167 years ago, Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto was performed for the first time in Leipzig.

The Concerto is is his last large orchestral work. It forms an important part of the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time. A typical performance lasts just under half an hour. Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although… (more)

Listen to the composer’s Violin Concerto in E minor performed by Janine Jansen:

Listen to Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch:

154 years ago Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Victoria, used for her wedding Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March”. It became popular then. 

Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” in C major, written in 1842, is one of the best known of the pieces from his suite of incidental music (Op. 61) to Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is one of the most frequently used wedding marches, generally being played on a church pipe organ… (more)

Listen to the masterpiece conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner (the march begins @33:51):

Max Bruch would be 174 years old today.

He was a german romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire… (more)

Listen to his powerful Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor Op. 26, performed by Janine Jansen:

Leo Tolstoy on Kreutzer Sonata:

A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the presto! And a terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it does? They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully (I speak for myself), but not in an ennobling way. It acts neither in an ennobling nor a debasing way, but in an irritating way. How shall I say it? Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. I become confounded with his soul, and with him I pass from one condition to another. But why that? I know nothing about it? But he who wrote Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ knew well why he found himself in a certain condition. That condition led him to certain actions, and for that reason to him had a meaning, but to me none, none whatever. And that is why music provokes an excitement which it does not bring to a conclusion. For instance, a military march is played; the soldier passes to the sound of this march, and the music is finished. A dance is played; I have finished dancing, and the music is finished. A mass is sung; I receive the sacrament, and again the music is finished. But any other music provokes an excitement, and this excitement is not accompanied by the thing that needs properly to be done, and that is why music is so dangerous, and sometimes acts so frightfully.

Listen to Beethoven’s sonata.

Read Tolstoy’s novel.

Rodolphe Kreutzer passed away 181 years ago.

He is best known for being the dedicatee of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47 (1803), one of the greatest masterpieces for violin and piano.

Kreutzer Sonata is well known for its demanding violin part, unusual length (a typical performance lasts slightly less than 40 minutes), and emotional scope — while the first movement is predominantly furious, the second is meditative and the third joyous and exuberant… (more)

Listen to Kreutzer Sonata performed by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Labert Orkis:

Enjoy the extraordinary documentary “The Art of Piano - Great Pianists of the 20th Century” here: 

Three of the greatest pianists of the 20th century were born on January 5: Alfred Brendel (1931), Maurizio Pollini (1942) and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995).

Listen to Brendel playing Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 106 “Hammerklavier”:

Listen to Pollini performing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 Op. 83:

Listen to Benedetti Michelangeli playing Chopin:

Mozart’s famous Requiem in D minor was performed complete for the first time 219 years ago.

The masterpiece was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer’s death. A completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the February 14 anniversary of his wife’s death… (more)

Listen to the Requiem conducted by Sir Georg Solti here:

Listen to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, here:

The Christmas Oratorio (German: Weihnachts-Oratorium) BWV 248, is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. It was written for the Christmas season of 1734 incorporating music from earlier compositions, including three secular cantatas written during 1733 and 1734 and a now lost church cantata, BWV 248a. The date is confirmed in Bach’s autograph manuscript. The next performance was not until 17 December 1857 by the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin under Eduard Grell. The Christmas Oratorio is a particularly sophisticated example of parody music. The author of the text is unknown, although a likely collaborator was Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander).

The work belongs to a group of three oratorios written towards the end of Bach’s career in 1734 and 1735 for major feasts, the others being the Ascension Oratorio (BWV 11) and the Easter Oratorio (BWV 249). All parody earlier compositions, although the Christmas Oratorio is by far the longest and most complex work.

The oratorio is in six parts, each part being intended for performance on one of the major feast days of the Christmas period. The piece is often presented as a whole or split into two equal parts. The total running time for the entire work is nearly three hours.

The first part (for Christmas Day) describes the Birth of Jesus, the second (for December 26) the annunciation to the shepherds, the third (for December 27) the adoration of the shepherds, the fourth (for New Year’s Day) the circumcision and naming of Jesus, the fifth (for the first Sunday after New Year) the journey of the Magi, and the sixth (for Epiphany) the adoration of the Magi.

The structure of the story is defined to a large extent by the particular requirements of the church calendar for Christmas 1734/35. Bach abandoned his usual practice when writing church cantatas of basing the content upon the Gospel reading for that day in order to achieve a coherent narrative structure. Were he to have followed the calendar, the story would have unfolded as follows:

1. Birth and Annunciation to the Shepherds
2. The Adoration of the Shepherds
3. Prologue to the Gospel of John
4. Circumcision and Naming of Jesus
5. The Flight into Egypt
6. The Coming and Adoration of the Magi

This would have resulted in the Holy Family fleeing before the Magi had arrived, which was unsuitable for an oratorio evidently planned as a coherent whole. Bach removed the content for the Third Day of Christmas (December 27), John’s Gospel, and split the story of the two groups of visitors—Shepherds and Magi—into two. This resulted in a more understandable exposition of the Christmas story:

1. The Birth
2. The Annunciation to the Shepherds
3. The Adoration of the Shepherds
4. The Circumcision and Naming of Jesus
5. The Journey of the Magi
6. The Adoration of the Magi

The Flight into Egypt takes place after the end of the sixth part.

That Bach saw the six parts as comprising a greater, unified whole is evident both from the surviving printed text and from the structure of the music itself. The edition has not only a title—Weihnachtsoratorium—connecting together the six sections, but these sections are also numbered consecutively. As John Butt has mentioned, this points, as in the Mass in B minor, to a unity beyond the performance constraints of the church year… (more)