![Edvard Grieg - 5 Songs, op. 60 [With score] @DamonJHK](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ouNvW2KgmDA/maxresdefault.jpg)
Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: Monica Groop (Voice), Ilmo Ranta (Piano)
5 songs for Voice and Piano, op. 60, written in 1893-94
00:00 - I. Liden Kirsten {Little Kirsten}
03:48 - II. Moderen synger {The mother's lament}
06:14 - III. Mens jeg venter {While I wait}
08:33 - IV. Der skreg en Fugl {There Screeched a Bird}
10:37 - V. Og jeg vil ha mig en Hjertenskjær {And I will take a sweetheart}
The five songs in Digte (Poems), Op. 60, were completed in 1894 and composed to texts by Vilhelm Krag. Dedicated to the Dutch baritone Johannes Messchaert (regarded as among the finest concert singers of his age), they were premiered by him in Copenhagen on January 20, 1894. Krag's arch-Romantic imagery served Grieg well in the creation of these unceasingly interesting lyric expressions.
The first song, "Liden Kirsten" (Little Kirsten) has a folk-like temperament, well suited to the bright simplicity of the poem. The second song, "Moderen synger" (The Mother Sings) is an anguished lament, arrestingly modern in its use of a hesitating melody set over an unsettlingly dissonant accompaniment. "Mens jeg venter" (While I Wait) is frequently performed apart from the other songs in this opus and presents a superb example of the composer's sophistication as well as his gift for freshness of utterance. The harmonization is chromatic, often changing key and supporting melodic cells with startling effect. The fourth song, "Der skreg en Fugl" (There Screeched a Bird) attests to the composer's close observation of nature's sounds. In the introduction and final measures of this song, Grieg used a motif from one of his sketchbooks, noted as "the cry of a seagull heard near the Hardanger fjord." The song is dramatic and impressionistic at the same time, prevailingly bleak and singular in its use of minor seventh chords near the ending, voiced over the sustaining pedal throughout the sequence to create a blurred and dissonant effect. The song seems to simply hang in suspension at its conclusion. The final song, "Og jeg vil ha mig en Hjertenskjær" (And I will Take a Sweetheart) is an exuberant outburst of high spirits and a superb encore piece. It is found in the song repertoires of many singers who do not otherwise program much of Grieg's music.
[allmusic.com]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: Monica Groop (Voice), Ilmo Ranta (Piano)
5 songs for Voice and Piano, op. 60, written in 1893-94
00:00 - I. Liden Kirsten {Little Kirsten}
03:48 - II. Moderen synger {The mother's lament}
06:14 - III. Mens jeg venter {While I wait}
08:33 - IV. Der skreg en Fugl {There Screeched a Bird}
10:37 - V. Og jeg vil ha mig en Hjertenskjær {And I will take a sweetheart}
The five songs in Digte (Poems), Op. 60, were completed in 1894 and composed to texts by Vilhelm Krag. Dedicated to the Dutch baritone Johannes Messchaert (regarded as among the finest concert singers of his age), they were premiered by him in Copenhagen on January 20, 1894. Krag's arch-Romantic imagery served Grieg well in the creation of these unceasingly interesting lyric expressions.
The first song, "Liden Kirsten" (Little Kirsten) has a folk-like temperament, well suited to the bright simplicity of the poem. The second song, "Moderen synger" (The Mother Sings) is an anguished lament, arrestingly modern in its use of a hesitating melody set over an unsettlingly dissonant accompaniment. "Mens jeg venter" (While I Wait) is frequently performed apart from the other songs in this opus and presents a superb example of the composer's sophistication as well as his gift for freshness of utterance. The harmonization is chromatic, often changing key and supporting melodic cells with startling effect. The fourth song, "Der skreg en Fugl" (There Screeched a Bird) attests to the composer's close observation of nature's sounds. In the introduction and final measures of this song, Grieg used a motif from one of his sketchbooks, noted as "the cry of a seagull heard near the Hardanger fjord." The song is dramatic and impressionistic at the same time, prevailingly bleak and singular in its use of minor seventh chords near the ending, voiced over the sustaining pedal throughout the sequence to create a blurred and dissonant effect. The song seems to simply hang in suspension at its conclusion. The final song, "Og jeg vil ha mig en Hjertenskjær" (And I will Take a Sweetheart) is an exuberant outburst of high spirits and a superb encore piece. It is found in the song repertoires of many singers who do not otherwise program much of Grieg's music.
[allmusic.com]
![Edvard Grieg - 5 Songs, op. 60 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ouNvW2KgmDA/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - 5 Songs, op. 60 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: Monica Groop (Voice), Ilmo Ranta (Piano)
5 songs for Voice and Piano, op. 60, written in 1893-94
00:00 - I. Liden Kirsten {Little Kirsten}
03:48 - II. Moderen synger {The mothers lament}
06:14 - III. Mens jeg venter {While I wait}
08:33 - IV. Der skreg en Fugl {There Screeched a Bird}
10:37 - V. Og jeg vil ha mig en Hjertenskjær {And I will take a sweetheart}
The five songs in Digte (Poems), Op. 60, were completed in 1894 and composed to texts by Vilhelm Krag. Dedicated to the Dutch baritone Johannes Messchaert (regarded as among the finest concert singers of his age), they were premiered by him in Copenhagen on January 20, 1894. Krags arch-Romantic imagery served Grieg well in the creation of these unceasingly interesting lyric expressions.
The first song, Liden Kirsten (Little Kirsten) has a folk-like temperament, well suited to the bright simplicity of the poem. The second song, Moderen synger (The Mother Sings) is an anguished lament, arrestingly modern in its use of a hesitating melody set over an unsettlingly dissonant accompaniment. Mens jeg venter (While I Wait) is frequently performed apart from the other songs in this opus and presents a superb example of the composers sophistication as well as his gift for freshness of utterance. The harmonization is chromatic, often changing key and supporting melodic cells with startling effect. The fourth song, Der skreg en Fugl (There Screeched a Bird) attests to the composers close observation of natures sounds. In the introduction and final measures of this song, Grieg used a motif from one of his sketchbooks, noted as the cry of a seagull heard near the Hardanger fjord. The song is dramatic and impressionistic at the same time, prevailingly bleak and singular in its use of minor seventh chords near the ending, voiced over the sustaining pedal throughout the sequence to create a blurred and dissonant effect. The song seems to simply hang in suspension at its conclusion. The final song, Og jeg vil ha mig en Hjertenskjær (And I will Take a Sweetheart) is an exuberant outburst of high spirits and a superb encore piece. It is found in the song repertoires of many singers who do not otherwise program much of Griegs music.
[allmusic.com]")
![William Walton - Viola Concerto [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ozL-R0yWhPs/mqdefault.jpg "William Walton - Viola Concerto [With score]
Composer: Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 1902 – 8 March 1983)
Orchestra: Sofia Symphonic Orchestra
Conductor: Ljubka Biagioni
Viola: Simonide Braconi
Viola Concerto, written in 1928/ revised in 1961
00:00 - I. Andante comodo
09:02 - II. Vivo, con molto preciso
13:34 - III. Allegro moderato
In 1928, the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham suggested to Walton that he write a concerto for the eminent violist Lionel Tertis. The composer agreed and started work on it almost immediately; on completion he sent it to Tertis who, much to Waltons disappointment, rejected it. In his biography, My Viola and I (Elek, 1974) Tertis relented: I had not learnt to appreciate Waltons style. The innovations in his musical language which now seem so logical and so truly in the mainstream of music then struck me as far-fetched. The composer and violist Paul Hindemith gave the first performance in London in October 1929, when the Sunday Times critic Ernest Newman wrote, somewhat unenthusiastically, The composer has a grasp of musical logic, a sense of fitness and a command of craftsmanship that is very unusual in a young man. In 1960, and again in 1961, Walton ever the perfectionist extensively revised the work, but it has never been among his most-admired compositions.
Tertis original reservations may well have had something to do with the fact that the concerto is not, in any obvious sense, a showpiece for the viola. It certainly makes virtuosic demands on the soloist, but its strengths lie in the intimate dialogues between viola and orchestra and the intricate, almost casual, way in which the themes are crafted.
In the first movement, Andante commodo, the music, though lyrical, is haunted by feelings of restlessness, with frequent time changes and shifts of harmony. There is even a trace of impatience in the way, rising to its highest register, the viola delivers its own version of the second subject.
The second movement, Vivo con molto preciso, has three main thematic ideas. It opens with fast, rhythmic figures tossed between orchestra and soloist, abruptly cut short by quiet chords in the brass and followed by lively explorations by the soloist. The movement closes with a more contemplative version of the opening theme, and ends quietly.
The final movement, Allegro moderato, the longest of the three, starts with a rather unpromising melody for bassoon, soon to be expanded, enriched, and brought to a climax by the viola before being passed to the orchestra. The poetic sincerity with which Walton returns to earlier themes as the movement draws to a close is among the concertos finest moments.
[allmusic.com]
Original Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nElLYUTuGgs
NB: Please note that both audio and sheet music are NOT mine. If you have complains about this upload concerning copyright issues, please write me a direct message. In that case, I will delete the video immediately.")
![Haram Kim - 24 Pieces for Instruments No. 3 Little French [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p5GVl6Eb7f4/mqdefault.jpg "Haram Kim - 24 Pieces for Instruments No. 3 Little French [With score]
Composer: Haram Kim (b. 1998)
Performer: Haram Kim
Composers note: Please understand my lack of professionalism in sound quality and piano playing since I am major in Violin performance. I hope you enjoy the piece!")
![Edvard Grieg - 9 Romances and Songs, op. 18 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pFE6RpwHLrY/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - 9 Romances and Songs, op. 18 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: Monica Groop (Voice), Roger Vignoles (Piano)
Romances and Songs for Voice and Piano, op. 18, written in 1865-69
00:00 - I. Vandring i Skoven {Wandering in the woods}
01:57 - II. Hun er saa hvid {She is so white}
03:25 - III. En Digters sidste Sang {A poets last song}
05:42 - IV. Efteraarsstormen {Autumn storms}
09:11 - V. Poesien {Poesy}
12:57 - VI. Ungbirken {The young birch tree}
14:50 - VII. Hytten {The hut} (For danish text turn subtitles on)
16:18 - VIII. Rosenknoppen {The rosebud}
18:27 - IX. Serenade til Welhaven {Serenade to Welhaven}")
![Edvard Grieg - Two symphonic pieces, op. 14 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pNYV14alDNM/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Two symphonic pieces, op. 14 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: The Cologne Piano Duo
Deux pièces symphoniques {Two symphonic pieces} for Piano four hands, op. 14, written in 1869
00:03 - I. Adagio cantabile
04:42 - II. Allegro energico")
![Maurice Ravel - Shéhérazade [With score] (Reupload)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/paZ7LXd_wKM/mqdefault.jpg "Maurice Ravel - Shéhérazade [With score] (Reupload)
Composer: Joseph-Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 28 December 1937)
Mezzo-Soprano: Anne Sofie von Otter
Conductor: Pierre Boulez
Orchestra: The Cleveland Orchestra
Shéhérazade - Trois poèmes pour chant et orchestre sur les vers de Tristan Klingsor [Three poems for voice and orchestra on verses by Tristan Klingsor]
00:00 - I. Asie
09:54 - II. La flûte enchantée
13:02 - III. Lindifférent
Ravel was drawn to the sensual allure of the Orient as early as 1898, when he composed the Ouverture de Shéhérazade, a work which quotes a Persian melody while drawing on the spiritual ancestry of Rimsky-Korsakovs Sheherazade of 1888. He returned to its title in 1903 for this cycle of three songs for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, based on the exotic texts of the French poet Tristan Klingsor. With Shéhérazade, his first major statement for orchestra, Ravel demonstrates his mastery of muted and climactic orchestral details, while eliciting equal measures of ecstasy and restraint for the human voice.
Like the story in Rimsky-Korsakovs famous suite, Shéhérazade conjures up Eastern tales of indulgence, perversity, death and danger. The first poem, Asie opens with a hushed string tremolo, followed by a meandering oboe melody, establishing a seductive atmosphere of Oriental fantasy. The opening four lines are declaimed syllabically and recitative-like (Asia, Asia, Asia/marvelous old land of nursery tales/where fantasy sleeps like an empress/in her forest filled with mystery). Pentatonic scale figures, grace notes and fluttering strings further impart the poems chilling decadence, leading to an accelerating climax on the words I would like to see those who die for love as well as those who die for hatred. The piece falls silent and shimmers to a close, as the recitative of the opening concludes the tale over a faintly rolling timpani.
La Flute enchantée and Lindifferent, are considerably shorter than Asie, and each song concludes with a brief yet subtly modified reference to the opening theme.
La Flute enchantée is a timeless portrait of a girl listening to the sounds of a flute, while Lindifferent sometimes regarded as the most beautiful of all of Ravels songs concerns the attraction of the unattainable. If all three of the Tristan Klingsor settings in the cycle are expressions of longing, this final one finds a particularly personal tone, through false modality, and a final pandiatonically extended triad with a major ninth. After Shéhérazade, Ravel wrote no song with an erotic theme until he completed Chansons madécasses in 1926.
[allmusic.com]")
![Igor Stravinsky - Piano Concerto [Concerto for piano and wind instruments] [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pyRX_bq3Tds/mqdefault.jpg "Igor Stravinsky - Piano Concerto [Concerto for piano and wind instruments] [With score]
Composer: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June 1882 6 April 1971)
Piano: Alexander Toradze
Orchestra: Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Concerto for piano and wind instruments, written between 1923-1924
00:00 - I. Largo - Allegro - Più mosso - Maestoso
07:46 - II. Largo - Più mosso - Tempo primo
16:13 - III. Allegro - Agitato - Lento - Stringendo
In the early 1920s, the recent war having wreaked havoc on his personal finances, Igor Stravinsky set about ensuring the future security of his family by exploring avenues of musical life more immediately lucrative. One result of this was a rich series of works featuring the pianoforte in a solo role, designed quite specifically with Stravinsky himself as the pianist. In 1921, he fashioned three extracts from the ballet Petrushka into the Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka for Arthur Rubinstein. Finding, however, that he could not successfully bring off so technically demanding a work, the composer made certain that all of his forthcoming pianoforte compositions lay well within the realm of his own technical capabilities. The Concerto for Piano and Winds was composed in 1923-1924 for performance at one of Koussevitzkys Paris Concerts. It is the first representative in a new line of works that would eventually reach into the last decade of his active life, though by the time of Movements in 1959, Stravinsky was no longer in a position to give the premiere himself. In addition, the concerto is the first large-scale concert work to put to use Stravinskys new neo-Classical style. Since the premiere at the Paris Opera House on May 22, 1924, it has become one of his best-known and most dearly loved works.
Perhaps the most immediately striking aspect of the concerto, ignoring the strong affinities that the basic musical gestures have to those of the Baroque era, is the removal of the string section from the ensemble. Only the string basses remain, Stravinsky having decided that the same all-wind ensemble that he had already used in the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the Octet, and, for all intents and purposes, the opera Mavra better complemented the timbre of the pianoforte.
The work is in three movements: 1) Largo - Allegro; 2) Larghissimo; and 3) Allegro. After the mock-grandiose, fundamentally Baroque Largo orchestral introduction, the piano enters with a rhythmically energized theme from which almost all the material of the movement is drawn in one way or another. Following the precedent set in his last few piano works, the piano is used in a very percussive manner. After a very long absence, sonata form, or something very like it, has returned to Stravinskys bag of tricks in this movement. The Largo introduction comes back, much modified, as a coda. The piano begins the second movement alone, offering a lyric theme whose gentle steadiness is balanced by thick, ponderous chords beneath. Stravinsky makes room for two cadenzas as the movement unfolds. At the end of the final Allegro movement, the Largo introduction to the first movement is heard from again, only to this time fade away into a pause that suddenly bursts into the Vivo plunge to the final C major cadence. In 1950, Stravinsky made a revision of the concerto, making a few small changes of instrumentation and many more substantial alterations to the metronome and tempo markings; in the 1950 version, the title of the second movement has been changed from Larghissimo to Largo.
[allmusic.com]
Original Video: https://youtu.be/QS7d8fI9hPw")
![Francis Poulenc - Chansons gaillardes [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qGsWD9BxWXE/mqdefault.jpg "Francis Poulenc - Chansons gaillardes [With score]
-Composer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963)
-Performers: Gilles Cachemaille (voice), Pascal Rogé (piano)
Chansons gaillardes, song cycle for voice and piano, FP 42, written in 1925-26
00:00 - I. La Maîtresse volage
00:47 - II. Chanson à boire
03:21 - III. Madrigal
03:55 - IV. Invocation aux Parques
05:45 - V. Couplets bachiques
07:06 - VI. LOffrande
08:03 - VII. La Belle Jeunesse
09:41 - VIII. Sérénade
By 1926, when Heugel published the Chansons gaillardes, Poulenc was already the popular composer of the Trois Mouvements perpétuels, for piano and the hit ballet Les Biches and was in constant touch with everyone who was anyone in Paris Stravinsky (whose influence he gratefully acknowledged) and Falla, Stokowski, and Koussevitzky, Diaghilev and Landowska, Cocteau and Max Jacob, to take names at random. But if his great lyrical gifts and smartalecky chic brought him eager acclaim, he was both avid and insecure regarding technique, his private studies with Koechlin having finished but two years previously. And if the Chansons gaillardes ribald songs do not yet share the exquisite balance and appositeness of his mature mélodies, especially those set to poems by Apollinaire and Eluard, they nevertheless partake imperishably of the insouciance and brilliant whirl of the pampered playboy-composer. In The Diary of My Songs, Poulenc remarked of the Chansons gaillardes, I am fond of this collection where I tried to show that outright obscenity can adapt itself to music...The texts were found in an anthology of songs of the seventeenth century (an old edition). Wry comment on the fidelity of his mistress and frenzied panegyrics to wine and the pleasures of the bed Couplets bachiques and La belle jeunesse must be performed very fast, Poulenc noted alternate with an eerily serene prayer to the Fates and the elegant conceit of Sérénade. The airy madrigal tells little Jeanneton that, while shes lovely as an angel and sweet as a lamb, a girl without breasts is like partridge served without orange. By postmodern standards, LOffrande is the only truly obscene item in the collection a virgin offers the god of love a candle to obtain a lover and he replies that, while she waits, she could always make use of her offering (Servez-vous toujours de loffrande). The first performance of the Chansons gaillardes was given by baritone Pierre Bernac with Poulenc accompanying on May 2, 1926, in company with the premiere of the latters Trio for oboe, bassoon, and piano (dedicated to Falla), and works by Auric at a concert so well attended that over 200 people had to be turned away. From 1934 until his retirement in 1960, Bernac was Poulencs preferred interpreter, giving premieres and recording many of his songs with the composer, including two numbers from Chansons gaillardes.
[allmusic.com]")
![Francis Poulenc - Cocardes [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qOnTZGB9yCE/mqdefault.jpg "Francis Poulenc - Cocardes [With score]
-Composer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963)
-Text: Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963)
-Performers: Mario Nuvoli (Tenor), Giulino Plotino (Violin), Francesco Tamiati (Piston), Floriano Rosini (Trombone), Roberto Morini (Percussion)
Cocardes, song cycle for voice and chamber ensemble, FP 16b
00:00 - I. Miel de Narbonne
02:56 - II. Bonne dEnfant
04:26 - III. Enfant de troupe")
![Robert Schumann - Fünf Lieder {Five Songs}, op. 40 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qdHM5a5qjI4/mqdefault.jpg "Robert Schumann - Fünf Lieder {Five Songs}, op. 40 [With score]
-Composer: Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856)
-Performers: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Baritone), Christoph Eschenbach (Piano)
Fünf Lieder {Five Songs} for Voice and Piano, op. 40, written in 1840
[00:04] - I. Märzveilchen
[01:33] - II. Muttertraum
[04:19] - III. Der Soldat
[07:11] - IV. Der Spielmann
**[10:19] - V. Verratene Liebe
Schumann wrote these songs to poems by Hans Christian Andersen, an author best known today for his fairy tales, and dedicated them to the poet, who had visited Robert and Clara Schumann earlier that year. The translations were by Adalbert von Chamisso, author of the texts for Frauenliebe und -leben, which Schumann wrote during the same period. They were in the same volume that Frauenliebe came from.
He noted in the letter that he sent with a presentation copy that Andersen may very well find the settings strange, as he himself found the texts strange at first. He continued to say that as he began to understand the poems and their strangeness more deeply, his music started to become increasingly strange as well.
While the situations depicted vary widely, the songs are still linked somewhat loosely by the keys, and considerably more strongly by their place in Schumanns ongoing tendency to explore changes in moods and feelings rather than to express and develop one single emotion, as well as by that element of strangeness.
Part of the strangeness lies in a certain emotional compression; in both Muttertraum and Der Spielmann, Schumann compresses into one song the dramatic and emotional range that he unfolded over the course of a cycle in Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben, written around the same time.
Another part lies in an almost cinematic quality, such as in Muttertraum, with its changing images: the theme suggesting the mother rocking the baby in her arms, the peaceful image in the vocal lines with the more ominous underlying piano, and the growing forcefulness of the darker mood as the song ends; in Der Soldat, with the powerful scene painting from the imitation of the death march and the almost disturbingly vivid image in the postlude of the actual moment of death and the fall of the body; in Der Spielmann, with the images of dancing and the close-ups of the fiddlers deterioration; and in Verratene Liebe, as the gossip about the kiss spreads, at first quietly, and then thundering cheerfully all through the town.
[allmusic.com]")
![Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 9 [With score] (Reupload)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qynu8yNiTrY/mqdefault.jpg "Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 9 [With score] (Reupload)
-Composer: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975)
-Orchestra: WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne [WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln]
-Conductor: Rudolf Borisovich Barshai
Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, op. 70, written in 1945
00:10 - I. Allegro
05:26 - II. Moderato
11:08 - III. Presto
14:03 - IV. Largo
17:10 - V. Allegretto
Shostakovich composed this work for Schumann-sized orchestra plus percussion in the summer of 1945, and Yevgeny Mravinsky led the first performance at Leningrad on November 3 of that year. Given the size of Shostakovichs war-haunted seventh and eighth symphonies, Joseph Stalin expected a Ninth in 1945 that out-Mahlered Beethoven, in the late Boris Schwarzs phrase. In Testimony, Solomon Volkov recalled the composers saying, They wanted a fanfare from me, an ode, a majestic Ninth....I doubt that Stalin ever questioned his own genius or greatness. But when the war against Hitler was won, he went off the deep end, like a frog puffing himself up to the size of an ox, and now I was supposed to write an apotheosis of Stalin. I simply could not....My stubbornness cost me dearly.
Volkov called the Ninth a work full of sarcasm and bitterness. Disguised as an homage to Haydn, it was Shostakovichs shortest symphony since the Second of 1927, despite having five movements (the last three are played without pause). In an effort to shield Shostakovich from political fallout, conductor Mravinsky called the new symphony a joyous sigh of relief...a work directed against philistinism, which ridicules complacency and bombast, the desire to rest on ones laurels. Putting on a good face, the Soviet hierarchy echoed Mravinsky, but only temporarily.
By and large, Western critics dismissed the work as trivial. However, in his 1990 book The New Shostakovich, Ian MacDonald asserted that only a dunce could have failed to realize the composer was up to something, pointing out the code-bearing nature of recurring notes and rhythms. A Stalin motif is frighteningly present always two notes, one usually short, one long from its raucous first appearance, without musical point, in the double-exposition of a giddy Allegro movement. The opening mimic[s] the ordinary citizens carefree relief at the victorious conclusion of the war. [But] the second subject a crude quick-march, led by a two-note, tonic-dominant trombone is clearly symbolic of the Vozhd [Stalin]. MacDonald hears fights breaking out [and] for a hectic moment the music continues in two keys until the trombone wrests control, whereupon strings capitulate and the reprise ends on sneering trills, the quick-march in control.
A Moderato movement follows, with a B minor main subject for clarinet that is wan, sad-faced, with a telltale two-note pendant, and a heel-dragging second one: a chain of two-note cells [that] subtly mock conventional grief. Horns warn off [the] real feeling that breaks through briefly, whereupon happy-face clowns [usher in] a cheery scherzo...another street party [as in the first movement] that goes violently wrong.
Menacing brass octaves begin the fourth movement; then a bassoon recitative sends mixed signals, another mask that leaves the strings uneasy. The Allegretto finale erupts into action....A dark whirlwind drives the movement to a climax of teetering expectation but all that emerges is the clownish main theme, hammered out by the entire orchestra. Shostakovichs contempt is scalding. Here are your leaders, the music jeers: circus clowns. Point made, [he] summons a helter-skelter coda and slams [the Ninth] shut.
For MacDonald it is an open gesture of dissent [that] ruthlessly targeted Stalinism....Wagnerisms, the most prominent being an allusion to Wotans Leitmotif in the fourth movement, are probable expressions of the view, outlined in Testimony, of Stalin and Hitler as spiritual relatives. Shostakovich paid dearly indeed for the snub; he was damned in 1948 as a formalist and blacklisted, leaving him only movie scores for income. After Stalins death in 1953 he finished a Tenth Symphony, in whose scherzo the Vozhd himself makes one last, unforgettably terrifying appearance.
[allmusic.com]")
![Edvard Grieg - Hjertets melodier {Melodies of the Heart}, op. 5 [With score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rNVmcNIR0NU/mqdefault.jpg "Edvard Grieg - Hjertets melodier {Melodies of the Heart}, op. 5 [With score]
-Composer: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
-Performers: Monica Groop (voice), Love Derwinger (Piano)
Hjertets melodier {Melodies of the Heart}, for Voice and Piano, op. 5, written in 1864
00:03 - I. To brune øjne {Two brown eyes}
01:14 - II. Du fatter ei bølgernes evige gang {You grasp not the waves eternal motion}
03:00 - III. Jeg elsker dig {I love thee}
04:40 - IV. Min tanke er et mægtigt fjeld {My thought is a mighty mountain}
Grieg is known to have credited his wife Nina as being not only the finest interpreter, but the very inspiration for his collection of songs known as the Hearts Melodies for voice and piano, Op. 5. It is generally understood that his understanding of the technical capabilities and expressive possibilities of the human voice are directly attributable to her. Therefore, the sheer melodic potency of his early songs have rightfully earned them a revered place in the vocal music canon, despite their often mediocre texts. In addition, the piano writing of the early songs is well conceived, often with brief preludes and interludes, and motifs derived from the vocal lines. The early songs are typically strophic in form, which works well with text settings that often depict Norwegian folklore. Griegs early songs encompass a wide-ranging emotional palette that includes deep anguish, humor, and in the Nordic tradition, impressions of nature.
[allmusic.com]")
