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What Are You Listening To Right Now?


Guest Black Lotus

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Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now?

 

In remembrance of the Oregon Symphony concert I attended last night, this video comes to mind. Violinist Janine Jansen and the BBC Symphony performing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, with subtitles that give a play-by-play of what is happening in the piece as well as tidbits about its composition and the life of Mendelssohn. The larger the window or screen with which you watch the video the better.

 

I learned a great deal from it, as this is the first time I had learned the term "double-stop", a technique that enables a violinist to play two notes on two different strings simultaneously. It also reminded me of Felix Mendelssohn's prominent role in the musical culture of his time as a conductor, teacher and critic as well as composer. Among other things, he was able to take the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, who had flourished a hundred years earlier, back into the concert hall after he has largely been relegated to scholarly appreciation.

 

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Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now?

 

Off Youtube, the "New World" Symphony by Antonin Dvorak. At the time he wrote the work Dvorak was on a three-year sojourn in the United States, where he served as director of the New York Conservatory as well as composing and conducting. The work uses both American and Czech themes -- Dvorak was nothing if not a patriot and would probably have been delighted had the Czechs achieved independence from Austria in his lifetime (as it was they had to wait until the Austrian collapse at the end of World War I).

 

Dvorak would also write one of his best string quartets, the Quartet #12 "American", while in the US. It is thought that he had used some American tunes in that work but he refused to specify which, leaving them a mystery to this day.

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