Play Mozart in memory of me

[dvanov-deactivated20181218]

Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 (The Leningrad Symphony) by Dmitri Shostakovich was performed in blockaded Leningrad on 9 August 1942 under the conductorship of Karl Eliasberg. The Soviet artillery units were ordered to cease the fire for the German troops to hear the music, which was broadcasted through the loudspeakers.

[realcelloguy]

Listen: Cecilia Bartoli Just Became the First Woman to Perform in the Sistine Chapel

Her performance of a piece of early music by Perotin breaks an over 500-year-old taboo.

Worth noting, I daresay.

[lisztrunaway]

Krystian Zimerman - Beethoven - Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor, Op 37

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor, Op 37 1 Allegro con brio 2 Largo 3 Rondo. Allegro Krystian Zimerman, piano Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra...

So I’m learning this piece...

[gnossienne]

Pianist Ludovico Einaudi performs in the Arctic Ocean as part of a Greenpeace campaign calling for its protection (x)

[doing-it-for-debussy]

a compilation of some of my favourite composer quotes:

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”  - Igor Stravinsky

“I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.” - Edvard Grieg 

“Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them.” - Richard Strauss

“He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” - Richard Strauss on Schoenberg

“I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.” - Ludvig van Beethoven

“I have written a chorale both sober and suitable. In it I have put everything I know about boredom. I dedicate this to those who do not like me.” - Erik Satie

“ Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.” - Gioacchino Rossini

“What a good thing this isn’t music.” - Gioacchino Rossini on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique 

“Oh how wonderful, really wonderful opera would be if there were no singers!” - Gioacchino Rossini

“In opera there is always too much singing.” - Claude Debussy

“Bring me coffee before I turn into a goat!” - Johann Sebastian Bach

“Listening to the 5th Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.” - Aaron Copland 

“The audience expected something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.” - Louis Schnieder on Debussy’s La Mer

“He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.” - Clara Schumann on Liszt 

“What a giftless bastard!” - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Brahms

“Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting.” - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“Bach on the wrong notes” -  Sergei Prokofiev on Stravinsky 

And, saving the best for last…

“Lick my ass up and down” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

Feel free to add more! (Also please don’t think that I agree with all of these, I am a huge fan of Symphonie Fantastique and La Mer!!)

[frozen-delight]

Because Wagner bashing is a favourite occupation of mine:

“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend to hear it a second time.” - Gioacchino Rossini

“For me Wagner is impossible…he talks without ever stopping. One just can’t talk all the time.” - Robert Schumann

“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease?” - Friedrich Nietzsche

For which reason I’ll also quote some non-composers on the subject:

“Richard Wagner was a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.” - Mark Twain

“I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time.” - Oscar Wilde

[menarsgerie]

[clavierissimo]

Johannes Brahms, Sketches of “Vier ernste Gesänge”, op. 121, Autograph. Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien.

[barcarole]

Glenn Gould, by Gordon Parks.

[thecuriouspianist]

Steinway Model D Piano on the stage at Carnegie Hall, NYC, in preparation for a concert by Alfred Brendel.

©Lisa Quiñones

[solopianomusic]

Resplendent Piano Photo

[vintageeveryday]

[ladylabsinthe]

Music in Victorian Era – Vintage pictures of women playing musical instruments in the 1800s

[barcarole]

Ravel’s autograph with the opening six bars of the third song from his Chansons madécasses, ca. 1926. 

[soyoumusik]

Here’s a video of the master class I went to last night. So maybe you’ll understand why I was inspired and infatuated.

Filip Pogady slaying some Paganini

[coffeeandcello-deactivated20170]

Imagine if instead of method-actors we had method musicians.

The conductor wearing earplugs during rehearsals to understand how Beethoven felt conducting his brilliant 9th, but never being able to hear it, only knowing how it was supposed to sound. 

Getting high as fuck before playing Symphonie Fantastique.

Traveling with tape recorders, capturing the same country melodies as Bartok did in Hungary.

Commuting always with a fresh pair of underclothes and a toothbrush in case of arrest while playing the music of Shostakovitch.

Practicing Haydn concertos in a reclusive castle on the countryside.

Spending 6 months in Poland before playing Chopin in order to fully understand the joy and love of one’s country that lies in the notes.

Traveling afar while studying Dvorak, as to understand the wonder of a new country, yet the sad distant longing for one’s homeland. 

Imagine if we didn’t only capture what the composer wrote, but what they felt and experienced as well? 

[if-the-jimmychoo-fits]

I always buy stuff at the symphony gift shop

[if-the-jimmychoo-fits]

[musician-photos]

Leonard Bernstein at Chopin’s piano in Warsaw