In Reference to Murder

Sunday Music Treat

This is the third in my Halloween-themed music selections for the month; the first two used the "Dies Irae" chant (Liszt's Totentanz and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique). Here's a different piece but still spooky enough for Halloween, the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. It's based on a literary poem by Henri Cazalis and deals with the French superstition that says Death comes out at the stroke of midnight each Halloween, summoning the dead to join in a dance.

Sunday Music Treat

Last Sunday, I featured Franz Lizst's Totentanz, which includes the iconic Dies Irae chant melody, as part of the "spooky music" theme for October. This week, here's another use of the same Dies Irae chant, this time in the Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz, the last movement which is titled "Witches Sabbath":

 

Sunday Music Treat

'Tis the month of Halloween, so it seems appropriate to feature "spooky" music this month. What better than the Totentanz (literally "Dance of Death") by Franz Liszt. The work includes the iconic Gregorian chant "Dies Irae," used in my Scott Drayco novel, Dies Irae. Here's a performance with pianist Beatrice Berrut and the Berlin Philharmonic:

Sunday Music Treat

The Leeds International Piano Competition just wrapped up, and the winner was 20-year-old American Eric Lu. Lu is about the same age as Scott Drayco when his career was cut short by tragedy, but I'm hoping that Lu has a much longer, successful, and rewarding career ahead of him. For the finals, Lu played Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, and here's the third movement from that work performed by pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the Philharmonia Orchestra:

 

Sunday Music Treat

Scott Drayco will be making his fifth appearance in the upcoming novel, The Suicide Sonata. One of the pieces that is mentioned in the book is Franz Schubert's Impromptu #3, from Opus 90. As Drayco notes, the piece has "Hints of deep sadness and a bit of acceptance of that sadness as part of being human. Not a prayer, not a plea, just an admission that dark and light were all part of the same spectrum." Here's pianist Evgeny Kissin peforming this deceptively simple work:

 

 

Sunday Music Treat

Today is Mother's Day, and Mozart was my Mom's very favorite composer. So, I thought it appropriate that today's Sunday Music Treat would be a little something she would have thoroughly enjoyed, the Andante movement from the  Piano Concerto No. 21 played by Alicia De Larrocha with the English Chamber Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis, conducting:

 

Sunday Music Treat

When former pianist Scott Drayco hurt his right hand, some people pushed him to just perform works written for the left hand only. He refused, not wanting to pursue such a career as an "oddity." Works written just for the left hand you say? Yes, they do exist, including perhaps the most famous such piece, Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I. Since tomorrow, May 7, is the anniversary of Ravel's birth in 1875, it seemed fitting to feature his composition today. Here's a recording with soloist Samson François from 1959:

 

Sunday Music Treat

I want to thank a couple of readers of Played to Death who pointed out something that seemed to be an error but was more a miscommunication on my part. It's a good case in point of how sometimes the vision in a writer's mind doesn't make it to the page in a coherent way.

In Played to Death, Scott Drayco says that the first time he sat at a piano when he was a small child, he picked out Count Basie's "Take the A Train." Now, the classic jazz piece was composed by Billy Strayhorn, who played piano and wrote arrangements for Duke Ellington's band. But what I didn't point out was that Drayco had heard the piece in the later Count Basie version. My grandfather was a drummer in a Dixieland band, and Basie was also a drummer, so that seemed fitting. Plus, Basic learned how to play the piano from his mother, just like Drayco did.

Anyway, here's the original Duke Ellington version, followed by Count Basie's version and finally Oscar Peterson's solo piano version, which would be more like what Drayco played (in fact, it's fun to image a young Drayco, his feet not able to reach the floor, playing this piece):

 

Sunday Music Treat

Yesterday was National Astronomy Day (actually there are two, one in spring and one in fall). English composer Gustav Holst composed the suite The Planets between 1914 and 1916, with eight movements, one for each planet in our solar system as known at the time (Pluto wasn't found until 1930 and has since been reclassified as a "plutoid"). Here's the movement for Jupiter, "The Bringer of Jollity," with Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic:

 

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Fans of piano music and Scott Drayco will also be happy to know Holst also composed a version for two pianos, actually before the actual orchestrations:

Sunday Music Treat

Sergei Rachmaninov (a/k/a Rachmaninoff) was born this month (April 1, 1873) and is one of Scott Drayco's favorite composers. One of Rachmaninov's pieces, the Prelude Op.23 No.5 in G minor, will be used in the upcoming Drayco book, Suicide Sonata, due out this summer. Here's another talented pianist, Vladimir Ashkenazy, performing the piece: