June, 2022

70 Posts
archive-post-image
Music in the Mountains
The Gstaad Menuhin Festival and Academy
“The hills are alive with the sound of music” is a verse taken from a well-known Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song in the 1965 Hollywood movie “The Sound of Music”. At the opening scene, Julie Andrews made her first appearance twirling
Read more
archive-post-image
Musicians and Artists:
Peter Maxwell Davies and Paul Klee
Peter Maxwell Davies: 5 Klee Pictures After his graduation from Manchester, British composer Peter Maxwell Davies’ first position was with the Cirencester Grammar School. In his three years there, he wrote a number of works for their orchestra, the first
Read more
archive-post-image
Sad Summer Nights
Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été
Picking unpublished poems from the manuscripts of his neighbor romantic poet and writer Théophile Gautier, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) created his song group (not a cycle) Les nuits d’été (The Nights of Summer). Completed in 1841, the songs, written for mezzo
Read more
archive-post-image
On This Day
9 June: Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 Was Premiered
On 9 June 1902, Gustav Mahler treated the audience in Krefeld to the premiere of his complete 3rd Symphony. The second movement alone had first sounded on 9 November 1896, and the second, third and sixth movements on 9 March
Read more
archive-post-image
E. T. A. Hoffmann
“Music is the most romantic of all the arts for its sole subject is the infinite” Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822), better known by his pen name E. T. A. Hoffmann, was possibly the most original and influential fiction writer
Read more
archive-post-image
On This Day
June 8: Robert Schumann Was Born
The leading exponent of musical Romanticism, Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, on 8 June 1810. He was the fifth and last child of August Schumann and Johanna Christiana Schumann (née Schnabel). August Schumann was a book dealer, and
Read more
archive-post-image
The Book of Beasts
Schafer’s A Medieval Bestiary
In 1954, British author T.H. White, known for his children’s Arthurian novels such as The Sword in the Stone, translated a medieval bestiary. His interest in the medieval started in the late 1920s, when he discovered Thomas Malory’s 15th-century chronicle
Read more
archive-post-image
On This Day
7 June: Britten’s Peter Grimes Was Premiered
The performing arts venue Saddler’s Wells Theater is located in Clerkenwell, London. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683, and when the venue reopened after World War II, it did so with the premiere of Benjamin
Read more