“For three hours I lived in a magic dream, intoxicated by fairies and princesses, by splendid palaces, streaming with gold, by the enchantment of fairy-tale…All my being was in cadence with those rhythms, with the radiant and fresh waves of beautiful melodies, already my friends.” Thus wrote the young artist Léon Bakst after attending the … Continued
The Houston Symphony just completed its triumphant 2018 European Tour! Get an insider’s view of the tour when Houston Symphony Principal Bass Robin Kesselman shares his experiences below. Hello everyone! I’m writing to bring you along with us on our final three tour stops. First up, the beautiful port city of blustery Hamburg, home to a brand … Continued
In the summer of 1929, the conductor Serge Koussevitzky was making plans for the 50th anniversary season of the Boston Symphony, for which he served as music director. A champion of contemporary music, he decided to mark the occasion by commissioning a symphony from one of the world’s leading composers: Igor Stravinsky. Returning to the … Continued
The Houston Symphony just completed its triumphant 2018 European Tour! Get an insider’s view of the tour when Houston Symphony principal clarinet Mark Nuccio shares his experiences below. March 14 Our first day in Warsaw, Poland started off with an 11 a.m. rehearsal for two hours. We were preparing for the first tour performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony … Continued
Leonard Bernstein first read Auden’s The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue in the summer of 1947, shortly after it was published. Auden’s extravagant, book-length poem would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1948, but it began to stir Bernstein’s musical imagination immediately. Between 1947 and 1949, he would compose an unconventional symphony … Continued
The Houston Symphony’s 2018 European Tour is underway! Get an insider’s view of the tour when Houston Symphony principal oboe Jonathan Fischer shares his experiences below. After celebrating a terrific first concert in Brussels, we had an easy bus trip over to Essen, Germany, passing through a little corner of Holland on our way. Transporting the orchestra along … Continued