This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25, as orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg.

Johannes Brahms composed his Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25, between 1856 and 1861. It is understandable why Schoenberg was eager to orchestrate it. The quartet is a dramatic and expansive chamber work. It is made up of four movements, culminating in the famous “Rondo alla Zingarese.” Clara Schumann, Brahms’s lifelong friend and confidante, had described the piano quartet as “symphonic in breadth and power.” According to her, the quartet’s length (almost 50 minutes), the weight of its four movements and the sheer intensity of the piano part went beyond the intimate scope of chamber music.

The quartet premiered in Hamburg in 1861, with Clara herself playing the piano part in subsequent performances. Even before Schoenberg, musicians had made attempts to turn the quartet into a symphonic work. Friedrich Hermann (a Leipzig violinist and arranger) ...

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss U.S. Security of State Marco Rubio's visit to Israel, and what that demonstrates about the Trump administration's real attitude toward Israel's attack on Doha, Qatar, an act that had supposedly enraged the president himself.

Oy vey, Fritz
Teary Merz declares ‘war’ on antisemitism

Friedrich Merz grew visibly emotional at the commemoration of a rebuilt synagogue in Munich last night. The Reichenbachstrasse shul was all but destroyed in the Nazi pogroms of 1938. The German chancellor praised the building as "an expression of Jewish vitality in Germany."

Recalling the memoirs of the woman who initiated the reconstruction, Merz cited her haunting childhood question: “Had no one helped the Jews?”

Merz said he was “appalled” by a resurgence of antisemitism in Germany, calling “Never again” both a duty and a promise. He argued that his country had too often ignored how many newcomers arrived from places where antisemitism is “a state doctrine.”

“From this place I declare war, on behalf of the entire German government, on every form of old and new antisemitism in Germany,” Merz said.

“From the European perspective, increasing LNG imports from Nigeria, while encouraging regional actors to move forward with the construction of the 4,128-kilometre (2,565-mile) Trans Saharan Gas Pipeline (TSGP), represents a strategic step toward enhancing energy security.
However, the TSGP is designed to transport ‘only’ 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year, which is unlikely to satisfy Europe’s needs.
That is why European nations are counting on another large-scale project – the Nigeria Morocco Gas Pipeline (NMGP). It would run from Nigeria, through multiple West African coastal countries (Benin, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Senegal, and Mauritania), to Morocco, and then onwards to Europe.
The challenge, however, lies in the competition between the two projects, which raises questions about which will receive priority funding.”
https://businessday.ng/opinion/article/can-nigeria-become-europes-new-gas-gateway/