![Andreas Staub (1839).](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Untitled-design-42.png)
Reflections on a Timeless Love
It is not uncommon for the great composers—at least, those who laboured after the beginning of the classical era—to be judged on the strength of their symphonies. There is some good sense in this for, after all, the symphony is the instrumental form that is typically the grandest in scale and ambition and thereby affords the greatest range of expressive possibilities. I have always found it somewhat incongruous, however, that it is a form that generally does not feature the piano. The piano is the single most important tool of the composer and, arguably, the most expressive of all instruments. Although I love symphonies and other musical forms which exclude the piano, such as string quartets, I sometimes feel that piano music is the key that most directly unites us with the soul of the composer.
The piano, of course, is just one of the things that connects the lives and music of Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann (née Wieck) and Johannes Brahms. Love is the thing that binds them…
The Editor of Quadrant Music, Alexander Voltz, has won the symphonic section of the prestigious George Enescu International Competition in Bucharest.
Sep 03 2024
1 mins
You can imagine my surprise when I recently became aware, courtesy of my cousin Paul, of the letter below, addressed to Mr J.A, Farquar, Commissioner of the South Australian Railways.
Aug 31 2024
2 mins
The history of the Jewish state, just like that of the Holocaust, is undoubtedly unknown to these deniers of Israel’s legitimacy. They are but the latest iteration of the five Arab states’ war in 1948-49, by which they expected to destroy the fledgling Jewish state. They lost, but have since used the motley collection of Circassian, Turkish, Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese Arabs, renamed Palestinians in 1967, to ceaselessly prosecute the original war of rejection.
Aug 29 2024
8 mins