by Kenneth Woods | Apr 8, 2015 | Lists, Nuts and bolts
So you made a mistake on the gig yesterday. I feel your pain. We all make mistakes- I made a real howler twice in the same place on a cello gig recently and it’s been bothering me ever since. Mistakes are a controversial and painful subject for musicians. Nobody likes...
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 | Aug 10, 2013 | A view from the podium, Lists
Whether it was folklore or fact, I’m not in a position to say, but in the latter years of his career, it was reputed that Rostropovich’s fee for a performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto hovered around $80,000. For any of the 60 or so works written for him, however,...
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 | Sep 7, 2011 | A view from the podium, Lists
This is a list I’ve been thinking about ever since I first conducted the Prokofiev 2nd Piano Concerto with Daniel de Borah. I was amused at the thought of just how far down the list of the greatest piano concerti of the 20th c. I would go before I got to a piece not...
by Kenneth Woods | Sep 6, 2011 | A view from the podium, Lists
This is a list I’ve been thinking about ever since I first conducted the Prokofiev 2nd Piano Concerto with Daniel de Borah about five years ago. I was amused at the thought of just how far down the list of the greatest piano concerti of the 20th c. I would go before I...
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