The Kuss Quartet November 17, 2008
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The Kuss Quartet at Duke, reviewed.
New Music at UNC Chapel Hill November 14, 2008
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New music by Allen Anderson, Stephen Anderson and John Fitz Rogers in review.
John Fitz Rogers November 12, 2008
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Composer John Fitz Rogers is on the faculty of the School of Music of the University of South Carolina. I had the pleasure of hearing two recent works in concert this week at UNC Chapel Hill, but his capacious web site has dozens of downloads of his music available, both excerpts and complete works. Rogers has an original voice and masterful technique – a creative spirit worth getting to now. The Music Library has two dozen of his scores either on order or already on the shelves.
Peteris Vasks November 7, 2008
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Composer Peteris Vasks
Not so long ago music from Eastern Europe’s composers was considered to be contaminated artistically simply by the fact that it had been created within a system which gave government support to the arts and which saw them as socially useful. Record labels such as Melodiia in the Soviet Union had extensive catalogs releasing works of composers throughout the union, but were frequently difficult to acquire unless the collector went directly to the source.
Latvian composer Peteris Vasks (b. 1946-) is from a generation younger than that of Penderecki or Part (both born in the mid-thirties) and roughly contemporary with John Adams (b. 1947). I first heard his work (a piece called Mūzika aizgājušajam draugam) on a 1986 LP also presenting music by Grinups, Zemzars, and Smidbergs, none of the others yet househould names in the West. The Music Library has just received a 2008 CD with three chamber works by the composer, Gramata cellam for cello solo, the Partita for cello and piano, and Episodi e canto perpetuo for piano trio. The latter work manages the feat of paying hommage to the late Olivier Messiaen without falling into pastiche, combining the master’s idiom with Vasks’s own language.
VASKS – Works with violoncello – CD 17077
Ich gieng einmal spatieren November 7, 2008
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You probably know and love the Aria with 30 Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach, known affectionately as the Goldbergs. Perhaps you will also enjoy the 31 variations on Ich gieng einmal spazieren by Hans Leo Hassler, another Protestant organist and composer born 121 years before the Leipzig master. Hassler’s set of variations was by far the most extensive set of variations composed in his day (lasting almost 45 minutes!), and is based on a tune that was familiar and popular throughout Europe, known as La Monica in Italy, and used with a chorale text, Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, in Lutheran Europe.
The Music Library has just received a fine recording of this work by Leon Berben, who uses the 1561 Franciscus Patavinus harpsichord of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. If you are an early music lover or harpsichord fan, don’t miss this one.
Hassler Ich gieng einmal spatieren CD 16785
