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Feeling tired? Need to unwind? Then how about some gentle, soothing piano music? Welcome to the the first episode of Series 5 in the Relaxing Piano Playlist! In this episode, I perform for you music by Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Scriabin, Glinka and Debussy.
0:30 - James Quinn
Hello and welcome to Episode 1 of Series 5 in the Relaxing Piano Playlist, with your host, James Quinn here at the piano, thank you very much for joining me.
I hope you enjoyed the previous Fourth series of this podcast with all the music that was on offer, and this Fifth series will of course continue in the same way . You can expect to hear some wider range of music from more additional composers as well as the familiar names that we all know and love. Just as in Series 4 there will be another special episode where you will get to hear some of my own original piano compositions. You can also expect to hear some more slow movements from Piano Concertos which you will hear the first of these in Episode 2. With all that aside, let’s go on with the music in this episode.
In this episode, you’re going to hear a number of pieces ranging from a wide variety of composers, covering the Baroque, the Classical, the Romantic and the 20th Century periods.
The first piece that you’re going to hear, comes from the Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and the piece that you’re going to hear is the Fugue in D Sharp minor which comes from the first book of his 48 Preludes & Fugues, otherwise known as the Well-Tempered Clavier.
We then make a return to the Classical composer Ludwig Beethoven for our next piece, and in this instance you’re going to hear the second movement, set to the speed of Largo Appassionato from his Piano Sonata No.2 in A, which was published in a cycle of his first three Piano Sonatas as Op.2.
The next set of pieces come from the Romantic period. The first of these comes the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, and the piece that you’re going to hear is his one of his most cherished pieces, Liebestraume No.3 in A Flat Major. He wrote just the 3 of these, and this one in particular is perhaps has the greater popularity. This is a perfect example that Liszt can indeed create a wonderful and expressive work that can indeed “sing” from the piano, in comparison to his virtuosic works.
Afterwards, we make another return to the Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin, and in this case you’re going to hear Prelude No.9 in E, which comes from his early cycle of Preludes that he published as Opus 11.
We then hear a work from a new composer added to the podcast, in the form of the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka. Born in the village of Novospasskoye on 1st of June 1804 and later died on 3rd of February 1857, he is widely considered to be described as the “Fountainhead” of the Russian Classical music. His works would become a major influence on other fellow Russian composers, especially with members known as The Five: consisting o Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. At the age of 13 Glinka attended a school for children of the nobility in Sant Petersburg, where he initially had piano lessons with Irish composer John Field and later with Charles Mayer. To give you an opportunity to hear his musical style, the piece you will hear is a standalone work of his, the Nocturne in E Flat which he wrote in the year of 1828.
Finally, we make another return to the 20th Century French Impressionistic composer Claude Debussy, where you will hear from his first cycle of 12 Preludes, the Prelude ‘Les sons et les parfums tournet dans l’air du soir’, translated as “The sounds and fragrances swirl through the evening air”, which was intact based on the poem by Charles Baudelaire entitled Harmonie du soir.
So to recap, here is the order just once more: Fugue in D Sharp minor from the Book 1of the Well Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach, Movement 2 from Piano Sonata No.2 in A from Op.2 by Beethoven, Liebestraume No.3 in A Flat by Franz Liszt, Prelude No.9 in E from Op.11 by Scriabin, Nocturne in E Flat by Mikhail Glinka, and finally ‘Les sons et les parfums tournet dans l’air du soir’ from the first set of 12 Preludes by Claude Debussy.