About The Event
Stuart-Liff Collection Library: Thursday, 18th June at 4.00 pm
Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings
The second talk of the series by Dr. Cavas Bilimoria this month will focus on Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Although Tchaikovsky was a composer of Romantic music, his idol was Mozart. He often referred to Mozart as the ‘Christ of Music’. So, in September 1880, he decided to write a serenade for strings alone, as a tribute to Mozart who had himself written many beautiful serenades. While many of these were written for a small group of musicians, Tchaikovsky’s serenade requires a full string section to bring out the wonderful sonorities woven into the music. It remains one of his most loved and most performed pieces.
Stuart-Liff Collection Library: Thursday, 2nd July at 4.00 pm
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4
In this series of talks on Western classical music, Dr. Cavas Bilimoria takes listeners through musical concepts, the lives of composers and their famous works, interspersed with examples from recorded music. The first talk this month focuses on Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
After having composed three relatively small-scale symphonies, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth was a breakthrough work. It was big, heroic and synthesised many of the stylistic and expressive elements closest to his heart—his love for Beethoven’s music, for dance music and folk music, for the Russian countryside and people and the extremes of joy and angst so intrinsic to his expressive ‘voice’.
Stuart-Liff Collection Library: Thursday, 16th July at 4.00 pm
Dvořák: New World Symphony
The second talk of the series by Dr. Cavas Bilimoria this month will focus on Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony. In 1892, having secured leave from the Prague Conservatoire, Dvořák went to America as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, a forerunner of what is today the Juilliard School. The name ‘From the New World’ which the composer himself gave his symphony clearly points to the basic idea of this work. The contact with the folk music of another land, namely the African American Spirituals and the folk music of the Native Americans had a stimulating effect on Dvořák’s imagination. As he himself said that in these African American melodies, he discovered “all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”
An NCPA Presentation
Entry free on a first come, first served basis.
