June 13, 2022
2022 marks the 157th anniversary of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in former Confederate states. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was more than two years since the Proclamation had been issued in 1863, but it took until that day for word of freedom to reach …
June 3, 2022
In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Henry David Thoreau described friendship: “They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.” So much beautiful music has come to the world through the mutual encouragement of friends. In this post, we will explore some historic friendships in classical music, when great …
May 10, 2022
Please enjoy this post by All Classical Portland’s 2022 International Arts Correspondent Sophie Lippert! Sophie is a multi-talented Portland musician and artist who has been given the opportunity to live in Tel Aviv, Israel for the next 12 months. She’ll be sharing her journey with us online and on the air with a series of …
April 27, 2022
Poetry was a major theme in the music of American composer Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944). Her 117 art songs explore a huge range of poets, from Robert Browning to Robert Burns. Amy Beach’s love of poetry also appears in a large catalogue of choral compositions, with settings of poets like Oliver Wendell Holmes, in …
April 19, 2022
All Classical Portland is proud to announce 16-year-old double bass player Maggie Carter as the 2022 Young Artist in Residence. A home-schooled high school junior, Maggie began music lessons with former Oregon Symphony bassist Nina DeCesare at age nine. She currently studies with Jordan Anderson, Principal Bass of the Seattle Symphony, and performs regularly with …
April 14, 2022
Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot were two of the bel canto era’s greatest mezzo sopranos. Sisters, and daughters of the imposing Spanish pedagogue Manuel García, Malibran and Viardot each left an indelible mark on nineteenth-century opera. Each was also a composer, a quality less celebrated during their lifetimes. Malibran, who died tragically young in 1836, …
April 11, 2022
Program director John Pitman shares his latest conversation with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, where they discuss her new CD titled Undersong. Dinnerstein chose this word, an archaic term meaning “refrain”, which can be found both in the individual pieces (Schumann’s Arabesque, and Kreisleriana; Couperin’s Les Barricade Mysterieuses), and throughout the entire program. Hear more of their …
March 25, 2022
Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot were two of the bel canto era’s greatest mezzo sopranos. Sisters, and daughters of the imposing Spanish pedagogue Manuel García, Malibran and Viardot each left an indelible mark on nineteenth-century opera. Each was also a composer, but their ability to compose was less celebrated during their lifetimes. Malibran, who died …
February 23, 2022
It is part of All Classical Portland’s mission to expand and advance knowledge of and appreciation for classical music. If you’re just starting to discover music outside the traditional classical canon, there’s no better composer to start with than that African American 20th-century composer Florence Price, whose music has been enjoying a recent resurgence in …
February 22, 2022
In his newest recording for Deutsche Grammophon (released September, 2021), Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson explores Mozart’s music in the context of composers who came before him and who helped Mozart shape his distinctive and immediately recognizable style. Ólafsson speaks with program director John Pitman about how he made connections between Mozart and Carl Philipp Emanuel …
