of Performing Arts from 1969 to 1982.

The post A River Runs Through This Music appeared first on Classical KUSC.

We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

The Polovtsian Dances from Alexander Borodin’s unfinished opera Prince Igor (along with Borodin’s Serenade, his Second String Quartet, and a couple of other works) have a special place in music history. Classical tunes had been adapted into pop songs before, but this was the first time any had made it to Broadway–and won awards for it.

Robert Wright and George Forrest had adapted classical music for shows and pop songs before (Grieg for Song of Norway and Rimsky-Korsakov for the film Balalaika), but Borodin was actually their third choice for Kismet. And, fortunately for them, by the time they finished writing, Borodin’s music had come into the public domain so they wouldn’t have to pay royalties. As it turned out, they filed their copyright on Kismet the very day that the copyright on Borodin’s music expired.

The musical opened in December 1953 and went on to run for almost 600 performances on Broadway, and even more in London’s West End. It won the Tony Award in 1954 for Best Musical, as well as for Best Leading Actor in a Musical (Alfred Drake) and Best Conductor/Music Director (Louis Adrian). Borodin was awarded a posthumous Tony, 68 years after his death.

The post Alexander Borodin Goes to Broadway appeared first on Classical KUSC.

Symphonie fantastique tells the story of a young composer whose obsession for a woman leads him to madness and reckless behavior… and when you hear that the movements include “March to the Scaffold” and “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” it’s all the more surprising that it was autobiographical.

Hector Berlioz was a very passionate and dramatic young man – and was immediately smitten with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson when he saw her performing as Juliet and Ophelia in stage productions of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet in Paris in 1827. That obsessive love is presented as a theme that runs throughout Symphonie fantastique, the ‘idée fixe’. It begins straightforwardly, but as the piece progresses, it becomes more and more twisted and deranged.

The final two movements of the piece reflect a ‘bad trip’ caused by the young artist taking opium. He goes into a deep sleep, and is tormented by visions – he’s going to be executed for having killed the object of his affection, and imagines having to climb the tall stairs to where the guillotine awaits. The ‘idée fixe’ is cut short by the blade falling, followed by the head of the artist, bouncing on the steps, and a fanfare with drumroll.

The final movement, the spooky “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” turns his beloved into a witch – the theme of their love played raucously on an unusual instrument in the orchestra, an E-flat clarinet, as a crowd prepares to watch the artist’s funeral, surrounded by demons. There’s also a musical quotation from the “Dies Irae” – the chant from the Requiem mass – by the low brass, accompanied by the tolling of a bell.

Back in the real world, Berlioz hoped to woo Harriet Smithson by inviting her to the premiere. She didn’t come to the first concert, but after he had reworked it for a few years and presented it again especially when she was in town, she did. He continued to pursue her, and in a move that “the young artist” might have tried, proposed, despite the fact that they had just met, and didn’t speak the same language. She agreed to marry him (one tale has him threatening suicide with opium before she said yes) but the marriage didn’t last. She died in 1854, long before Berlioz, but when he saw that the cemetery where she had been buried was going to be destroyed, she was reinterred in Montmartre Cemetery. That’s where she would remain, next to Berlioz (and his second wife). In a passage reminiscent of the horrors he describes in Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz wrote in his memoirs seeing the body being moved from one coffin to the other, complete with descriptions of the sights, smells, and sounds of the process.

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Voting is open for the Classical California Ultimate Playlist, and since we know our Open Ears blog series has been one of our most popular features, KUSC arts producer Jeffrey Freymann put together this playlist to inspire your voting. If you think any of these pieces should be on the Classical California Ultimate Playlist click here to vote or let us know in the comments below.

Eva Jessye: Bles’ My Soul An’ Gone

Traditional spiritual edited and arranged by Eva Jessye, who was a teacher, singer, and for decades, acclaimed choral director. She led the “Dixie Jubilee Singers” – later renamed in her honor – the choir in the first production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Julius Eastman: Stay On It

Lincoln Center and members of the ‘activist orchestra’ called The Dream Unfinished posted this performance of a work by Julius Eastman, a gay Black American who crossed boundaries and brought dance and theatrical elements into his work.

Undine Smith Moore: Scenes from the Life of a Martyr

Introductory narration and two movements from the oratorio that Undine Smith Moore wrote in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Here it’s conducted by Joseph Young, now Music Director of Berkeley Symphony.

María Luisa Anido: El Misachico

A work named for a religious procession in honor of saints by the Argentine composer and virtuoso guitarist María Luisa Anido, known as ‘The Lady of the Guitar.’

Margaret Bonds: Little David

Spiritual arranged by pianist, composer, and teacher Margaret Bonds. She was the first Black soloist to appear with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, when she was 22, and later would be one of Ned Rorem’s first piano teachers. Known for her tune “Troubled Water,” a piano work based on the spiritual “Wade in the Water.”

 
Vote Now in the Classical California Ultimate Playlist

The post Classical California Ultimate Playlist: Selections From Our Open Ears Series appeared first on Classical KUSC.

Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto (the “Emperor”) dates from 1809, a difficult year for Vienna and for Beethoven. In May, Napoleon invaded the city and Beethoven took refuge in the basement of his brother’s house. The bombardment was close enough that he covered his ears with pillows to protect them.

On July 29th, he wrote to his publisher:

“We have passed through a great deal of misery. I tell you that since May 4th, I have brought into the world little that is connected; only here and there a fragment. The whole course of events has affected me body and soul…. What a disturbing, wild life around me; nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts.”

Beethoven reportedly confronted a French officer:

“If I were a general and knew as much about strategy as I do about counterpoint, I’d give you fellows something to think about.”

Modern day Vienna

It was in these horrendous times that Beethoven wrote one of his great heroic pieces, a piece with an unconventional opening. In his Fourth Concerto, Beethoven had begun with a short statement by the piano, which then quickly turned it over to the orchestra for its customary introduction of themes. But here in the Fifth Concerto, he goes way beyond that. It opens with a cadenza for the soloist.

And how did the concerto get its nickname? The story goes that when the concerto was premiered in 1812 (in an occupied Vienna) a French soldier, obviously impressed, exclaimed, “It is the Emperor!”

The post A Heroic Piece in Hard Times: Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto appeared first on Classical KUSC.

As summer fades and autumn takes over, our thoughts turn, of course, to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, in which each season gets its own violin concerto.

The basis of the concertos is a set of four sonnets, quite possibly written by Vivaldi himself. These sonnets appear in the printed edition and an explicit connection is made between specific lines of the poems and specific passages in the music. The evidence for Vivaldi as poet lies in the fact that each of the sonnets lends itself excellently to the form of his concertos: a fast movement, a slow movement and another fast movement to conclude.

The middle of each sonnet has material suitable for that slow middle movement: In the spring, the slow movement depicts a goatherd sleeping with his faithful dog at his side. In the summer, it’s a tired shepherd who can’t sleep because of his fear of lightning, thunder, flies, and hornets. In the autumn, the mild air puts everyone to sleep. And, finally, in winter, the slow movement represents quiet contented days by the hearth.

This is the Autumn sonnet:

I. Allegro
The peasant celebrates with song and dance
The harvest safely gathered in.
The cup of Bacchus flows freely, and many
Find their relief in deep slumber.
II. Adagio molto
The singing and the dancing die away
As cooling breezes fan the pleasant air,
Inviting all to sleep
Without a care.
III. Allegro
The hunters emerge at dawn,
Ready for the chase,
With horns and dogs and cries.
Their quarry flees while they give chase.
Terrified and wounded, the prey struggles on,
But, harried, dies.

I’ll refrain from commenting on the wisdom of hunting while hungover, but I will invite you to listen for the details in the concerto:

The post With Fall Upon Us, Discover the Poetry in Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” appeared first on Classical KUSC.

What goes through your mind when you hear those opening notes? Fear? Do you get goosebumps? Are you reminded of that haunted house you went to last Halloween or the chilling 1962 version of the Phantom of the Opera? We’re not sure that inflicting horror was Johann Sebastian Bach’s intention for his Toccata and Fugue in d minor, but that’s certainly how it’s been used over the last century.

To help change your perception of the piece so you can listen anxiety-free, we’ve compiled a list of less frightful and more awe-inspiring performances of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. While the piece was originally written for organ, check out how incredible it sounds when played on other instruments.

1. The Classic

The Toccata and Fugue remains the most popular organ piece in the repertoire, so there’s no better way to start off this list than with a beautiful performance on an 18th-century organ in central Germany.

2. Disney’s Fantasia

Disney’s iconic film Fantasia opens with an entire scene based around Bach’s T&F, with a gorgeous orchestral arrangement by conductor Leopold Stokowski. The feature led to a resurgence in the piece’s popularity.

3. Harp Solo

Frightening no more! Watch this heavenly performance by harpist Amy Turk.

4. Shred it!

Heavy Metal musicians are often huge fans of classical music because of the deep emotion and virtuosic possibilities of each genre. Watch guitarist Dan Mumm completely shred in this version, complete with a rockin’ drum track!

5. Classical Guitar Solo

If the Metal guitar was a little too heavy for you, the classical guitar might be the right amount of flair you need…

6. The Glass Harp

The glass harp is the most wine country instrument imaginable. Try it out! Grab a bunch of wine glasses, fill them to different levels to create various pitches, wet your fingers, and play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Anyone can do it… right?…

7. The Portable Organ

Before you cue the cruel, cruel accordion jokes, just remember that it’s basically a portable organ so it fits perfectly with the Toccata and Fugue… and almost inside of a Downtown LA apartment.

8. Solo Flute

Bach wrote this piece for 10 fingers and two feet. How is this going to work? Oh, so beautifully…

9. Solo Violin

A theory suggests that the piece was originally written for violin and later transcribed to organ. Here’s what that would have sounded like.

10. Fancy Feet Fugue

There’s an old African proverb that says: “If you can talk you can sing, if you can walk you can dance.” So now that you’re dancing, why not just play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue on a humongous Floor Piano!

The post 10 Scary-Good Performances of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue appeared first on Classical KUSC.

We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

Poetry. It’s simple, concise, and beautiful. And it has managed to inspire composers throughout history. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending is a perennial favorite, deriving emotion and inspiration from an old verse. It’s based on a lovely British poem from the 1880s that describes an English skylark in flight.

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

Poet George Meredith’s 122 lines of verse deeply moved composer Ralph Vaughan Williams shortly before World War I, nudging him to write a duet for violin and piano, with the violin taking on the flight of a skylark. Like the bird, the piece soars and dips. It was dedicated to violinist and good friend Marie Hall, who was enormously important with her suggestions of both the musical and technical aspects of a violin mimicking a wild bird in flight. In 1920, Vaughan Williams had the duet arranged for orchestra.

It’s now more famous than the old poem that inspired it, and to say that The Lark Ascending is popular is an understatement. At this very moment, ArkivMusic.com, the online CD and music service, currently has 76 recordings of Vaughan Williams’ gem in print.

Why is this work such a perennial favorite? The answer lies in sitting there and letting the violin envelop you. This is music that takes your breath away, giving the listener goosebumps and somehow managing to stop time.

The post The Poetic Inspiration Behind Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” appeared first on Classical KUSC.

We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

Many of us hold a special place in our hearts for Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Whether it’s the mystical harmonies that seem to have one foot in the Renaissance period and the other in the 20th-century, or the luscious timbre of the string orchestra, or simply the transcendent and meditative sonic world the piece inhabits, the piece seems to be universally loved.

While many know the Vaughan Williams piece well, how many of us are familiar with the original work by Thomas Tallis that Vaughan Williams based his piece on?

Vaughan Williams first encountered the “Theme by Thomas Tallis” that he used while he was editing the 1906 English Hymnal for the Church of England. The haunting melody comes from the third psalm tune from Tallis’s Nine Tunes for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter, a collection of vernacular psalm settings being compiled in 1567 for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker.

This third psalm tune is nicknamed “The Third Mode Melody” as it is in the Phrygian mode, a Medieval church scale that is related to the modern minor scale. Here is Archbishop Parker’s text for the psalm:

Why fumeth in fight: The Gentils spite,
In fury raging stout?
Why taketh in hond: The people fond,
Vain thinges to bring about?
The kinges arise: The lordes devise,
In counsayles mett thereto:
Agaynst the Lord: With false accord,
Against his Christ they go.

Check out this performance of Thomas Tallis’s Third Tune from Nine Tunes for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter, “Why fum’th in fight.”

I’m sure you’ll find that Tallis’s original piece is as stunning as the Vaughan Williams Fantasia which drew its inspiration from it. It’s easy to hear how Vaughan Williams was enraptured with this haunting melody and created the timeless masterpiece that we all love today!

The post The Inspiration for Vaughan Williams’s “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” appeared first on Classical KUSC.

We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

Perhaps it was inevitable that George Gershwin would change American music forever. Born Jacob Bruskin Gershowitz to immigrant parents fleeing anti-Semitic persecution in Russia, Gershwin’s music is unique, innovative, and emblematic of “The American Dream.”

George Gershwin is responsible for creating one of the most original musical languages in the history of the art form. With his Rhapsody in Blue, he brought two competing genres of music together, creating something that lived in a world between jazz and classical.

It could have easily been dismissed as not fitting into either world: not jazzy enough for the clubs, not serious enough for Carnegie Hall. But instead, his music was embraced by both the jazz crowd and the classical music elites. His music served as a tool to open both jazz and classical audiences’ ears to new sound worlds.

The first performance of Rhapsody in Blue took place on February 12, 1924, at a lengthy concert by Paul Whiteman and his band called An Experiment in Modern Music. The big finish was Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1. Just before it, just as the audience was succumbing to restlessness and grumpiness, the penultimate work on the program was Gershwin’s new Rhapsody. The now-famous clarinet glissando which opens the work caused the audience to snap to attention. Delight soon followed.

Today, that glissando is as recognizable (to classical and non-classical fans alike) as the four famous notes which open Beethoven’s fifth symphony. The improvisatory solo piano episodes throughout the piece, which Gershwin didn’t write down prior to the first performance, bring an edge-of-your-seat spontaneity that can be rare in the classical concert hall. Then, of course, there’s the Big Tune which is one of the most stirring melodies ever written.

A USPS stamp from 1973 commemorating George Gerswhin

All sorts of musical influencers were in attendance that February evening. Composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Igor Stravinsky were there. The March King, John Philip Sousa, was in the audience as was the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the time, Leopold Stokowski. Violinist Fritz Kreisler and stride piano legend Willie “The Lion” Smith were both present as well.

Small wonder, then, how quickly word of Gershwin’s triumph spread. But, in spite of the success of Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin’s eventual impact on the music of this country wasn’t inevitable. Had the United States not welcomed his parents—a refugee couple on the run—who knows what would’ve become of their son? Who knows what would’ve become of American music?

The post George Gershwin Changes American Music Forever with the One and Only “Rhapsody in Blue” appeared first on Classical KUSC.

Mozart’s last symphony picked up its nickname “Jupiter” in London around 1820. Some think it’s a reference to the loftiness of Mozart’s ideas. Others point to the opening of the symphony and say that they hear the “thunderbolts of Jupiter.”

But as impressive as this opening movement may be, the real news is in the last movement, whose concluding section is a masterpiece of the art of counterpoint, weaving together the musical fabric from individual strands of melody.

Mozart learned that art from Bach, thanks to Baron van Swieten, a diplomat in Vienna. In those days Baroque music was old music, not in wide circulation, but at the baron’s house Bach and Handel were very much in fashion. Soon after Mozart arrived in Vienna, he started going every Sunday at noon to the baron’s home.

Mozart’s study of Bach enabled him to incorporate the legacy of Baroque counterpoint into the structure of the Classical symphony.

The last movement of the Jupiter introduces five simple themes:

These themes mix and mingle until finally they are all combined. A late nineteenth century writer commented: “[The five themes], all in perfect harmony, are enough to give Bach a headache.”

The post Mozart Hurls Thunderbolts From Jupiter appeared first on Classical KUSC.

We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

Coming in this year at #75 on your Classical California Ultimate Playlist, is a duet from the exotically-set opera Lakme by the Frenchman Leo Delibes. The action of the opera takes place during the British Raj in India during the late-19th century. The so-called Flower Duet from Act 1 is an exquisite blending of soprano and mezzo-soprano voices in close harmony. The characters singing are Lakme herself (the French version of the name Lakshmi) and her servant Mallika. What are these nice ladies singing about? Well, they’ve gone down to the banks of a river to gather flowers. That’s pretty much it.

The piece is instantly recognizable from the many times it’s been used in TV and film. You may have heard it while watching The Simpsons or Parks and Rec. And at the movies, it shows up all the time on soundtracks including such unlikely films as The Angry Birds Movie and Bad Santa.

Here’s one of my favorite renditions of the Flower Duet with Renee Fleming and Susan Graham:

For whatever reason, The Flower Duet also lends itself to some pretty creative arrangements; what the kids call re-mixes!

The post The Many Lives of the “The Flower Duet” appeared first on Classical KUSC.

We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

It’s been said that Beethoven once spoke fondly of the versatile guitar, calling it “a six-string orchestra.” Herr Beethoven got that right. Hands down the most popular work for the classical guitar is not from Ludwig van Beethoven but rather the magnificent work by Joaquín Rodrigo known as the Concierto de Aranjuez.

From Andrés Segovia to Miles Davis, performers have recognized the originality and depth of this Spanish masterpiece. For guitarists and guitar lovers, it is the Mount Everest of the instrument’s literature. Amazingly, this fabulous piece was not written by a guitarist. The composer Rodrigo played the piano but had a perfect ear for the sounds, colors, and distinctive voice of the guitar. While in Paris, he wrote this piece as a celebration of Spain and the guitar.

This work is extremely difficult for a guitarist to pull off—not for the faint of heart. Rodrigo’s brilliant Concierto de Aranjuez never lets the orchestra overpower and dominate the subtle volume of the graceful classical guitar. The stunning second movement, the Adagio, is one of the most famous melodies in music. After his death, Rodrigo’s widow Victoria broke the couple’s long silence about the inspiration for this slow, passionate movement. She said her husband was feeling a combination of happy moments from earlier in their life, the sadness of a miscarriage, and the ongoing revolution in their native Spain.

There was always a rumor that Rodrigo wrote the piece for Segovia, who was at the time the hottest guitarist on the planet. Not true. The Concierto was written before World War II for the guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza, who first performed the work in Madrid and Barcelona in 1940.

Every guitar player worth his or her salt knows how important it is to get these legendary twenty-two minutes under their belt. All the top six-string soloists have taken their crack at this deceptive beauty—Segovia, John Williams, Pepe Romero, Xuefei Yang, David Russell, Ben Verdery, Milos, Jason Vieaux, Sharon Isbin. Piano players have their Grieg A-Minor Concerto, while violinists know their Beethoven and Bruch concerti; so it is for top classical guitarists with Rodrigo’s gem. This one is a flawless celebration of the world’s most popular instrument. Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is a delicious Iberian high-wire act.

The post Rodrigo’s Iberian High-Wire Act appeared first on Classical KUSC.

Dean Rob Cutietta of the USC Thornton School of Music and Glorya Kaufman School of Dance solved listeners’ musical mysteries every week for more than a decade on KUSC’s Ask the Dean. Dean Rob seemed like the perfect guy to ask why a piece written by Tchaikovsky about an 1812 Russian victory over the French has become a part of so many 4th of July celebrations? And why does it always come with fireworks?

Such a great question. You can’t go to a 4th of July concert now without hearing the 1812 Overture. You do hear Copland, you do hear Bernstein, you do hear Gershwin, you certainly hear John Philip Sousa, but that’s always on the first half. It’s never what the people come for.

To get to the answer we have to think back to the mid 1970s. The country was gearing up for the bicentennial—for those of us who remember that it was a really really big deal. Two years before that in 1974, Arthur Fiedler who worked with the Boston Pops did a televised concert for the 4th of July and he was the person who did the 1812 Overture with cannons and with church bells. Naturally, everyone was watching this show and musical directors around the country thought “well I have to do something for the bicentennial” and immediately it was the right piece at the right now.

In 1976, we see symphonies all over the country programming the 1812 Overture, and it has become so popular and so standardized that it really has become the Independence Day piece for the United States. Tchaikovsky didn’t write in the fireworks, those were added after, but they’re so great we all love it.

People probably don’t think about where it came from, it’s just a neat piece of music. But when you hear some of the themes going on in the piece, they really make no sense for us to be using in this way. I would think the second movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England would be THE American piece. It doesn’t get more American than that—it’s complicated, but it’s fun and has American folk songs and a marching band in it—but for some reason, I never hear that on the 4th of July.

A bonus question for Dean Rob… what is the 1812 Overture an overture to? Is there an 1812 Opera?

There’s no 1812 Opera. You’re thinking the term “Overture” would be an overture to something, but often times with classical music it’s never that simple. “Overture” is a term that was used in the 19th century for one-movement programmatic orchestral pieces. Franz Liszt called these “symphonic poems.” Richard Strauss called them “tone poems.” All of these terms mean the same thing: one movement pieces that are trying to tell a story or capture a specific mood. So that fits the 1812 Overture because it’s a one-movement piece that tells the story of a battle.

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We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

Erik Satie wasn’t the only late 19th-century French composer rejected by the Paris Conservatory, but he was the most influential experimental composer no one ever heard of until he was rediscovered by John Cage in the 1960s.

These days historians credit him with sowing the seeds of minimalism with his three Gymnopédies for solo piano in the 1890s. Satie wrote them during his first years in Montmartre – the Bohemian town at the top of the steep steps to the Sacré-Cœur Cathedral that overlooks Paris. There he was in good company with avant-garde artists of all kinds who were drawn to the irreverent and raucous atmosphere of its dance halls and absinthe bars.

Sacré-Cœur in the background, peaking up above Paris

Satie became the house pianist at Le Chat Noir where he cultivated an eccentric persona. He ate only white food, lived alone, and owned seven identical grey velvet suits which he wore every day of his life. When he died, his apartment which no one was ever allowed to enter, was stuffed with objects, including 100 umbrellas and two grand pianos stacked one on top of the other.

“I am not a musician”, he said, but a “phonometrographer’, interested in the science of how sounds relate to each other. It’s no surprise that his contrarian approach to music defied the Romantic era “rules” of composition.

In fact, way before mid-20th-century composers were staging “happenings” and developing ambient music (Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, for example), Satie coined the term “Furniture Music”, producing, for example, a concert where the musicians performed seated among the audience which was invited to ignore them.

Satie was once accused of writing music that had no form. His response: Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear. It had seven movements, and instructions to the pianist to “think like a pear”. But, his music was championed by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Later in his career, he collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes for the 1916 ballet, Parade, about circus artists trying to lure an audience into the tent for the show. Jean Cocteau wrote the story, Satie the music, and Pablo Picasso did the costumes and scenery.

After WWI, Satie was pretty much forgotten until the 1960s when John Cage first heard the Gymnopédies. In 1963, Cage paid him tribute with a performance of his very challenging Vexations, a piano piece of 180 notes which were to be repeated 840 times. Satie’s instructions: “In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities”. It took eleven pianists in a relay of twenty-minute shifts performing all night to accomplish the feat.

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We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

Much like Sting’s 1987 hit “An Englishmen in New York,” George Gershwin’s free form symphonic tone poem An American Paris finds its inspiration in the idea of being a fish out of water and the wide-eyed excitement of seeing new sights and hearing new sounds. Gershwin traveled to Paris in 1926 to study with Maurice Ravel. Ravel refused to teach him after their first meeting, saying that George would be better as a first-rate Gershwin rather than a second-rate Ravel.

George Gershwin (on the far right) with Maurice Ravel at the piano

Gershwin began his sketches that year for what would become An American in Paris with a shorter piece entitled “Very Parisienne.” When returning to the U.S., Gershwin brought home Parisian car horns in specific pitches which figured prominently in that work and of course later in the final version of An American in Paris.

The piece begins like it’s in the middle of a thought, in stark contrast to the dramatic opening to Gershwin’s 1924 masterwork Rhapsody in Blue. You can picture someone, perhaps Gershwin himself, strolling the streets of Paris after just arriving in the city and taking in the hustle and bustle of daily life. Trucks rushing by and honking at oncoming traffic, businessmen rushing off to the office, a woman picking flowers and bread for the evening meal from a street vendor in a city street market. The mood transitions to feelings of homesickness, which are quickly dashed by a visit to a cabaret and the nightlife of Paris in the 1920s. Bright lights, roaring fountains, and romantic encounters.

An American Paris premiered in 1928 and was met with some resistance by classical critics, who felt the work was too light and contemporary to share a bill with Mozart and Bach. Gershwin responded, saying “It’s not a Beethoven symphony . . . it’s a humorous piece, nothing solemn about it. It’s not intended to draw tears. If it pleases symphony audiences as a light, jolly piece, a series of impressions musically expressed, it succeeds.”

An American in Paris has gone on to be one of Gershwin’s most popular and oft-performed works. It will also live on forever on the silver screen as part of the 1951 Oscar-winning film starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron which shares the same title.

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We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

If you’ve ever taken a stroll through Vienna, you’ve probably heard about 20 different performances of a Viennese waltz within a five-block radius. If you’re a gambler, it’s a pretty safe bet that 15 of those were written by Johann Strauss II and half of those were almost certainly the most famous of them all – the one and only Blue Danube Waltz.

Rightfully nicknamed the Waltz King, Strauss II came from a family of Viennese composers who were masters of dance music – but he perfected the craft, writing about 500 dance pieces during his lifetime, 150 of them being waltzes.

Surprisingly, the Blue Danube waltz – or ‘An der schönen blauen Donau’ (‘By the Beautiful Blue Danube’) – wasn’t well received originally as audiences disapproved of the lyrics. Lyrics you ask? Yes! The piece was originally written as a choral work. Strauss was commissioned to write a piece for the Vienna Men’s Choral Society to uplift the people of Vienna who were reeling after losing the Austro-Prussian War. He was inspired by Karl Isidor Beck’s poem about the ‘beautiful blue Danube.’ Unfortunately, the Danube section he was writing about was in Baja, Hungary and not Vienna. Plus, the text for the choral piece was written by a satirical writer, Josef Weyl, who wrote a more dispiriting version than anticipated. The text reads:

The waltz became much more popular when Strauss II wrote the orchestral version, the one we all know and love, later that year.

The Blue Danube gained mainstream popularity in the late 1960s as the score for the famous space docking scene in Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick originally commissioned composer Alex North (A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?) to write the score for the entire film, but during post-production, and after North had already finished the entire score, Kubrick decided to use classical pieces in the film instead. It’s rumored that North didn’t find out that his score had been replaced until he showed up to the screening of the film.

Listen to the original score for the scene and let us know if you think Kubrick made the right choice.

And while you’re at it, check out The Simpsons take on the iconic scene.

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We’re celebrating the Classical California Ultimate Playlist with a series of fun and informative blogs about the music you love.

One of my guilty pleasures is reading the YouTube comments under favorite recordings. I love discovering that people all over the world, writing in a myriad of languages, agree (or vehemently beg to differ) with my taste in music.

I discovered this note under Anne-Sophie Mutter’s sumptuous recording of what is one of the highest-ranking works on the Classical California Ultimate Playlist: “Rien de telle que la Méditation de Thaïs pour s’évader un instant de ce monde”. Loosely translated: There is nothing like the Meditation from Thaïs to allow us to escape from this world, if only for a moment.

Five moments, to be exact, of sheer musical bliss. The Meditation began life as an entr’acte or intermezzo between scenes in the second act of Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs. The crux of the plot: Athanaël, a Cenobite monk, goes to extreme lengths to persuade Thaïs, a ravishing courtesan, to give up her life of sin. She will find salvation through God, he opines. The Meditation for violin solo and orchestra affords our heroine a brief but heavenly period of reflection, and as far as the monk is concerned, the music nails it: after it ends, (and the concertmaster acknowledges the rapturous applause) Thaïs tells Athanaël she’ll renounce her hedonistic life and follow him into the desert.

Okay, you know this is grand opera. There’s no way the monk, however pious, will resist the charms of our comely heroine, right? And no way Thaïs will live to see the final curtain. No matter. For some of us, this little five-minute interlude completely overshadows the rest of the opera, with its clunky plot and lovely but somewhat unmemorable music. (A cellist friend who has played in the pit for many a staged Thaïs refers to the piece as “Medication”, a kind of drug to combat operatic doldrums.)

Happily, the Mediation has found enduring life outside the opera house, entering the standard repertoire not long after the opera’s 1894 premiere. It’s been recorded by everyone from Fritz Kreisler to Yo-Yo Ma to euphonium virtuoso Adam Frey.

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