Blog topic: Music

Schumann’s Dichterliebe, op. 48, from 1840 weds music and text into one of the most memorable song cycles of the Romantic period. The cycle consists of sixteen songs on poems from Heinrich Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo. The earliest recordings of the entire cycle were by Dutch baritone, Thom Denijs (1877-1935), who recorded the cycle twice in London with his wife, Emmy Denijs-Kruyt (1878-1964), as pianist, first in an acoustic recording on 5 April 1923 and later as an electrical recording in three sessions in January and July 1928.

New arrival in the Music Library:

Schönberg, Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19 [facsimile]

Published by the Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna.

Schönberg's Sechs kleine Klavierstücke (Six little piano pieces), op. 19, were composed during a very creative period in Schönberg's life, around the years 1910-1912. In addition to musical composition, Schönberg exhibited his paintings and kept a lively correspondence with his friend, the expressionist painter Kandinsky, and was also at work completing his orchestration for the Gurre-Lieder, and writing his Theory of Harmony. Five of the Six little piano pieces were composed in a single day, February 19, 1911. After the revered composer Gustav Mahler's death on May 18, 1911, Schönberg painted his impression of the event, the Begrabnis von Gustav Mahler (Burial of Gustav Mahler), and then composed the sixth piece in the op. 19 set, on June 17, 1911. 

"The Beethoven Project is a large-scale celebration acknowledging Bing Concert Hall as the new home of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and Stanford Philharmonia Orchestra. These ensembles, under the baton of Jindong Cai, will devote the season to the performance of all nine Beethoven symphonies, as well as all five of the composer’s piano concerti featuring Van Cliburn Gold Medal–winning pianist and Stanford alumnus Jon Nakamatsu.