The opera Guillaume Tell by Gioachino Rossini, premiered in 1829, is the most famous musical version of Wilhelm Tell, the drama published by Friedrich von Schiller in 1804. Although the opera is hardly performed, the piece that opens it has become independent and is one of the most popular in the classical repertoire; everybody recognizes that brilliant music even if they cannot identify it.
In this article, I would like to tell you about two books: one that was recently published, and one that was never published. Both interest us because they are related to Franz Schubert. That is why I waited until this week, when we commemorate 194 years since his death, to talk about it. As every year, we remember him, and thank him endlessly for his music.
When Mr Félix José de Montes y Galloso passed away prematurely, his family (the widow and four children) suffered economic hardship. To try to alleviate the situation, the mother decided something that was not uncommon at the time: to board one of the boys at the seminary. This way, she had one less mouth to feed, while providing the boy an education that went far beyond what she could afford. The eldest son [...]
Sometimes the way a song is interpreted make us to stop and to rediscover it. Because there's something different, we hear details that we didn't previously hear in other versions; sometimes are more obvious, like unusual tempi, and sometimes more intangible: the accent on a word, a colour, the particular way the piano plays a note... And I wanted to talk about this, this week, about a song rediscovered thanks to a different interpretation.
A kind reader asked me a few days ago if we wouldn't have a "Halloween-Lied". Well, I hadn't even think about it, but... why not? We can easily find stories of spirits, ghosts, and creatures from the otherworld in the repertoire. So today we have a horror story.