The Evening Concert

Beethoven was about 40 when he wrote his "Serioso" String Quartet (1810). Schumann was born the same year as the "Serioso" Quartet was composed.

Tonight's works are filled with the feeling of 'pride in one's homeland' and/or they've borrowed things from the common culture and used them in orchestral works (nationalism as it is called).

Brahms came to writing symphonies very late in his career as he (paraphrasing sources) "felt the shadow of Beethoven looming over him"...the 4th Symphony is a tour de force from it's wistful opening to the dramatic finale.

Is Beethoven's 5th Symphony the most famous piece of symphonic classical music ever? There really are people who have never heard it from start to finish. Won't you be one of them if it's your turn?

The clarinet is central to the compositions on tonight's "Music Mountain".  Alexander Fiterstein is featured. His playing was praised by the New York Times for its 'beautiful liquid clarity'.

One wonders if the Finale to Beethoven's 5th Symphony was, in it's day, considered 'the sound equivalent of The Apocalypse'? Messiaens' "Quartet for 'The Endof Time'' is.

Mozart is your main-menu-music item on tonight's all chamber music programs (as always on SUnday evenings on the "Evening Concert".

Would it be surprising to know that Holst was reading a book about astrology when he started composing "The Planets"?

J S Bach: Orchestral Suite #4 (the fmaous one) and his son C P E bach's famous cello concerto: tonight.

She reads him a different story each night until he falls asleep, thus avoiding certain death....that 'she' is Scheherazade.