Charles Rosen News
American pianist and writer on music
- piano
- music theory
- United States of America
- pianist, writer, musician, musicologist, music teacher, music theorist, music historian, non-fiction writer, biographer, music critic, composer, journalist
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2024-04-23
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2024-02-19 09:17:00
In Relations: exploring links from Meyerbeer, to Loewe, to Mendelssohn, to Schumann, to Emilie Mayer and Frances Allitsen.
[…] composer Frances Allitsen began her career as a singer, but turned to composition when her voice failed. We hear three of her Heine settings, all in German. Katherine proves to be quite a surprise, and is far more sophisticated than the composer's background story might have suggested. Ma da draussen Schnee sich thurmen has an expansive lyricism to it, whilst Die Botschaft is more direct and ballad-likeWe end with Schumann. First setting Rückert with a finely touching account of Aus den ostlichen Rosen then Goethe with Singet nicht in Trauertonen, The record booklet includes a fascinating diagram that demonstrates the interconnectedness of the songs on the disc. Some links are intriguing, such as Schumann's espousing Elisabeth Kuhlmann, whilst others are frustrating in the way female poets and composers have managed to be evaporated from history. But though there are song texts, there are no translations so you must go hunting for these.What makes the disc work, is that both […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2023-12-18 16:37:18
Schumann Got It Right the First Time
[…] 6, is a fully re-engraved score of the entire work; but the only immediately obvious differences from the first edition are changes in tempi and omission of the quaint rubrics of Florestan and Eusebius, who individually initial each of the 18 pieces. No. 3 in the first edition is marked Etwas hahnbüchen, which my oldest dictionary renders as “somewhat clumsy” (Hutcheson gives it as “rather cockeyed”); the second edition changes this to Mit Humor. Charles Rosen first brought to public attention the changes that Schumann made in the final bars of the Phantasie, op. 17, just before first publication in 1837. Here is the original ending as Rosen gives it in The Romantic Generation, p. 110, and as he recorded it (at right). One can listen to a recent recording HERE. Everyone who knows the standard version of the ending of the third movement will recognize that these Adagio measures […]
2023-11-16 07:29:00
In a much-recorded field, they create something memorable: Songs of the Night from Rowan Pierce, Julien van Mellaerts, & Lucy Colquhoun
[…] whose solid reputation has not quite outshone their flashier contemporaries. Here, we hear two of Piftzner's songs (he published over 100), both setting Eichendorff. Nachts contrasts Pierce's finely focused vocal line with the restless, rather chromatic piano accompaniment whilst van Mellaerts is vividly urgent in Nachtwanderer.The Strauss group begins relatively early in 1900 with Des Dichters Abendgang in a passionately expansive performance from van Mellaerts, but then we go right back to 1883 for Rote Rosen where Pierce really brings out the words. Lied an menem Sohn from 1902 is rather intriguing, the poem by Richard Dehmel encourages sons to rebel against their fathers! It combines a stormy piano with an almost Schubert-esque vocal line, with van Mellaerts and Colquhoun rising to an impressive climax. Pierce returns for a characterful account perhaps the best-known Strauss song of the group, Schlechtes Wetter.The disc ends with two of Mendelssohn's delightful duets, both […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2023-10-01 23:03:23
Gravity Waves and Curveballs: Sherman Remembered
[…] musicians who are not yet old will find it very difficult to imagine either the sea change that took place in the classical music environment in mid-1960s Boston, or the elevation of informed discourses thereon. The reason was the arrivals of accomplished musicologist Michael Steinberg at the Globe, then the working hornist, educator, and composer Gunther Schuller, who, as NEC president, engaged the serious piano prodigy (and Edward Steuermann student) Russell Sherman. Along with Brendel, Rosen, Kovacevich and a few others, Sherman opened our ears, hearts, and minds to fresh hearings of familiar classics, as well as to much new music. Soon after Sherman arrived, Steinberg wrote of his performance of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5: … still more valid evidence of the rightness of Sherman’s approach [was to be found] in the direct musical result, in the way melodies, figurations, whole paragraphs, took on a coherence in some […]
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