Notes from David Yang

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Never, in 24 years, have we sold out St. Paul’s.

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Baroque composer Nicola Canzano will have a world premiere featured as a most special encore on the upcoming Winter Baroque concert.

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This week’s post features a chat about being a music student in Vienna with Beth Clary and Alessandra Yang

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Quick, hum a melody! What is the first tune that comes to mind?

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If you think I am going to weigh in on who serves the best lobster roll in Newburyport then you've got another thing coming.

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We need beauty in our lives, now more than ever. Here are three gifts.

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 While I’ve never birthed a baby, I have had a kidney stone. I thought I was dying. And you know what they didn’t have in 1720? Anesthesia!

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Why exactly did they wear wigs in the 17th Century? (Maybe better not to ask.) Set aside Sunday, December 22nd for our annual winter baroque concert.

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This summer, we’ll be performing piano quintets by Schumann (happy!) and Schnittke (maybe not so happy…).

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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you already know that for NCMF this summer, Alfred Nicol has written a poem about local birds

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It isn’t that music is a language, but, as it turns out, language is a type of music.

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If I could carve my own personal Mt. Rushmore of music, who would I choose to deface the side of a beautiful mountain? 

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Thinking about concerts – not ones I’ve played, but ones I have attended. Here are the top five that jumped out at me, in no particular order.

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We’re somewhere around the mid-point of the festival which began with a talk last Monday on Kurtág and ends with our final concert this Sunday.

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Maybe it is the action of sitting in a concert or lecture or open rehearsal or Hausmusik with others.

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The first Storytelling and Music and Puppet show outside today at 11:00 at Maudslay has been cancelled due to weather

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Transplanted to a different continent, these sold-out concerts feel like a vindication of the vision I call “community-oriented” chamber music.

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‍Musicians are modern-day itinerant minstrels. Stephanie, one of our festival artists this summer (violin) and I have been trying to find a time to record a conversation.

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When I was a teenager, I got a job one summer working as a bike messenger in New York.

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How does one come up with a name for a new ensemble? There are composers, artists, Institutions, violin makers, myth-related names,, or sometimes a group is named after a member of the ensemble, but oddly, architects haven’t yet made the cut.

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When rural Americans finally got electricity in the 1930’s and 40’s, decades after the cities, many went outside just to look back at their illuminated houses.

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Hungarian composer György Ligeti was born into a Jewish family in 1923 and grew up under the vile reigns of both the Nazi and Soviet regimes.

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He then had the idea of adding to the four instruments a piano part for his wife Clara, and the resulting piano quintet was written in less than three weeks.

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This summer marks another joyful collaboration with the actor, director, impresario, and his band of merry puppeteers. 

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This was decided upon in a highly scientific manner. Take a look and let me know which favorite bird I left out...

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Long-time NCMF audience members are aware that I am an ardent fan of 98-year-old composer György Kurtág

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Twelve iconic birds of Newburyport for string quartet and...theremin? 

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Sometimes I’d buy a book, often I’d just browse, open up a volume, read the first paragraph. 

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Composers are a curious lot, interested in everything and anything. 

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Ravel was an ardent collector of Art Nouveau and Art Deco with its stylized and stylish ideals

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Brahms, Schumann, Kurtag, Schnittke, Ligeti, Liszt, a world premiere by Castillo with theremin, puppet shows, oh my!

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Haydn's music reflects a time of great political and social upheaval.

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This summer we’ll feature two piano quintets that are a study in contrast.

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Our roster of artists for this summer along with some of their favorite meals. Is there a better way to get to know someone?

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On Tuesday, I had the privilege to discuss the composer Arnold Schoenberg with his son, Larry.

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I’ve said about all I can about the Mozart and Schoenberg trios and how great they are.

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A thoughtful reader challenged my observation that the Mozart is more difficult than the Schoenberg.

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Most of us have had kind and generous teachers that left a lasting impression.

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Buckle your seat belts! The program consists of the Schoenberg String Trio and Mozart’s Divertimento in Eb.

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Goethe said "music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music." That sounds good but what does it really mean?

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Sometimes the process of figuring out the right question is as important as the answer. 

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What is the difference between a modern and "historic" cello and why use one over another?

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I’m delighted to announce we have a new board member, Maryellen Moreland.

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The feedback from NCMF Winter Baroque has been rolling in and is overwhelmingly positive.

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There is a new look for Winter Baroque this year (tickets go on sale today!).

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I’ve returned to the tried and true holiday formula of not programming anything composed after 1750.

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After the call informing me that one of the artists had tested positive...

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Thomas Baltzar’s jewel of a piece, his Prelude, packs more in two minutes than some composers stuff into an entire symphony.

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There are certain very specific and individualized sounds we associate with childhood.

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This winter, I’ve been heading out on pre-dawn rides to train for what was supposed to be a slightly insane three-day, 400-mile bicycle trip

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Musicians travel - a lot - so I asked this summer’s artists to list a favorite place or two in the world.

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Have you ever wondered how exactly we keep this thing running? And...some great news!

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Musicians are itinerant; you go where the work is.

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After traveling through Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, we finally crossed the Alps into Italy

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One of the most original composers of the 20th Century, Janáček had a hot-blooded disposition and a pronounced appetite for the opposite sex.

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If Mozart drove a car, what kind of car would he have? (One thinks about such things when sitting on a transcontinental flight.)

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 "Looking back," Paul told me, “I would not have lived the same life without all this music because it is so important to me.”

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Thanks to an older kid in my orchestra back in 1982, I attended a chamber music camp in Vermont.

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If the concerto represents the individual against massed forces, unaccompanied works feel like an internalization of this struggle within an individual.

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In 1772, the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment ran head-on into early romanticism.

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Life is like that sometimes – everything can be fine one minute and then suddenly go all topsy-turvy.

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It is the anticipation of knowing what’s coming that might be classical music’s most sublime pleasure.

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Shostakovich’s late quartets provide one of the most intimate confessionals of personal feelings ever vouchsafed by a composer in his music.

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For the final concert of Summer 2023 with the world premiere based on Rhina's poem you can pay what you want - one dollar, one hundred dollars.

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It was as if I were witnessing the birth of a new composition in real time, not unlike a musical version of watching Harry Potter step out from behind the Cloak of Invisibility. 

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By all accounts, I think I can report that summer 2023, our twenty-second season, was a smashing success.

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I’m still coming down from the summer– Schoenberg, Shostakovich, “The Jury,” everything and everyone who turned up

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Musicians strive to play expressively, whereas actors can communicate directly with expression.

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I enjoy when instruments employ artifice to imitate non-instruments:

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When you were thirteen, what did you dream about doing when you grew up?

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Art expresses our deepest emotions. Ecstasy and grief, tranquility, bustle, anger, even frustration

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Recently I’ve been chewing over the joy I take in this profession due to my love of music vs. the satisfaction I take in the process

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Thank you so much for all your emails flagellating my beloved instrument.

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It is a weird thing, writing down music, if you think about it.

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For composers, it is often easier to get a first performance of a new piece than a second.

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A peek into the mind of a musician embarking upon her career.

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Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet is widely considered to be a visionary work.

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Tickets for the 2021 NCMF Winter Baroque concert have gone live and, as promised, the concert will be a doozy.

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In 1982 I received the best birthday present of all time: a Sony Walkman WM-R2.

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I love winter: the low afternoon sun, footsteps crunching on new snow, huddling in bed under a comforter...

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"Even if they cut off both my hands and I have to hold my pen in my teeth I shall go on writing music."

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David chats with Sébastien van Kuijk whose visitwas foiled by COVID-19

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Playing baroque music is a kind of going back to the basic ingredients of our art form.

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The concept of infinity is beyond the capacity of the human brain to conceptualize.

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Bringing music to the streets: Covid 19, the summer of 2020, and "quartet caroling" in Newburyport neighborhoods .

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For 19 years, the festival has taken over the town for a week in August.

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March is coming, spring is not far behind, and that means piano recital.

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The pain started as a dull ache in my abdomen around New Rochelle; by Stamford I was doubled over in agony.

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If Bach is God, Beethoven is Man, and the meaning of "beklemmt."

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Our 18th Season begins with a recital by Michael Brown, pianist and composer.

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I will occasionally post conversations with the artists who were scheduled to come this summer.

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Last year the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone passed away at the age of 91.

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There were a few weeks when Jon Deak emailed me a page of the manuscript every day.

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The complicated personal background to Shostakovich’s 6th String Quartet.

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David reflects on composers, compositions, and the act of composing.

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Does anyone in Newburyport really need an introduction to the National Treasure that is Rhina?

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Recently I’ve noticed the call of a Very Loud Bird I don’t recall hearing outside my window in the morning.

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David talks with composer Ania Vu about her new work written for the NCMF Winter Baroque concert.

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‍‍I started cooking in grad school when I procured a copy of Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cookbook.”

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David offers some suggestions for music to lessen the coronavirus anxiety.