Teddy Wilson was an American jazz pianist. His playing was known for its elegance and grace. Teddy worked with many of the great jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lena Horne, Billy Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. He worked a lot for various jazz bands but also led his own groups from the 1920s until the 1980s. Teddy Wilson was one of the first black musicians to appear prominently with white musicians. Teddy Wilson was one of the great pianists of the swing jazz era.
Here is an audio recording of Teddy Wilson playing some jazz standards. Enjoy!
Mieczyslaw Horszowski was a Polish-American pianist. He had one of the longest performing and teaching careers in history. As a pianist, Horszowski was known for producing an unforced, beautiful singing tone, and for his skill in balancing the intellectual and emotional qualities of the music he was playing.
His repertoire was very diverse and extensive. It included composers as diverse as Honegger, d’Indy, Martinu, Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Villa-Lobos, and of course Chopin.
Mieczyslaw Horszowski was also a very respected teacher. Anton Kuerti was one of Horszowski’s students. Horszowski taught piano until a week before he died at the age of 100.
When Horszowski was 97 years old he gave a solo piano recital at Carnegie Hall. Here is a clip of him playing a Chopin Nocturne and Etude from that Carnegie Hall recital. Enjoy!
A Brazilian composer who is best known for the tangos that he wrote. Nazareth also wrote waltzes and polkas. He worked for a time as a pianist playing for silent films. Nazareth’s tangoes and other music is full of beautiful melodies and infectious dance rhythms. Ernesto Nazareth’s tangoes established him as one of the most influential Brazilian composers of the 20th century.
Confidencias means Confidences. The piece is melancholy. The title of the piece refers to lost opportunities in life. This particular piece is a hesitation waltz. I decided to post this piece because I want people to know about this composer (who I think is not as well known as he should be). I also think this piece is very beautiful.
The pianist on this recording is Iara Behs. She is one of the foremost pianists in Brazil. You can buy the recording of this piece and other pieces by Nazareth on Amazon.com. It is an excellent recording. I have a copy of this recording and I highly recommend it.
Béla Bartók was a Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso. In the early part of his career as a composer, Bartók travelled with his colleague Kodály to remote villages in order to study their folk melodies. He recorded some of the peasants in these villages singing the folk melodies native to their region. Bartok later transcribed most of these melodies as best as he could for the piano and added harmonies to the melodies.
The Three Folk Songs from Csik are melodies that Bartók recorded village peasants singing, and then transcribed for the piano. I hope you enjoy them. They are quite beautiful.
A Russian 19th century composer. He is known today by lovers of classical music for works such as his Romeo and Juliet Overture, Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto no.1 in b flat minor, his six symphonies, the Waltz of the Flowers, and the music to the ballet Swan Lake.
Tchaikovsky wrote wonderful lyrical melodies and his music is often melancholy.
Here is a lullaby written for the piano played by the famous Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (the composer’s name is sometimes spelt with a v, but he preferred to spell it with two Fs). As a pianist, Rachmaninoff was renowned for his precision, rhythmic drive, legato (smooth playing), and the clarity of texture. Being a composer himself, Rachmaninoff had a real knack for figuring out what the composer was trying to say in his music. He learned a piece of music by deconstructing it note by note in order to figure out the phrasing of the melody (the contour of the melody) and how the piece fit together as a whole.
Here is a recording of a Tchaikovsky Lullaby transcribed by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and played by Rachamaninoff himself. Note that the recording quality is very good (Rachmaninoff lived from 1873-1943). Rachmaninoff made normal recordings and also recorded piano rolls. I think that this particular recording is a piano roll because the sound quality is extremely good and does not contain any pops or background noise. Enjoy!
Max Bruch was a 19th century German composer, pianist, and violinist. He is most well known for his violin compositions. Bruch also composed a few pieces for the piano. His six pieces for piano (op.12) are fairly early works, but are full of beautiful melody. They are charming pieces that are short and lyrical.
Bruch played both the violin and the piano. He performed in public a few times as a pianist but claimed that he liked the violin more than the piano. According to Bruch the violin could “sing a melody better than the piano can, and melody is the soul of music.”
Johann Schobert (c.1735-1767) was a harpsichordist, fortepianist, and composer. He was an important influence on the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart borrowed melodies from movements of Schobert’s harpsichord sonatas and used them in some of his earliest piano concertos. He also borrowed other musical ideas from Schobert and built on those ideas in his earliest piano sonatas.
Here is a recording of Johann Schobert’s Piano Concerto in G major.
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was an Austrian composer. He has often been referred to as the the “Father of the Symphony” and the “Father of the String Quartet.” Haydn wrote about 104 symphonies and 80 string quartets. He also wrote music for the church, large scale works for orchestra, soloists, and choruses (such as masses and oratorios), and around 50 piano sonatas. It has been said that when he had an idea for a composition (whatever the instrumentation) he would sit down at the keyboard and improvise and work out musical ideas.
For over 30 years Haydn worked for the Esterhazy family. In 1790, Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy died. Haydn was invited to go to London, England by the impresario J.P. Salomon. It was only once he was out of the Esterhazy court and in London that Haydn received his first real recognition, and gratitude from people for all the fruits of his labour.
Works by Joseph Haydn and his brother Michael Haydn (also a composer) have been unjustly neglected and overshadowed by other composers such as W.A. Mozart.
Some of the music by Joseph Haydn and Michael Haydn is very interesting and in some ways better than some of W.A. Mozart’s music.
Here is a recording of two movements of a Haydn Piano Sonata played by the famous Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz live in Carnegie Hall in 1966.
Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894) Was a Belgian composer. He was born in Heusy, Belgium (a small village in Belgium). It was there that Guillaume took his first music lessons in piano from the conductor of the local conservatory brass band, Alphonse Voss.
Lekeu’s family moved to Poitiers, France in 1879 and he continued to study music with his physics teacher. Under this teacher he learnt about the music of J.S. Bach and Beethoven.
He wrote his first composition when he was 15 years old.
Lekeu studied music composition with Cesar Franck and Vincent d’Indy (two very important composers).
Lekeu composed about 50 compositions. Unfortunately most of his works are incomplete. Among his most important compositions are a violin sonata (commissioned by the great violinist Eugene Ysaye), and an orchestral Fantasy. He also composed several works for piano.
Here is a beautiful recording of Lekeu’s Violin Sonata played by Jonathan Morton on violin, and Carole Presland on the piano. Enjoy!
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer and pianist.
Debussy was an important figure in music history who broke away from the popular methods of musical composition in the 19th century. Debussy developed his own original concept of harmony and musical structure. According to Debussy, each piece of music was its own sound world and not something that should be bound by strict rules.
Here is a recording of a Nocturne for piano by Debussy.
If you like the recording of this piece you can buy it on eMusic or iTunes. You can also buy the complete cd which contains other piano works by Debussy including this piece.
Musical Treats 