New music, just released
Magdalena Gika, violin and Kishin Nagai, piano have released a CD featuring violin and piano sonatas No. 1 and 2 by Béla Bartók. The two violin sonatas (1921-22) are exactly one hundred years old. Even now, they sound very daring, with complex piano accompaniments and sharp harmonies that are not taught in conventional harmony theory.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s birth. We will be listening to a selection from his Etudes Tableaux. He saw his etudes as kind of paintings of anything. It is always risky to reduce a piano piece to a picture. After all, pictures are representations: a picture of a house is still a house even when the title suggests something else. Only music can be happy, melancholic, or longing, without further specification.
Béla Bartók. Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1.
Magdalena Gika, violin and Kishin Nagai, piano.
Sergei Rachmaninov. Études-Tableaux (Op.33). First Group.
Nikolai Lugansky, piano (photo).
