2009-2010 Alfred Concert Band New Releases

Celebration and Song

Spectre-Alan walker

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä, conductor
Joélle Harvey, soprano
Reginald Mobley, countertenor
Hugh Russell, baritone
Chicago Symphony Chorus 
Jenny Wong, guest director 
Uniting Voices Chicago 
Josephine Lee, director

Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34

Counting Stars - Instrumental - Violin

The World Classics of Modern Treatments

Summer (Presto), Four Seasons, Antonio Vivaldi (remix)

None

Counting Stars (instrumental)

BRITTEN: Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra- benjamin britten

The third of the Three Concert Études is in D-flat major, and is usually known as Un sospiro (Italian for "A sigh"). However, it is likely that the title did not originate with Liszt. Although there is no evidence that he actively attempted to remove the subtitle, none of the editions or subsequent printings of the Three Concert Études published by Kistner during Liszt's lifetime used them; he simply ignored such subtitles in later years, always referring to the piece by key.


Opening of Un Sospiro
The étude is a study in crossing hands, playing a simple melody with alternating hands, and arpeggios. It is also a study in the way hands should affect the melody with its many accentuations, or phrasing with alternating hands. The melody is quite dramatic, almost impressionistic, radically changing in dynamics at times, and has inspired many listeners. The étude has been considered by many pianists as one of the most beautiful piano pieces ever composed. Liszt kept the étude in his repertoire until his final years.

Un sospiro consists of a flowing background superimposed by a simple melody written in the third staff. This third staff—an additional treble staff—is written with the direction to the performer that notes with the stem up are for the right hand and notes with the stem down are for the left hand. The background alternates between the left and right hands in such a way that for most of the piece, while the left hand is playing the harmony, the right hand is playing the melody, and vice versa, with the left hand crossing over the right as it continues the melody for a short while before regressing again. There are also small cadenza sections requiring delicate fingerwork throughout the middle section of the piece.

Towards the end, after the main climax of the piece, both hands are needed to cross in an even more complex pattern. Since there are so many notes to be played rapidly and they are too far away from other clusters of notes that must be played as well, the hands are required to cross multiple times to reach dramatic notes near the end of the piece on the last page.

This étude, along with the other Three concert études, was written in dedication to Liszt's uncle, Eduard Liszt (1817–1879), the youngest son of Liszt's grandfather and the stepbrother of his own father. Eduard handled Liszt's business affairs for more than thirty years until his death in 1879.

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Dreamt Liszt

Un sospiro by Liszt

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, is a piano concerto written by Frédéric Chopin in 1830, when he was twenty years old
It was the first of Chopin's two piano concertos to be published, and was therefore given the designation of Piano Concerto "No. 1" at the time of publication, even though it was actually written immediately after the premiere of what was later published as Piano Concerto No. 2.

The concerto is scored for solo piano, pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, bass trombone, timpani and strings. A typical performance lasts about 40 mins.
The piano concerto is dedicated to Friedrich Kalkbrenner, a pianist and composer whose playing Chopin admired. Another influence is apparently Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Harold C. Schonberg, in The Great Pianists, writes "...the openings of the Hummel A minor and Chopin E minor concertos are too close to be coincidental".[2]

While composing it, Chopin wrote to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski, saying, "Here you doubtless observe my tendency to do wrong against my will. As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes, I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong."[3] This sight may have been the well-known soprano Konstancja Gładkowska, believed by some to be the "ideal" behind the Larghetto from Chopin's Second Piano Concerto, although some believe Chopin may have been referring to Woyciechowski.[4]

Premiere and critical reception

The Theatre where Chopin premiered his concerto
The premiere, on 12 October 1830, was "a success.... a full house." There was "an audience of about 700," according to the Kurier Warszawski. The concerto was premiered with Chopin himself at the piano and Carlo Evasio Soliva conducting. The piece was followed by "thunderous applause." Seven weeks later, in Paris, following the political outbreaks in Poland, Chopin played his concerto for the first time in France at the Salle Pleyel. It was received well, once again. François-Joseph Fétis wrote in La Revue musicale the next day that "There is spirit in these melodies, there is fantasy in these passages, and everywhere there is originality."[5]

Opinions of the concerto differ. Some critics feel that the orchestral support as written is dry and uninteresting, for example the critic James Huneker, who wrote in Chopin: The Man and his Music that it was "not Chopin at his very best."[6] Sometimes musicians such as Mikhail Pletnev feel a need to amend Chopin's orchestration.[7][8] On the other hand, many others feel that the orchestral backing is carefully and deliberately written to fit in with the sound of the piano, and that the simplicity of arrangement is in deliberate contrast to the complexity of the harmony. It has been suggested that the orchestral writing is reminiscent of Hummel's concertos in giving support to the piano rather than providing drama. However, Robert Schumann took a rather different view when he reviewed Chopin's concerti in 1836 for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, stating that "Chopin introduces the spirit of Beethoven into the concert hall"[9] with these pieces.

Structure
The concerto comprises three movements, typical of instrumental concertos of the period:

Allegro maestoso (E minor)
Romanze – Larghetto (E major)
Rondo – Vivace (E major)
A typical performance lasts around 38 to 42 minutes.

Chopin Concerto No.1 (Full audiobook)

lollollol

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