(Program)
Capital Records Recording , Printed in Canada // Antonin Dvorak // Violin Concerto
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducted by William Steinberg with soloist Nathan Milstein.
Violin Concerto in A Minor
- Allegro ma non troppo -
- Adagio ma non troppo
- Finale: Allegro giocoso ma non troppo
Georgia thunder just won’t satisfy
Like a California storm
Just when I feel like giving up
I feel the warmth of the
LA Rain…
‘LA Rain’ — Angel Snow
I first heard the 3rd movement of the Dvorak Violin Concerto as a child growing up and listening to it played on Toronto's Classical 96.3 FM radio station. I really loved the joyful spirit of the movement and I knew that I really wanted to learn it one day. Fast forward a few years and I was invited to perform the Violin Concerto with the Oakville Symphony and Maestro Roberto De Clara on March 30/31 2019 - it was the perfect opportunity for learning the full concerto. The timing of these performances ended up coinciding with my auditions for graduate schools in seven different cities last winter and my graduation recital at the end of March and so the concerto really became my "war-horse" last year! “” leslie ashworth
that’s an excerpt from my interview with violinist leslie ashworth, the soloist in the video above, about this concerto. indeed it’s the third movement of this concerto that feels most intuitively dvorák, with a main theme that has the same whistleability as the third movement of the Symphony No.9. the first two movements, with the dense and craggy instrumentation for the solo violin, are much more academic than anticipated, cerebral and at times even severe.
Every phrase reflects his simplicity and sincerity — no music is more honest than his. This is leisurely music and, as so often in Dvorák, one senses his reluctance to let go of ideas which have charmed him and which he correctly assumes will charm us. “” notes from the recording
this is my first time hearing the czech composer’s sole violin concerto. it’s not quite what i expected, especially coming off of the Symphony No.9. i think the concerto sounds better in leslie’s performance above (with a piano reduction) than with the full orchestra in the milstein recording, as this concerto’s weight falls more on the soloist than the orchestra.
(song of the week: ‘LA Rain’ — Angel Snow)
a benefit of taking your time to digest a song—an average of at least nine months in my case—is bringing the mood and atmosphere wherein you discovered it along for the ride, to perhaps dock in a completely different epoch of being (in the middle of a pandemic for example).
it was in the balminess of july of 2019 that i first heard this song, and i immediately got that greedy feeling that is concomitant with getting the gist of a good song: you want to hold on to it and never let go. this blog is an attempt to organize years of that kind of hoarding.
i like to listen to chopin in the month of august, i find in his music the same thing that’s in song: the musical equivalent of flipping over to the cooler side of a summertime pillow.
snow hails from nashville, and ‘LA Rain’ is a gem from her 2019 extended play record Arrows, which was her attempt to capture, among other things, “a love story of two people who have to let each other go.”
it sounds different now, of course, the lyrics take a more literal meaning, i’d like nothing more than summer rain and summer thunder. aside from music i can’t think of any other way to capture the particular mood an aesthetic of a season in a particular year.
Throwback to: Year 2, Week37
Click here for the full 2019/2020 roster