Brahms, Sort of

Often an orchestra will take a survey of their members to determine which composer they most enjoy playing. By huge numbers, Brahms is always the winner. Brahms. It took me many years of playing to totally get Brahms. He is still not one of my most favorites but lovely to play.

Although I also love to play Bach, I am a true lover of post-Romantic era music. During this period (1850-1900), composers began to write music associated with their national folk cultures. The Russian style of music began with its composers including Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Borodin. Also my very favorite composers from the other areas of the world began writing music from their roots as well. Those composers included Smetana and Sibelius. (One of the piano teacher’s at my school was the great-grandson of Sibelius.)

But one of my most favorites, Antonin Dvorak was also a composer of this era. I will go anywhere to play Dvorak. I will go anywhere to play Tchaikovsky. I love to play music that has a Slavic feel to it.

My most favorite piece of music to play is Tchaikovsky’s 5^th Symphony. It is very bass heavy and it is the only piece of music that we basses were not told to quiet down! It is hard. It is a blast to play. It is the one that has the famous horn concerto in one of the movements.

I will always remember reading through it the first time. We were playing the final movement furiously then turned to the last page of the piece. There, on top of the page was written PRESTO. That means: No matter how fast you are now playing, hang on because it is going to be REALLY fast. And it was. The entire orchestra was in a deep sweat when the piece was finally over.

Buy it on iTunes and listen to it. If you listen really hard, you may hear the final page turn when every member of the orchestra takes a deep breath to gather enough strength to make it to the end.