Never too late to learn....

My parents taught me how to listen to everybody before I made up my own mind. When you listen, you learn. You absorb like a sponge and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time.  ~ Steven Spielberg

Anton Webern

Some time ago--thanks to my friend over at Classical Dark Arts--I discovered a work that is new to me, although it was composed in 1908 and is Anton Webern's Opus 1. The Passacaglia appeared just as Webern was completing four years of study with Arnold Schoenberg. Philip Huscher of the Chicago Symphony notes, Schoenberg’s presence is felt, too—the Schoenberg of Transfigured Night and Pelleas and Melisande, not of the later atonal pieces. The formal structure reminds us that the passacaglia finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony (scarcely twenty years old in 1908) was often performed and discussed and obviously influential. There are fleeting moments that recall the unlikely world of Bayreuth, the Wagnerian festival Webern attended as a present on graduation from the Klagenfurt Gymnasium in 1902. The Passacaglia is the work that brings them all together.

The work is amazing.

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Theodor Kirchner

Thanks to my work on the annual "Huey Awards," I was reminded of a forgotten musical figure of the late Romantic era, Theodor Kirchner. He was close to both Robert and Clara Schumann; Johannes Brahms was a supporter. In fact, Kirchner made the vocal score to the German Requiem and arranged a number of his orchestral works for piano.

He was a prolific composer of solo piano pieces as well as a smaller amount of chamber music. I think I need to do some digging.

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Alberto Ginastera, turning 100!
Died too soon in 1983

While working on programming for the 2016-17 season of the Quad City Wind Ensemble, I've come across some original music for winds from Venezuela and Colombia. More on that later. In the meantime, here is the line-up for the first concert:

QUAD CITY WIND ENSEMBLE

Fall Concert, 2016: Sweet Sixteen

Clifton Williams (1923 - 1976): Caccia and Chorale (1976)

Vittorio Gianinni (1903 - 1966): Symphony No. 3 (1958)

            I.  Allegro energico

            II. Adagio

            III. Allegro con brio

Julius Fucik (1872 - 1916): Gigantic March

INTERMISSION

Alberto Ginastera (1916 - 1983), arr. Greg Bimm: Pampeana No. 3 (1954)

            II. Impetuosamente

John Philip Sousa (1854 - 1932): Willow Blossoms (1916)

Vincent Persichetti (1915 - 1987): Turn Not Thy Face, Chorale Prelude (1966) 

John Barnes Chance (1932 - 1972): Variations on a Korean Folk Song (1966)

I think it's going to be darned good (even though they're all dead white guys of European extraction; I'll have to make up for that later). Looking ahead, we're going "south of the border" to play contemporary(!) wind music of Columbia, Venezuela, and elsewhere.