Tagged: Classical

Beloved and rarities abound on Drama Queens

In the 3 sonatas of Opus 10, Ludwig van Beethoven was making a statement about his pianistic abilities, and one thing he knew that would certainly attract attention was contrast. The composer asks for double fortes, throws in unexpected rests, and invents the heroic funeral movement that he would exploit in future symphonies. This is all in the third sonata in D Major.

Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, his final opera, was created in parallel with his greatest creations including The Ring and Tristan. Beginning in the 1850’s, its prose and poetry was returned to over and over again in first and second drafts, and was finally orchestrated and presented in 1882; it occupied over a quarter century in Wagner’s creative life. The work was scored with the acoustics of the newly built Bayreuth in mind and has one of the oddest operatic history’s imaginable.