THE PIECE
Don Quixote is a composition for cello, viola and large orchestra. The work is based on the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. The score is 758 measures long and is written in sinfonia concertante form, with the solo cello representing Don Quixote, and the solo viola and tenor tuba depicting the comic Sancho Panza (squire to Don Quixote). 

These are the sections/variations to the piece:

1. Introduction: ”Don Quixote loses his sanity after reading novels about knights, and decides to become a knight-errant”
2. Theme: ”Don Quixote, knight of the sorrowful countenance”
3. Maggiore: “Sancho Panza”
4. Variation I: ”Adventure at the Windmills”
5. Variation II: ”The victorious struggle against the army of the great emperor Alifanfaron”
6. Variation III: ”Dialogue between Knight and Squire”
7. Variation IV: ”Unhappy adventure with a procession of pilgrims”
8. Variation V: ”The knight’s vigil”
9. Variation VI: ”The Meeting with Dulcinea”
10. Variation VII: ”The Ride through the Air”
11. Variation VIII: ”The unhappy voyage in the enchanted boat”
12. Variation IX: ”Battle with the magicians”
13. Variation X: ”Duel with the knight of the bright moon”
14. Finale: ”Coming to his senses again” – Death of Don Quixote

THE STORY
The novel is fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha and is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. Don Quixote is the protagonist of the novel and is a retired country gentleman about fifty years old, living in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and housekeeper. While mostly a rational man of sound reason, reading Romances in excess or books of chivalry, has had a profound effect on Don Quixote, leading to the distortion of his perception and the wavering of his mental faculties. In essence, he believes every word of these books of chivalry to be true, though for the most part, the content of these books is clearly false. Otherwise, his wits, in regards to everything other than chivalry, are intact. His quests and the second part to the story are here.

I will be talking about the third movement, which starts at 29:11 in this video (one of the very few that don’t split up into 10-minute videos :D).

Rachmaninoff wrote the concerto in the peaceful setting of his family’s country estate. The third movement is quick and vigorous and contains variations on many of the themes that are used in the first movement, which unites the whole concerto cyclically. However, after the first and second themes it diverges from the regular sonata-allegro form. There is no conventional development; that segment is replaced by a lengthy digression using the major key of the third movement’s first theme, which then leads to the two themes from the first movement. After the digression, the movement recapitulation returns to the original themes, building up to a toccata climax somewhat similar but lighter than the first movement ossia cadenza and accompanied by the orchestra. The last movement is concluded with a triumphant and passionate second theme melody in D major. The piece ends with the same four-note rhythm – claimed by some to be the composer’s musical signature – as the composer’s second concerto.

I usually don’t go exploring for piano concertos. In my opinion, along with cello concertos, the sound of it playing “against” the orchestra sounds muffled when piano plays solo. The piano/cello has a wide range of notes, similar to the orchestra, and the sound tends to mesh together and doesn’t stand out as much as a flue or violin would. It’s a good and bad thing to me, depending on who plays what. My friend showed this to me a few weeks ago. I haven’t listened to much of Rachmaninov’s piano concertos so I gave this a try. Because it was 45 minutes long, I played it as background music while I did summer work. Within the first five minutes, it drew my more of my attention and I closely listened watched his hands for the rest of the video. The third movement is my favorite and it really sparked something in me when a melody sounded familiar at a few seconds in from 30:09 and at 32:10. It gives a very warm, homey sensation listening to it. There is this bronze-yellow and warm orange I see that melts into teach other going into different themes. This movement is so colorful in many ways and Horowitz did an incredible job playing it (this is one of those recordings that is going to leave a strong first opinion on me).

Rhapsody in Blue is a musical composition for solo piano and jazz band written in 1924, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. Whether or not Rhapsody in Blue is “jazz” remains a much-debated topic. In the 1920s, the word “jazz” was used loosely to cover a broad range of contemporary popular music and was starting to be seen as a significant American contribution to musical culture. Like a concerto, the piece is written for solo piano with orchestra. A rhapsody differs from a concerto because it features one extended movement instead of separate movements. It often incorporates passages of an improvisatory nature (although written out in a score), and are irregular in form, with heightened contrasts and emotional exuberance. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is typical in that it certainly has large contrasts in musical texture, style, and color. The music ranges from intensely rhythmic piano solos to slow, broad, and richly orchestrated sections.

I first heard this piece when watching Fantasia 2000 when I was about five or six years old. I loved the famous melody at 5:19 in this video and always remembered it, but could never remember the name of the piece. It’s so hard to describe it… It’s so “chill”, I feel both the orchestral and jazzy side to the piece, and the solos are prominent and fun to hear. I also love how Bernstein in the recording is both playing the piano and conducting at the same time. It’s amazing to watch.

Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, are a set of short pieces for the piano, one in each of the twenty-four keys, originally published in 1839 and dedicated to Joseph Christoph Kessler, a composer of piano studies during Chopin’s time. Ten years earlier, Kessler had dedicated his own set of 24 Preludes, Op. 31, to Chopin. Although the termprelude is generally used to describe an introductory piece, Chopin’s stand as self-contained units, each conveying a specific idea or emotion. Prelude No. 24, or “The Storm”, opens with a thundering five-note pattern in the left hand. Throughout the piece, the left hand continues this pattern as the right hand plays a powerful melody punctuated by trills, scales (including a rapid descending chromatic scale in thirds), and arpeggios. The piece closes with three booming unaccompanied notes – the lowest D on the piano.

I first heard this as the introduction to an episode of Tom and Jerry called Cat Concerto. I really wanted to know the name of the piece for a while. A few weeks ago I performed at a chamber concert and a senior pianist played this piece tremendously. I couldn’t tell if he made any mistakes, but each note was clear and the entire piece was so vibrant, especially the chromatic scale that descended in thirds. It definitely depicts a great storm.

It is nicknamed Devil’s Laughter, is one of Niccolò Paganini’s renowned 24 Caprices. This solo violin piece starts out with scale like double-stopped passages at a moderate speed. The second part consists of high speed runs that exercise left hand flexibility and position shifting, and right hand high speed string changing and detache bowing. The piece then repeats back to the beginning and ends right before reaching the second part for the second time. This is my second favorite caprice after the 17th one. It’s just so bizarre and interesting, especially the beginning with the “laugh”.  

Egmont consists of an overture followed by a sequence of nine additional pieces for soprano, male narrator and full symphony orchestra. The subject of the music and dramatic narrative is the life and heroism of a 16th-century Dutch nobleman, the Count of Egmont. It was composed during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, at a time when the French Empire had extended its domination over most of Europe. Beethoven had famously expressed his great outrage over Napoleon Bonaparte’s decision to crown himself Emperor in 1804, furiously scratching out his name in the dedication of the Eroica Symphony. In the music for Egmont, Beethoven expressed his own political concerns through the exaltation of the heroic sacrifice of a man condemned to death for having taken a valiant stand against oppression. The overture, powerful and expressive, is one of the last works of his middle period; it has become as famous a composition as the Coriolan Overture, and is in a similar style to the Fifth Symphony, which he had completed two years earlier.

This is one of my favorite Beethoven pieces. This is actually a piece I use to remember what F natural sounds like. It’s such a distinct beginning with one simple note played in unison and it brings you settled into the piece. I love the contrast between two images and the passing around of melodic voices.

Of Henryk Wieniawski’s two concert polonaises for violin and orchestra (or piano), the Polonaise de concert in D major, Op. 4, is probably the better known. Wieniawski was himself, of course, a Pole, and that he should put together a show-stopping, virtuosic example of his country’s most famous dance form is hardly surprising. What might surprise some is the fact that, Chopin’s polonaises aside, Wieniawski’s first polonaise is among the finest examples of its breed to visit concert halls with any frequency. The energetic rhythmic ideas have backbone (as at the very opening: has ever an eight-bar phrase moved with such speed through so many individual characters without losing sight of its musical goal?), the less robust melodies suppleness and grace; and the polonaise’s tendency to hover in a near-schizophrenic fashion on the border between heroism and deep melancholy is given full play. There is plenty of ear-candy for those that demand instant gratification: the piece is not easy to play, and Wieniawski has made sure that nobody in the audience could possibly miss the fact.

I first heard this piece the summer after 7th grade at a summer camp in Jacob’s School of Music. It was beautifully played by a 15-year-old boy during a masterclass and ever since then I kept this piece remembered as something I’d love to play. I love pieces like this one by Wieniawski. They have such flair and the range that the violinist has to reach is amazing. It’ll be a challenge to play such a piece but I’d feel great if I was able to play through with my interpretation of it.

The overture to “Colas Breugnon” is the prelude to an opera which Kabalevsky wrote in 1937 called “The Master Of Clamecy”, the book of which was derived from the novel by Romain Rolland, “Colas Breugnon, Burgundian”. Colas Breugnon is a kind of Frenchified version of Robin Hood, but touched, perhaps, with a certain decadence which some people regard as peculiarly French. Such a subject probably appealed strongly to the Soviet composer, but whether or not Kabalevsky cared about the political implications, he did make a piece shich appeals strongly to capitalistic American conductors. The overture to “Colas Breugnon, Master of Clamecy” is a gay, almost Mozartian piece, delicate, sophisticated, stntimental, ironical, and utterly delightful.

We played this piece last year in YOCJ. I remember we got handwritten copies, which was cool, but we couldn’t read half the notes for the first week. Anyways, it eventually became much more exciting for us to play with spontaneous outbursts from different sections and this huge buildup of intensity toward a climax. It reminds me a lot of Overture to Candide, which Bernstein writes much later. I loved performing them both.

It is usually referred to as “The Tempest”, but this title was not given by Beethoven, or indeed referred to as such during his lifetime; instead, it comes from a claim by his associate Anton Schindler that the sonata was inspired by the Shakespeare play. This movement is very moving, first flowing with emotion and then reaching a climax, before moving into an extended development section which mainly focuses on the opening figure of the movement.

I’m not sure why I liked it when I listened to it often a few years ago. I used to think of this piece as being in a pretty “complicated” mood and liked the fluidity of all of the notes crowding my mind. After a while though, it hasn’t settled into me like it did in the past and I almost started to feel uncomfortable listening to the piece. Well, tempest does mean “a violent windy storm” but I pictured this piece to be more like a moderate rain storm and a stressed mood. When played on the piano, I feel the rain but not the violent, windy storm. Hm.

The piece is in 6/4 time and it makes use of legato and slurring. The music should flow like a swan gliding through the water. This is the only movement from the Carnival of the Animals that the composer would allow to be played in public during his lifetime as he thought the remaining movements were too frivolous and would damage his reputation as a serious composer.

In this recording, I love the phrases this cellist makes. They are very continuous— opening up well and drawing back to a close throughout the piece and of both the cello and the harp, each note is so crisp and clear. The harp settles in the background while the cello stands out with a lovely melody, like a painting with a delicate flower garden in the background while the swan glides across the water, displaying its beauty. This piece has one of my favorite melodies in classical music.

I regret still not watching the whole movie Up. I’ve only seen the beginning half, including this scene, there this soundtrack was played. It matches the scene so well and I probably watched it so many times, yet it still makes me tear up every time. We sometimes think too much in what we want to do in life that it takes away the special, little moments that we try to achieve every day. I love the repetitive motive and instrumental choice that makes this soundtrack have an older style, fitting to the main character’s life. Even without watching the clip, the music still gives a sense of how life goes on with a new beginning, ups and downs, softer and more personal moments, and loss.

While the usual classical symphonies used a minuet and trio as their third movement, Beethoven chose to use the newer scherzo and trio form. The movement returns to the opening key of C minor and begins with a theme, played by the cellos and double basses, that is answered by a contrasting theme played by the winds, and this sequence is repeated. Then the horns loudly announce the main theme of the movement, and the music proceeds from there.

I’ve always liked the 5th symphony, even with the overplayed first movement. It’s one of my favorite works by Beethoven. Coincidentally, I just took a music history test on it and had fun listening to a childhood piece again. I love the opening theme and how it opens up the piece nicely, then a very contrasting horn plays, and it keeps developing with more fluidity in the theme. Beethoven slows the movement down and puts huge emphasis on the first beat so it sounds more like a thundering slow march in 4/4 time, although it’s in a 3/4 time.

Rachmaninoff’s second movement scherzo is “vigorous to the point of abandon.” The first motif is carried out largely by the horn section. There is a second motif that relates to the first movement, becoming the “motto” motif for the whole work. The brass chorale at the end of the scherzo is chilling and it derives from the Dies irae, a Gregorian chant for the dead that haunts many of Rachmaninoff’s works and held great influence over his creative life (e.g. Isle of the Dead, Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, his First Symphony, and his second set of Symphonic Dances). The brass chorale theme later shows up in the cadence of the final movement.

We’re playing this right now in the symphonic orchestra of YOCJ and it’s a really challenging piece. For our seating audition, probably most sections that I expected to be required were from this movement. Despite its difficulty, I love this movement. The brisk tempo and light flare at the beginning that comes back always gets me worked up and excited about playing it during rehearsals. Changes in mood from a sharp, aggressive tone to a sweet, melodious one easily moves me deeply.

This whole piece is already pretty long, even after taking out the first movement, so when our conductor goes, “Hmm… what part should we play next…,” I’m like:

Then he choses the beginning of this movement and I’m like:

Among Liszt’s symphonic poems, Les préludes is the most popular. During World War II, a fanfare motiv of the march finale was made the signature tune for the Wehrmachtbericht radio report and Die Deutsche Wochenschau newsreel. The full title “Les préludes (d’après Lamartine)” refers to an Ode of Alphonse de Lamartine’s Nouvelles méditations poétiques. During the introduction the motif is frequently repeated in different forms but it is, however, the head of a melody.

I remember in 7th grade, this was the piece we played with the symphonic orchestra of YOCJ. Honestly, this was one of the pieces that really changed my perspective on horns. They give off such a warm and rich tone when playing the melody that plays throughout the piece. I was always touched by this piece and I still am. It makes such a huge difference when listening to it after being able to rehearse and perform this with the orchestra. After two years, I still love reminiscing about the stirring emotions I poured into the piece, sometimes tearing up to realize how beautiful music can really be.

The 24 caprices have an étude-esque structure, with each caprice studying individual skills (double stopped trills, extremely fast switching of positions and strings, etc.) The 17th caprice of one of the most challenging scores in the violin repertory. The “A” section contains numerous thirty-second note runs on the A and E strings that converse back and forth with double stops on the lower two strings. The middle section is famous for the incredibly difficult octave passage.

Okay, I just want to say that I didn’t realize this caprice was in E flat minor until recently and I was really happy about the coincidence. Anyways, I really started listening to the 24 Caprices after reading Things Hoped For by Andrew Clements. The main character in the book played this piece for a competition. I only recognized the 24th caprice in 6th grade when I read this book and decided to explore the other 23. This is one of my favorites and a piece I want to play before I die.