Par VON SUPPE FRANZ. Preludes and overtures were often written to set the mood of Viennese folk plays and therefore might be used for more than one production. Such was the case for Poet and Peasant, which introduced a comedy of the that name in 1846. The piece had already been heard as the overture to the play Lots of money, short of sleep and may also have prefaced two other plays. This overture…

Par WAGNER RICHARD. The second opera in Richard Wagner’s mighty The Ring cycle, Die Walkure remains among the most popular and frequently performed of his works. It is a masterful epic, with themes and motifs that combine and interplay to create some of the finest woven musical threads ever. From its gripping opening, in which the hero finds himself weaponless in the house of his enemy; to its hea…

Par CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO MARIO. Born into a family that had lived in Florence since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) entertained only a distant relationship with the music he heard at synagogue. It was only when he discovered Schelemo, a rhapsody for cello and orchestra written in 1916 by Ernest Bloch, that he began to understand what ' Jewish mus…

Best of New Age and Minimal Piano. Par . The renowned pianist Hans-Günter Heumann has arranged these 30 contemporary Piano classics which are some of the greatest hits of modern composers, inspired by minimalism and drawing on many other genres. Including arrangements of Einaudi, Yiruma and Yann Tiersen among many others, Piano Pur features many songs to soothe the soul. The most acclaimed compose…

In E-flat major Op.102. Par SAINT-SAENS CAMILLE. The second half of the 19th century represented something of a ?Golden Age? of the violin sonata in France: influential violin sonatas such as those by Franck, Fauré and Saint-Saëns were among the successful works of this genre, inspiring many further compositions. Saint-Saëns? Violin Sonata No.2 was written in 1896 during a stay of several months b…