Musical memories

  If you look closely at the CD cover above, you'll see Ginastera down at the bottom in third place. Although the other two pieces are lovely and world premiere recordings to boot, my love goes out to the concert variations this time. I was thrilled when my mother sent me this recording right after I moved to Germany in 1990. George Manahan and I had a friendly relationship while I lived in Richmond. We had dinner together and I went to very many of his orchestra rehearsals. We often talked about music together and I would lend him books about Mahler that he hadn't read yet. In one case, while he was rehearsing Mahler 5, he stopped during the Adagietto, turned around and asked ME what I thought about the balance between the harps and the orchestra, even though his assistant conductor was sitting up in the balcony. I was sitting down below with two of my best friends, my girlfriend and her parents. I felt like a king.  I never got to hear him conduct Ginastera, though. I belie...

  Martha Argerich plays the Schumann Piano Concerto in Amsterdam Most of Robert Schumann's music puzzles me. Perhaps because he was insane; or maybe I'm crazy. Or perhaps it is because he composed his music to go straight to the heart and my head often gets in the way of this kind of listening. Whatever it is, I am often at a loss as to what the music is trying to say. His Kinderszenen are easy enough to appreciate, but I've read few critics who have praised either his concerto for violin or the cello concerto. The Piano Concerto in a-minor , on the other hand, is one of the most frequently played and most lovely piano concerti in the concert repertoire. It is often called a woman's concerto, perhaps because the half-hour long work is not as strenuous to play as some of the other piano concerti in the repertoire.  My first introduction to the piece came at William & Mary when the first movement was to be played by a student pianist, Steven Budd, who had won that yea...