“Tubby,” with music by George Kleinsinger and story by Paul Tripp, was composed in 1946. It serves as a wonderful introduction to the orchestra, and has become a well-loved children’s classic. It tells the story of Tubby, a fat little tuba who just wants to be treated...
In the 1780's, Mozart's fame was, amazingly, already fading in Vienna; but in Prague, then capital of Bohemia, Mozart was celebrated as a rock star would be today. He made a triumphant four-week trip in January of 1787, to be present at, and later conduct,...
Voyage is a string-orchestral version of the choral setting of Richard Wilbur's translation of Baudelaire's "L'Invitation au Voyage." The lyrical, seamless vocal lines translated themselves naturally to strings, and the burnished imagery of the poetry finds a happy...
Carl Maria von Weber was one of the pioneers, if not the preeminent pioneer, of German Romanticism in music. The Andante and Rondo Ungarese (Hungarian Rondo) was originally written, in 1809, for viola solo and orchestra. Von Weber later re-worked the piece for bassoon...
Vivaldi, himself a violinist, wrote over 500 concertos, and interestingly enough, besides the 230 for violin, wrote more concertos for the bassoon than for any other instrument. Even though, like Bach, Vivaldi was forgotten for decades, the resurgence in scholarship...
Schubert wrote the Overture in B flat in 1816. By this time, he had already written four symphonies and several other overtures. Schubert was a good violinist as well as pianist and held a principal position in his school orchestra in Vienna. Legend has it that the...
Perhaps the most famous children’s work ever written, Peter and The Wolf was composed by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936 as a way of introducing children to the instruments of the orchestra. It opens with Peter, a brave little boy (played by the strings), going out into the...
Written in 1954, this short 3-movement work was Vaughan Williams’ last concerto. It is a compact work, with 2 modernistic outside movements surrounding a slow movement. It begins with a vigorous opening built around rising and falling scale-like passages. This is...
Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was a well-known teacher and composer in his own right in mid-18th century Germany. Although he composed conventional orchestral and choral works, he also composed a number of programmatic pieces with peasant or...
Kodály, together with Bartok, was a major figure in the collection and analysis of Hungarian folk music. Many of Kodály’s compositions are based on Hungarian folk tunes of various types. This is evident in the “Hungarian Rondo,” which Kodály wrote in 1917 and...
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