At A Glance
Cosmology has inspired a number of classical works, including Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Olivier Messiaen’s From the Canyons to the Stars, and George Crumb’s Makrokosmos. Unsuk Chin, one of the most internationally admired of contemporary composers, adds to that roster with Alaraph, ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’, named after a binary star in the constellation Virgo whose pulsation resembles a a heartbeat.
The Belgian violinist Henry Vieuxtemps, an international superstar in his day, wrote his Violin Concerto No. 5 as a competition piece for the Brussels Conservatory. In the slow movement, he quotes a passage from an opera by the earlier Belgian composer André Grétry—so here is a Belgian composer quoting another Belgian composer for the delectation of students at a Belgian conservatory.
Kevin Puts is one of five composers who contributed movements to the Elements project organized by Joshua Bell. “They all have something in common,” said Bell: “They all have a tendency toward tonality and melody, which I like.” Puts’s contribution represents the element Earth, originally in the company of Water, Fire, Air, and Space.
It was during youthful summer weeks spent at the beaches of Cannes that Claude Debussy learned to love the sea, particularly its unpredictability, its ever-changing nature. La Mer was only his seventh major orchestral score, but it is so brilliantly assured that it sometimes seems like Debussy invented the modern orchestra.
The Belgian violinist Henry Vieuxtemps, an international superstar in his day, wrote his Violin Concerto No. 5 as a competition piece for the Brussels Conservatory. In the slow movement, he quotes a passage from an opera by the earlier Belgian composer André Grétry—so here is a Belgian composer quoting another Belgian composer for the delectation of students at a Belgian conservatory.
Kevin Puts is one of five composers who contributed movements to the Elements project organized by Joshua Bell. “They all have something in common,” said Bell: “They all have a tendency toward tonality and melody, which I like.” Puts’s contribution represents the element Earth, originally in the company of Water, Fire, Air, and Space.
It was during youthful summer weeks spent at the beaches of Cannes that Claude Debussy learned to love the sea, particularly its unpredictability, its ever-changing nature. La Mer was only his seventh major orchestral score, but it is so brilliantly assured that it sometimes seems like Debussy invented the modern orchestra.
