by Neil McCalmont
Part of McCalmont’s List Series
Genre: Symphonic Poem- an orchestral work with extra-musical meaning (typically some sort of narrative)
Scoring: Orchestra
Era: Late Romantic
Length: 7-10 minutes
Will you recognize it? It’s a coin toss
Recommended Recording: Colin Davis and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic
Composer: Jean Sibelius (1865-1957): Sibelius is Finland’s most important composer. He established his reputation as a leading orchestral composer in the 1890s and continued to create masterful works until the mid-1920s, when he retired from public life. [Read more…]
Poor Victor Herbert, the Irish-born, German-trained cellist, conductor, and composer, has gotten the short end of the music history stick. In the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century he was one of the most acclaimed American musical figures, both as a performer and as a composer of concert works — as well as a successful grand opera (Natoma, 1911) which starred soprano Mary Garden and a young Irish tenor making his operatic debut, John McCormick. 
On Sunday evening, July 17, The Cleveland Orchestra celebrated the centenary of the National Parks Service with an Americana-themed concert titled “An American in Paris” at Blossom Music Center — their own venue located in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The night’s program consisted of works by Ravel, Copland, and Gershwin conducted by Bramwell Tovey, with guest pianist Javier Perianes.
English music doesn’t appear very often on American symphony orchestra programs — except when English conductors make guest appearances. Michael Francis brought along Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony for his Blossom Music Festival visit. On Saturday evening, July 16, he paired engaging Britannic music both urban and bucolic with Mozart’s 21st concerto featuring Australian pianist David Fung. 