Franz Liszt: Totentanz Context Completed in 1849, Totentanz (‘Dance of the Dead’) is a fiery work for solo piano and orchestra by Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt. The work is primarily based on the Dies irae melody, which Liszt takes and develops into a powerful set of variations. Liszt was known Read more…
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Peanuts® Gallery Context After becoming friends with the cartoonist and creator of the Peanuts comic, Charles M. Schultz, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich composed her piano concerto Peanuts® Gallery as part of a commission from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. This unlikely friendship started after Zwilich found a Peanuts cartoon Read more…
Francesca Caccini: Lasciatemi Qui Solo Context Francesca Caccini was born in Florence in September 1587. Her parents were both musical, so she grew up in the artistic community of the Medici court – one of the most cultured in all of Europe. At a very young age Caccini, taught by Read more…
Arturo Márquez: Conga del Fuego Context Arturo Márquez was born in Sonora, Mexico in 1950. Surrounded by a musical family, Márquez studied composition with the likes of Federico Ibarra, Hector Quintanar, and Joaquín Gutierrez Heras. His use of Latin American styles in his music makes Márquez a highly popular composer Read more…
Maurice Ravel: Boléro Context Composed originally as a ballet that was commissioned by the Russian actress Ida Rubinstein, Maurice Ravel’s orchestral work Boléro is his most famous composition. Before composing Boléro in 1928, Ravel had composed music for ballets including suites for ballet and full large-scale ballet scores. For instance Read more…
Ralph Vaughan Williams: In the Fen Country Context Inspired by the fairly bleak and desolate East Anglian marshland, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ In the Fen Country is one of his earliest orchestral works. The Fens, known for being flat and dull, was an interesting, and perhaps unusual inspiration for Vaughan Williams. Read more…
Alexander Glazunov: Oriental Rhapsody Context Composed in 1889, Alexander Glazunov’s Oriental Rhapsody was one of many orchestral works by Russian composers that took great inspiration from East Asia. This vein of Russian exoticism is also seen in works by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Igor Stravinsky. The five-movement work is Read more…
Hildur Guðnadóttir: Bathroom Dance Context In 2018, Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir was announced as the composer for the 2019 thriller, The Joker. Alongside Director Todd Phillips, Guðnadóttir composed a lot of the music based on her reactions to filmed scenes and script ideas. Guðnadóttir was allowed to flex her creative Read more…
Franz Liszt: Liebestraum No.3 Context Franz Liszt was born in 1811 in Hungary, into an already well-established musical family. His father, Adam Liszt, had been in service for Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy. This meant he was in direct contact with prolific composers such as Haydn, Beethoven and Hummel. Liszt was an Read more…
Ralph Vaughan Williams: 49th Parallel Prelude Context Unlike in America, the British film industry in the 1930-40s did not specifically employ specialist film composers to write scores for films. Instead, popular concert composers were asked, as was the case for the 1941 war drama 49th Parallel. In 1940, conductor Muir Read more…