Tchaikovsky’s meditative hymn is from his Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, first performed in Kyiv in 1879. You can also do nothing but be an active listener: follow the rhythms, instruments, textures, melodies, patterns as they unfold or repeat or turn themselves upside down. Dett mixed romantic idioms with the rhythms of folk music, and the spirituals he assiduously – and vitally – collected. Snatches of European folk song, collected by Bartók himself, entwine themselves round the brightness of his New World music, ending in a bravura finale.

Music for Life : 100 Works to Carry You Through - Google Books

We understand that not everyone can donate right now, but if you can afford to contribute, we promise it will be put to good use. President Roosevelt sent a note of congratulations: “It comes at a time when the world needs nothing so much as a better mutual understanding of the peoples of the earth. Nearly all the well-known pieces – three of the piano concertos, two of the symphonies – were written in Russia. For a time, Brahms turned his attentions instead to Robert and Clara’s daughter Julie, though not so that anyone would notice.

While Holst was working on the piece, he and Hardy had walked in rural Dorset, in southwest England, the region Hardy had brought so potently to fictional life. Omissions first: opera and big symphonic and choral works (with a few breakout moments) are excluded. Fiona Maddocks selects 100 classical works from across nine centuries, arguing passionately, persuasively and at times obstinately for their inclusion, putting each work in its cultural and musical context, discussing omissions, suggesting alternatives and always putting the music first.

Fiona Maddocks | Faber Fiona Maddocks | Faber

For the first full moon of 2023, the orbed choice is Fauré’s Clair de lune, an ethereal setting of words by the poet Paul Verlaine from his collection Fêtes galantes (also set by Debussy).As well as sacred music he wrote keyboard works and madrigals, leading the way in a golden age for composers of the first Elizabethan era. The way he tore them into small scraps and carefully positioned them echoed the collages he was making in his studio, when not on Rachmaninov duty.

Music for Life: 100 Classical Works to Carry You Through

He had his own way of writing down music and wanted the player to use palms, fist and forearms as well as fingers. Soon after his arrival in New York, in November 1918, amid armistice celebrations, he was mobbed, as one critic noted, by the flapper girls of Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn. For Observer readers, January’s cultural diet is now a habit: first literature, in 2020, then last year’s sequel, short films. The popularity of Vivaldi – usually topping the “most played” classical lists thanks to The Four Seasons – risks obscuring the glory of his expansive genius. These 31 pieces might lead you to aural pleasures as well as greater confidence in following your enthusiasms.This lament, with rapturous lute accompaniment, asks what can be done, what said, in the face of disaster.

Fiona Maddocks - Classical Music Fiona Maddocks - Classical Music

There’s an unrivalled pleasure in playing chamber music: a joint venture in which merely getting through can be harder, and more rewarding, than you’d ever think. I had an uncle who, intermittently and not necessarily simultaneously, wore a kilt and played the violin. The rise of online lessons means that an army of tutors awaits the chance to discover your dormant virtuoso.This is the peaceful summer residence where Rachmaninov lived in in the 1930s and where he composed the Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini and the Third symphony.