by Kenneth Woods | Apr 3, 2018 | Mahler, Mahler- Performer's Perspective
Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde is a work that ends with the beginning of a journey. Across the first five movements, and through much of the sixth, the narrative voices we hear are passive ones. In the third and fourth songs, the poetry of Li T’ai-po...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 10, 2015 | A view from the podium, Lists
It’s been hailed as “the saddest of all keys.” Andras Schiff called it “Beethoven’s key of existential struggle.” It was Brahms’s Tragic key- the world of his brooding First Piano Concerto and his Tragic Overture- both quite symphonic works. Yet Brahms never wrote a D...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 24, 2012 | Nuts and bolts
In the comments for my previous blog post on the Real Top 20 C Major Symphonies of All Time”, I assembled a list of the greatest “C minor symphonies that end in C major.” The first four pieces I thought of were Beethoven 5 Brahms 1 Bruckner 8 and...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 20, 2012 | A view from the podium, Lists
C major. The white keys on the piano. The Symphony has been good to C major, and C major has been good to the symphony, even though there are no Brahms, Mahler or Bruckner symphonies officially in C. Brahms 1 ends in C major (as does Beethoven 5 and Bruckner’s...
by Kenneth Woods | Jun 18, 2011 | A view from the podium
Conductor Foster Beyers is the newly appointed Director of Orchestras at Concodia College in Minnesota. He is currently completing his Doctorate degree at the University of Minnesota, where his dissertation is on the recorded history of Sibelius’ Symphony no. 7....
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