Café Concert: Jenny Lin

An upright piano may not seem like the desired tool of a keyboard purist but Jenny Lin needed little rationalization for playing Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite on the upright in the WQXR Café. Stravinsky himself was said to compose not at a concert grand, but "at a tacky-sounding and usually out-of-tune upright piano that has been muted and dampened with felt,” according to a onetime description by his wife, Vera Stravinsky. What’s more, Stravinsky’s teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, advocated using uprights in orchestra works, arguing for their tinny, delicate sounds over thick, chordal opulence. The instrument may have also underscored the Russian folk sounds that characterize many of Stravinsky's early works.

You can listen to Café Concert: Jenny Lin online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Café Concert: Jenny Lin is an episode from Café Concerts by WQXR Radio.

This episode is 00:17:23 long.

This episode was published on Feb 26, 2014.

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