#ClassicsaDay #ClassicalSpring Week 2

Classical Spring For January 2019 the #ClassicsaDay team made #ClassicalWinter then theme. It seemed only right to continue the trend and celebrate Spring. So for April 2019, everyone is encouraged to share classical works inspired by the season.

Some famous pieces may readily come to mind, such as the "Spring" movement from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," or Copland's "Appalachian Spring." I decided to avoid the obvious and dig a little deeper. 

Here are my posts for the second week of #ClassicalSpring.

4/8 Li Huanzhi - Spring Festival Suite

Chinese composer Li Huanzhi compose the suite in 1955. It depicts the celebration of the Chinese New Year. The first movement is extremely popular in China and is known separately as the Spring Festival Overture.

4/9 Henry Purcell - Thus the ever Grateful Spring

This aria appears in Act IV of Purcell's 1692 opera, "The Fairie Queen." It's part of a birthday masque for Oberon celebrating the four seasons.

4/10 Carl Hervelius - Sangen om varen (Spring Song)

Swedish composer Carl Hervelius was born in 1926. And that is all I could find out about him and this work!

4/11 Claudio Monteverdi - O Primavera, gioventù de l'anno (O Spring, youth of the year)

"O Primavera" is the ninth selection in Monteverdi's Third Book of Madrigals. This 1592 work documents Monterverdi's mastery of late-Renaissance polyphony -- and foreshadows his transition to the Baroque.

4/12 Arnold Bax - Spring Fire. symphony for orchestra

This 1913 work was written for the Norwich Festival. According to Bax, the work represents "the first uprush and impulse of Spring in the woods."