A native of Upstate New York, Timothy Judd has been a member of the Richmond Symphony violin section since 2001.
Know Your Composer
This month marked the 150th anniversary of the first performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. The premiere, led by the composer, took place on May 22, 1874 at the Church of San Marco in Milan, and was followed by subsequent performances at La Scala and in Paris. Powerfully dramatic, Verdi’
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Norman Carol, the legendary American violinist and concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1966 to 1994, passed away on April 28 in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. He was 95. Born in Philadelphia to Russian immigrant parents, Carol began playing the violin at age six, and performed his first concert at nine. Following
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Sir Andrew Davis, the renowned English conductor, passed away on April 20 following a brief battle with leukemia. He was 80. Davis served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1975 to 1988, and later as chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2013–2019). From 1989 until
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The first single from Unseen, the newest work by American composer, Michael Torke, was released earlier this month. (The full album will be available on May 10). The excerpt, No. 7 from a piece which unfolds in nine brief movements, delivers a visceral and ecstatic sense of groove. Scored for
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The story, recounted by the Russian musicologist, Leonid Sabaneyev, is so incredible that it may have been apocryphal. One day, while in Alexander Scriabin’s Moscow flat, Sabaneyev sat down at the piano and began to play a theme from Scriabin’s Fantasie in B minor, Op. 28. The composer
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George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was premiered one hundred years ago, on the snowy afternoon of February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall on Manhattan’s West 43rd Street. The 25-year-old composer was at the piano, joined by the dance band of Paul Whiteman, the noted bandleader who commissioned the
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The American composer Ron Nelson, who wrote numerous works for wind ensemble, as well as for orchestra and chorus, passed away on December 24, 2023. He was 94. Leonard Slatkin once called Nelson a “quintessential American composer,” and praised his “ability to move between conservative and newer styles with ease,
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As dean of the Second Viennese School, Arnold Schoenberg was one of the twentieth century’s greatest exponents of atonal music. Yet, Schoenberg resisted dogma. Long after developing his twelve-tone system, he asserted that “there is still much good music to be written in C major.” Weihnachtsmusik (“Christmas Music”) is
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In 2017, a previously unknown work by Dmitri Shostakovich was discovered in Moscow’s Central Archives among the documents of Vadim Borisovsky (the longtime violist of the Beethoven Quartet). It was a brief, unassuming piece entitled, Impromptu for Viola and Piano, Op. 33. The autograph on the title page was
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Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major is music rooted in nature and song. It is the work of a 28-year-old composer who was rapidly rising as one of Europe’s premier conductors, and who was coming out of a stormy love affair with Marion von Weber, the wife
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The trio sonata, which consists typically of two violins (or flutes, recorders, or oboes) and basso continuo, originated in Italy in the late sixteenth century. At first an instrumental adaptation of three-part vocal music, the form was refined and developed by Arcangelo Corelli. It is François Couperin (1668-1733), harpsichordist and
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In his later years, the cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, recalled a conversation that he had with Nina Vasilyevna, the wife of Dmitri Shostakovich. Rostropovich wondered what he could do to encourage Shostakovich to write a concerto for the cello. “Slava,” she answered, “if you want Dmitri Dmitriyevich to write something for