Obscure Music Mondays

This week we are delving into the wonderfully strange world of Russian Futurism; a genre short-lived but produced many thought-provoking and enjoyable pieces. Alexander Mosolov (1900-1973) is a lesser-known composer today, but was a champion of the Soviet avant-garde, particularly in his early works.   Born in Kiev and raised in Moscow, Mosolov attended the Moscow Conservatory and studied piano and...

This week we are looking at a piece by Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947), a Venezuelan born composer and conductor who lived and worked in France for most of his life. Hahn was most famous for writing almost 100 art songs, and although it isn't a name we often hear in the modern musical canon, Reynaldo Hahn was very popular in the...

Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836) was a trailblazing composer and teacher who's talent and achievements have been overlooked. During her lifetime, however, she was recognized as an excellent performer and improvisor, who maintained artistic relationships with famous composes such as Viotti and Balliot. Her Piano Sonata in F minor, published in 1795, features many dramatic elements of early romanticism that are...

We've previously taken a look at the Piano Quartet No. 1 by the talented Mel Bonis. This week, we look at her Piano Quartet No. 2, Op. 124, a later work from 1927. The second Piano Quartet is dedicated to her classmate at the Paris Conservatoire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQDZFUsGPIA Rudersdal Chamber Players perform Mel Bonis' Piano Quartet No. 2 The first movement opens...

Charles-Marie Widor was a powerhouse writer for the organ, writing many symphonies for organ alone that took advantage of the varied voices to give a full symphonic form. It was in 1880, however, that he was approached by the future King Edward VII of the United Kingdom to create a work for Organ & Orchestra. Out of that request came...

Tom Turpin (1871-1922) was a composer, saloon-owner, and powerful man in the black community of St. Louis at the turn of the century - even earning the nickname "Father of St. Louis Ragtime." Famously, his piano had to be raised on cement blocks for him to play as he was exceptionally tall and rotund, making his stomach an obstacle to...

William Yeates Hurlestone (1876-1906) was a student of Charles Villiers Stanford, who considered him his finest student - above such luminaries as Vaughan Williams and Holst, who also studied with Stanford. Hurlestone's talent was seen at an early age - his earliest compositions were published at the age of nine! Unfortunately, he suffered from bronchial asthma, ending his first musical...

Composer Riccardo Drigo (1846-1930) was an Italian composer and conductor who spent much of his career working in the opera and ballet theaters of St. Petersburg, though his career began and ended in Padua, Italy in the Veneto region. It is that region that inspires his beautiful work for viola (or cello) & piano (or organ) Serenatina Veneziana all'Antica. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjiJamc78s...

Felix Arndt (1889-1918) was an unfortunately short lived American pianist and composer who was most known for his many popular songs and the rag Nola, but also dabbled in some light-hearted variations on classical music. This week we look at his An Operatic Nightmare. Arndt was the child of immigrants, though few immigrants of the time could claim Napolean III...

British composer Maria Hester Park (née Reynolds) was a classical era performer and composer of some renowned, a rarity for the time. Ms. Park performed a number of well received recitals as a pianist before her marriage, at which time she retreated to a life of teaching and composition. We're fortunate to have a number of her works that have...