August's Musical Bounty

I always seem to have this silly expectation that the summer time is a time of relaxation and a slower pace to things...I think it is the residual feeling from childhood that once June hits, school's out for summer and I can just play. The reality is always that summertime is also music festival time, and my work plate suddenly becomes full of the widest variety of composers I ever perform in one condensed period of time. What I love about summers is that festival time is a time for musicians to explore, and I always inevitably end up falling in love with some newly discovered gem by a composer that I've never even heard of or finding a neglected treasure by a composer I am already very familiar with that's been overshadowed by much of their other more popular fare.

Here's a list of most of the composers (along with their dates, Wikipedia mugshots) who I'll be spending next month with:

Jake Heggie (1961 - )

Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976)

Alma Mahler (1879 - 1964)

Hans Pfitzner (1869 - 1959)

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)

Frederick Delius (1862 - 1934)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 - 1908)

Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)

Gioacchino Rossini (1792 - 1868)

Domenico Cimarosa (1749 - 1801)

Josef Mysliveček (1737 - 1781)

Niccolò Jommelli (1714 - 1774)

George Friedrich Handel (1685 - 1759)

Should be an interesting month. I can't wait to see what new musical obsessions await.