The Hammock Papers: Harnoncourt

Showing posts with label Harnoncourt. Show all posts

07 May 2026

Happy Birthday, Johannes Brahms

Study Bach, there you will find everything.

Johannes Brahms, born on this day in 1833

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conductsVienna Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of the maestro's grand and glorious, Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45.

My introduction to Brahms came by way of this piece being played at a firepit in Naperville in August of 1989. It stuck. Thanks, Gayle. Thank you, Annie.

Heady days.

01 May 2026

Premiered.

Mozart, Score to the Overture of The Marriage of Figaro, 1786

Mozart premiered his opera The Marriage of Figaro on this day in 1786.

Anna Netrebko performs "Deh vieni non tardar" from Act Four. Maestro Harnoncourt is leading the Vienna Philharmonic ...

05 December 2025

Mozart, Requiem in D-Minor, K. 626

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Concentus Musicus Wien and the Vienna State Opera Chorus featuring Rachel Yakar (soprano), Ortrun Wenkel (alto), Kurt Equiluz (tenor), Robert Holl (bass) ...

Rest in peace, Wolfie.

01 July 2025

Furtwängler.

Okay, Harnoncourt's in the top five, but Gardiner outside the top ten?

Have you ever heard of Wilhelm Furtwängler (no offense)?

30 June 2025

Bach, Brandenburg Concertos, BWV 1046-1051

Nikolaus Harnoncourt leads Concentus Musicus Wien ...

18 April 2025

27 January 2025

Happy Birthday, Mozart

Lange, Mozart, 1790 Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born on this date in 1756.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on this date in 1756.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance for the Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Major, KV. 207. Gidon Kremer plays the fiddle ...

05 December 2024

Mozart, Requiem in D-Minor, K. 626

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Concentus Musicus Wien and the Vienna State Opera Chorus featuring Rachel Yakar (soprano), Ortrun Wenkel (alto), Kurt Equiluz (tenor), Robert Holl (bass) ...

Rest in peace, Wolfie.

14 November 2024

I’m a little bit afraid of words like "proper form" because I don’t think that there is a "proper form." Were are always on search; we are never there. And there is no "proper" interpretation of anything. The kiss of the muse is the real property. A mistake can be more inspiring than the "proper” thing. For me, security and beauty and not compatible. When you seek beauty, you have to forget security, and you have to go to the rim of catastrophe. There you find the beauty. If a musician makes a mistake, a crack, because he risks everything to get the most beautiful thing and he fails, then I thank him for this failure because it is only with this risk you can get the beauty, the real beauty. The real beauty is not available at all. If you seek security, you should make another profession.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

21 March 2024

Happy Birthday, Bach

Haussmann, Johann Sebastian Bach, 1746

Nikolaus Harnoncourt directs Concentus Musicus Wien and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir in a performance of the cantata "Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben," BWV 147 ...

16 December 2023

Happy Birthday, Beethoven

Wyeth, N.C., Beethoven and Nature, 1921

Ludwig von Beethoven was born on this day in 1770.

Nicholas Harnoncourt leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a performance of the Missa Solemnis in D Major, op. 123 ...

05 December 2023

Mozart, Requiem in D-Minor, K. 626

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts Concentus Musicus Wien with the Vienna State Opera Chorus featuring soprano, Rachel Yakar, alto, Ortrun Wenkel, tenor, Kurt Equiluz, and bass, Robert Holl ...

07 May 2023

Happy Birthday, Brahms

Johannes Brahms was born on this day in 1833.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt leads the Vienna Philharmonic and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir through Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 ...

05 December 2022

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Mozart, Requiem in D minor, K. 626

Nikolaus Harnoncourt masterfully conducts Concentus Musicus Wien ...

24 November 2022

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

A treasured gift from my friend, Kurt. This collection has become a Thanksgiving tradition.

25 November 2021

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

A treasured gift from my friend, Kurt, this collection has become a Thanksgiving tradition.

03 August 2021

Dvořák, Stabat Mater, Op. 58 (B. 71)

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe ...

12 June 2021

Premiered.

Mozart's Symphony No. 31 in D major, K.297(300a), "Paris", premiered on this day in 1778.

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, performs ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."