Weekly SpinOn:
Shaping the Modern Ear

This week’s theme focuses on orchestral works that left a lasting mark on popular culture and changed the way we listen. These pieces moved beyond the concert hall and helped shape modern expectations of musical form, sound and intensity. They influenced how music is used in film and media, and how listeners recognise patterns, colour and large-scale builds in today’s musical world.

Track 1: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 – Sergei Rachmaninov

Alexis Weissenberg · Berliner Philharmoniker · Herbert von Karajan

This recording of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto has returned to streaming services after a hard-felt long absence, re-released by Warner Classics. The concerto, completed in 1901, soon became one of the most recognisable works of its time. Its long melodic lines and clear emotional shape helped it enter modern culture in unusually direct ways. The music plays a central role in David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), appears in The Seven Year Itch (1955), and later returns in Clueless (1995) and Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) through Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself,” which takes its harmony from the slow movement.

Besides these direct appearances, the concerto belongs to the late-Romantic tradition that strongly influenced early Hollywood. Film composers such as Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Franz Waxman worked with a similar melodic richness and harmonic colour. Their approach shaped the sound of many early films, and Rachmaninov’s music — with its broad emotional arcs — stood close to the language they adopted.

Karajan recorded the audio in 1972, with a filmed performance following in 1973. It is the only recording of this concerto he ever made. His collaboration with Alexis Weissenberg during this period was marked by precision and a shared sense of structure. Weissenberg’s focused playing matches Karajan’s approach to balance and clarity, giving this version a distinct character within the concerto’s long recording history.

Within this week’s theme, Shaping the Modern Ear, the work shows how a classical score can connect to modern listening — through film quotations, through later adaptations in popular music and through the way Rachmaninov and other late-Romantic composers helped inspire the early sound of film scores.

Track 2: Boléro – Maurice Ravel

Berliner Philharmoniker · Herbert von Karajan

Ravel completed Boléro in 1928. The piece is built on a very unusual plan for its time: a single rhythm in the snare drum, a single melody and a single harmonic pattern, all repeated without interruption. The only elements that change are the orchestral colours and the gradual increase in volume. In large orchestral works before 1928, this kind of strict repetition over such a long timespan was extremely rare. Most symphonic music relied on contrast, development or variation; Boléro does not.

This structure makes the piece relevant for this week’s theme, Shaping the Modern Ear. Many later composers in the second half of the 20th century used similar ideas of clear patterns, steady pulse and slow transformation. Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams all based major works on repeating figures and incremental change — features that also define Boléro. There is no direct link between Ravel and these composers, but the resemblance between the techniques is often noted in writing about Minimal Music. Boléro shows an early large-scale example of a musical process that unfolds through time without thematic contrast.

Because of its clear structure, the piece has often been discussed in studies of how repeated patterns shape musical form in the 20th century. Its method — keeping melody and harmony constant while changing the instrumentation — stands apart from most orchestral works of its period and can be viewed as a precursor to later process-oriented scores.

Karajan recorded Boléro several times with the Berliner Philharmoniker. His versions highlight the stability of the snare drum and the precise sequence of instrumental entries, making the construction of the piece easy to hear. In the context of this week’s playlist, Boléro represents a type of writing that relies on repetition, timing and orchestral colour — elements that became important in many strands of modern and contemporary music.

Track 3: La mer: II. Jeux de vagues – Claude Debussy

Berliner Philharmoniker · Herbert von Karajan

After the long single arc of Ravel’s Boléro, our third track shows a different way in which early 20th-century composers reshaped the orchestral sound. Debussy’s La mer, completed in 1905, does not build through repetition but through constant change. The second movement, Jeux de vagues, moves quickly between short musical ideas and bright orchestral colours, creating the impression of waves that shift and break in rapid motion.

La mer is included this week because several of its musical features later became common in film and media music. Debussy’s focus on colour, soft harmonies and fluid movement is often mentioned in discussions of how early film composers developed a more atmospheric orchestral style. Writers have pointed out similarities between passages in La mer and the kind of scene-setting textures used by Bernard Herrmann, especially in films where mood and suspense depend on orchestral colour rather than strong themes. Comparable comments appear in studies of John Williams, whose broad orchestral palette in films like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is frequently linked to the French orchestral tradition of Debussy and Ravel. These connections don’t claim direct influence but show how Debussy’s approach to sound became a reference point for describing later cinematic writing.

Outside the cinema, La mer is often cited in journalism about “atmospheric” music in advertising, documentaries and television — places where shifting textures and gentle harmonic movement are used to create a setting without a clear melodic line. Because of this, the work is one of the early examples that helps explain how orchestral colour moved from the concert hall into modern media.

Karajan recorded La mer several times with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In Jeux de vagues, the quick exchanges between woodwinds, strings and brass remain very clear, allowing the listener to follow how Debussy builds movement from small details. Within this week’s theme, the piece shows how the sound world of the early 20th century helped shape what many listeners today recognise as “cinematic” or “atmospheric” music.

Track 4: Pini di Roma: IV. I pini della Via Appia – Ottorino Respighi

Berliner Philharmoniker · Herbert von Karajan

After Ravel’s long repeating pattern and Debussy’s constantly shifting textures, our final track shows yet another way early 20th-century composers shaped orchestral sound. Ottorino Respighi completed Pini di Roma in 1924. The last movement, I pini della Via Appia, begins with soft, low strings and brass. As the music continues, more instruments join step by step. The harmony changes very little; the movement grows mainly through a steady increase in volume and instrumental weight.

This makes the piece relevant for the week’s theme Shaping the Modern Ear. It presents a third method of creating form: not through repetition, and not through rapid colour changes, but through slow accumulation. The rise toward the final climax comes from the number of instruments involved, not from contrast in melody or rhythm. In studies of 20th-century orchestral writing, this type of build is often mentioned as a clear example of how composers began using orchestral mass as a structural element.

Karajan recorded Pini di Roma several times with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In the Via Appia movement, the gradual increase in sound is carefully paced: low strings and brass at the start, more instruments added in predictable steps, and finally the full brass section at maximum volume. His version makes each stage of this buildup easy to hear.

Placed at the end of this playlist, the movement shows a different kind of large-scale process — one based on rising density — and completes the set of contrasting techniques that helped shape the modern orchestral imagination.

—  Pia Bernauer (Karajan Institute, Salzburg)