Robert Parkins performs “Salome’s Dance” and other works recorded on Duke Chapel’s Aeolian organ

This video premiered on Friday, January 8, 2021.

View the program for this concert.

Salome’s Dance, recorded by Robert Parkins on the renovated Aeolian organ (1932) in Duke Chapel, was released by Loft Recordings in the spring of 2019. Dr. Parkins has selected seven of the 18 tracks, introduced by him with brief notes on each piece. Works by African American composers Florence Price and Adolphus Hailstork are followed by music of former Duke composer Robert Ward and current Wake Forest composer Dan Locklair. The title track, “Dance of the Seven Veils” from Richard Strauss’s opera Salome, was transcribed for organ by Dr. Parkins (“. . . a complete success, as the organ proves an ideal means for realizing the colorful exoticism of the orchestral original.”– Fanfare)

Robert Parkins is the University Organist and Professor of the Practice of Music at Duke.

Beethoven’s 250th anniversary: R. Larry Todd plays the Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 2 No. 2

This video premiered on Friday, December 18.

Video is introduced with prefatory notes by Professor R. Larry Todd

Beethoven: Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 2 No. 2

I. Allegro vivace (begins at 17:55)
II: Largo appassionato (begins at 25:05)
III: Scherzo: Allegretto (begins at 31:47)
IV: Rondo: Grazioso (begins at 35:31)

To help celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), R. Larry Todd offers a new recording and discussion of the Piano Sonata in A major, Op. 2 No. 2 (1796). A product of the composer’s early Viennese years, the sonata reveals Beethoven’s efforts to find his own creative voice even as he embraces the high classicism of Haydn and Mozart. The result is an innovative, four-movement sonata dedicated to Beethoven’s teacher, Haydn, but also exploring what would become an idiosyncratic marker of Beethoven’s own style-the determined use of musical conflicts, accomplished in this case through unexpected, at times quirky changes in dynamics, articulation (legato vs. staccato), and register.

R. Larry Todd is Arts & Sciences Professor of Music, and co-author, with Marc Moskovitz, of Beethoven’s Cello: Five Sonatas and Their World (Boydell & Brewer, 2017), 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award.

Fall 2020 Undergraduate Showcase

 

This video premiered on Friday, December 11

View the program for this concert

Highlights from undergraduate performances in the Fall 2020 semester

Thorin Chappel (harp), Fauré: Une Chatelaine en sa Tour
Debosir Ghosh (piano), Rachmaninoff: Prelude in G sharp Minor, Op. 32 no. 12
Claire Li (piano), Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C Major, Op. 53 – Allegro con brio
Jacques Quartet, Dvořák: String Quartet Op. 106 in G Major – Mvt. 1
Bill Guo (alto sax), Singelée: Duo Concertant, Op. 55, Mvt. I. Risoluto
Caleb Woo (alto sax), Decruck: Sonate – Mvt. I. Très modéré, expressif
Duke University Saxophone Quartet, Piazzolla: Libertango, arr. Thomas Schön