# Five Years of Tuesday Blogs



## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

I joined _TalkClassical_ in May of 2011, and started my Tuesday Blog a few weeks later. The landscape hasn't changed much - some of the TC lurkers have come and gone, but I have tried to stay the course, though my contributions have been limited to a few per month over the last while. _Balancing work, home and my pastimes can be a challenge!_

Allow me to take a moment to thank my fellow TC'ers - past and present - for their continued support and readership, as well as for their (too few) comments on my many posts. Looking ahead, I have many playlists on deck, so I plan to be around these parts for a while yet!

Not only have I been part of the virtual furniture in this forum for five years, this year also marked the five year anniversary of my weekly Blog and Podcast, I Think You Will Love This Music Too. To mark the occasion, I began last month a long-term project that assembles many of my podcasts and playlists in a Journey of Musical Discovery, exploring the (ahem) Classical Music repertoire in what I hope is both entertaining and somewhat educational. Please check it out here.

An Old Formula Returns… if only for this week

Since last fall, I've been posting on TC about twice a week, and my posts have either explored my old vinyl collection (in posts I like to call _Vinyl's Revenge_) and old downloads from defunct music web sites (_Once Upon the Internet_). However, not so long ago, we used to prepare playlists based on "music hyperlinks" around a common theme. We did a lot of those over the years, combining _YouTube_ videos with hot links from open source sites. One of my "go to" sites in preparing those playlists was the Music Library of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which has a very impressive collection of live chamber performances. For a few summers, we made a point of doing chamber music playlists (remember the _Summer of the String Quartet_? Or the _"In Camara" series_?)

This week, allow me to indulge in one of those "throwback" hyperlink posts, showcasing three performances from the ISGM, which have a common theme: musical democracy in the form of "large" chamber works. By large, I mean something requiring more than four players.

The works I chose present the challenge of democracy in music in two distinct ways - are these works featuring five or six _independent performers_ each having their moment in the Sun so to speak, or are they _ensemble pieces_, where the individual artists forego their individual play in favour of that of the group as a whole. You decide!

To begin, I chose *Carl Nielsen*'s _Wind Quintet_, performed by the "Musicians from Marlboro". This ensemble, with a varying lineup, was created as an extension of Vermont's Marlboro Music Festival, offering valuable touring experience to artists at the beginning of their careers, and for featuring programs of unusual as well as beloved chamber repertoire.

Since their inception, the Musicians from Marlboro have introduced such great talents as Yefim Bronfman, Pamela Frank, Richard Goode, Jaime Laredo, Murray Perahia, Paula Robison, András Schiff, Peter Serkin, Richard Stoltzman, Christian Tetzlaff, Benita Valente and Harold Wright, among others.

Next, I programmed a pair of string sextets performed by "ad-hoc" ensembles featuring well-known interpreters. When you browse the line-up of these sextets, you will see some names that garner marquee appeal, as well as great craftspeople, known for their chamber play. The two works, though merely separated by a few years, span both ends of the late Romantic period - *Tchaikovsky*'s _Souvenir de Florence_ and *Schönberg*'s still very tonal _Transfigured Night_. Despite the fact that the artists featured don't usually perform as an ensemble - in fact, these are pick-up sextets - you will be pleased to hear how "together" they actually sound!

Happy Listening!

*Carl NIELSEN (1865-1931)*
_Kvintet for Flöte, Obo, Klarinet, Horn og *****_ (Wind Quintet) in A Major FS 100 [op. 43]
Musicians from Marlboro
http://traffic.libsyn.com/gardnermuseum/nielsen_op43.mp3

*Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)*
_Souvenir de Florence_ for string sextet in D Major, TH 118 [op. 70]
Featuring Kyoko Takezawa, Cho-Lang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Scott Lee, Gary Hoffman, and Alisa Weilerstein
http://traffic.libsyn.com/gardnermuseum/tchaikovsky_op70.mp3

*Arnold SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)*
_Verklärte Nacht _for String Sextet, op. 4
Featuring Ida Kavafian, Ani Kavafian, Paul Neubauer, Roberto Diaz, Ronald Thomas, and Fred Sherry
http://traffic.libsyn.com/gardnermuseum/schoenberg_op4_afarcry.mp3


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

*We are featuring the music from this post as part of our ongoing "222 day Binge Challenge" on the For Your Listening Pleasure podcast September 29, 2021. The following notes are an update with useful links we have created or discovered since the original post.

Over the next few months, I will be creating archive pages for our posts featuring music from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. So far, none of the links found on these old posts have disappeared; the ISGM music library portal itself has changed however, with more fine-grained filters.*

ISGM Music Portal page - https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/music

Archive page for this ISGM share - https://archive.org/details/02SouvenirDeFlorenceForStringS

Happy (further) listening!


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