by Kenneth Woods | Dec 2, 2010 | Explore the Score
Of course, reading about music you’ve never heard (and this piece hasn’t been heard here in 55 years), can be off-putting. After all, much as I may try to describe what is going on in the score, you don’t yet know how it sounds. Here is where...
by Kenneth Woods | Feb 16, 2010 | Explore the Score, Mahler, Mahler- Performer's Perspective
Gustav Mahler is the composer of contradictions and paradoxes. He is the composer of ambiguities, contrasts, complexities and cognitive dissonance. Nothing could make this truth more evident than the move from the 3rd Symphony to the 4th. * The reasons...
by Kenneth Woods | Jun 17, 2009 | A view from the podium, Explore the Score, Haydn, Nuts and bolts
“You can only analyze music from beginning to end, because the listener can’t know what they haven’t heard.” Those words were spoken by my friend David Hoose at the RCICW a few years ago. At first, I thought “that can’t be entirely right,” but as the years go by, I...
by Kenneth Woods | May 2, 2009 | A view from the podium, Explore the Score
When Shostakovich began work on his Fourth String Quartet in 1949 his life and career were at a low ebb. After spending most of the late 1930’s in fear for his life, painfully aware that Stalin was watching his every move, Shostakovich had become somewhat used to a...
by Kenneth Woods | May 1, 2009 | A view from the podium, Explore the Score, Favorite posts
When I first got to know the music of Gustav Mahler, I was fascinated by the story of his last years. His most perfect symphony, the Sixth, is also his most tragic. Written at the height of his personal and professional life, its Finale depicts a hero who suffers...
by Kenneth Woods | Sep 20, 2008 | A view from the podium, Explore the Score, Favorite posts, Nuts and bolts
It’s a bit of a cliché to say that an artist bared his or her soul in a work of art. One of the few pieces I can think of for which that expression is truly apt is the Schumann Violin Concerto, which we are doing next week with the English Symphony Orchestra and...
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