Anyone looking for a heartwarming story about a musician overcoming tremendous disadvantage, and persevering to become a national hero in his homeland, needs to look no further than the life of Danish composer Carl Nielsen. Born the seventh of 12 children, Nielsen’s father was a house painter and weekend musician who did not see a future for his son in music. Carl had other ideas however, and toiled for years playing cornet in an army band before eventually enrolling in the Royal Danish Academy of Music to study violin and composition. His grades were unimpressive by all accounts, and it took him three years to land a job in the second violin section of the Royal Danish Orchestra where he played for 16 years.

Composing was initially a secondary pursuit - when the Orchestra premiered his First Symphony in 1894, Nielsen was not in the audience, but playing from his chair in the 2nd violin section. Still, he persisted, eventually earning a modest state pension which allowed him to stop teaching violin and spend more time composing. Perseverance paid off, and by his late 30s, Nielsen had gained substantial recognition in Denmark for his music. Despite this, he never gave up his other jobs, continuing to work as a conductor and teacher even after leaving his position in the Orchestra. At his death in 1931, he was continuing to burn the candle at both ends, overseeing productions of his music, conducting and teaching. International popularity came in the 1960s when Leonard Bernstein became a champion of his music, and today Nielsen is considered Denmark’s most important composer.

Maskarade was Nielsen’s second opera, and by far his most successful. Based upon a comedy by the 18th century Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg, it was premiered in November of 1906 at the Royal Danish Theater in Copenhagen. The comic opera of masked balls and mistaken identity was an immediate success, and is today considered to be the “national opera” of Denmark. The overture, completed only a week before the opera’s premiere, sets a humorous tone from the start, as violins race madly about while woodwinds chatter and the buffoonish brass lumber. Select melodies from the opera are presented, and the overall atmosphere is of good-natured high jinks. The madcap race to the finish makes it clear that the opera intends to be an evening of cheeky antics and escapist fun, both of which have a timeless appeal. As the opera’s hero Henrik puts it in one of his arias, “In this country where sunlight is so woefully reduced, where it is dark eleven months of the year… can a young cavalier do better than to forget for a while the swamp in which we wade, and make his heart light by bathing in the cascade of dance and song and light and fire called masquerade?” Modern audiences, even in sunnier climes, continue to think that Henrik, and Nielsen, got it right.

In 1886 the 26-year-old conductor Gustav Mahler, having toiled in lesser opera houses since beginning his career six years earlier, landed the highestprofile position he had yet held when he accepted a job as conductor at the Leipzig Opera. He brought with him a reputation for being difficult, a task master whose dictatorial conducting style and heavy rehearsal schedules had already alienated orchestras, theater directors, and fellow conductors. He also brought with him a set of love songs he had written while infatuated with a soprano who worked at the theater he had just left. While these songs would eventually be published as his song cycle Songs of a Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen), several of the melodies make their initial appearance in his First Symphony, which he began writing in late 1887.

In his composing as in his conducting, Mahler struggled to find a way to convey the full breadth of his feelings and experiences. This resulted in symphonies that were far more expansive, both in length and in volume of musical material, than anything the audiences at the time had encountered. The public was mystified, and more than a bit put off, by the 1889 premiere of the work in Budapest, with one critic calling it “a parody of a symphony.” There was simply too much material for the audience to digest, and the inclusion of bird calls, raucous Bohemian village bands, and a children’s song (reworked as a funeral march) resulted in the work being dismissed by another critic as “the kind of music which for me is not music.”

Mahler was hurt, writing, “Naively, I imagined that it ... would have ... immediate appeal ... How great was my surprise and disappointment when it turned out quite differently. In Budapest, where I first performed it, my friends avoided me afterwards ... I went about like a leper and an outlaw.” Mahler would go on to rework the piece multiple times. Over the coming years he would delete an entire movement, add (then remove) descriptive movement titles, invoke (then also remove) the title “Titan” (after the novel by Jean Paul), and generally tinker with the work in hopes of garnering public approval. Although Mahler conducted the work more often during his lifetime than any of his other compositions, broad acceptance of the symphony would not come until the 1960s, when Leonard Bernstein became its champion. Today it is a concert hall staple, finally achieving the recognition and worldwide affection that its composer longed to witness.

At the top of the opening movement, Mahler writes “Wie en Naturlaut” (“like the sound of nature”), and it is immediately clear that this is not a “normal” symphonic introduction. The entire string section holds the pitch A strung out over a full seven octaves and barely audible. The effect is one of extraordinary stillness, like a vast meadow before dawn. The upper woodwinds join with a series of descending intervals which hint at nature awakening. Three trumpets, positioned offstage (they will enter the stage later during the movement), play a distant hunting call and birds begin to chirp. A solo clarinet “cuckoos” loudly and a pair of horns offer snippets of a lazy melody. Eventually, the full orchestra is gradually awakened and the cellos ease into the main melody for the movement, which comes directly from the second song in Mahler’s Wayfarer cycle, “ Ging heut Morgan über’s Feld ” (“I Went This Morning Over the Field”). This sunny “walking music” will serve as the primary theme for the movement as it is passed around the orchestra in various incarnations, accompanied by everpresent bird calls. A momentary return to the opening “stillness” music ushers in a quartet of horns playing hunting music which slowly gathers energy, culminating in a joyous return of the main theme, this time with more spring in its step. The highspirited romp concludes humorously as the timpani and the rest of the orchestra “chase” each other to a jubilant, madcap conclusion.

The second movement is an unapologetic Ländler, a folk dance in ¾ time that Mahler would undoubtedly have heard growing up in his Bohemian village. Heavy basses set the foot-stomping mood as the rest of the orchestra leaps and spins. A contrasting middle section slows considerably, becoming more reminiscent of a ballroom waltz than a bar room romp. The highbrow sophistication is short lived, however, and the raucous music returns, eventually spinning itself into a wild and rowdy conclusion.

The third movement marks the point at which early audiences and critics threw up their hands, mystified. Inspired by a woodcut titled How the Animals Bury the Hunter by Austrian painter Moritz von Schwind, Mahler utilizes what at the time were considered highly unconventional techniques to tell the story of the parade of animals and village musicians carrying a hunter’s coffin through the woods. The movement begins with quiet footsteps in the timpani, on top of which a lone double bassist plays a farcical version of the tune most commonly called “Frère Jacques,” but in an unsettling minor mode. Early audiences had no idea what to make of this use of an altered children’s song to begin a symphonic movement. The macabre tune is passed around the lower instruments of the orchestra in a kind of ghoulish round, following which, in a section Mahler marked “with parody,” a raucous village band appears playing klezmer music. The swooping clarinets and trumpets, accompanied by percussion and the string players tapping their bows against their strings, must surely have led the audience to think that Mahler had gone mad. Next, the listener is inexplicably treated to a tender rendition of another of the Wayfarer songs, “ Die zwei blauen Augen ” (“The Two Blue Eyes”), exquisitely scored for harp, woodwinds, and violins. The remainder of the movement brings these three themes together in one of Mahler’s most evocative and unsettling scores.

The sense of impending danger is fully realized as, without pause, the fourth movement begins with a primal scream of pain from the full orchestra. Mahler described the opening of this final movement as a "flash of lightning from a dark cloud," saying "It is simply the cry of a wounded heart." The sense of a reckoning with destiny percolates throughout the movement as Mahler recounts themes from previous movements, much as Beethoven did in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony. Eventually, the full brass section announces that victory has been achieved and the remainder of the work is a vast, celebratory explosion of sound. Near the end, in another completely unexpected moment, Mahler instructs the seven horns to stand and play with their bells raised, explaining that “the horns must cut through the massive sound in a chorale of salvation from paradise after the waves of hell.” The effect is heartstopping and brings this fiercely inventive masterpiece to an electrifying conclusion.

Kevin Puts (pronounced like the verb “to put”) doesn’t mind if you call his music cinematic. Where many contemporary classical composers might bristle at having their music compared to film music, Puts takes it as a compliment. Interviewed in 2021, he noted, “In our field, in the field of new music, we are often criticized for being too cinematic or writing music that is too close to film music, but I have never really understood the aversion to these comparisons. I find it kind of flattering, actually, because there is so much film music that I love so much, but also because as a composer I want to tell the story with great impact for it to really hit home emotionally for the audience. And the best film composers are after the same thing.”

It’s clear that musicians, audiences, and critics worldwide agree that Puts is on to something, as his operas, symphonies, concertos, and chamber music continue to elicit the kind of accolades and admiration that any composer would envy. His 2012 opera Silent Night was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music; the recording of his triple concerto Contact received the 2023 GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Classical Composition; and his fourth opera The Hours was premiered to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera in 2022 with Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara, and Joyce DiDonato in the starring roles. Puts’ music, broadly tonal and unapologetically accessible, has tapped into the emotions of 21st-century music lovers in a unique and powerful way, and audiences continue to clamor for more from this distinctive and compelling artist. Puts’ Marimba Concerto was originally composed in 1997, when Puts was a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music, and later revised in 2021. He has remarked that it represents his “most direct and unguarded voice as a composer.” He writes that “The Marimba Concerto reflects my love of Mozart’s piano concertos, works with instrumentation similar to that of this concerto, i.e., a keyboard instrument with chamber orchestra. I decided to write a piece which is lyrical throughout and to feature the marimba in both melodic and ornamental roles. The influence of Mozart lies mainly in the relationship between the soloist and orchestra, one of near equality in which the marimba continually interacts with the instruments of the orchestra. The overriding message is one of optimism and exuberance.”

Composed in three movements—fast, slow, fast, like a Mozart concerto—each movement bears a subtitle taken from the poetry of Puts’ aunt, Fleda Brown. The first movement, “‘...terrific sun on the brink’ (Flowing),” opens with a tender melody in the violins accompanied by rustling lower strings. The tune blooms as instruments enter and eventually grows into an expansive, full orchestra theme. The energy increases when the marimba enters, ornamenting the melodies in the orchestra. Because the marimba cannot sustain the sound like a piano, there is a constant rhythmic energy to the music as notes must be continually restruck to create a melody. The tension increases somewhat in a central section featuring flashes of sound from the orchestra as the soloist continues the restless perpetual motion playing. A mesmerizing cadenza for the solo marimba epitomizes the movement’s title as cascading rivers of sound create an entrancing mood. The strings reenter, and the movement quickly fades away, as if in mid-sentence.

A poignant melody opens the second movement “‘...into the quick of losses’ (Broad and Deliberate).” Utilizing only the string instruments of the orchestra, the mood is melancholy as the strings offer a tender, but increasingly sorrowful theme. The marimba joins the gentle pathos and eventually takes over, expanding on the melody. Orchestra and soloist join forces, taking turns with the theme, eventually building to a heart-wrenching climax. A tender denouement follows, the music dissipating until only the memory of the sound remains.

The final movement, “‘...logarithms, exponents, the damnedest of metaphors” (Presto non troppo),” opens with a manic energy in the marimba, accompanied by flashes of sound from the orchestra. A majestic music that begins in the brass grows to counter the frenzied marimba, as Puts reprises the tender first movement melody, tying the work together with a magnificent reminiscence. Lest we revel too long in the grandeur, the music abruptly finds another gear, and marimba and orchestra race together to a grand finish.

When asked if he specifically writes music designed to be emotionally satisfying for audiences, Puts responded, “I know what moves me. I have no idea what the audience’s tastes are, I can only imagine myself as the audience and make my decisions based on that.” Clearly, Puts has found that his music does indeed move many. Amid our 21st-century melee of sound bites and memes, it also serves as a reminder that a gifted composer with a “cinematic” sensibility is always something to be cherished.

Whether you are a classical music aficionado or simply remember seeing the film Amadeus back when it premiered in 1984, you likely know that Mozart was a bit of a prankster who didn’t shy away from, and even sought out, a good scandal. While the movie took great liberties with historical fact in order to create a fun and memorable film, the truth is that Mozart did enjoy a good dirty joke and often poked fun at the aristocracy and the clergy, both directly in his letters and indirectly through his music. It is not surprising, then, that when the composer was looking for a story on which to base a new comic opera in 1786, he eventually chose to use a play which had been banned throughout much of Europe.

The Marriage of Figaro began life as a 1782 play by the French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais. King Louis XIV, after having been offered a private reading by the author, denounced it as “detestable,” and decided that it should never be produced. Napoleon, as well as the Austrian government, agreed that the play’s portrayal of the aristocracy was simply too irreverent to be allowed to be seen, and banned it. Of course, this only served to heighten interest in the play, and secret productions proliferated. Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, decided that this material was too good to pass up and embarked on turning it into an opera, which the two of them brought to the stage in a mere six weeks in 1786.

The comic story of the servants Figaro and Susanna trying to marry, while simultaneously dodging their employ premiered in Vienna after Emperor Joseph II eventually approved its production. Despite the bans, the original play had found its way onto multiple stages by 1794, and Da Ponte had assured the emperor that he would tone down the most scandalous passages. The premiere was modestly successful, but a subsequent run in Prague was an enormous hit, and the work has remained a staple of the operatic repertoire ever since. The Marriage of Figaro continues to make lists of the greatest operas of all time to this day.

Always scrambling at the last minute, Mozart composed the Overture a mere two days before the opera’s premiere. As was customary at the time, the Overture does not contain any direct music from the opera. Rather, it is a commentary on the spirit of what is to come, a madcap romp full of sudden leaps from quiet to loud and an ever-present, manic energy. Even with no knowledge of the opera’s plot, the overture is an absolute joy, leaving no doubt that what will follow will be a zany, irreverent delight—composed by a genius who loved a good scandal and knew that we would too.