A native of Upstate New York, Timothy Judd has been a member of the Richmond Symphony violin section since 2001.
Know Your Composer
In 1880, immediately following the completion of his First Piano Quartet, Gabriel Fauré began work on a sonata for cello and piano. Often, when composing a new chamber work, Fauré began with the slow movement. Ultimately, the sonata failed to materialize, but the intended slow movement was published as a
Know Your Composer
Before television, internet, movies, and rock and roll, there was the secular cantata. During the late Baroque period in Italy, these dramatic vocal works were popular entertainment in wealthy, aristocratic circles. Made up of a brief sequence of recitatives and arias, the secular cantata amounted to a kind of highly
News
Menahem Pressler, the pianist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, passed away on May 6. He was 99. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, the 14-year-old Pressler hid from Nazi thugs who vandalized the shop owned by his Jewish parents during the Kristallnacht. In 1939, the family fled and emigrated,
Know Your Composer
The Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147, was Dmitri Shostakovich’s final work. The score was completed on July 5, 1975, a day before the composer entered the hospital where, just over a month later, he would succumb to the effects of terminal heart disease and lung cancer. Shostakovich
Know Your Composer
Gabriel Fauré’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 109 inhabits a world of elegance and dreamy nostalgia. It is music characterized by soft edges, buoyant motion, and an effortless sense of melody. Composed in the summer of 1917, this is one of two cello sonatas Fauré completed
Know Your Composer
Beethoven was a newcomer to Vienna when, in 1795, he completed the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major. It is bold music which was designed to showcase the young composer’s skills as one of the preeminent virtuoso pianists of the time. Although the C major Concerto was the
News
The legendary clarinetist Stanley Drucker passed away on December 19, 2022. He was 93. Born in Brooklyn, Drucker entered the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of 15, but left after a year to accept a position with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He went on to become principal clarinetist
Know Your Composer
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor opens with one of the most powerful and iconic introductions in music history. A mighty four-note descending line, stated three times in the horns, is punctuated by orchestral thunderbolts. A soaring and expansive theme emerges in the strings, accompanied by colossal
Know Your Composer
Camille Saint-Saëns was 24 years old when, during the summer of 1859, he composed Symphony No. 2 in A minor. It is a work which is both youthful and convention-defying. Intimate and compact, this music is far removed from the monumental grandeur of the “Organ Symphony,” which Saint-Saëns wrote some
Know Your Composer
The Latvian composer, Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946), began as “a young, angry and avant-garde” modernist. Over time, his music evolved to embrace consonance, simplicity, spirituality, Latvian folk influences, and “echoes of bird songs.” Composed in 2013, Vasks’ The Fruit of Silence is a choral setting of a prayer by Mother
News
Lars Vogt, the renowned German pianist and conductor, passed away on Monday, September 5. He was 51. In March of 2021, Vogt was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in his throat and liver. Born in the town of Düren in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, Vogt rose to prominence after winning
Know Your Composer
Franz Joseph Haydn’s 1798 oratorio, The Creation, begins with a shocking musical depiction of chaos which, at times, seems to anticipate the chromaticism of Wagner. This famously progressive harmony sets the stage for a masterful dramatization of the creation of the world, as outlined in the Book of Genesis.