by Kenneth Woods | Jun 16, 2024 | A view from the podium
I had the pleasure this week of reading a recent essay by the cultural historian Joseph Horowitz called “Three Who Quit,” a moving meditation on the later-life silences of Elgar, Ives and Sibelius. Joe and I will be recording a podcast on the topic later this week, so...
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...
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