AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 3 of 9)

Posted on October 7, 2019

Dr. and Mrs. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham.

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

Amy the composer, part 2

Perhaps because of the gender-based response she got from some reviewers for her Mass, even with only that one major work to... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 4 of 9)

Posted on October 6, 2019

Maud Powell, from the cover of the biography by Karen Shaffer, and Amy Beach, around 1914, courtesy Library of Congress; with a handwritten dedication to Maud Powell.

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

Amy and her contemporaries part 1

As Beach’s rebuttal to Dvorak’s “ladies” comment attests, Amy Beach... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 5 of 9)

Posted on October 5, 2019

Florence Price, Mary V. Dodge

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

Amy and her contemporaries part 2

Florence Price (her maiden name was Smith) was born twenty very significant years later, in a then-racially integrated community in Little Rock, Arkansas, the same one where William Grant Still grew... Read More ›

AMY BEACH and THE “GAELIC” SYMPHONY (Part 7 of 9)

Posted on October 3, 2019

PYP performed Amy Beach‘s Gaelic Symphony on Saturday, November 9, 2019, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Click here to watch our performance.

The “Gaelic” Part 2

Given that Beach’s next major work did indeed deploy old Irish folk songs, it’s easy to see why critics have assumed the “Gaelic” was written entirely in response to this debate.  The several aspects of form that the “Gaelic” has in... Read More ›

Lera Auerbach Part 1: Early Years

Posted on April 22, 2019

This series of blog entries will focus on different facets of Lera Auerbach’s life and ever-expanding universe of artistic creation. 

Lera Auerbach seems just to live more than a plain everyday human.  Here are a few of the things she’s done in the past six weeks: the world premiere of a massive work for piano, choir and orchestra (including literal cracking ice as part... Read More ›

Lera Auerbach Part 2: “Chimera”—The Backstory (1)

Posted on April 19, 2019

Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash

“Chimera”:  The Backstory

Commissioned by the Dusseldorf Symphony, John Fiore conductor.  Premiered 11/10/2006.

MOVEMENTS

1. Aegri somnia (The sick man’s dream) 2. Post tenebras lux (After darkness, light) 3. Gargoyles 4. Et in Arcadia ego (I [death] am here, even in the perfect countryside) 5. Siste, viator (Halt, traveler) 6. Humum mandere (To bite the dust) 7. Requiem for Icarus

chi·me·ra /kīˈmirə,kəˈmirə/  Noun

1. (in Greek mythology) a... Read More ›