Category: Classical music

In 1999, I picked up the studio phone during my air shift. “WCRB Air Studio.”

“Hello, Laura? This is Javier. You don’t know me, but I’m a cabby here in Boston and I usually listen to you when I’m driving people around the city. I just want to ask if you’ve heard Santana’s newest album yet?”

“Hi Javier. Supernatural? Yeah – I bought it just last night! I only had time to hear the track with Lauryn Hill, but just based on that I think he’s going to win a Grammy. Why?”

“Because I want to know if the song ‘Love of My Life’ is classical music that I heard you play on WCRB. Can you listen and tell me if I’m hearing things?”

I went home and listened. Javier heard right! Within seconds of “Love of My Life” starting, I recognized it as the gorgeous third movement from Brahms’s Symphony No. 3! I searched the liner notes, but was dismayed that there was no mention whatsoever of Brahms anywhere. That means that unless some of the 30 million people who have bought that album also know Brahms, 30 million people don’t know that they are listening to, and loving, classical music.

That’s not the first time I have encountered the classical-becomes-pop situation. In 1994, I led a WCRB listener trip on a cruise through the western Caribbean. One of the on-board talks I gave was “Pop Music Inspired by Classical.” Most of the fellow travelers knew the pop versions, but many also were surprised to know they were based on classical music.

Here are a few examples of the genre cross-overs. See how many you recognize!

In 2019, Maroon 5 released “Memories.” You may recognize it as based on Pachelbel’s Canon in D. The lead singer is Adam Levine.

Here’s Jean-Francois Paillard conducting the original, with the Kanon Orchestre de Chambre.

The Pachelbel Canon has been used also as the music base for the popular Christmas song, “Christmas Canon” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra from their 1998 album, The Christmas Attic.

The British girl group Little Mix released its second album, Salute, in 2013. It contained a song titled “Little Me,” and sampled the gorgeous Pavane by Gabriel Fauré. To me, the lyrics (which you can read if you scroll below the video) capture the emotion Fauré must have intended to convey just with his melancholy melody.

Here’s the official Little Mix video.

And here’s Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Fauré’s original.

There are numerous recordings of Fauré’s Pavane, and I must have about 2-million of them. One of my favorites is played on Celtic harp!

Billy Joel was already making a name for himself after his 1971 album, Cold Spring Harbor, but he became a household name with his 1973 hit single “Piano Man,” which rose to No. 25 on Billboard’s Hot 100 back in 1974. Other top hits came in rapid succession, including “Uptown Girl,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” “Tell Her About It,” “Innocent Man,” “The Longest Time,” and the list goes on and on.

Despite having all these hits and the fame that came with them, Joel once told a CBS interview “I have not forgiven myself for not being Beethoven.” In his song “This Night,” he paid homage to the great composer, borrowing from the second movement of the Piano Sonata No. 8, the “Pathétique.” You’ll hear it at approximately 1-minute in.

By the way, Billy Joel credits Beethoven on the album with being one of the writers of the song.

Here’s Daniel Barenboim playing the original.

Rap also recognizes Beethoven’s genius. One of my favorite songs from the genre was by Nas in 2003 from his album God’s Son. “I Can” is based on Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” and you’ll hear it as a young girl starts to play the piano about 12 seconds in.

I love that Lang Lang performs “Für Elise” by taking the tempo slower. So many pianists rush through it, like kids performing at their first piano recital. He plays it with the intention Beethoven must felt when he wrote the piece for a woman with whom he had fallen in love.

Frédéric Chopin’s music has also been “borrowed” for pop. His Fantaisie-impromptu was the basis for a song called “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” It was published in 1917 and instantly became a Vaudeville hit. Although “everyone knew it” for years, it wasn’t until the 1941 movie, Ziegfeld Girl, when Judy Garland turned it into a pop ballad.

There were many other singers who turned that song into hits for themselves, including Perry Como, a duet version with Helen Forrest and Dick Haymes, and a gentle-yet-broken-heart version with Jane Olivor from the 1970s.

Here’s Daniil Trifonov playing a gorgeous rendition of the piece in a casual setting. The “Chasing Rainbows” theme comes in at 1:45.

By the way, Chopin never wanted the Fantaisie-impromptu published! He worried that people would think it was too similar to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata and wanted the piece destroyed. A friend had it published posthumously, six years after Chopin’s death. We are all the luckier for that.

Barry Manilow also was a Chopin fan, incorporating the Prelude in C Minor, Op. 28, No. 20, throughout the power ballad “Could It Be Magic.” There are a number of stories about how the hit song came to be – one involving too much wine one afternoon in 1971. Regardless of how it came to be, Manilow credits Chopin as a co-songwriter. There is a YouTube version of this song which is the official album track, but I really like this live performance, as Manilow talks about Chopin at the beginning:

Here’s a concert performance with Seong-Jin Cho.

Singer-songwriter Eric Carmen had back-to-back hits in 1976, and both were based on themes by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The first of the singles was “All By Myself,” which was based on Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Although there are many YouTube versions, I like this one because it is twice longer than the standard radio version, and it gives Carmen a chance to show off his classical piano training.

Pianist Yuja Wang plays the whole piece here with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra. The actual theme used by Eric Carmen was in the second movement, which begins at 11:49.

“All By Myself” reached No. 2 on the U.S. charts and No. 12 in the U.K.

His follow-up single, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again,” was taken from the beautiful Adagio, the second movement melody, in Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2.

Here’s the original Adagio movement, with André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

And how about that Brahms-Santana I mentioned at the top of this blog? Here’s how Carlos Santana blended Latin beats, funk, and Brahms in “Love of My Life:”

Claudio Abbado leads the Berlin Philharmonic in the original version as Brahms envisioned.

There are many more examples that I’ll save for a Part 2 at some point. Meantime, I hope you’ll share this list with folks who say they don’t know classical music, or don’t ever listen to classical. Then watch their faces when they realize that they actually do!

CODA: One more! Here is the girl group, The Toys, with their 1965 big hit, “A Lovers Concerto.” This is their version of the song first released by bandleader Freddy Martin in the 1940s. The entire song is based on a piece Johann Sebastian Bach included in the Anna Magdalena Notebook, a compilation music book gift for his wife. Barbara Harris is the lead singer, joined by June Monteiro and Barbara Parritt.

Love the bust of an 18^th century composer on the set! The piece was always assumed to be by Bach, but scholarly research now credits the original as being by Christian Petzold. Here’s Lang Lang playing the Minuet in G, BWV Anh. 114.

Geoff playing a chacona, 2010.

One of the brightest, most generous lights in the American chamber-music world is gone: Geoff Nuttall, the first violinist of the St. Lawrence Quartet, died today at the age of fifty-six, of pancreatic cancer. It’s devastating news to the hundreds of musicians who’ve worked with Geoff over the years, whether as students or as colleagues. And it’s devastating news to audiences across North America — from the Banff Centre, where the quartet first broke through, to Palo Alto, where it is based, and on to Charleston, where Geoff led the chamber-music series at the Spoleto Festival. One of my favorite experiences as a critic-reporter came in 2001, when I followed the St. Lawrence on the road, to El Paso, Texas, and Joplin, Missouri. I’d covered the quartet’s New York début, in 1992, and wanted to check in on their progress. Geoff was at the heart of the group and the chief source of its spontaneous, viscerally musical spirit. Behind his regular-guy affect was an exuberant, unpredictable, wide-ranging mind. Barry Shiffman, the former second violinist of the St. Lawrence, tells me that Geoff remained active to the end, biking to and from his chemotherapy appointments and leaving Barry huffing in the course of strenuous hikes. He will be profoundly and permanently missed.

This text is an expanded version of the article originally published (in Estonian translation) by Sirp, 16 September 2022.

Looking back through Erkki-Sven Tüür’s first nine symphonies, they exhibit a great deal of consistency, primarily with regard to the use of contrasting musical ideas, often presented as bold juxtapositions, sometimes forming the basis for development. Tüür has also compartmentalised the orchestra in increasingly familiar ways: the woodwinds tend to form textures from cascading lines; the brass veer between fanfares and stretched out chords; the percussion boom, clatter and dance, whether reinforcing other ideas or stating their own; while the strings, depending on their mood, opt either to sing, hover or propel the music along. Of course, these types of behaviour are not solely restricted to these instrumental groups, and they inevitably spill over the boundaries, but it’s interesting to note the generalised attitude Tüür has towards each section of the orchestra.

Symphony No. 10 – completed in 2021, but only premièred this year, due to the pandemic – extends this notion of compartmentalisation further, separating the horns from the rest of the brass section and making them a concertante group. This is hinted at in the symphony’s subtitle, ‘ÆRIS’, the Latin word for brass. In many respects the work recalls the “negotiations” that Tüür spoke about in Symphony No. 5, in terms of the relationship between the horns and the rest of the orchestra.

In the first movement (Tüür refers to the work having four “movements” in his programme note, though they are not labelled as such in the score, and the only indication of where they begin is the presence of double barlines), the winds act almost as an antagonist, pursuing their own florid agenda in a similar yet even more assertive manner to that in Tüür’s earlier symphonies. The brass and strings align with the horns, who progress from a steady sequence of microtonal chords to more fanfaric material. The percussion can be thought of as ‘neutral’ in this divided outlook, embellishing or reinforcing both sides of the argument.

There are echoes of the primordial power of the ‘Magma’ and ‘Mythos’ symphonies as the music develops, arriving at a rhythmically driven middle sequence where a two-note motif becomes insistent. Just as nature doesn’t care about short-term variety, Tüür lets this phrase continue to pound relentlessly. It’s this sequence that crystallises the fact that Symphony No. 10 is in part a return to the polarised world – clear or vague, delicate or raw – that typified Tüür’s earliest symphonic works. That being said, clarity is restored via the most wonderfully messy microtonal chord in the brass (with fading echoes of the two-note motif still continuing), which finally coalesces onto a single pitch.

That opening movement suggested that what was necessary, in terms of the work’s inner dynamic, was to bring the woodwinds into line with everyone else. Yet the slow second movement unexpectedly goes the other way, showing the winds’ independence beginning to influence the horns, who imitate their flowing lines. Yet this plays out in a typically Tüür-like environment of contrasts in parallel, emerging from a beautiful, dream-like opening into a place where ideas are thrown around, moving abruptly between the sections of the orchestra. However, these ideas aren’t as disjunct as they first seem, sounding more and more mutually sympathetic; they begin to cohere, leading to dialogue and a unified orchestra.

This cooperation is extended in the lively third movement, with sympathetic ideas in the winds and trumpets. Rhythmically the music takes a turn for the funky, building to a playful climax where everyone is united in filigree littered with repeated notes and weird recurrent glissandi (with echoes of the microtonal slides heard in the first movement). At the end, the winds begin a new rhythmic game and everyone – eventually even the horns, who initially resist – gets involved.

The symphony concludes with the opposite of a conventional finale: another slow movement, featuring a renewed emphasis on the horns. Its atmosphere mingles dark and light elements, the brass initially coming across as a ‘dirty’ core to floating, ethereal music. Though mysterious, a rising harp and vibraphone idea heard throughout the symphony now acts like a familiar landmark in an otherwise strange place. There are behavioural echoes of the first movement, though the winds now respond to the horns (with rising flurries) rather than contradicting them. The strings finally get some time in the foreground, before a final climax, without the horns (who have literally vanished), combining rhythmic and sustained elements. When the horns return – now located at the four corners of the performance space – they bring the symphony to a close with calm counterpoint, the final word falling, again, to the vibes and harp.

It’s a gesture that highlights the way that the different parts of the orchestra behave so consistently throughout the symphony while at the same time altering and accommodating their behaviour in relation to others. In his programme note, Tüür speaks of the horns as “messengers”, wondering “Will their message be understood?” Symphony No. 10 seems to suggest that the horns’ message was, at least, accepted, as part of a general progression towards agreement and unification.

In August 2018, i wrote, when exploring Symphony No. 8: “On the strength of this and his more recent Ninth Symphony, i really can’t wait for Tüür to write a Tenth.” And in July 2020: “Despite lasting only a little over half an hour, Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Symphony No. 9 is easily one of the most powerfully arresting new symphonies i’ve heard in many, many years. i can’t wait until he unleashes No. 10.” Well, the wait is finally over, and it’s nice to reflect on the extent to which Symphony No. 10 lives up to that promise, tapping into familiar elements from throughout the four decades of Tüür’s symphonic output while at the same time charting a new path, one that tends to avoids the levels of full force ferocity that have sometimes appeared to typify these symphonies, focusing instead on interactions and relationships. Likewise, the role of juxtaposition, such a vital aspect of these symphonies, has progressed from simple contrasts to an exploration of the way ideas can be incorporated into each other and subsequently developed. Where this evolution will lead next remains to be heard – if and when Tüür eventually composes his Symphony No. 11.

Following some delays due to the pandemic, Symphony No. 10 received its première on 18 May in Bochum, featuring soloists German Hornsound (to whom the work is dedicated) with the Bochumer Symphoniker conducted by Olari Elts. Its first performance in Tüür’s homeland took place last month, with German Hornsound and Olari Elts now joined by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. Having compared the two (Tüür kindly sent me a private recording of the world première), the Estonian performance is more compelling; Elts takes it at a much faster pace and overall there’s a greater sense of urgency and drama. It was performed on 16 September at the Estonia Concert Hall in Tallinn.

Programme note

In Latin, ÆRIS means brass, which is also the name of a certain instrument group in the symphony orchestra. However, AERIS means ‘air’ and without this essential element, not a sound would come out of brass instruments. Thus, the title of my tenth symphony focuses mainly on the brass sound that carries the weight of this composition.

The symphony begins by exhibiting this sound, which seems to be arriving from beyond the horizon. The illusion of an “upward stretching” axis pitch formed by quarter tones is the first sign of a mysterious group of guests who will soon start playing a decisive role in the entire development process.

The increasingly dense layer formed mainly by the woodwinds presents a contrasting material to the slowly stretching sound axis of the French horns. In turn, this contrasting material later forms the basis for the theme of the French horn quartet.

The symphony is divided into four movements that transition without clear separation. Every movement expresses a different development between the ensemble of soloists and the orchestra. Sometimes their motifs spread into the orchestra like memes that start changing and gradually take on lives of their own; sometimes they enter a debate without reaching common ground; sometimes there is a dialogue between the soloists and the ensembles within the orchestra, creating the impression of shared development principles…

The French horn quartet may be regarded as messengers, bringing prophecies of imminent irreversible changes. Will their message be understood? What will be the reaction and how will it impact communication? Where did they come from anyway? What did they want to tell us? Let every member of the audience deal with these questions according to their social compass and imagination. It is not up to me to paraphrase my music and I won’t bother anyone with my composition techniques or creative methods – that is a topic for special seminars. What I wish is for the audience to take this journey with an open mind.   

I am extremely grateful to the French horn quartet German Hornsound who came to me with the idea of composing such a piece.

—Erkki-Sven Tüür
(Translated by Pirjo Jonas)

Afa Dworkin, president and artistic director of the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization, came to the U.S. at the age of 17. She didn’t learn English, her fourth language, until she was 18, speaking her native Russian and the languages of her mother, who was from Azerbaijan, and her dad, who was a Persian Jew from Iran, while growing up.

A professional violinist, she was early in her college career at the University of Michigan when she met Sphinx founder Aaron Dworkin in 1995. She fell in love with the organization’s mission — and him. She joined Sphinx as an intern and never left, moving through its ranks to president when her husband departed.

For the past nine years, Dworkin, 46, has led Sphinx’s work to increase diversity in the classical music field, including a program to build the pipeline of Black and Latinx administrators in the field, a $1.5 million venture fund that’s making investments in similar efforts to build diversity in classical music around the country and more recently, a plan for an undisclosed gift from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott.

Dworkin said she sharpened her culinary prowess during the COVID-19 pandemic and cooks at least one new meal every week, which is paired with a custom menu and related poem or trivia contributed by her husband.

Dworkin’s remarks have been edited for space and clarity.

• What kind of impact has Sphinx had in its first 25 years?

The number of youth impacted so far by our programming is 150,000 over 25 years. Not including the early educational programming, we also have more than 1,000 alumni. We’ve invested more than $10 million into artist grants and scholarships to our alumni and members of the Sphinx artists family, and our overall digital imprint, which is about 60 million.

• In the last several years, Sphinx launched a pipeline development program aimed at diversifying the corner office in the classical music field. Where does that stand?

We launched that program four and a half years ago, and it was the first effort that did not focus on music, education or performance. It focused on administrative empowerment. The (John S. and James L.) Knight Foundation found the idea compelling, and they gave us seed money, a $1.5 million pilot grant, to launch what we now refer to as Sphinx LEAD (Leaders in Excellence, Arts and Diversity.) We launched a two-year fellowship program for 20 fellows a year. They get together four times a year for learning retreats, where they learn everything from how to compile or interpret budget documents to how to program a concert, do contract negotiations, public speaking and networking. We pair each leader with a coach, a mentor and ultimately, we help them gain positions in the C-suite level. Fifty people have come through the program. Today, there are six LEAD alumni who occupy C suite positions in major orchestras, conservatories, music schools, who now come back routinely to Sphinx and help co-curate content for our year-round digital curriculum that we deliver online and at Sphinx Connect, the largest and longest standing convening that we run in Detroit. It’s not formally announced yet but will be in the next couple of weeks, Knight has renewed and slightly increased its commitment to the LEAD program. And that’s a great vote of confidence.

• Just before the pandemic, Sphinx created a venture fund. What sorts of investments has it made?

We’ve made a million-and-a-half-dollar commitment to the sector. It’s essentially a re-granting effort, and it’s in place because we know that the systemic sector-wide change that we’re trying to affect cannot be done directly by Sphinx alone. Examples of some successful things that we’ve granted in the last couple of years include a national solo vocal competition that was launched by one of our alumni in partnership with the Manhattan School of Music, a conglomerate of 30 orchestras that partnered together to create commissions by Black and Brown composers and have committed to perform these new works during their main season and a national piano competition launched last year by the Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and an African American pianist. The Sphinx Venture Fund is an important effort because it’s trying to encourage people to think big, big systemic change with kind of big high impact and large numbers. So that’s kind of an important area of Sphinx’s programming that I feel positions on much more in the next 25 years as an organization that’s not just doing the work alone, but is working with the entire sector and also serving the field.

• The Sphinx Virtuosi just made its international debut in Sao Paulo, a fitting accomplishment to celebrate your 25th anniversary. Will there be more international performances for Sphinx ensembles?

The hope is absolutely. It’s an objective, and I do foresee us returning abroad and performing not just in South and Central America but also elsewhere abroad and in Europe and hopefully the African continent as well. It’s important and meaningful to the artists because they get to bring their craft, their artistry to the world and because the work they do is synonymous and sort of an extension of Sphinx’s mission, at the core of it being that excellence and diversity are wrapped together.

• How do you feel about what Sphinx has accomplished during its first 25 years, and is there work yet to be done?

Sphinx has grown from a small singular initiative into something that’s a whole conglomerate of programs that spans not just a country but has now been taken global. It’s something that I think is a movement, not a program or an organization. But there is a ton more work to be done. I think our work stops when our stages, our music, our conservatory community schools and corner offices are occupied by a diverse number of leaders. And until such time as that occurs, the work is not done. We’ve still got quite a long way to go. So I see the next 25 years as really doing a lot of advocacy work, tripling and quadrupling down on partnerships so that diversity and inclusion doesn’t just become a thing that Sphinx does and encourages others to do… but it’s now not only showing others how to do it but also working together with large conglomerates of our sector so that we continue to do this work together.

• Sphinx is among the local charities benefiting from an unexpected donation from billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott. Can you share what your plans are for that?

We have elected not to disclose the amount but the gift was used to create the Next Stage Fund, which is designed to invest in a special initiative each year for the next five years to take an element of our work to the next stage or level. Among the first projects is a series of recordings to document, preserve and disseminate music by Black and Latinx composers, performed by our premiere touring ensembles

• You said you improved your culinary prowess during the pandemic. What kind of prowess are we talking about?

My repertoire is expanding in terms of genres and types of culinary techniques that I’ve never tried because of course, I have more time at home. I have learned how to do a whole lot more things with vegetables. And in fact, during the pandemic, I’ve turned entirely vegetarian. … During the pandemic, Aaron and I started a weekly newsletter to share recipes with our friends and family and paired them with a piece of music and also created an online menu for folks. What we still practice even now, at least weekly, is we create a printed menu with a detailed description and a theme for each evening. And then Aaron pairs a piece of poetry or researches a fun fact, trivia that’s associated with a new dish. I feel like it’s still a special time for the two of us every day no matter what. And the other thing is that it’s entertaining and educational.

When Hilary Hahn was just eight years old, she made a surprisingly mature promise to herself. She vowed that if she were to become a famous performer, she would never be ungrateful or dismissive toward an audience member. She’d seen renowned musicians behaving that way. And she hated it.

Now Hilary is a star, with dozens of recordings, three Grammy awards, a wildly busy schedule, and throngs of devoted fans. And the prestigious magazine Musical America has just named her Artist of the Year.

Through it all, she’s kept her promise. In fact, it turns out that her relationship with her fans is as crucial and instructive for her as it is for them.

She practices with them (#100daysofpractice), she collects their artwork, she’s created Bring Your Own Baby concerts, and you’ll always find her signing autographs after a concert.

It was inspiring to talk to Hilary Hahn about her newest recording, Eclipse, which came out earlier this month. Especially since it’s a recording that almost didn’t happen. She had struggled within the stifling cocoon of the pandemic, and when it came time to record, the many concerts leading up to the recording sessions had been canceled. She had never brought the intense and relentlessly difficult Violin Concerto by Alberto Ginastera onto a stage with her. Nor had she ever performed Pablo de Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy.

Sharing with an audience gives breath to music, and the magic of experience can make all the difference. Time without audiences had dragged on, and she’d fought through a crisis of confidence. She’d lost her sense of self, and her trust in her own playing. She decided not to try.

It was with the help of friends, like conductor Andrés Orazco-Estrada, her collaborator on Eclipse, that she found the determination to say yes to the mics. And she couldn’t be happier with her decision.

You can hear our conversation, with music from the CD, by clicking on the player above. And you can read a transcript below.

Cathy Fuller Well, it’s a happy day when I get to meet up with Hilary Hahn here in our studios! I’m Cathy Fuller. Hilary, welcome back.

Hilary Hahn Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Cathy Fuller I am thrilled by this new recording and I’ve been getting goosebumps and shivers and the whole thing. But, you know, you have called this album many things. You’ve called it a transition into your forties. You said you have found a real authenticity in the voices on this album. But you also said the album almost didn’t happen. Can you tell that story?

Hilary Hahn Well, I think we all remember the lockdown phase of concerts a few years ago. And the situation actually was more for me than just logistical. I hadn’t ever done the Ginastera or the Sarasate in performance. They were new to me and I had a lot of performances of those booked before the recording sessions, which I was really excited about. The recording was a pinnacle moment in my season that I was really working towards. And as it turned out, I had a year of sabbatical in the middle of which the pandemic began, and then the next season was also largely affected. And the end of the season was this recording. So I found myself doing a lot of work on my own. I did a couple rounds of Hundred Days of Practice and all of that, but I was mostly preparing on my own and I didn’t quite know what I had as a musician at that particular moment – when it came clear that the recording could happen, but nothing in the preparation could happen.

Cathy Fuller No concerts.

Hilary Hahn No concerts. Just walk in and do these pieces. The Dvorak, the Ginastera, the Sarasate. I just didn’t know if that was the point at which to make a recording. When you don’t know what you have and who you are, you kind of need to play it out a little bit to see where you’ve landed after all that evolution time. But I ultimately decided to go for it. I realized I had colleagues that I trusted, and that’s why I was doing the recording with them in the first place and that it would be super exciting. And why not have the mics on? Let’s just leave them running and see what happens. So in that moment when the mics were running, and we were playing the concerts that were recorded. That’s when a lot of things suddenly came clear for me, and I’m really glad that we did capture all of that.

Cathy Fuller So these were essentially concerts without an audience.

Hilary Hahn The first, the Dvorak was the first to be recorded, and that was a live stream with no audience. [MUSIC] And it wasn’t in the main hall, it was in the radio hall. And then in June that year, we finally got into the main hall, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. And it was for an audience. We wound up splitting the concert into two because at the last minute there was a restriction on how many people could be there. So we moved it from one concert to two concerts, but with audience. And it was Andres Orozco-Estrada, the conductor, it was his final big concert as music director. And so for him to finally be able to be in there and the orchestra in there, it was really great to share that space and that concert together.

Cathy Fuller Well, so on this recording is Dvorak Violin Concerto, which must be an old friend, right? And then this Ginastera Violin Concerto. That is a new friend, right? And then the Sarasate Carmen Variations, which are enough to just raise the hair all over. But this Ginastera piece, you know, when I hear, just to be a little abstract here, sometimes I hear a composer like that or Schoenberg even… It’s so strange and unusual. And yet there’s this weird kind of familiarity about the way it sounds. It’s almost like they found some blueprint of the way the emotional mind works or something, and only they have access to it and they put it down in music. It strikes you in this really haunting way. Tell me about how you feel when you play. It starts with a cadenza with you alone doing these mad, wild, incredible gestures. [MUSIC] How does it feel to play that piece?

Hilary Hahn It’s really interesting to hear you say that because I haven’t heard anyone articulate it that way. But that is what I feel, what I keep trying to say about the Ginastera. And I also in my mind tie it with Schoenberg for the concerto, Schoenberg Violin Concerto, and Ginastera. And I think that that’s a positive thing because for me, I recorded the Schoenberg years ago and I was very, like, it grabbed me, I was obsessed by it and I knew I had to do it. And I knew how I wanted to play it. It was very clear to me even before I learned it, and then I proceeded to try to learn it. And that was a whole other phase. And it was the same exact thing with the Ginastera. That was the second time it’s happened to me where there is a concerto that’s not played very often, that is often thought of as unplayable, thorny. But I heard something else in it, and I really believed that there’s so much humanity in this piece. And I knew how I wanted to play, and I knew I needed to get it out there because this vision I have of it feels really, really connective. So I feel like through this music you can actually connect with a lot of the experiences of the audience.

The thing I believe about music that is a little weird, challenging, different, unexpected, is that the composers who succeed in writing that music with line and with layering and with complexity, they are some of the greatest composers. They know everything about writing and nothing is an accident. And what they’re doing is they’re confronting some of the, some of the emotions that are not often confronted in music. So they’re confronting them and drawing them out. They’re presenting them in a way where you can actually engage with them deliberately as an audience member. But then they move you through them into the resolution. And so often we carry a lot of experiences inside of ourselves that don’t have resolution that get shoved under the rug. I think the past few years everyone’s had some kind of experience that they’re trying to incorporate into their life now, and we’re often left to sort of process all of that or transform it on our own, in our own way, by ourselves. And when you go into a concert hall, you’re sitting there with all these people who have all these different life experiences, who relate in some way to that emotion that the music is presenting. And you go through that all together and you arrive all together at some other place. So it’s really, really crucial.

I believe that music and the arts are the emotional document of history. You can read the facts, but how do you feel what it’s like to be there? How do you translate a certain time into the present day? And I think, you know, part of interpreting history, part of reading and understanding what people have been through that have led us to the present moment is feeling it and making it your own. How do you relate to it? How do you put yourself in other people’s shoes? So at the same time that it’s historic, it’s also about compassion, empathy, the human experience and the connectiveness of the musical world. So for me, the Ginastera encompasses all of that, and when I play it, I feel that and I feel that that’s a mission of this particular piece.

The thing you say about familiarity is, with the Ginastera at least, I notice that he takes these foundational elements of classical music, what we consider to be classical music, and he reinvents them. Like, for example, there’s a part of the first movement that’s about thirds, you know, just a little variation, a little study in thirds. [MUSIC] It sounds meandering, dissonant, a little twisted, like a funhouse, but also charming and graceful. And you’re like, What is that interval? And you look at it and you realize it’s – I’m just playing thirds the whole time. It’s minor thirds. It’s, you know, Paganini did Caprices based on thirds, thirds are one of the building blocks of any chord, any tonality in almost every musical culture. Yet for millennia, you know, we’ve been hearing thirds. But Ginastera takes it in the 1960s and says, I’m going to connect these in a way that makes you doubt that what you’re hearing is this straightforward, foundational element of music. And then he moves out of it into the next thing. It’s just like, no big deal. But there are instances of that kind of thing all through this piece, and it just never ceases to amaze me.

Cathy Fuller It is amazing, all the things that you say. But I want to say one thing to you, and that is that all of that complexity, all of that visceral reaction, all of the good stuff that comes from experiencing a piece like this, it requires that the artist is trusted by the audience. Do you know what I’m saying? And so you have gained through all kinds of means, but mainly through your authenticity and your brilliance, this incredible trust. And I’m wondering, you must feel that.

Hilary Hahn I do. I work really hard to connect. I always have since my first concerts. I work really hard to connect in a positive way with the audience. I was given that opportunity when I was a kid, going to concerts, being introduced to musicians after the concert by friends who were in the orchestra. And I saw many different ways of interacting with the audience and a couple of negative ones that I saw, I said to myself, even at eight, I was like, If I ever get the chance, I’m never going to be like that. And I saw…

Cathy Fuller Like what? What did you see?

Hilary Hahn I think there was just a sense of disconnect or a sense of entitlement. And also, you know, someone being just too busy, which is actually a very valid thing. You can be too busy and you can have boundaries. But the way the boundaries are communicated and the reason for them, you have to just remember that the people you’re looking at are people and not part of your landscape. It’s not your landscape. You’re just walking through the world and so is everyone else. And I think that the community that I’ve realized has gathered around, I guess, the work that I do, but the larger field of classical music, is one that wants to be connected. It’s one that cares about the art form and could also, by extension, care about each other. So I really try to build that. I’ve noticed in my Instagram and online communities that the Practice project, how people commented on I00 Days of Practice and engaged with it, I learned a lot about who they are and how they want to connect, and it’s something that I really value. And so I definitely see in the post-concert signings, in the comments. I also try to create a safe space in the comments and make sure that people are being respected and that the things that are coming across my feed and coming to them are, you know, about people and about the experience of being people. So yeah, I really appreciate it when they show up and they’re so nice and warm and welcoming, it’s just really food for the soul.

Cathy Fuller Yeah, I can imagine. And that you have the time to curate all that. And you have fun, too.

Hilary Hahn I love it.

Cathy Fuller There’s a fantastic video of you opening up the fan box version of the LP of of this recording. It’s beautiful. And the thing is just gorgeous. There’s all kinds of good stuff inside, but you’re sitting on the couch with your guinea pig … and you’re letting your guinea pig be your timer as he starts eating your sequins! And that means it is time to move on! But it’s a really nice dip into what’s in that beautiful, beautiful box, this beautiful LP with with a gorgeous art print of, I think it’s the cadenza of the Ginastera, is that what that is?

Hilary Hah Yeah, yeah.

Cathy Fuller And just beautiful pictures of you and it’s just a lovely thing. But you have fun and we love that about you, Hilary, is that you’re having fun. Is it true you never played the Carmen Fantasy before?

Hilary Hahn That’s right.

Cathy Fuller What?

Hilary Hahn I do now! [MUSIC] 

Cathy Fuller What are you doing there? Are you becoming her, or do you have time?

Hilary Hahn Well, fortunately, the building process for that interpretation was with these colleagues on the album. So that that’s really us together building this version that we, that we recorded. And to be able to do that with colleagues that I’ve worked with for decades and who are familiar with the opera, who think about music from a similar philosophical perspective – to me, I, I just really loved that. And I felt like I knew what I wanted to convey and we all got there together. So basically what I wanted to do was, the Carmen Fantasy, by Sarasate, is such a virtuoso piece. And starting from childhood, when I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it played as a virtuoso violin piece. There’s also a very literal quotation of parts of the opera. It’s really extracting Carmen from the opera and interpreting her in violin form. So you have the famous arias that Carmen sings. You have some of the orchestral interludes which are actually not just intervening bits, but really core emotional pillars of the opera. And when I played it, I wanted to make sure that, although Sarasate writes for the violin, not the violin imitating voice, there’s so much of the spirit of Carmen in there and the words are in there. So I wanted to make sure to start with the opera, start with the tempi of the opera, start with the pacing of these arias so you can imagine the words if you love the opera. [MUSIC] And that really gave us a sort of a different approach to this piece, and one that’s very much in line with how Bizet initially interpreted the Spanish dances that Sarasate grew up with and reclaimed in this piece.

Cathy Fuller So you’re thinking about her.

Hilary Hahn Yes.

Cathy Fuller I mean, there are opera singers who spend their lives trying to figure out Carmen, right?

Hilary Hahn Yes.

Cathy Fuller But she’s a complicated woman.

Hilary Hahn Yes, she’s a complete person.

Cathy Fuller Yes. She is a whole person. And it is a phenomenal recording. And he is, this conductor, who is, you know, obviously dear to you. He’s amazing.

Hilary Hahn He is. He’s actually here for his debut next week in Boston. But, yeah, he’s he’s fantastic. He’s, I’ve worked with him with Houston, with Frankfurt, as a guest conductor. We recently worked together in Paris. But we, we’ve worked around the world. He’s Colombian. I’ve worked with him on a cultural exchange between the Bogota Orchestra and the Houston Symphony. We’ve performed in Colombia together and worked with students there. And. And so it’s just, when you have a colleague who understands you and challenges you and you can do the same back…

Cathy Fuller Wow.

Hilary Hahn It’s really amazing.

Cathy Fuller He is Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

Hilary Hahn Yes.

Cathy Fuller And boy, he’s a joy to watch. On top of everything else, he’s just a joyful presence on the podium.

Hilary Hahn He’s a very positive person. He always leaves everything on the stage when he performs. When he works, he gives everything to the music and he loves the details in the music, but he’s able to do extremely complicated contemporary repertoire as well as the expressive, connective music like Dvorak that is just, you know, one melody after another, but with all of these underpinnings. He lives in Vienna and he’s very European in many ways. But he also is a global presence. And I think that’s nice, in music, that you have people who bring different approaches to different combinations of repertoire, and that becomes who they are as musicians.

Cathy Fuller I know that you have always, there’s always been a part of you that wants to immerse young people in this music because, you know, the sooner you start, the happier they can be within it. Right? Has becoming a mother, do you hear the music from their point of view more? Do they and do they react to – like, how do they feel about the Ginastera? Have they heard that?

Hilary Hahn Yeah. My kids are not a good barometer for how people absorb music because they couldn’t care less. They basically tell me I’m too loud or…

Cathy Fuller Mommy’s too loud

Hilary Hahn Or I’m like too busy for, like if I’m practicing while they would like to spend time with me, I would actually rather spend time with them. So I try to practice other times. Sometimes it is coincidental that everything is happening at once. Um, but they, I think they hear music in a way that’s really natural to them because they’ve heard it for so long.

Cathy Fuller Yeah.

Hilary Hahn But I have to say, my guinea pigs are actually a good barometer. When I’m playing something a little dissonant, they kind of start like twitching a little because their ears pick up the overtones and stuff. And then when I play lively music, they dance around. And then when I’m playing complex music, they eventually get tired, fall asleep. It’s kind of interesting. It’s really predictable how animals absorb music and humans are animals.

Cathy Fuller Yeah!

Hilary Hahn But one thing that really, I think the biggest way that changed my way of hearing music was when I had my first sabbatical when I was turning 30, I had six months. I gave myself six months break and I cleared the decks. I had nothing going on. I just said, okay, I’m going to pick up the violin when I’m ready to pick it up again. I’m going to, from day one of the sabbatical, start making the plans that I want to make during my vacation time, and I’m going to turn the radio on when I’m ready. And it was four months before I, well three months before I could even look at a suitcase. I had thought that I would probably go backpacking and, you know, I’d probably go backpacking in South America or Europe or something like that. I couldn’t even look at a suitcase. I couldn’t even pack. I just, what I needed was to stay put.

And then also for music, what I needed was to not listen to any classical music. I took a road trip at one point and I listened to the top 40 pop songs and just had the windows down. And then one day I needed to hear classical radio again, and I grew up with it. So I turn it on in the middle of Saint-Saens Organ Symphony and my ears were just assailed by magic! I was like, What is this series of sounds?! This is amazing! I pulled over. I was in the car, I pulled over. I texted everyone I knew: There’s this amazing piece, you have to turn on the radio! And I just, I could then finally, I somehow managed to turn off my lifelong analytical ear, where everything I heard became a score unfolding in front of me. And I was listening for how people played and what they were doing and what I would do differently. And do I like this piece? Would I program it? All of these things, analyzing what I was hearing. And I could hear as a listener with a swath of sounds. And that was such a revelation. And at that moment, I understood how music can get inside you in these mysterious ways and really move you. And I think that was a huge turning point because now I can switch that on whenever I need it. I can turn off my analytical mind, go to a concert, and just be amazed by the sounds that I’m hearing and really feel it for what it’s conveying in the moment.

Cathy Fuller Wow. That is a lesson I think lots of musicians need to hear – how to wash them, sort of clean themselves, wash all those hours out of their hair and hear things again.

Hilary Hahn You’ve done all the work, but do you know how to really listen? Like someone who really just wants to absorb the music for what it feels like? That’s a hard thing to do. You can’t force it. You just have to be aware that maybe the way you’re listening is not the way the music actually is intended to hit.

Cathy Fuller Wow. Hilary Hahn. It has been a joy. I could talk to you all day.

Hilary Hahn Me, too, with you. This has been wonderful.

Cathy Fuller It’s been great. Thank you for your revelations and for bringing so many people to this music. That is a gift. Thank you so much. And we hope to see you soon here in Boston again.

Hilary Hahn Yes. Yes.

Cathy Fuller Thank you.

Hilary Hahn Thank you.

If it is possible for a critic to be a genius, then Peter was one. Just a few weeks ago, The New Yorker published one of his finest pieces ever, on Mondrian. It ends with a grandly dizzying sentence that contains the phrase “adamantine conundrum.” This, I told him, was worthy of Wallace Stevens. Peter was a raucously, symphonically vital writer right to the end, immune to cliché and addicted to surprise. In person, he was quick, funny, honest, and wise. A couple of decades ago, in some now extinct diner in the East Village, we had a long conversation that touched on heavy matters, and in the course of it he said, “Faith is not panicking.” Thank you, Peter, for everything.

Remembrances: David Remnick, The New Yorker, The New York Times

The last time i wrote about Australian composer Brett Dean was exploring his response to the music of J. S. Bach, as part of The Brandenburg Project. This time it’s Beethoven’s music that Dean is responding to, in his orchestral work Testament, which has recently been released in a performance by the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. Yet while the piece does fleetingly reference musical material by Beethoven (specifically his String Quartet No. 7, the first ‘Rasumovsky’ quartet), it responds more to the composer’s words and experiences, as described in the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, where Beethoven described the despair he felt due to his ever-worsening deafness. As such, Dean’s Testament (originally composed in 2002 for 12 violas – Dean’s former colleagues in the Berlin Philharmonic – and reworked for a Classical-sized orchestra in 2008) is therefore as much about the man as the music, a character study that taps into his emotions and temperament.

Dean finds an analogue for frustration and futility through use of bows without rosin, used in the opening of the work where the rapid material they’re evidently attempting to articulate emerges eerily muted, all the more uncomfortable due to the apparent effort behind the players’ actions. Notes occasionally blurt out, seemingly involuntarily, and the buzzing activity roams through the registers with an air of desperation, weak phrases spiralling outwards as it continues. As if through sheer bloody-mindedness, the strings manage to force out accents, at which point the strain seems to overcome them, falling back to barely audible momentum except for some vestigial high falling tones.

Rather than simply try again, the orchestra opts for something lyrical (a sudden moment of clarity), though this also reduces to quiet wavering, and a strong sense of solemnity starts to take over as the rapidity drains away, the music now rather plaintive. Yet Dean keeps the orchestra restive, and for several more minutes there’s a kind of impatient treading water, a succession of repetitive pitches, pizzicatos, faint notes and low growls begging the question more and more urgently about where on earth the music really wants to be going. Everything sounds poised.

A series of strong melodic quotations from Beethoven act as a catalyst, soon leading to a second half that becomes abruptly boisterous, overflowing with energy and barely-contained aggression, and even when the piece treads water again later on (shortly after a piccolo has let rip), even more than before there’s the distinct sense of serious quantities of power just below the surface. Though melody was the catalyst it finally becomes forgotten in the rhythmic impetus that’s by now driving Testament, bringing with it a descent into forceful tutti poundings, ending up stuck in a series of grooves. It’s as if the orchestra gets caught in spiralling outbursts, hammering out accents with half-mad desperation and rage. Though softer, the conclusion is no less incensed, still locked in place, letting loose a wild volley of flute accents, bubbling over with intensity until the very last moment.

The work is appropriately paired here with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. As with Dean’s contribution to The Brandenburg Project, where his piece preceded the Bach, the same is true on this album, and it makes for a fascinating listening experience, all the more so considering that Beethoven composed the Second Symphony at exactly the same time and place as his Heiligenstadt Testament. What we hear is something akin to two sides of the same person: Dean hinting at the desperation and dread tormenting the composer, Beethoven himself rising above these demons to create a symphony filled with joy and élan. The fact that, as with the Dean, it’s a live recording cuts both ways. On the one hand, it’s certainly not the best performance of Beethoven 2 out there (personally, i’ve never heard better than Karajan’s 1960 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic).

On the other hand, it’s a nonetheless superbly convincing performance that digs deep into the work’s broad dynamic contrasts and shapes them in distinctive ways. The Trio, in particular, is remarkable in the way Jurowski yanks back the tempo from the Scherzo to transform it into a much more introspective music. Yet it’s the first and last movements that impress most, especially the first, taken here almost recklessly fast, which in the wake of Dean’s Testament gives the impression that the orchestra now has something to prove. Several times it sounds as if the piece could come completely off the rails (the start of the exposition repeat is a hazardous moment), but in the end the orchestra’s ebullience is matched by a palpable sense of unity. The same is true in the finale, which is practically over before you even realise it’s got going.

i’ve often written disparagingly about composers endlessly requested to write pieces that ‘respond’ to existing music, but Brett Dean’s Testament goes beyond that simplistic conceit and teases out something much more meaningful, offering insights into a complex, damaged composer who both channelled and overcame his fears and anguish to create music that, over two centuries, still sounds positively white hot.

Released on the Bayerische Staatsoper label, Testament / Symphony No. 2 is available on CD and download.

LOWELL — In Catholicism, a requiem is a Mass for the dead, and the music that accompanies the service is meant to help one’s soul pass through to the afterlife.

But surprisingly, these grim moments of mourning can produce commanding, fun and dramatic music fit for a 200-person performance.

Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s 19th-century Requiem is just that, and the large choral orchestral work is coming to Lowell.

UMass Lowell, along with the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and Nashoba Valley Chorale, will stage Verdi’s Requiem in a free community concert on Friday, Nov. 4, at 8 p.m. at the university’s Durgin Hall. They’ll also perform at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium on Sunday, Nov. 6, at 4 p.m., but tickets are $15 to $25. It will be the CSO’s first performance in its 48th season.

Jonathan Richter, a visiting lecturer at UMass Lowell who directs several of the university’s choirs, said Verdi’s Requiem is recognizable, calling it a “quintessential” work and one that is meaningful to the students and recent alumni who’ll perform it.

“Verdi has his very successful, very fun and expressive, operatic style,” Richter said, “and he imports that into the requiem tradition in a really effective way.”

About 130 choir singers from UMass Lowell’s University Choir and Chamber Singers, as well as from the Nashoba Valley Chorale, will gather behind the orchestra during the concert, and four international soloists will also take the stage, said Cynthia Woods, music director of the CSO.

There will be a full orchestra with “full brass,” Woods said, including a cimbasso — a huge, rather rare tuba that “goes all the way down to the floor.”

At the beginning of the piece’s “dies irae” — which translates from Latin to “day of wrath” — audience members will hear trumpets from behind them, beside them and in front of them, harkening judgment day.

“It’s a really fantastic effect,” Woods said. “As they create the tumultuous arrival of the ends of days, the brass will come crushing in and be very, very loud and really fun. Everybody likes that movement.”

For many of Richter’s students, this is their first large-scale concert of their college career, since the pandemic basically halted big, live performances. But music department alumni will also sing on stage, since they, too, missed out on that experience.

As with all the choirs’ other performances, understanding the context in which the music is made is vital, said Dylan MacLeod, a graduate student at UMass Lowell studying music education who will be singing in the show. The work is also entirely in Latin, so MacLeod and the other performers also needed to know what exactly they were singing and in turn, what emotions to display, he said.

Though he hadn’t heard of the Requiem before, MacLeod said it’s a “historically relevant,” roughly 90-minute piece that takes listeners on an emotional roller coaster. He called it a “banger of a musical piece.”

“It’s literally an epic from beginning to end, it’s one concrete piece of music that somebody created so long ago but we are recreating in real time, and it’s going to be the full concert experience,” MacLeod said. “They are going to come away feeling all types of emotions, relief and grief, sadness, on the edge of their seat. They’re going to get it all from watching us perform.”

By uniting music majors with adult performers in a “multigenerational” collaboration, Richter said he hopes to show students that they can continue to stay involved in the arts throughout their lives.

“There’s no better example to show them than the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and Nashoba Valley Chorale,” Richter said, “because they’re making music with people of all ages and doing really important work along the way.”

But another major part of the concert is community engagement. The concert series will highlight Lowell nonprofit House of Hope, which works to help Massachusetts families experiencing homelessness.

“There’s so many wonderful nonprofit organizations that people don’t know about,” Woods said. “We decided to go with a Lowell community organization this time because we’re up there, and an organization that we felt is really getting in there and building the blocks of a better community.”

Anne Watson Born is the director of the Nashoba Valley Chorale, a Littleton-based group of about 75 people who will also sing at the concert. She said the requiem “always elicits the best music from every composer that sets it,” including Mozart.

The chorale performed the Verdi Requiem in 2016, she said, and will also perform the Mozart Requiem with Symphony New Hampshire in March. Verdi’s piece is “exciting, wild” in some parts, but “gloriously tender” in others, Watson Born said.

“It’s a very engaging work,” she said. “It’s really a fantastic piece.”