Monday 10 March 2014

Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K.467 - Andante, by Mozart


From Wikipedia:

The Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, was completed on March 9, 1785 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, four weeks after the completion of the previous D minor concerto, K. 466.

The concerto has three movements:
1. Allegro maestoso; in common time. The tempo marking is in Mozart's catalog of his own works, but not in the autograph manuscript.
2. Andante in F major. In both the autograph score and in his personal catalog, Mozart notated the meter as Alla breve.
3. Allegro vivace assai

The opening movement begins quietly with a march figure, but quickly moves to a more lyrical melody interspersed with a fanfare in the winds. The music grows abruptly in volume, with the violins taking up the principal melody over the march theme, which is now played by the brass. This uplifting theme transitions to a brief, quieter interlude distinguished by a sighing motif in the brass. The march returns, eventually transitioning to the entrance of the soloist. The soloist plays a brief Eingang (a type of abbreviated Cadenza) before resolving to a trill on the dominant G while the strings play the march in C major. The piano then introduces new material in C major and begins transitioning to the dominant key of G major. Immediately after an orchestral cadence finally announces the arrival of the dominant, the music abruptly shifts to G minor in a passage that is reminiscent of the main theme of the Symphony No. 40 in that key. A series of rising and falling chromatic scales then transition the music to the true second theme of the piece, an ebullient G major theme which Mozart had previously used in his Third Horn Concerto. The usual development and recapitulation follow. There is a cadenza at the end of the movement, although Mozart's original has been lost.

The famous Andante is in three parts. The opening section is for orchestra only and features muted strings. The first violins play with a dreamlike melody over an accompaniment consisting of second violins and violas playing repeated-note triplets and the cellos and bass playing pizzicato arpeggios. All of the major melodic material of the movement is contained in this orchestral introduction, in either F major or F minor. The second section introduces the solo piano and starts off in F major. It is not a literal repeat, though, as after the first few phrases, new material is interjected which ventures off into different keys. When familiar material returns, the music is now in the dominant keys of C minor and C major. More new material in distant keys is added, which transitions to the third section of the movement. The third section begins with the dreamlike melody again, but this time in A-flat major. Over the course of this final section, the music makes it way back to the tonic keys of F minor and then F major and a short coda concludes the movement.

The final rondo movement begins with the full orchestra espousing a joyous "jumping" theme. After a short cadenza, the piano joins in and further elaborates. A "call and response" style is apparent, with the piano and ensemble exchanging parts fluidly. The soloist gets scale and arpeggio figurations that enhance the themes, as well as a short cadenza that leads right back to the main theme. The main theme appears one final time, leading to an upward rush of scales that ends on a triumphant note.

Sunday 9 March 2014

Adagio in G minor, by Tomaso Albinoni and


From Wikipedia:

The Adagio in G minor for violin, strings and organ continuo, is a neo-Baroque composition popularly attributed to the 18th-century Venetian master Tomaso Albinoni, but composed by the 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer Remo Giazotto and based on the purported discovery of a manuscript fragment from Albinoni.

Sunday 2 March 2014

August : Osage County - End Credits



From Wikipedia:

August: Osage County is a 2013 American black comedy-drama film written by Tracy Letts and based on his Pulitzer Prize–winning play by the same name. The film is directed by John Wells and produced by George Clooney, Jean Doumanian, Grant Heslov, Steve Traxler, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

The ensemble cast is led by Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, with Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, and Benedict Cumberbatch in other lead roles. The film was a modest success and received mixed reviews from critics, with much praise given to its cast, especially to Streep and Roberts who received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.

The Book Thief - Learning to Write



From Wikipedia:

The Book Thief is a 2013 American-German war drama film based on the novel of the same name by Markus Zusak, directed by Brian Percival and written by Michael Petroni, with a musical score composed by John Williams. The film stars Emily Watson, Geoffrey Rush, Sophie Nélisse, Ben Schnetzer, Nico Liersch, and Joachim Paul Assböck.

Saving Mr. Banks - End Title


From Wikipedia:

Saving Mr. Banks is a 2013 American-Australian-British biographical comedy-drama film directed by John Lee Hancock from a screenplay written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. Centered on the development of the 1964 Walt Disney Studios film Mary Poppins, the film stars Emma Thompson as author P. L. Travers and Tom Hanks as filmmaker Walt Disney, with supporting performances from Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, B. J. Novak, and Colin Farrell. Named after the father in Travers' story, the film depicts the author's fortnight-long briefing in 1961 Los Angeles as she is pursued by Disney, in his attempts to obtain the screen rights to her novels.

Produced by Walt Disney Pictures and BBC Films, Saving Mr. Banks was shot entirely in the Southern California area, primarily at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, where a majority of the film's narrative takes place. The film was released theatrically in the U.K. on November 29, 2013, and in the United States on December 13, 2013, where it was met with positive reviews, with praise directed towards the acting, screenplay, and production merits—Thompson received BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, SAG Award, and Critic's Choice Award nominations for Best Actress, while Thomas Newman's film score, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. The film was also a box office success, grossing $100 million worldwide against a $35 million budget.