“If I fail, my death will be a glorious one, and if I succeed, I shall have done a great service to my country” (Anonymous).

In this vein, Scheherazade, the daughter of the Grand Vizier, persuaded her father to allow her to marry the Sultan who, convinced of the duplicity and infidelity of all women, had slain each of his wives after the first night of marriage. Through a clever practice of nightly storytelling Scheherazade won over the Sultan, who spared her life, causing peace to fall on the land and the realm to become safe from losing any more of its young women. Such is the background to Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical depiction of four of the 1001 tales with which Scheherazade beguiled her husband. Hansel and Gretel in Humperdinck’s opera found other ways of dealing with evil intentions, while Saint-Saëns mocked the fear of dying in his “Danse Macabre” depicting Death as a violinist appearing every Hallowe’en playing his fiddle as skeletons rise from their graves and dance until dawn.

Much less dramatic was the second of our May programmes. Debussy in his “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” conjures up the image of a Faun – a half-man and half-goat figure of Greek mythology – drifting off to sleep filled with colourful dreams and wakening to luxuriate in sensual memories. Sibelius’ Violin Concerto marks a turning point in the composer’s struggles with alcoholism and the financial needs to meet his responsibilities as a father of three. Illustrating the beauty of light amid so much wintery darkness of his native land, the character of the piece also has been compared to the character of Nordic people, offering a fascinating window into the inner world of Sibelius’ fellow countrymen. Many performers who have approached the task of bringing the concerto to life have defined it as a piece about both actual nature and human nature. In 1785 (age 29), Mozart dedicated a set of six new string quartets to his friend and mentor Josef Haydn, 34 years his senior. Upon attending the premiere of the new quartets with Leopold Mozart, his protégé’s father, Haydn told him: “before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.” Some accolade, but something many of us have long since come to know!  We played just the 2nd of the set of six.

These and all our musical offerings for May may be listened to by clicking on the links below.
​
Bill Squire

Session Notes 9th May

Humperdinck - Prelude to Hansel and Gretel
Rimsky- Korsakov - Scheherazade
Schumann - Cello Concerto
Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre
 
Session Notes 23rd May
​
Debussy - Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Sibelius - Violin Concerto
Handel - Let the Bright Seraphim
Mozart -String Quartet No. 15

“May you, dear Spohr, wherever you find real art, and real artists, think with pleasure of me, your friend Beethoven”. In this personal testament to his sometime companion, Beethoven acknowledged a central figure in the development of European concert music. As the nineteenth century progressed Louis Spohr was engaged and feted by the major musical establishments for whom he conducted the steady output of orchestral, solo and chamber works. His reputation clearly rivalled that of Schubert, Schumann, Weber, Berlioz and others.

Time has treated Spohr more shabbily than several of his contemporaries - a contrast from an era (170 years past) when his musical ‘star’ was so much in the ascendant. The story is told of a distinguished visitor - manufacturer and music lover Herr von Tost - arriving one morning at Spohr’s doorstep with an extraordinary proposition: ‘He expressed the wish that everything Spohr should write in Vienna be reckoned as his property for a period of three years, and for which he would be financially rewarded. Spohr was to give him the original manuscripts and make no copies … “they may be performed as often as is possible but the scores must be borrowed from Tost for each occasion and performed only in his presence”.

One such work was “Nonet in F major”, a composition for nine instruments made up of four strings plus flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. Tost requested the work to be written in such a way that each instrument would appear in its true character. It was the first composition ever for nine instruments.

Spohr’s “Nonet” was the major focus for our one and only session in April. The remainder of the session comprised a suite from the opera “Carmen” and a Mozart piano concerto with a stunning encore of Liszt’s “Tarantella”. The notes for each and the recordings may be accessed by clicking on the links below.

Bill Squire.


Session Notes

Bizet - Carmen Suite No.1

Louis Spohr - Grand Nonet in F major

Mozart - Piano Concerto No.19 & Liszt - Tarantella
​

There’s a quote by Anonymous: “Music isn’t what I do, it’s who I am”. Because, historically,  societal attitudes towards women designated them as inferior in the worlds of arts and sciences, women who composed music often found their compositions devalued accordingly. Consequently, much good music became “lost” through lack of exposure to the concert-going public. Thankfully, that is now beginning to be reversed.

​Our first programme for the month of March, in recognition of the contribution of female composers to the world of music, featured works by five women from varied backgrounds and circumstances: Maria Antoine Walpurgis who used her political clout to advance her music, Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, her royal position and connections; while Louise Farrenc, Professor of Music at the Paris Conservatoire for 30 years in the 19th century not only produced quality compositions but managed to achieve equal pay for men and women at the Conservatoire. Marie Jaëll had the good fortune to study composition with the likes of César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns and achieved recognition through sheer persistence and hard work, while Florence Price persevered against the odds of being both female and Afro-American in the USA in the first half of the 20th century.

Our adventures into these little-known worlds will be balanced by a return to “Old-favourites” – Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky – for the second programme of the month. Who wrote the better music? Look up the notes and listen to the recordings posted below after the session. You might be surprised at the conclusion you come to.

Bill Squire.

Session Notes 14th March
Maria Walpurgis - Overture to Talestri Queen of the Amazons
Princess Anna Amalia - Flute Sonata in D
Maria Jaell - Cello Concerto
Louise Farrenc - Sextet for Piano and Winds
Florence Price - Piano Concerto in One Movement
 
Session Notes - 28th March
Beethoven - Leonora Overture No.3
Mozart - Violin Concerto No.4
Tchaikovsky - Rococo Variations
Beethoven - Wellington's Victory

“One of my best works”, said Beethoven of his Seventh Symphony. Another composer, however,  thought “The extravagances of Beethoven’s genius had now reached the ‘non plus ultra’, and Beethoven must now be ripe for the madhouse”. There was a lot going on in Beethoven’s mind as he composed this symphony, it has to be said. His mental state had driven him to a health spa - his deafness was increasing, a deep love affair had collapsed, and his financial state was embarrassing. On the brighter side Napoleon’s conquests were starting to fail (he despised Napoleon) and this gave him a deal of joy. All the associated emotions at this time came together in this symphony which, as another tilt at Napoleon, he premiered at a benefit concert for soldiers who had been wounded in a recent battle in which Napoleon was routed. It was this seventh symphony that was the feature work in this year’s final session.

Works by Beethoven Mozart, Bach and Saint-Saens made up the rest of our November programmes – what better way to wind up a successful year.

​A big ‘thank-you’  to the class of ’24 whose appreciation provided the impetus that has kept the music coming. Roll-on 2025!

Italian philosopher Umberto Eco is recorded as saying “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth”.

Listeners to Shostakovich are often on the look-out for hidden messages in his music: some sign of political dissent, or a parody of the Georgian dictator encrypted in special note combinations or musical phrases.

Shostakovich was always quiet about what his music "meant." If there’s a story or meaning behind the First Cello Concerto, Shostakovich never wrote one down. He’s certainly not around anymore to tell it.

Ultimately, you need to be careful you don’t get distracted from the music, which is so powerful it doesn’t really need a story behind it. It stands up perfectly well on its own.

Similarly, Eduard Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”.  Although descriptive of fourteen people in Elgar’s life, it has bemused and challenged musical scholars, both professional and amateur, for decades as they try to unlock the secret enigma contained in his work, but so far, no convincing solution has been found.

Clearly, the best approach to both is just enjoy them for their wonderful music. You can check out both pieces of music and read notes about each by clicking on the links below, as well as the other shorter works that occupied our attention during the month: works by Smetana, de Falla, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, which contain no enigma at all.
 
Session Notes 11th October
Schumann - Overture to Hermann and Dorothea
Shostakovich - Romance from "The Gadly"
Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No.1
Haydn - Symphony No.104 
 
Session Notes 25th October
Rossini - Overture to William Tell
Elgar - Enigma Variations
de Falla - Ritual Fire Dance
Beethoven -  Piano Sonata No. 17


Bill Squire.

Yoko Ono, when married to Beatles star John Lennon, created, with Lennon, three albums titled “Unfinished Music”, and Ono herself a book titled “Everything in the Universe is Unfinished”. “I never want projects to be finished”; said Ono, “I have always believed in unfinished work”. I got that from Schubert, you know, the ‘Unfinished Symphony.’”

Whether Schubert’s eighth Symphony was deliberately left unfinished or whether he forgot to finish it, or whether it was really ‘unfinished’ at all, has been debated ever since the work was discovered. Antonin Dvorak nearly didn’t get to complete his Violin Concerto because a world-renowned violinist kept wanting him to make changes to it, So Dvorak called ‘time’ and gave the concerto to another violinist to premiere.

​On the other hand, in the tradition of Christina Rosetti who claimed that the only thing sadder than an unfinished work, is one never begun, Felix Mendelssohn’s 3rd (or Scottish) Symphony, nearly didn’t get started. Having written down notes for it during a trip to Scotland, he embarked on a trip to Italy and was so taken with sights and sounds he found there that he forgot - until he went to write was to become his 4th (or Italian) Symphony.

No such concerns, however, for Mozart – so much music was there in his head! And especially should there be a young woman in the offing, and more so, again, if her father was a man of influence. Finished in seemingly no time at all, Mozart’s 9th Piano Concerto was his first fully mature piano concerto, dedicated to the young woman in question, and one he took as a show piece for a tour of Mannheim and Paris.

Details about our September programme and links to the recordings played can be found below.
 
 
Session Notes  13th September
Rossini - Overture to The Silken Ladder
Mendelssohn - Symphony No.3
Dvorak - Violin Concerto
 
Session Notes  27th September
Smetana - Overture to The Bartered Bride
Schubert - Rondo in A
Schubert - Symphony No.8
Mozart - Piano Concerto No.9
​

“Why fit in when you are born to stand out” is an ‘Elephant-in-the-Room’ quote often attributed to children’s author Dr Suess.

It could be applied to Johannes Brahms for whom Beethoven was the ‘elephant-in-the-room’ when it came to symphonic writing. Living in the shadow of Beethoven, Brahms was reluctant to compose a symphony for fear of it being compared to those of Beethoven. Hence it took him at least fourteen years to complete his first symphony.

It could be applied to Gabriel Fauré when he composed music for that classic ‘elephant-in-the-room” subject “death”. Faure’s Requiem is unique. He doesn’t comply totally with the traditional text. The anguish, loss and horrors of Death and Judgement Day, common to musical settings by other composers, are left by the wayside. Fauré concentrates on the true meaning of the word "Requiem", or "rest". His Requiem is about peaceful acceptance and release, and the music is serene, elevating, comforting.

Beethoven’s own ‘elephant-in-the-room’ was his ‘Septet for Wind and Strings’. The concert-going public loved it so much to the detriment of their acceptance of other works of his - works which Beethoven considered superior - that he could not bear to talk about it. “I wish I had burnt it”, he is reputed to have said of the Septet. 

For your interest and enjoyment here are the links to the notes and recordings for these and other works which occupied us in the month of August.
 
Session Notes 9th August
Introduction to Academic Festival Overture
Brahms - Academic Festival Overture
Beethoven - Septet
Webern - Langsamer Satz
Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 12
 
Session Notes  23rd August
Beethoven - Prometheus Overture
Brahms - Symphony No.1
Faure Requiem - Netherlands Choir
Faure Requiem - Kings College Choir
Faure Requiem - Latin to English Text
 
Bill Squire.

English author CS Lewis wrote: “Devils are depicted with bats' wings and good angels with birds' wings, not because anyone holds that moral deterioration would be likely to turn feathers into membrane, but because most men like birds better than bats”.

Birds, angels, and devils, featured largely in our July programmes. For a university graduation ceremony Finnish composer Rautavaara wrote a “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra” in which the orchestra part is juxtaposed with bird sounds from the Lapland bogs and marshes recorded by the composer himself. His fellow compatriot Sibelius was inspired by the sight of swans flying overhead as he wrote the final movement of his 5th Symphony. Violinist Niccolo Paganini was such a genius that rumours were put about that his soul had been sold to the devil – the violin sometimes being described as the devil’s instrument only adding to the spread of the rumours. We listened to and watched the playing of his first violin concerto – a ‘devilishly difficult’ work to master. Argentinian musician Astor Piazolla reimagined the Tango which while winning admiration in some quarters saw him receiving a ‘devil of a time’ from others for meddling with the sounds of the people”. Richard Strauss had a similar reception for the first outing of his tone poem ‘Don Juan’.

As for ‘bats’, maybe that could apply to this convenor for presenting works this month that were ‘new’ both in composition and to the class members. You be the judge, however. Links to the notes and recordings played are listed below.

Bill Squire.

Albert Einstein once said: “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”. Robert Schumann made a grave mistake in experimenting with a device to strengthen his fingers for his planned future as a concert pianist. It so damaged his fingers that it ruined any chance of his becoming a pianist. This led to his turning to a career in musical composition. The outcome of this decision to try something new was his being acclaimed one of the most important composers of the nineteenth century. Schumann succeeded in a magnificent manner by composing what is acclaimed “probably the most beautiful of Romantic concertos. This flawless masterpiece is one of the most outstanding and romantically inspired concertos in the repertoire”.

Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg thought Brahm’s 1st Piano Quartet was something of a “mistake” because the piano tended to overwhelm the other instruments. 70-plus years after the event he decided to do something new with it by arranging it for Orchestra so that the other instruments could be heard. Schoenberg’s transcription has been variously described as a “masterpiece” and as “an over-rated travesty”.

Antonin Dvorak began his working life as a butcher. At the age of 13 he was inducted into the Butcher’s Guild of Zlonice. Thankfully for us, and audiences the world over, his musical talent shone through and he changed career path. in 1889 he was inducted into the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts. His 8th symphony was composed in celebration of his election.

These compositions were the prime focus of our June sessions. More detail and description of other works plus links to the recordings played are available below.


​Bill Squire.

14th June
Session Notes
Glinka - Overture Ruslan and Ludmilla
Brahms -  Piano Quartet No. 1
Tchaikovsky -  The Seasons (Complete)
Telemann - Flute Concerto in D


28th June
Session Notes
Schumann - Manfred Overture
Dvorak - Symphony No.8
Schumann - Piano Concerto

“To Richard Strauss, the composer, I take off my hat,” the conductor Arturo Toscanini once famously declared. “To Richard Strauss, the man, I put it on again.” Strauss, at one stage in his life was connected, musically, to Hitler’s Third Reich. Toscanini’s distinction between the individual and his work raises an age-old conundrum about art and morality: Should we allow the details of an artist’s biography to affect the way we view their work? Perhaps there is no easy answer, so perhaps we take their music as we find it and enjoy it for how that is. Which is how we approached Richard Strauss’  tone poem: “A Hero’s Life”.

Sergei Rachmaninov had his brush with politics finding himself on the receiving end of the wrath of Soviet Union officialdom following the publication of a critical letter that he’d written about the regime. His music was banned in Russia, allowing for neither its study nor its performance. Happily elsewhere it found acclaim and we were able to enjoy his Third Symphony – the penultimate work of a long career.

Similarly, Dmitri Shostakovich found himself in an ‘on and off’ relationship with the State. At an ‘on’ time he penned a Festive Overture to celebrate an anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Meanwhile in wartime England Ralph Vaughan-Williams was arrested on suspicion of being a German spy. It turned out he was making notes for a work to become known as “A Lark Ascending”.
​
Happily, other music for this month by Beethoven, Grieg and Mozart came without any political motivation or overtones. hence, they were able to be enjoyed simply for the beauty of the music. Details and links to the notes and recordings follow:
 
Session Notes  10th May
Beethoven - Consecration of the House
Rachmaninoff - Symphony No.3
Grieg - Piano Concerto
 
Session Notes  24th May
Shostakovich - Festive Overture
Richard Strauss - A Hero's Life
Additional Notes to 'A Hero's Life'
Vaughan-Williams - The Lark Ascending
Mozart -  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik


Bill Squire

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” William Shakespeare uses this line in his play Romeo and Juliet to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant. Composer Robert Schumann would disagree. For Schumann, everything was in a name, and his own was legion. Most famous of all are Florestan and Eusebius, whom Schumann labelled the two emotional extremes in his changeable personality -  the active and the passive aspects of his personality. Florestan, an outward-going, robust figure; Eusebius, moody and introspective. These also appear regularly in Schumann’s music. His second Symphony is a good example with its contrasting moods of quiet reflection and exuberant hyperactivity. This, the main focus of the first of our April sessions, was bookended by a Telemann Overture and Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet for strings, composed at sixteen years of age. Interestingly, Telemann’s music was an enormous influence on Mendelssohn’s more than a century later, and Mendelssohn was the conductor for the premiere of Schumann 2nd Symphony.

If Schumann’s mental state was his “Achille’s Heel”, Beethoven’s was his encroaching deafness which, at times,  drove him to despair and, like Schumann, to thoughts of suicide. It was in the midst of this anguish that Beethoven’s Second Symphony was born. A work which bewildered critics at the time, others since have come to see it as filled with spirited vitality, humour and frivolity – “music which glances backwards while looking forwards”. This was the first part of a double bill in our second April session, the other being Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.23 – it also being a work expressing powerful emotions. Another composer of powerful emotions was British composer Ethel Smyth whose campaigning for women’s rights aa well as her music both landed her in gaol and in performance in the drawing room of Queen Victoria; and later the first composer to be made a Dame of the British Empire. We heard the Overture to her opera “The Wreckers”.

​Links to the recordings and the notes for the 2nd session may be accessed by clicking on the links below. Hopefully notes for the first session will be posted as soon as possible.

​
Bill Squire. 

14th April Session Notes - to be added shortly.  

G.Ph. Telemann Ouverture-Suite in D major, I Ouverture, TWV 55D1 (Musique de table Tafelmusik).mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbLYcAu7BNA​

Symphony No. 2 Robert Schumann Dowland Lachrimae Antiquae Klaus Mäkelä Oslo Philharmonic.mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxbfkZ_BzwU&t=5s​

Felix Mendelssohn String Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20.mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1xiQ93L7A

28th April Session Notes (pdf)

YouTube Links to Recordings:

Ethel Smyth Overture to The Wreckers - Queer Urban Orchestra.mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbpp2tiNCXk

Beethoven Symphony No. 2 in D major, op 36 Christian Theilemann & Wiener Philharmoniker.mp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdvcIE6kVuE&t=2127s

​Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major K 488 Evgeny Kissin mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4S6UYv8-W4&t=711s

“Here they grow in mountain depths. Far from any dwelling place. And no one comes to view their blooms” (from a poem by Japanese noble woman, poet, and author, Lady Sarashina). Ann Boyd, the first woman to be appointed as professor of music at the University of Sydney said in reflecting on those words: “It felt to me like it was the voice of all the women composers that had ever composed in the world before”. “They create great beauty but no one listens, no one hears, they don’t have a permanent place. And I felt one of them”. An ABC presenter introducing a programme for International Women’s Week on ABC FM a couple years ago took a more positive stand: “Throughout history people have said some very strange things to, and about, women in classical music. And for just as long, women have been doing incredible things anyway”.

It was with both those thoughts in mind that one of our sessions in March was given over to honour the music and the fortitude of women composers and musicians down through the ages and to showcase some of their wonderful music.  You can read about and listen to just some their music as was presented to our group by clicking on the links below. For the record, the other March session featured works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Felix Mendelssohn, and Max Bruch – all of them male composers. But don’t let that put you off -  it’s equally good and enjoyable music, too; and likewise, the links to the notes and recordings are posted below.   
              
Bill Squire

Session Notes – 22nd March Women Composers

Fanny Mendelssohn - Overture in C
Hildegarde of Bingen - De Spiritu Sancto
Emilie Mayer -  Piano Concerto in B flat major
Clara Schumann - Three Romances for Violin and Piano
Germaine Tailleferre - Sonata for Harp
Maddalene Lombardini-Sirman - Quartet No.3 Opus 2

 
Session Notes – 8th March
Additional Notes to Bruch's Scottish Fantasy
​
Rimsky-Korsakov - Russian Easter Festival Overture
Mendelssohn - 5th Symphony
Bruch - Scottish Fantasy

​Ayn Rand, Russian - American writer and philosopher - once wrote “To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder”?
​
Italian composer Guiseppe Tartini had a dream in which he was invited by the Devil sell his soul in return for which the devil would become Tartini’s servant. In the process Tartini saw and heard the Devil playing him a melody on the violin. That was the easy bit. The hard part came when Tartini awoke and tried to remember the melody devil had played!. The result was his Sonata in G which featured as one of the “pipe-openers” for this year’s musical excursions.

Beethoven, Mozart, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky with a little Wagner and Rossini made for some “easy” listening as we welcomed new members to our group.

Not so easy was to bid “Goodbye” to world famous Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa who died during the month.

You can read and listen to our tribute to him along with the notes and recordings for both of our February sessions by accessing the links below:
​
Bill Squire

Session Notes  9th February
Overture to Tannhauser
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.1
Tartini - 'Devil's Trill' Sonata
Mozart - Oboe Concerto
 
Session Notes   23rd February
Rossini - Overture to The Italian Girl in Algiers
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings
Beethoven - Choral Fantasy (Ozawa)
Ozawa - Broadcast to Outer Space 

An important date for you diary - Music Appreciation 2024 commences on Friday 9th February and is held on the 2nd & 4th Friday of the month – 10 am to 12 noon.

Bill Squire

Too long, strange, complicated, were words that once were not uncommon when it came to describing some of Beethoven’s music. His (one and only) violin concerto proved so difficult at its premiere that the soloist gave up with the piece altogether, choosing instead to improvise. People left the concert feeling confused at best, ‘exhausted’ at worst. The Violin Concerto didn’t sink into utter obscurity, but it was rarely performed in the four decades following its lukewarm debut. When it was performed, reviewers usually talked about how talented the soloist was to pull off such an attempt, rather than praising the concerto itself. Such was our experience as we watched a performance of the concerto so scintillating as to seemingly confine to obscurity the orchestral suite by Australian composer Nigel Westlake and the Mozart symphony that made up the rest of our one and only session for the month (and our final programme for this year). The links to the session notes and links and to the video recordings used are posted below.
​
Bill Squire
 
Session Notes
Westlake - Flying Dream
Beethoven - Violin Concerto
Mozart - Symphony No.40
​

What do you do if someone goes to sleep during your performance of your latest work? That’s what happened to Brahms while Liszt was introducing his brand-new Sonata in B minor. Clearly he wasn’t impressed, Nor was Clara Schumann to whose husband, Robert, the work was dedicated. “Blind noise”. “Just awful”, were two of her comments. Yet it became in some other’s eyes, a masterpiece  - an essential part of any aspiring concert pianist’s repertoire.

I didn’t notice if any of our group “did a Brahms” as it was played during one of our October sessions, but if it wasn’t to everyone’s musical taste, the rendition we saw at the hands of an upcoming Russian pianist in a winning performance at this year’s Tchaikovsky competition was something else indeed.

Brahms also featured earlier in the month in a chamber version of his Serenade for Orchestra – a work that helped bring the composer to the attention of the musical world and served also as an introduction for him to the art of symphonic writing.

But it was Steven Isserlis’ performance of Haydn’s 1st cello concerto that had our group talking the most.

Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro composed for the purpose of a harp manufacturer to show off their latest instrument (and stave off competition from a rival manufacturer) introduced the month’s music programme, while Mozart’s 39th (but not his last) symphony brought down the curtain on the second of our gatherings.

Click on the relevant link below to access notes and recordings.

Bill Squire

13th October:
Session Notes 
Ravel - Introduction and Allegro
Brahms - Serenade for Orchestra
Haydn - Cello Concerto No.1
 
27th October:
Session Notes 
Ramaeu - Pieces de Clavacin No.5
Liszt - Sonata in B minor
Mozart - Symphony No. 39

“It simply wrote itself”, commented Sergei Rachmaninoff on the melody that comprised the major theme of his 3rd Piano Concerto. Perhaps that could be the wish of many of us as we get older and brain fade tendencies seem to increase! That melody, however, was to grow into one of the towering masterpieces composed for the keyboard and formed the centrepiece of the first of our September sessions.

Unlike Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky could relate to some degree of brain fade. Struggling to compose his 5th Symphony, he frequently complained of ‘writer’s block’ and began to wonder whether he has simply run out of ideas. History demonstrates, of course, that nothing was further from the truth.  This symphony with its theme of “ultimate victory through sacrifice”, was ordered to be played during the World War II Siege of Leningrad in an endeavour to keep up the spirits of the city’s population, thus ensuring its popularity. One performance was broadcast live to London and listeners could hear the sounds of bombs exploding as the musicians played on.  This symphony was the central item for the second of our sessions this month - but without any added sound effects of bombs. 

A Spring Festival Overture by Chinese composer Li Huanzhi and Schumann’s Spring Symphony helped put spring into our step as we celebrated the arrival of the new season, while Smetena’s romantic “The Moldau” and Bruch’s 1st Violin Concerto with its dreamy adagio movement, proved a perfect foil to the drama of Tchaikovsky Symphony.  

Bill Squire

​Click on the links below to access session notes and recordings.

Self-portraits come in a variety of forms. Some are with a paintbrush, some with a camera, others with a pen. It would seem only right - and natural, even - that a musician would choose music. Which is what Camille Saint-Saens is said to have done in his 3rd Symphony. Within in its walls are aspects of the composer – his talents, his doubts, his belief, his fears and his hopes. All his instruments are there – a pipe organ (has was a church organist at one time), the piano (which he had played since childhood), his passion for sacred music, the love of logic and balance (there are two movements each with two sections), the forces of darkness (the Deus Irae haunts the work) and finally there is the element of hope as the symphony gradually progresses from darkness to light. Some say it is expressive of his hope of resurrection, although it is well documented that Saint-Saens was not at all religious. Perhaps his aim was to demonstrate the spiritual power of music. Whatever, it was the standout work we looked at in our August sessions.

Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto which we also heard deserves more acclaim than it gets – tending to be overlooked - coming as it does between the monumental 3rd and 5th concertos - so two totally different recordings were viewed. Love is often in the air when music is being composed and Brahms’ love for Clara Schumann may have inspired his 1st violin sonata, while Mahler’s Adagietto from his 5th symphony definitely was instrumental in the wooing of Anna, his wife to be. These and the ubiquitous overture - every good music programme should start with one – made for happy watching and listening. The video recordings together with the explanatory notes for each performance can be accessed via the links below.  

Finally, a reminder that our class on Friday 22nd September has been rescheduled to the Friday 29th September.
​
Bill Squire.


Session Notes   - 11th August
 
Weber - Euryanthe Overture
 
Saint-Saens - Symphony No.3
 
Mahler - Adagietto from Symphony No. 5
 
Mozart - Piano Trio K 502
 
Session Notes  - 25th August
 
Rossini - Thieving Magpie Overture
 
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.4 - Soloist Nelson Freire
 
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.4 - Soloist Eric Lu
 
Brahms - Violin Sonata No. 1

“Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced”. That quote by Japanese writer and translator Haruki Murakami, kind of describes some of the class reactions to the first of our June sessions as we endeavoured to get our musical minds around Karl Jenkins’ composition The Armed Man, commissioned by the British Royal Armourers to mark the transition from the 20th to the 21st century and their move to a new Museum in Leeds.  Dedicated by the composer to the victims of the Kosovo conflict, the work is a 13 movement Mass for peace loosely set within the Christian Mass, with additional texts from Muslim and Hindu sources and secular writers. A mind and body exercise occupying us for the whole of the session.

No such concerns with our second session as we watched a scintillating performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 given in the final round of the 18th Chopin Competition in 2021. The work was bookended in our programme by Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni and Schumann’s Symphony No.4 leaving us in a buoyant mood as the curtain came down on Semester 1.  Semester 2 for us kicks off on Friday 14th July.

Meanwhile you can check out recordings and notes for our June programmes below.  Enjoy!

Bill Squires

Session Notes  9th June 

Karl Jenkins - The Armed Man

​Session Notes  23rd June

Mozart - Don Giovanni Overture

Chopin - Piano Concerto No 1
​
Schumann - Symphony No.4

It has been said that “the most glorious works of art, the ones that bring the purest joy – perhaps they need not be touched or known, but seen only with the heart”.

Both of the major musical compositions for the month of May can be understood a “masterpieces in their own way.

​Debussy’s ‘La Mer’ – an impression of the sea as seen from the heart - is regarded today as a masterpiece of musical impressionism, although that wasn’t always the case. The premiere of the work in 1905 was met with a mixture of boos, whistles and restrained applause. There were no boos and whistles as our group listened to it, and neither was there an enthusiastic reception overall. Masterpiece or not, impressionism is clearly not to everyone’s taste.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 was regarded by Brahms as a “masterpiece of art, full of inspiration and ideas. Beethoven remarked to a pianist friend “we’ll never be able to write anything like that”, while some scholars and musicologists claim it to be one of the greatest piano concertos ever composed. Yet this concerto is written in the minor key - unlike most of Mozart compositions – and so for other listeners a work not easily recognisable as belonging to Mozart. Such was the case with our group’s listening experience.

For those reading this, then, perhaps you can listen to each and form your own opinion. It’s all available (recordings and notes) via the links below. While you are at it, why not check out the rest of the month’s music selections: - something a little more recognisable as Mozart, some Mendelssohn and Haydn, Tchaikovsky and, of course, given the other big event of the month, some Coronation music.


Bill Squire.
 
 
Session Notes 12th May
 
Session Notes 26th May
 
Debussy - La Mer
 
Mozart - Piano Concerto No.24
 
Mozart Symphony No.35
 
Handel - Zadok the Priest
 
Handel - The King Shall Rejoice
 
Handel - Let Thy Hand be Strengthened
 
Elgar -  Pomp and Circumstance March No.1
 
Mendelssohn - Hebrides Overture
 
Haydn - Symphony No. 83
 
Tchaikovsky - Capriccio Italien

When is a symphony not a symphony? When it’s an overture! Maksym Berezovsky (the Ukrainian Mozart) composed a Symphony in C lasting all of nine minutes, which also doubled as the overture to his one and only opera “Il Demonfonte”, and also as the ‘overture’ to our first session for April. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, a highly poetic philosopher was all the rage in Germany when Richard Strauss was a young man. Strauss set to music a wildly rhapsodic book of his called Thus Spake Zarathustra, which was the major focus for our group this session. The work isn't really about Zarathustra at all. Nietzsche simply used Zarathustra as a spokesman, a sort of prophet—hero, into whose mouth he put his own philosophy. Strauss’ "Zarathustra" is a music picture of man's greatest problem—his mortality, the grim fact that he must die. This painful problem is shown in terms of a conflict—the struggle between Man's tremendous need for immortality, and his equally strong need to accept the fact that he is mortal. It's a struggle we all share.

A little bit of Russian fairytale by way of contrast - Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite - completed the morning. As an encore the Pas de Deux from the Firebird ballet was danced courtesy of the Mariinsky Ballet Company.

The ‘Overture to get session two underway came from the pen of Robert Schumann in the form of his “Overture, Scherzo and Finale”. Written in the wake of his marriage to Clara Wieck (after a long and tortuous courtship made difficult by Clara’s father), it is essentially a symphony without a slow movement.  Schumann initially named it “Symphony No.2” before settling for the title “Sinfonietta”. 

When war broke out in August 1914, Edward Elgar was not among the enthusiastic.  He had serious forebodings, and after the cataclysm that effectively eliminated an entire generation of English youth, he plunged into despair.  His Cello Concerto (the major work for this session) is completely the reflection of a heartfelt response to the national tragedy.  It’s an unconventional concerto, but it is a masterpiece.  It is not only a reflection of the forever altered world of Britain in 1919, but also the deep and apt expression of great composer facing his own old age, and for that matter, an audience that soon saw him as an anachronism. 

When Rachmaninoff, wizard of the piano, meets Paganini, wizard of the violin, the result is the notoriously difficult Rhapsody — 24 variations on the 24th of Paganini’s Caprices — encompassing everything from knuckle-busting runs to the terrifying Day of Wrath medieval chant and the swoon-worthy 18th variation. Said to be Rachmaninoff’s finest work for piano and orchestra, it brought down the curtain on our April music excursions. Full notes and links to the recordings used can be found on Music Appreciation page of our U3A website.

​Bill Squire

​14th April
 
Session Notes for 14th April
 
Berezovsky - Symphony in C
 
R Strauss - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
 
Stravinsky - Firebird Suite
 
Stravinsky - Firebird Pas de Deux
 
28th April

Session Note for 28th April
 
Schumann - Overture, Scherzo & Finale
 
Elgar - Cello Concerto
 
Rachmaninoff - Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini
 
Start times - Rachmaninoff Variations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VviWab5J2ao
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfwAPg4rQQE&t=1283s
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZqYPIN4CEI&t=317s
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC6MmmLKEmA

War, love, family, tragedy: you name it and music has it. Add in a dash of artistic influence and a bit of a ‘walk in the park’ and you have a quick guide to our March programmes. 

​Session one started out with Wagner’s overture to Lohengrin – an opera about fairy-tale love that ends in tragedy. Beethoven loved nothing more to relieve the frustrations of his encroaching deafness than to go for a nature walk – the sounds he would hear leading him to compose his sixth (pastoral) symphony. Maurice Ravel wrote a concerto which literally can be played with one hand behind your back. His Concerto for the Left Hand being commissioned by a pianist/soldier who lost an arm fighting in the first world war.

First up in session two was Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture written for a play about a fifth century Roman general whose ‘turncoat’ decisions led to his death at the hands of his soldiers – or perhaps he died at his own hand? Brahms, who was never a violinist, struck up a close friendship with one who was the premier violinist of the day. This led to a violin concerto that is one of the most recorded in the violin repertoire. Its premiere saw Brahms as the conductor of the orchestra and his friend as the soloist. A Brahms encore was composed in honour of another of his friends - an artist who died tragically at a young age. “Nänie” is sometimes referred to as Brahms’ “Litte Requiem” (as distinct from his much longer and grander “German Requiem”.

To top off the month’s musical journey Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ – the inspiration for the name coming from Whistler’s painting “Nocturne in Blue and Green”. Written in a hurry (most of it on a train journey) and premiered even before the solo part had been put to paper (Gershwin himself being the pianist), the work went on to become an all-time American classic. You can read the detail and find the links to the music recordings below.  

Bill Squire