 2024 – 2025 Season Calendar |
2024 – 2025 Season Calendar |
20-concert series All performances, except where noted, are held at: Find out more about the Jupiter Players and our Guest Artists. Tickets $25, $17, $10 ~ Reservations advised |
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September 9 Mad about Schumann
Hans HUBER Sonata in Bb Major Op. 135 ▪ published 1913 Huber (1852–1921) enjoyed a hugely successful career. Born in Eppenburg, he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory with Carl Reinecke and Ernst Richter between 1870 and 1874. While at the Conservatory he met Clara Schumann and Brahms, whom he admired, along with Robert Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner. “On completing his studies he became a private music tutor to the families of French industrialists in Wesserling, Alsace…. During his three years in Alsace he was able to compose to his heart’s content, and his many new works met with increasing recognition. He wrote chiefly piano music and performed his works in recitals, many of which he gave in Basel…[where he settled] in 1877. His works were readily published, and he was soon active as a music teacher, pianist and composer, receiving commissions for new works. His openness and friendly character brought him wide popularity; his works were frequently performed (especially by the Allgemeine Musikalische Gesellschaft in Basel) and highly praised…bringing him renown throughout Switzerland. Huber continued to perform as a pianist, and he was often joined in recitals by his wife, the singer Ida Petzold [New Grove Dictionary].” In 1889 he taught at the music school in Basel, and was its director between 1896 and 1917. Under his leadership the school attained far-reaching significance and, in 1905, he oversaw the addition of a music college. He spent his last years in Locarno, composing mainly sacred music. Carl REINECKE Wind Sextet in Bb Major Op. 271 ▪ published circa 1904 The Sextet—in a unique scoring for flute, oboe, clarinet, 2 horns, and bassoon—was written at age 81 by the longest-serving music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus (from 1860 to 1895) In 1844, Reinecke met Robert Schumann in person at a soirée of the Leipzig music publisher Friedrich Hofmeister [Reinecke, Memories of Robert Schumann]. They helped each other considerably, which strengthened their close relationship. Not later than the 1840s, Reinecke promoted the distribution of Schumann’s works through his concerts and chamber music ensembles, and later in his position as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Schumann found in Reinecke a pianist who understood him musically, and interpreted and comprehended his works in the way Schumann had probably conceived them—he told him, in 1848, “this is because you understand me, like few others.” Schumann also appreciated Reinecke’s own compositions. When Reinecke moved to Cologne in 1851, he was able to meet Schumann in person more often due to the geographical proximity to Düsseldorf. Later, as director of the Gewandhaus, Reinecke presented the premieres of many works by Schumann. Furthermore, in 1878, Clara Schumann’s 50th anniversary as an artist was celebrated at the Gewandhaus with performances of Robert Schumann’s music. After Schumann’s death, Reinecke produced arrangements for four hands of Schumann’s Op. 22 Piano Sonata and Piano Quartet in Eb Major, and an orchestration of Pictures from the East, along with other arrangements and transcriptions. In 1907, Reinecke recorded two piano works by Schumann on piano rolls: No. 3 from Fantasia Pieces, Op. 12, and No. 6 from Kreisleriana, Op. 16. Reinecke truly was an ardent advocate of Schumann’s music, and his efforts ensured the preservation of Schumann’s legacy. Reinecke was born in 1824 near Hamburg in the town of Altona, then under the jurisdiction of Denmark (until 1864). Taught by his father Rudolf, a widely respected teacher and music theorist, he started composing at age 7, and at 11 he made his first public appearance as a pianist. He was also a top-notch orchestral violinist; and at age 18 he toured Sweden and Denmark as a pianist, being especially successful in Copenhagen. In 1846 he was appointed court pianist to the King of Denmark in Copenhagen, where he accompanied the violin virtuoso Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst and gave solo recitals. As a teacher of composition and piano he had few equals; and as the director of the Leipzig Conservatory, he transformed it into one of the most renowned in Europe. Among his many students were Grieg, Bruch, Sinding, Svendsen, Janáček, Weingartner, Albeníz, Delius, Arthur Sullivan, Ethel Smyth, and George Chadwick. As conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra he achieved a high level of virtuosity from his players. And not least, “As a composer Reinecke was best known for his numerous piano compositions, representing virtually every musical form of the time and stylistically nearer to Schumann than to Mendelssohn.... His chamber music is distinguished [New Grove Dictionary].” Salomon JADASSOHN Notturno in G Major Op. 133 ▪ 1896 Alongside Reinecke, Jadassohn (1831–1902) was regarded as the leading composer of the Leipzig School, continuing the tradition of Romanticism inspired by Mendelssohn and Schumann. While considered a master of counterpoint and harmony, he acknowledged, in his writings and his works, the fundamental importance of beautiful melody in composition. Born in Breslau, Jadassohn enrolled in the Leipzig Conservatory in 1848, but after a year he left to study piano with the nemesis Liszt in Weimar from 1849 to 1852. He returned to the Conservatory to complete his studies in theory and composition and remained in Leipzig, first as a piano teacher, then as the conductor of the Leipzig Synagogue Choir (1865), the Psalterion Choral Society (1866), and the Musikverein Euterpe concerts (1867–1869). In 1871 Jadassohn was appointed a teacher of harmony, counterpoint, composition, and piano at the Conservatory; and in 1893 he was made royal professor. Among his pupils were Edvard Grieg, Frederick Delius, and Ferruccio Busoni. The University of Leipzig also gave him an honorary doctorate in 1887. As a composer, he wrote over 140 works. The Jadassohn scholar Klaus-Peter Koch contends that the Jadassohn’s music is not better known today for 2 reasons: as a Jew, he was a victim of the anti-Semitism of Wilhelmine Germany; and he was overshadowed by his colleague, Carl Reinecke. Robert SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in Eb Major Op. 44 ▪ 1842 Schumann composed the Quintet in less than 3 weeks during a creative spurt, with the piano part for Clara in mind. However, she was unwell when it was first performed at a private party in December 1842, so Felix Mendelssohn was called upon to play the demanding part, which he sight-read. At the Quintet’s first public performance on 8 January 1843 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Clara was the soloist. It was an immediate success. She wrote in her diary that it was “Magnificent—a work filled with energy and freshness.” The Quintet was published on her birthday—13 September 1843. The composer Hector Berlioz, also a leading critic at that time, was visiting from Paris, and his praise for the work did more than anything else to establish Schumann’s reputation throughout Europe. The 20th century musicologist Homer Ulrich viewed the Quintet as “noble, exuberant, and vital.” |
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September 23 Crème de la Crème
Michèl YOST Duo for Two Clarinets Op. 10 No. 6 ▪ circa 1785 Yost (1754–1786), a Parisian composer and brilliant virtuoso, cofounded a French clarinet school. He received his early education from his Swiss father, who played the trumpet in the French cavalry, and from military bandsmen. He later studied with Joseph Beer, who also taught Heinrich Baermann. (Beer’s performances at the Concerts Spirituel in Paris were major cultural events. His gentle, nimble tone and virtuosity inspired French composers to rewrite oboe parts for the clarinet and to feature the instrument in symphonies and concertos.) Yost himself was distinguished for the extraordinary beauty of his tone and the accuracy of his playing, which brought him fame beyond France. Before his early death at age 32, Yost wrote concertos, quartets, and duets which were published under his first name. Praised for their meticulous craftsmanship, they were performed throughout Europe; his clarinet concertos were especially popular. Many of his works were also written in collaboration with Johann Christoph Vogel. Among his pupils was Jean Xavier Lefèvre, whose beautiful sound and clean execution were praised by François-Joseph Fétis, the influential Belgian critic. Cécile CHAMINADE Piano Trio No. 2 in A minor Op. 34 ▪ 1887 Chaminade is the foremost French woman composer of the late Romantic era, and is known chiefly for her character pieces for piano as well as salon songs—elegant, tuneful, and often witty. She was born in Paris in 1857 into a prosperous family. First taught by her mother, she was composing by the age of 7; two of her piano mazurkas appeared in print in a magazine around this time. Their neighbor, Georges Bizet, noticed her talent while visiting the Chaminades in August 1869, and dubbed her the “Petite Mozart.” Since her father was against a music education at the Conservatoire, she studied privately at home. In 1875 she gave her first public recital, after which she performed numerous concert tours, particularly in England, where Queen Victoria became her fan. In the 1890s Chaminade visited Her Majesty at Windsor Castle several times, and one of her compositions, the song Reste, was dedicated to Princess Beatrice. While in London during Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (the 60th anniversary of her reign), Chaminade received a Jubilee Medal. And at Victoria’s funeral in January 1901, the ceremonies included a performance of her Prélude for organ. President Theodore Roosevelt also invited her to play at the White House. Before her star faded with the onset of the Great War, almost all her compositions sold well during her lifetime; and there were some 200 Chaminade Clubs in the United States alone. In 1913 Chaminade was the first woman composer ever to be granted the Legion of Honor award. The composer Ambroise Thomas said, “This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman.” Yet she died a recluse in Monaco in 1944, her music nearly forgotten. Francis POULENC L’invitation au château FP 138 ▪ 1947 In July 1947, when Anouilh announced that The Invitation to the Castle was almost completed, he asked Poulenc to write a single amusing waltz for the comedy. Poulenc not only provided one waltz, but an irresistible, sensual suite of infectious dances. It is music of great personality. Premiered on 15 November 1947, the collaboration between Anouilh and Poulenc was a success. In 1950, the dramatist Christopher Fry made an adaptation in English—Ring Round the Moon—which had its first production at the Globe Theatre starring Paul Scofield, Claire Bloom, and Margaret Rutherford. The plot centers around a ball hosted by a young man who disapproves of the engagement of his twin brother—the light confection of mistaken identities and heartbreak schemes is joyful and perfect in its portrayal of a Cinderella finding her true love at the unexpected ball. The 11 short musical movements include the Boston, a Waltz brillante and Waltz of the little moles, Tango (with a French twist), Gavotte, Polka, and Tarantella. The Boston enjoyed popularity in the early 1920s, but it was soon upstaged by the Charleston and Black Bottom. Gabriel FAURÉ Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 15 ▪ 1876–1879 / revised 1883 During the years Fauré composed his first Piano Quartet, he became engaged to Marianne Viardot after a 5-year courtship, but she broke off the engagement in October 1877 after only 3 months. Although his heart was broken, he reasoned, in retrospect, “Perhaps the break was not a bad thing for me. The Viardot family might have deflected me from my proper path.” (Marianne’s mother, Pauline, was the noted composer and mezzo-soprano.) The Piano Quartet, with its endless resourcefulness in harmony and melodic invention, premiered on 14 February 1880 at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique, with Fauré at the piano. The revised version with a new finale premiered 5 April 1884, again with Fauré as the pianist. Fauré (1845–1924) was born in Paniers, the youngest of 6 children. He recalled, “I grew up, a rather quiet well-behaved child, in an area of great beauty. But the only thing I remember really clearly is the harmonium in that little chapel. Every time I could get away I ran there—and I regaled myself.… I played atrociously…no method at all, quite without technique, but I do remember that I was happy.” The esteemed critic Harold Schonberg wrote in The Lives of the Great Composers, “One of the few important French composers not trained at the Conservatoire, Fauré instead studied at the École Niedermeyer [where he was a boarder for 11 years, from the age of 9]. Among his teachers was Saint-Saëns, and Fauré later said that he owed everything to his older colleague. In those days, the middle 1850s, Saint-Saëns was one of the progressives, and he introduced his pupils to Wagner and Liszt as well as to Bach and Mozart. Later he supported Fauré with encouragement and help, finding jobs and publishers for him. Fauré probably had a better musical education at the Niedermeyer than he would have received at the Conservatoire, which was largely a factory for producing virtuosos and fashionable composers. Thanks to Saint-Saëns, Fauré was introduced to the whole range of music.” In the 1870s Fauré worked as an organist and teacher, and served during the Franco-Prussian War. He also composed and regularly visited Saint-Saëns’s salon, where he met all the members of Parisian musical society. When the Société Nationale de Musique was established on 25 February 1871, upon the instigation of Saint-Saëns and Romaine Bussin, Fauré was among its founding members. The Société sought to develop a new French idiom with an emphasis on finesse, delicacy, and nuance, and thus laid the groundwork for the impressionism of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. |
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October 7 Out of Judaism
Joel ENGEL Freilechs Dance Op. 21 ▪ 1919 Freylekhs are lively circle or line dances commonly performed at weddings. Engel (1868–1927) is regarded as the “Father of the Renaissance of Jewish Music.” The Russian composer, critic, and folklorist was born in Berdiansk, Crimea, and studied law before switching to studies with Sergey Taneyev and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov at the Moscow Conservatory. After graduating, he worked as a music critic for the newspaper Russkiya vedomosty from 1897 to 1919. Concurrently, he composed. Engel also became interested in Jewish folk music—he collected, arranged, performed, and published the songs of Eastern European Jews. He went on excursions to the shtetls of Eastern Europe, writing down the villagers’ songs and then composed music inspired by his findings. In addition, he promoted his interest with lectures on Jewish folk music, and encouraged other Jewish composers to create a national Jewish style of classical music. In 1924 Engel moved to Palestine, settling in Tel Aviv “as a teacher and choir conductor in support of his belief that the revival of Jewish song was prerequisite for any future art of music in Israel [New Grove Dictionary].” Aleksandr KREIN Esquisses hébraïques Op. 13 ▪ 1910 In Krein’s words, “The form was improvisational, after the manner of my father’s extemporizations on the violin.” The second of two sets of “Jewish Sketches” was written at the urging of Joel Engel, who encouraged Krein to explore his own Jewish musical heritage. The piece earned immediate acclaim, establishing Krein as a major new voice in both Russian and Jewish music. Critics were particularly struck by the use of the classical string quartet with a clarinet line that evoked the idiosyncratic melody and intonation of klezmer music, a sound sometimes said to mimic the emotive character of Jewish prayer chants, the soulful inflections once described as “laughter through tears.” Krein (1883–1951) was one of the leading modernist composers of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Nizhni Novgorod, he was one of 10 children in a family of traditional Jewish folk musicians; his father Abraham was a folk violinist. His childhood was spent performing in his father’s band, playing klezmer music (Eastern European music in the Jewish tradition). At age 13 he entered the Moscow Conservatory as a cello student, then studied music theory and composition with Sergey Taneyev. “While still a student, Krein began to compose song settings for Russian and French symbolist poetry. Upon graduation in 1908, he developed a highly original style of Jewish concert music, one that combined the new harmonic language of modern composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel and, in particular, Scriabin with the lyrical melodies and distinctive modes of Jewish folk music [Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe].” In her paper on “Herzlian Zionism and the chamber music of the New Jewish School, 1912-1925” Erin Fulton wrote, “Yoel Engel and Alexander Krein both left accounts identifying their first interest in Jewish music as an expression of ethnic identity. Krein in particular advocated nationalist music to resist absorption into Russian culture, calling his compositions a ‘turning towards Jewish melody as a protest against persecution and assimilation.’ …These political influences encouraged composers of the New Jewish School to write music that could be played by touring ensembles intended to spread Zionist ideas, and small chamber groups were best suited to such wide travel…. Correspondingly, the Society for Jewish Folk Music sponsored touring ensembles that visited Zionist organizations in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Lithuania, and Russia beginning in 1909. Special mention was given to the chamber music tours as one of the Society’s primary achievements at the organization’s third anniversary session, indicating the importance its members placed on this activity.” Mieczysław WEINBERG Aria Op. 9 ▪ 1942 Weinberg (1919–1975) is thought of as the third great Soviet composer, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich. He was born to a musical family in Warsaw. His father—a violinist and conductor in a Yiddish theater—gave the boy his first jobs as a musician, and exposed him to the traditional and liturgical Jewish music that influenced his creativity. At an early age, he taught himself to play the piano, and became sufficiently skillful to substitute for his father as conductor. In 1931 he began piano studies at the Warsaw Conservatory. Shortly after graduating in 1939, Weinberg fled the German occupation of Warsaw. He managed to escape to the Russian border after a 17-day trek, but his parents and sister were captured and burned alive. At first he was a refugee in Minsk, but when the Germans began their invasion of the Soviet Union, he was evacuated to Tashkent, where he wrote the Aria (it was not performed during his lifetime). While in Tashkent, in 1942, the composer Israel Finkelstein took an interest in him and showed Shostakovich Weinberg’s First Symphony. Shostakovich was so impressed that he arranged for Weinberg to move in 1943 to Moscow, where he lived the rest of his life. The two composers forged a close friendship that remained central to both of their lives. During the official persecution of Jews, Weinberg was imprisoned in February 1953, but was released after Stalin’s death in April. He continued composing serious works as well as vast amounts of film and cartoon music, radio plays, and music for the circus to support the family. Sergei PROKOFIEV Overture on Hebrew Themes ▪ 1919 The Overture “is the offspring of an encounter between a small group of Zionist-oriented Jewish musicians committed to Jewish culture and a non-Jew who will always be counted among the major and most influential composers of the first half of the 20th century. The work, composed in New York in 1919–20, was the result of the coincidental confluence of the Russian-born New National School in Jewish Music (the movement centered originally within the Gesellschaft für jüdische Volksmusik in St. Petersburg and its branches) and an artistic inspiration that was ignited and fulfilled when a chamber ensemble of six Russian-Jewish representatives of that New National School performed in New York during Prokofiev’s years there. They were known collectively as the Zimro Ensemble and also as the Palestine Chamber Music Ensemble: ZIMRO. The story framed by that ensemble’s birth in 1918 and its American concerts between 1919 and 1921 en route to Palestine constitutes a fascinating but short-lived and obscure episode in the history of Jewish music in the modern era. For Zimro would offer the American public…its first aural glimpse of the genuine folk melos that had flourished for at least a century in the outlying regions of the Czarist Empire and an insight into the fruits of the Gesellschaft’s mission and its activities within the Russian cultural sphere…. Zimro presented the world premiere of the Overture…[in] February (1920) at the Bohemian Club in New York—with Prokofiev as the guest pianist. The group repeated it, also with Prokofiev at the piano, in April of that year, at the ensemble’s second concert at Carnegie Hall. They played it again at Carnegie Hall at least twice: with their own pianist, Berdichevsky, in 1921; and in December 1920, possibly with guest pianist Lara Cherniavksy.…” In 1934 Prokofiev arranged it for chamber orchestra. For the complete article on Zimro by Neil Levin, see https://www.milkenarchive.org/music/volumes/view/intimate-voices/work/overture-on-hebrew-themes/ Prokofiev had a close relationship with the Bolsheviks before the Russian Revolution of 1917, but he went abroad, living in New York and Paris during most of the early years of the Soviet Union, and by the time he returned in 1935 he found cultural life under monitor—the Composers Union was formed to police the likes of Prokofiev and his more outspoken contemporary Shostakovich for alleged “formalist tendencies” considered to be intellectually elitist and anti-Soviet. Further, any freedom they may have had ended with the 1948 Zhdanov Decree, aimed at suppressing artistic self-expression. Prokofiev was now viewed as “anti-democratic” and much of his music was banned. Many concert and theater administrators refused to program his music, fearful of the consequences of supporting an artist denounced by the regime. He suffered censorship until his death in 1953. Leo ORNSTEIN Piano Quintet Op. 92 ▪ 1927 The Quintet premiered at a concert in which works by Bartók (who was also present) were performed. Gramophone has described it as “a glorious confection of Stravinsky, Ravel, Rachmaninov and East European folk idioms that almost makes up in enthusiasm what it so conspicuously lacks in discipline…. In the Quintet’s world of elementary melody and accompaniment, amplified by virtuoso texture and spiced by additive-rhythm ostinato, the piano is king.” A writer for the New World Records heard “Sweeping melodies floating beatlessly over strongly marked metric supports. In the outer movements, the mood is often epic; one is reminded of the movies of Eisenstein and the great Russian landscapes, marauding bands of Cossacks, affecting cantorial wails.… The slow movement is an eloquent expression of human sadness.” Ornstein’s obituary in the Independent recalled “An epic tonal work…recognized as a masterpiece of the genre.” Ornstein (1893–2002), the son of a Russian cantor, grew up hearing not only Jewish liturgical music, but Greek and Armenian chant, as well as Russian folk music. These influences are featured and blended in his music, together with a highly personal language of dissonant tonality. A prodigy, he was taught by his father until age 11, when he entered the St Petersburg Conservatory and studied with Alexander Glazunov. In 1907 he emigrated to New York and continued his education at the Institute of Musical Art (now Juilliard) with Bertha Fiering Tapper, the strongest single influence on his life and music. After his debut in 1911 he became a super piano virtuoso, who simultaneously outraged and riveted audiences with his unprecedented “futurist” experimental piano works. Then, after extensive touring and international fame, he abruptly ended his concert career at its height, in 1920, to pursue a quieter life of composition and teaching at the Philadelphia Musical Academy and Ornstein School of Music. A renewed interest in his music began in the 1970s with a steady increase in performances and recordings. When he died in Green Bay, Wisconsin at the age of 108, Ornstein had composed for more than 80 years and was among the longest-lived of composers. |
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October 21 The Ricordi Legacy
Casa Ricordi was founded in 1808 by Giovanni Ricordi, a violinist who had spent several months in Leipzig studying the techniques of Breitkopf & Härtel before forming his own publishing house in Milan. During his first decade in business he issued an average of 30 publications annually; in his second, the yearly average had expanded to 300. This was largely the result of securing contracts with La Scala, giving him the exclusive rights to publish the music performed at the opera house. In 1825 Giovanni purchased all their music archives. Subsequently he secured favorable contracts with the opera houses of Naples and Venice, and purchased the stock and plates of Ferdinando Artaria. By the end of 1837 he was advertising more than 10,000 publications. When Giovanni died in 1853, his son Tito continued the expansion of Ricordi. Tito's great coup was the acquisition in 1888 of the inventory of Francesco Lucca (his chief rival and Wagner’s publisher in Italy) from his widow for one million lire. Shortly before his death, Tito handed over the firm’s management to his son Giulio, who in turn was succeeded by his son Tito II. When Tito II retired in 1919, the management of the firm passed out of the hands of the Ricordi family. Giulio RICORDI Piano Trio in A Major ▪ published 1903 The Piano Trio was dedicated to the Trio Pesarese, then one of the foremost piano trio ensembles in Italy. Giulio Ricordi (1840–1912), the grandson of Giovanni Ricordi, was a highly cultured man and the best musician in the family—he played the piano, he painted, and his interest in journalism made him a strong advocate for the company’s periodicals. Born in Milan, Giulio studied composition as a youth and wrote many piano pieces and songs, some orchestral music and stage works, and quite a successful operetta, La secchia rapita. His music was usually published under the name of Jules Burgmein (or sometimes Grubmeni). He was also passionate about the unification of Italy and volunteered for military service at age 20, winning many honors for bravery in the war against the Austrians. From 1856, for a short time, he worked for his father Tito, and permanently from 1863. It was Giulio who regularly dealt with Verdi on the firm’s behalf and played a central role in Puccini’s artistic development. He served as both the editor and publisher of the operas of Verdi, Puccini, and Ponchielli, to name just three. Under his watch, Casa Ricordi became one of the most important music publishers in the world. By its 100th anniversary in 1908, the Ricordi catalog offered 110,000 publications, including the music of the composers on this program. Giulio’s death on 6 June 1912 was considered such a momentous event in the music world that his obituary received a full column in the New York Times. Giovanni Battista VIOTTI Duetto in D minor for Violin Solo W 5.23 ▪ 1821 Dedicated to his friend Luigi Cherubini, the piece requires finger-twisting dexterity that is a testament to Viotti’s own technical facility and to his compositional vision. It was written in March 1821 when he was in Paris, serving as the director of the Académie Royale de Musique. The New Grove Dictionary describes Viotti (1755–1824) as “the most influential violinist between Tartini and Paganini and the last great representative of the Italian tradition stemming from Corelli. He is considered the founder of the ‘modern’ (19th-century) French school of violin playing, and his compositions, among the finest examples of Classical violin music, exerted a strong influence on 19th-century violin style.” Born in Fontanetto da Po, the son of a blacksmith, Viotti was taken in 1766 to Turin, where he lived and was educated in the home of Prince Alfonso dal Pozzo della Cisterna. After 1770 he studied with the virtuoso Gaetano Pugnani, with whom he toured widely in Europe. His debut at the Concert Spirituel in Paris in March 1782 brought him instant success and fame, and led to frequent performances that garnered acclaim. After September 1783, however, he retired abruptly from public concerts and became court musician to Marie Antoinette at Versailles. He also established himself as a teacher and opera impresario, introducing important works, including the operas of his friend and associate Cherubini. In 1792 the French Revolution forced him to flee to London, where he conducted Italian operas and performed his own violin concerti at the Salomon Concerts. Then, in 1798, he was unjustly accused of Jacobin sympathies and went to Germany when ordered to leave. Upon his return to London in 1801 he retired from music, although he continued to perform and compose privately. Instead, he turned his attention to his wine business, which he had established before his exile. Following the failure of the business, he worked in Paris as director of the Académie Royale de Musique from 1819 to 1822, after which he returned to London. Viotti’s compositions enjoyed enormous esteem and popularity in his day. His “musical style, thoroughly Italianate in its lyricism, reflects the evolution of the Classical style, from galant to pre-Romantic, but in an entirely original and unpredictable way [Oxford Bibliographies].” His 29 violin concertos are his most important work; his favorite genre was the violin duo. Ottorino RESPIGHI Il Tramonto “The Sunset” ▪ 1914 Respighi wrote Il Tramonto after reading “The Sunset” by Percy Bysshe Shelley in an Italian translation by Roberto Ascoli. The poem is about a woman who had fallen in love with a young man who inexplicably dies. Accepting her fate, she lives on as if life “were a kind of madness, / If madness ’tis to be unlike the world” and seeks consolation in the thought of joining her departed lover: “Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!” The music is shaped by the emotional ride in Shelley’s poem as it wrestles with the mingling of love and death, the intensity of grief, the longing for peace, and the effect of time. Shelley himself was mired in complicated relationships when he wrote his poem in the spring of 1816—he was in a loveless marriage with his pregnant wife Harriet, whom he had left behind to elope with Mary Godwin (author of Frankenstein) in 1814. Percy and Mary’s first son was born in January 1816, and they would marry at the end of the year, after Harriet’s suicide. Antonino PASCULLI Ricordo di Napoli: Scherzo brillante ▪ [1875] Rachel Becker, a scholar of 19th century opera fantasies tells us that “Pasculli [1842–1924] was a fixture of Palermo musical life from his early teens till his death at age 81.” A phenomenal oboist beloved by his contemporary musicians and audiences, he was appointed a professor at the Palermo Conservatory in 1860 at the age of 18, and served as the music director of the Municipal Music Corps of Palermo from 1877 for 35 years. Pasculli was born in Palermo and raised at the Palermo Conservatory as an orphan with his violinist brother Gaetano (the Conservatory was founded as an orphanage for boys in 1618). His career began at the age of 14 when he performed at the Conservatory, and subsequently toured Europe as a virtuoso oboist with his brother. When Wagner traveled to Palermo in 1881–1882, he met Pasculli. He conducted the Corps with the oboist’s own baton, which was later donated to the Conservatory library. As a performer, Pasculli was famous for his “light and effortless bravura style.” As a composer, he wrote several dazzling opera fantasias that call for challenging feats of virtuosity, orchestral works and concertos, and concert etudes. His chamber music compositions highlight the oboe or cor anglais, and are generally for solo oboe with piano accompaniment. Giuseppe VERDI String Quartet in E minor ▪ 1873 Verdi’s only piece of chamber music was written between his opera Aida and the Requiem. He had arrived in Naples in November 1872 to oversee the local premiere of Aida, but the performance had to be postponed because Teresa Stolz, the soprano cast in the leading role, had fallen ill. With three weeks of idle time on his hands, he wrote the string quartet. It premiered on 1 April 1873, two days after the opening of Aida, at an informal concert played by local musicians in the lobby of his hotel. Verdi later recalled: “I’ve written a Quartet in my leisure moments in Naples. I had it performed one evening in my residence without attaching the least importance to it and without inviting anyone in particular. Only the seven or eight persons who usually come to visit me were present. I don’t know whether the Quartet is beautiful or ugly, but I do know that it’s a Quartet!” He continued to fret over it, and finally submitted it to his publishers 3 years later. |
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October 28 Amazing Women
The one thing the 4 women on this program had in common was the significant number of challenges they had to overcome, in their pursuit of a career in music, because they were women. Although they succeeded in varying degrees, it was not without difficulty. Amy BEACH Theme and Variations for flute and strings Op. 80 ▪ 1916 Commissioned by the San Francisco Chamber Music Society, the piece for flute and string quartet premiered on the West Coast on 28 September 28 1916. The theme is from Beach’s partsong, “An Indian Lullaby” Op. 57 No. 3, which she had composed in 1895. Beach (1867–1944) was the first successful woman composer in America, the first woman American composer to write a symphony, and the most performed composer of her generation. Born in Henniker, New Hampshire, her name was registered as Amy Marcy Cheney. She studied with well-known piano teachers, but was self-taught in composition as her musical education was curtailed. Her early feats included improvising duets before the age of 2, playing by ear in full harmony at 4, and giving public recitals at 7. Her parents allowed her to make her debut at age 16 and to solo with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at age 18, but they opposed a professional career. That same year, in 1885, she married Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a prominent physician 24 years her senior, and was known as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, as it was the custom in her day to take on her husband’s name. He limited her performances to one a year but encouraged her to compose. After Dr. Beach’s death, she toured in Europe as Amy Beach to revive her concert career and promote her compositions. Returning triumphantly to Boston in 1914, she devoted herself to concert tours, composing, and championing women composers. She gathered numerous honors and was twice received at the White House. When Beach died in 1944 in New York City, almost all of her 300-plus works in all genres had been published and performed. Her song Ecstasy sold so well that she bought the grounds for her summer house on Cape Cod with the royalties. Marguerite CANAL Violin Sonata ▪ 1922 Written while at the Villa Medici in the grand lyrical tradition of César Franck and Gabriel Fauré, the Violin Sonata is a marvel wherein the violin sings like a human voice. In the words of the music writer Thomas May, the Sonata “conveys a sense of Canal’s individuality: her distinct gifts for poignant melody; for expressing deeply felt emotion through exquisitely crafted, well-balanced textures; and for a radiant poetry all her own. …the first movement establishes a mood of gentle contemplation. The eruption of nervous energy in the second—unusually marked “Sourd et haletant” (Subdued and breathless)—makes an especially startling contrast; a middle section of troubled calm only intensifies that effect. Canal’s background as a singer and songwriter is especially evident in the soulful third movement, while the bravura finale weaves together the threads of agitated passion, melancholy, and liberating song heard throughout the Sonata.” Canal (1890–1978) was born in Toulouse to a highly cultured family—her mother was a talented pianist and her father adored music and also introduced her to poetry. At age 13 she studied with Paul Vidal when she entered the Paris Conservatoire, where Gabriel Fauré was the director. An outstanding pupil, Canal won first prizes in harmony, piano accompaniment, singing, counterpoint, and fugue. In 1917 she became one of the first women to conduct an orchestra in France—several concerts at the Trocadéro, and then at the Palais de Glace for the benefit of the wounded in World War I. In 1919 she was appointed teacher of solfège at the Paris Conservatoire, and she also won 2nd prize for her cantata, Le Poète et la fée (“The Poet and the Fairy”). The following year, she won the Prix de Rome for Don Juan, another cantata, and was congratulated by Camille Saint-Saëns. She was the second woman (after Lili Boulanger) to win the coveted prize, giving her the option to spend the next 10 years composing at the Villa Medici. She left her teaching position for Rome, but stayed only till 1925, when she returned to France and got married to Maxime Jamin, who also was her publisher. During her most productive years in the 1920s, Canal wrote songs, many of great beauty and sensitivity that reveal her love of the sea and children; chamber music; song cycles, including Amours tristes, set to her own verse and poems of other poets; and piano pieces. She later wrote her unfinished opera Tlass Atka (Le Pays Blanc), inspired by Jack London’s novel Burning Daylight, and an unfinished Requiem. Personal setbacks, including her divorce, had led to dimmed inspiration and diminished artistic output. (Her husband was a jerk who prevented the publication of her subsequent work.) She resumed teaching at the Conservatoire in 1935 until her retirement, and she continued to compose into the 1940s, but then chose to pivot to teaching. After her retirement, she suffered from poor health and lived out her life in a retirement home in Cépet. She is buried in the Cimetière Saint-Martin du Touch in Toulouse. Germaine TAILLEFERRE 3 Dances from La nouvelle Cythère ▪ 1929 In 1924 Seigei Diaghilev, the Russian promoter of the arts who revitalized ballet, commissioned Tailleferre to write music for a ballet based on Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s widely read account, Le Voyage Autour du Monde. The French navigator had discovered the island of Tahiti in 1768, during the reign of Louis XV. The ballet was to be called La Nouvelle Cythère (Cythère is the mythical home of Venus, the goddess of love) in honor of the warm welcome which he and his crew received from the native women of the “enchanting” island. Both the exotic subject and the 18th century milieu appealed to Tailleferre, persuading her to accept the commission. The work was scheduled for premiere during the 1929 season of the Ballets Russes; unfortunately, the death of Diaghilev led to the cancellation of the entire season. Tailleferre—the only female member of “Les Six”—was born in the outskirts of Paris in 1892. She first studied piano with her mother and composed an opera at age 8. In 1904 she began studying at the Paris Conservatoire, where she was a piano prodigy with a phenomenal memory and won prizes in counterpoint and harmony. However, her father was against a music career for women (he likened it to prostitution) and forced her to attend a convent school. By the time she was 14 he disowned her and she was forced to support herself by teaching private music lessons, and later she worked as a milliner as well. It was years before she was allowed to return to the Conservatoire. In revenge, she changed her father’s family name of Taillefesse to Tailleferre. At the conservatory, she studied with Debussy, Ravel, and Charles-Marie Widor; and met Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, and Arthur Honegger in 1912. Her classmate Francis Poulenc raved about her: “How kind and gentle she was!… What a charming and precious contribution her music makes!” Erik Satie declared her his “musical daughter” after hearing her play Jeux de pleine air, her piece for 2 pianos. She also began to be seen with the artistic set in Montmartre and in Montparnasse, including Picasso and Modigliani. Tailleferre officially became a member of Les Six in 1920 with Auric, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Louis Durey. Her 2 marriages ended in failure. Her first marriage in 1925 to an American caricaturist was a disaster, as her husband expected her to be French cook. Her second husband, a French lawyer whom she married in 1932, was also unsupportive and abusive. During World War II the Nazis burned her musical manuscripts to heat her house, which they had seized during the invasion of France. She also suffered a miscarriage and consistent financial instability. In the 1950s, she received a commission to write “pocket operas” for radio broadcasting, and composed four short opera bouffes that would imitate other composers’ styles using the “pastiche” principle. Later in her career, Tailleferre worked as an accompanist for a children’s music class at École alsacienne, a private school. Her final famous work, the Concerto de la fidelité for coloratura soprano and orchestra, was performed at the Paris Opera the year before she died. Although in her later years she suffered from severe rheumatism that made writing difficult, Tailleferre continued to compose and teach until a few weeks before her death in November 1983. She is buried in Quincy-Voisins near Meaux. For a detailed account of Tailleferre and her compositions see http://www.classicalmusicnow.com/tailleferre.htm Luise Adolpha LE BEAU Piano Quartet in F minor Op. 28 ▪ 1883 The fine Piano Quartet premiered on 1 December 1883 with Le Beau playing the piano part at the Leipzig Gewandhaus to great acclaim. It was dedicated to Franz Lachner, with whom she had recently completed composition studies. For much of her life Le Beau had to work against all odds as she kept hitting brick walls. Why? Because she was a woman composer. But she did what she was born to do—compose beautiful Romantic music. It has been reported that Le Beau could sing before she could speak. Born in Rastatt in 1850, the prodigy was fortunate to have supportive parents. Her father, especially, gave her the best education possible and even tutored her in subjects not offered to women in schools, and he also taught her the piano. She wrote her first piece at the age of 8. In 1866 she studied music theory with Wilhelm Kalliwoda, and in 1868 she made her debut performing Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto in G minor with the Baden Court Orchestra, which was followed by a tour to Basel, Heidelburg, and Augsburg. Le Beau then studied the piano with Clara Schumann, but after 12 lessons, they parted ways because of aesthetic differences. In 1873 she sought the advice of Hans von Bülow, who urged her to move to a larger city to expand her artistic opportunities. Eventually she went to Munich and studied composition with Josef Rheinberger and Franz Lachner. Le Beau spent 12 productive years in Munich, where she tutored girls in piano and music theory, continued to perform her own compositions, performed recitals, and wrote some of her best works, including the Piano Quartet. She also worked as a critic beginning in 1878, writing reviews for Allgemeine Deutsche Musik-Zeitung in Berlin. In 1884 Le Beau met Brahms and Eduard Hanslick in Vienna, and was politely congratulated on her compositions. Liszt called her Piano Fantasy “brilliant and idiomatic.” In the ensuing decades until her death in 1927 in Baden-Baden, even as her compositions won several prizes and she was acknowledged by major critics such as Hanslik and lauded by her contemporaries such as Brahms, Liszt, Berlioz, and Joachim, Le Beau continued to be confronted time and time again with tremendous skepticism about her abilities as a woman composer. Her autobiography reveals her resignation to this fate: “It is difficult to come to terms with such circumstances when one has dedicated her entire life to a profession, but one must be satisfied with the consciousness of having helped to build the temple of art according to one’s best knowledge and with honest intentions. I also feel satisfied that I, even with the disregard of all my musical interests, am completely free in thought and deed. I have attained this highest and most worthy goal of humankind, all of the successes of the world could not replace that for me.” Le Beau also once wrote, “Just do not limit, then, the training of girls. Rather, teach them the same things that are taught to boys. Grow accustomed to a system that has this same fundamental condition for every education, and then see what [girls] can do after acquiring technical skills and intellectual independence, rather than entrench yourselves against female capabilities by limiting the education of women!” |
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November 11 Spanish Flair
Isaac ALBÉNIZ “Asturias” from Suite Española No. 1 Op. 47 ▪ 1886 Albéniz originally titled the piece “Prelude” for a 3-movement piano suite—Chants d’Espagne—published in 1892. After his death a German publisher gave it the title Asturias and added the subtitle Leyenda (“Legend”) to make it sound exotic. However, the music has nothing to do the northern coastal region of Asturias. Instead, it is deeply connected to the fiery flamenco music of the southern region of Andalusia, mimicking on the piano the multi-layered fingering techniques of the flamenco guitar and the stomping feet of the dancers. Albéniz (1860–1909) is one of the most important musical figures in Spain, having helped to create a national idiom and an indigenous school of piano music. Many of his experiences were quite adventurous and colorful. At age 4, his performance at the Teatro Romeo in Barcelona so startled the audience that some kind of trickery was suspected, and he also made a concert tour of Catalonia with his father and sister. By age 12 he had run away from home twice. Both times he supported himself by concert tours, eventually gaining his father’s consent to his wanderings. On one occasion he was robbed of his luggage by bandits, and in 1872 (at age 12) he embarked in Cadíz as a stowaway on a freighter for South America. A precarious life in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States led him finally to San Francisco and back to Spain in 1873. He studied with Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1875–1876 and, when his money ran out, obtained a scholarship from Count Morphy to study in Brussels. Although his stay in Belgium was interrupted by a trip to Cuba and the United States, he won first prize in 1879 at the conservatory. In 1880 he met Liszt, under whom he perfected his piano technique. In 1883, after another journey to South America, he settled in Barcelona where he married, and also met Felipe Pedrell, father of the nationalist movement in Spanish music. It was Pedrell who was to inspire and guide him in the creation of music with truly Spanish roots. Around 1890 Albéniz gave up concertizing and began to take composition seriously. In 1893 he moved to Paris and was influenced by Vincent D’Indy, Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré, and Debussy. During this time he taught piano at the Schola Cantorum. In 1903, after his father died, he lived near Nice and spent his last years working on his masterpiece, the Suite Iberia for piano. He suffered from Bright’s disease and was a near invalid for several years before he died. Juan Crisostomo de ARRIAGA String Quartet No. 1 in D minor ▪ 1823 Arriaga’s teacher François-Joseph Fétis called him a genius and declared of his 3 String Quartets, written at age 16, “It is impossible to find anything more original, nor purer, or more correctly written” Known as the “Spanish Mozart,” the precocious Basque composer was born in Bilbao in 1806 and soon became renowned in the city’s musical circles. By age 10, he was playing second violin in a professional string quartet and had written an Octet for string quartet, bass, trumpet, guitar, and piano. His first opera, Los Esclavos Felices (“The Happy Slaves”), was written at age 13 and received considerable local success. Recognizing his extraordinary talent, his parents sent him to the Paris Conservatoire in 1821 at age 16. He studied violin with Pierre Baillot, counterpoint with Luigi Cherubini, and harmony with François-Joseph Fétis, the well-known music historian. Fétis later reported that Arriaga mastered harmony in three months and counterpoint in under two years. Cherubini asked, in 1823, after hearing his Stabat Mater, “Who wrote this?” and upon learning that Arriaga was the composer, said to him, “Amazing—you are music itself.” By 1824, at age 18, Arriaga was appointed to teach harmony and counterpoint at the Conservatoire. Ten days before his 20th birthday he died from exhaustion and a pulmonary infection. Ramón CARNICER Fantasía in Eb Major ▪ n.d. Carnicer—best known as the composer of the National Anthem of Chile—was the first opera composer in Spain, where he was also influential in the development of zarzuela (Spanish musical theater in which the dramatic action is carried through an alternating combination of song and speech). Born in Tàrrega in 1789, Carnicer was a chorister in Seo de Urgel Cathedral from 1799 to 1806; he then moved to Barcelona to study with the cathedral maestro de capilla. In 1808 the French (under Napoleon) occupied the city, forcing him to leave for Mahón (Minorca) where he taught singing and piano for 5 years. He returned to Barcelona in 1814, but left for London by the end of the year due to continuing political unrest. Upon returning to Barcelona in 1816, he was sent to Italy to recruit an opera troupe for the Teatro de la Cruz. In 1818 he was appointed director of the Coliseo Theatre orchestra, and wrote his first dramatic works. Among them were cavatinas and overtures for premieres of Rossini’s Cinderella and the Barber of Seville, followed by 3 of his own Italian opere semiserie, including Don Giovanni Tenorio (a synthesis of his Rossinian style and Mozartean grace). It is the first opera about Don Juan by a Spanish composer, and premiered at the Teatro de la Cruz on 20 June 1822. In 1827, by royal order of Ferdinand VII, Carnicer was forced to settle in Madrid to succeed Saverio Mercadante in directing the theaters of the Court. There he conducted premieres of 4 more operas, including one of his most important works—Cristoforo Colombo (1831)—the first opera about Columbus by a Spanish composer. In 1830 he was appointed one of the 16 founder-professors of Spain’s national conservatory, which opened on New Year’s Day 1831. He taught composition till his retirement in 1854. When he died in 1855, his funeral was the most sumptuous given a Spanish musician. In addition to operas and stage works, Carnicer wrote numerous Spanish songs (they were the most popular works of local color), sacred music, symphonies, and instrumental music. His stage and religious music are considered the best produced in Spain during the early Romantic period. As to his character, Baltasar Saldoni (the Spanish composer and musicologist) wrote in his Efemérides that Carnicer was “extremely kind, and having an extremely sensitive heart…most humble...and docile.” Pablo de SARASATE Navarra Op. 33 ▪ 1889 Navarra draws on traditional elements from the native culture of the region. Written in the style of a jota, an upbeat Spanish dance, it is partly inspired by the Spanish music of the gaitas, a small recorder-like instrument whose range and style he imitates in harmonics, tremolo (fast repeated notes), and lightning passagework for the 2 violinists—treated as dance partners in an array of dizzying movements. The pyrotechnics include an abundance of harmonics, double and triple stopping, tremolandos, left-hand pizzicatos, portamentos, and rubatos, adding up to an amazing display of violin wizardry. Sarasate was born in 1844 in the province of Navarre, a Basque region in northern Spain. He began playing the violin at the age of 5, and gave his first public performance when he was 8. The prodigy was recognized as a major talent and sent to the Paris Conservatoire in 1856 at age 12, aided by Queen Isabella. The following year he won the premier prix in violin and solfège. In 1859 he began the concert tours that made him famous in every country in Europe, as well as in North and South America. “Sarasate’s playing was distinguished by a tone of unsurpassed sweetness and purity, coloured by a vibrato somewhat broader than usual at that time and produced with a ‘frictionless’ bow stroke…. His technique was superb, his intonation was perfect, especially in high positions, and his whole manner of playing was so effortless as to appear casual [New Grove Dictionary].” He died in 1908 in the fashionable seaside resort of Biarritz, France, near the border with Spain. Enrique GRANADOS “Los Requiebros” from Goyescas ▪ 1911 Goyescas is the crowning glory of the Spanish Romantic-Impressionist style. Each of the suite’s 7 movements is a musical depiction of Spain as seen through the paintings of Goya (1746–1828), whose works often are a commentary on the everyday life of the low-status men and women (majos and majas, distinguished by their exaggerated and elaborate style in dress and manners), who frequented Madrid and its bohemian quarter in the late 18th century. The music is in the form of a jota, an 18th century Aragonese dance. Dedicated to the German pianist Emil Sauer, the first piece “Los Requiebros” (“Flattery,” “Loving Words,” “Flirtation”) was composed after the fifth of Goya’s Caprichos, Tal para cual. It portrays a maja flirting with a poor man with a sword. Granados was proud of the suite: “Finally I have had the good fortune to write something important…. All of the themes of Goyescas are united in El amor y la muerte…intense pain, nostalgic love and the final tragedy death.” First performed in Barcelona on 9 March 1911, the suite was received enthusiastically when Granados played it at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on 4 April 1914. In describing Goyescas, the renowned British critic Ernest Newman, remarked, “The music, for all the fervor of its passion, is of classical beauty and composure. [It] is a gorgeous treat for the fingers.” Granados (1867–1916) was first and foremost a pianist, trained in the Classical discipline. He studied piano in Barcelona and, from 1883, composition in Madrid with Felipe Pedrell. In 1887 he went to Paris to study piano privately with Charles de Bériot, then returned to Barcelona in 1889. His first major success came with the zarzuela Maria del Carmen, produced in Madrid in 1898; it won him a decoration from the king. The triumph of Goyescas in 1911 encouraged Granados to turn the piano suite into an opera in 1915, creating the first ever operatic arrangement of a piano work. He also became the first major composer from Spain to visit the United States when he attended the premiere of Goyescas, his final opera, at the New York Metropolitan Opera on 26 January 1916. This was followed by a recital at the White House and an audience with Woodrow Wilson, which caused him to miss a boat sailing directly to back to Spain. Instead, he took a ship headed for England, and in Liverpool boarded the Sussex for Dieppe. The Sussex was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the English Channel on 24 March. Granados was rescued by a lifeboat, but when he saw his wife Amparo struggling in the sea, he dove in to save her. Both were drowned. Newman lamented, “The death of Granados was the greatest loss the artistic world of Europe has sustained by reason of the War.” Joaquín TURINA Piano Quintet in G minor Op. 1 ▪ 1907 Born in Seville, Turina lived in Paris from 1905 to 1914. He studied at the Schola Cantorum—piano with Moritz Moszkowski and composition with Vincent d’Indy, whose teacher was César Franck. After the Quintet’s premiere he went to a cafe with his good friends Manuel de Falla and Albéniz, both of whom persuaded him to write in a more consciously Spanish style. The meeting led to a new kind of nationalism in Spanish music—as Turina put it, “We were three Spaniards gathered together in that corner of Paris and it was our duty to fight bravely for the national music of our country.” The Quintet won a prize in the Salon d’Automne, judged by Fauré, d’Indy, Gabriel Pierné, and 5 other jury members. |
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November 25 Ukrainian Splendor
Mykola LYSENKO String Quartet in D minor ▪ 1868 Written while studying with Carl Reinecke in Leipzig, it is not known if there was a 4th movement or whether the Minuetto was meant as the finale. By the turn of the 20th century, Ukrainian musical life was dominated by Mykola Lysenko—composer, pianist, conductor, collector of folk songs—heralded as the father of Ukrainian classical music. Born in 1842 in Hrynky (reputedly a descendant of a Cossack aristocrat), he was first taught the piano by his mother, then had lessons with teachers in Kiev and Khar’kov. After earning his degree in natural sciences at the University of Kiev in 1860–1864, he continued his musical education with Carl Reinecke and Ernst Richter at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1867–1869, and studied orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov in St Petersburg from 1874 to 1876. As a child Lysenko was deeply affected by the songs he heard peasants singing, and his nationalistic sympathies were seeded by a volume of Taras Shevchenko’s poems given to him by his grandfather (at age 19 he was a pallbearer at the poet’s funeral). As a student he was involved with the anti-tsarist movement, and remained a nationalist his entire life. He believed he could aid the political cause through music, particularly through settings of Ukrainian poets and through collecting, publishing, and studying the folk music of his country. After he expressed his support for the Revolution of 1905 by composing the hymn Vichnny revolyutsioner “The eternal revolutionary,” he was imprisoned for a time in 1907. His work in elevating the level of Ukrainian music education and culture led to his founding in 1904 the first Ukrainian music conservatory in Kiev—the Ukrainian School of Music (counter to the Russian Musical Society’s school in Kiev). His large number of compositions comprised piano and vocal pieces, including hymns and chorales; chamber music; at least 19 volumes of folk song arrangements; and stage works, including his epic opera Taras Bul’ba. His determination to aid the Ukrainian cultural revival by insisting on having his operas sung only in Ukrainian probably caused the loss of having Taras Bul’ba performed outside Ukraine. Tchaikovsky, who admired the work, had hoped to arrange a performance in Moscow, but Lysenko refused to authorize a Russian version of the libretto. When he died in 1912, there was an outburst of national grief which Maxim Gorky described with awe. Myroslav SKORYK Carpathian Rhapsody ▪ n.d. Born to a musical family in Lviv, Skoryk (1938–2020) started to play the piano at the age of 6. When Soviet repressions intensified in 1948, the family was deported to a mining town in Siberia. He recalled, “They started to consider me a prodigy, and they drove me to the regional town of Kemerovo and showed everyone that whatever number of notes you press for him, he will name all of them at once.” After Stalin’s death, when he turned 16, Skoryk returned to Lviv and studied at the Conservatory from 1955 to 1960, then completed graduate studies at the Moscow Conservatory in 1964. Subsequently, he taught composition at the Lviv Conservatory and the Kyiv Conservatory. He also became artistic director of the National Opera of Ukraine in 2011. Skoryk composed in his unique and colorful language operas, ballets, symphonies, and music for Ukrainian cartoons and films, including Sergei Parajanov’s award-winning Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, based on a timeless Carpathian story. Apart from music, he known for his prowess at football and is a knowledgeable mushroom picker in the Carpathian mountains. Vladimir DYCK Piano Trio in C minor Op. 25 ▪ 1910 Dyck (1882–1943) was a prolific Ukrainian composer who wrote in many genres. His colorful and tragic life began with his birth in Odessa, where his father held a customs post. Little is known of his life in the port city. At the alleged recommendation of Rimsky-Korsakov, he began studies at the Paris Conservatoire—harmony with Antoine Taudou (dedicatee of the Piano Trio) and composition with Charles-Marie Widor. He won first prize for harmony in Taudou’s class in 1904, and after obtaining French nationality in 1910, he won the second Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata Yanitza in 1911. After his graduation Dyck earned a living by teaching piano. Among his pupils were Henriette Poincaré (the wife of the President of the Republic), Madame Caillaux (wife of the Minister and President of the State Council), and Suzanne Bloch whom he married. Their daughter was named Nicole. As a composer, Dyck wrote deft scores for silent films under the pseudonym “Dri Mival,” an anagram on his last name. His other compositions were influenced by his conservatory training; they included chamber music, instrumental music, lyrical comedy, and French patriotic songs. He also began to work with Jewish material. His lovely arrangement of Hatikva in 1933 became the Israeli national anthem. In the same year he cofounded with Léon Algazi a publishing house, Mizmor, dedicated to the music of Jewish composers. And he arranged and wrote Yiddish songs, possibly for Algazi, who directed the Mizmor choir and the choir of the Great Synagogue of Paris on Rue de la Victoire. When the Nazis occupied Paris in 1943, Dyck was arrested by the Gestapo at his home at 79 Avenue de Breteuil with his wife and his daughter. He was deported to Auschwitz on 31 July and exterminated a few days later on 5 August. Reinhold GLIÈRE String Octet in D Major Op. 5 ▪ 1900 An early work, “It is shot through and through with magnificent melody” wrote the 19th-century critic Wilhelm Altmann. A review of its premiere in the Russian Musical Gazette, published on 11 January 1901, reported, “The Octet attracted much public attention and proved a great success. One of the foremost merits of the Octet is its exalted mood, suffusing nearly every bar. Glière’s music flows smoothly, lightly and naturally, while at the same time shining with elegant themes and betraying accomplished mastery of the string instruments” The musicologist Leonid Sabaneev also was impressed: “The Octet amazes one by the fullness of resonance and the masterly treatment of the instruments. Glière’s melodies are full of feeling and emotion, fine sonority and noble harmony.” Glière (1875–1956) is regarded as a great musical icon in his native Ukraine, and is considered the founder of Soviet ballet music. He was immensely versatile, and his prolific output made significant contributions in a wide range of genres. Born of Belgian Jewish descent in Kiev to a musical family who were master instrument makers, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory until 1900. His teachers included Arensky for harmony and Sergey Taneyev and Ippolitov-Ivanov for theory and composition. From 1920 to 1941 he, in turn, taught composition at the Conservatory. Among his pupils were Khachaturian, Nikolai Myaskovsky, the eleven-year-old Prokofiev, and Scriabin’s young son. His favorite instrument was the violin; his early commitment to writing chamber music continued for more than 50 years. Moreover, Glière survived the almost unparalleled political turmoil in both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Eric Levi, writing for the BBC Music Magazine, explained that “Glière’s consciously old-fashioned and widely accessible musical style enabled him to maintain a relatively stable career in the Soviet Union. Above all, it was these qualities that endeared him to Soviet cultural bureaucrats who regarded Glière as an ideal exponent of Socialist Realism.” Glière remained a staunch conservative throughout his life. |
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December 2 Tinkerers
The age of musical arrangements in Europe spanned from around 1780 to 1830, when transcribing large-scale works for chamber ensembles was commonly done. The motives were for profit, practicality, and pastime. Publishers and composers could boost their earnings; it was frequently more convenient to perform music using fewer musicians; and amateurs could enjoy making music themselves. The surge in music publishing in Vienna strongly encouraged the practice. “When Beethoven arrived in the Austrian capital to study with Haydn (November 1792), the practice was widespread and fueled by a market of dilettantes. The absence of effective copyright laws made it possible for a publisher to undertake an arrangement on virtually any work he could get his hands on, and it was not uncommon for an unauthorized adaptation to reach the market before the composer had a chance to make his own [Myron Schwager].” Thus, in response to one of the most popular leisure pursuits for the emerging bourgeois classes of Western Europe—playing music at home—a huge new market for chamber music was created. Publishers welcomed the great demand for arrangements of all kinds, capitalizing on the trend. BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 2 in D Major Op. 36 ▪ 1802 Larger and more brilliant than any that had been heard up till then, the Second Symphony is one of Beethoven’s most vivacious, cheerful, and outgoing works, showing no signs of despair, even though it was composed around the time his hearing was diminishing and he was contemplating suicide. Its premiere at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 5 April 1803 was conducted by Beethoven himself, but the reception was mixed. It was panned by Nicolas Slonimsky, who remarked in the May 1804 issue of Zeitung für die Elegante Welt, “Beethoven’s Second Symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.” In contrast, another reviewer called it “a noteworthy, colossal work of a depth, power, and artistic knowledge like very few.” Decades later, Hector Berlioz commented in 1862, “everything in this symphony smiles.” In the 20th century, Sir Donald Francis Tovey felt that “the brilliance and breadth of his design and the dramatic vigor of his style were so exciting that it was thought advisable to warn young persons against so ‘subversive’ (sittenverderblich) a work.” By the end of 1800, Beethoven and his music were in demand from patrons and publishers. This resulted in income generated from publishing his works, from performances of them, and from his patrons, for whom he gave private performances, as well as copies of works they commissioned for an exclusive period before their publication. From 1802 to 1806, Beethoven’s brother Carl managed his business dealings with publishers. Although he was terrible at this job, he did negotiate higher prices for recently composed works, sold some of Beethoven’s earlier unpublished works, and encouraged Beethoven (against the latter’s preference) to make arrangements of his more popular works for various instrumental combinations. Beethoven acceded to these requests, as he could not prevent publishers from hiring others to do similar arrangements of his works. Since the Second Symphony was rarely performed, Beethoven agreed to have Ries arrange it for piano trio under his supervision. Beethoven is also known to have made changes to the arrangement, which premiered on 5 April 1803 and was published 2 years later. In regard to arrangements, Carl Khym explained, “Beethoven, too, had to conform to this demand. Some of his works he transcribed himself, but in most cases he left such tasks to those with experience in this field.... Certainly, Beethoven did not always agree with this transcription practice. On 13th July 1802 he wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel: ‘The unnatural craze for transplanting even piano things for violin instruments, instruments that are contrary to each other in everything, should be stopped.... As not only whole sections have to be omitted and altered, so that one needs to add—and here is the unpleasant stumbling-block, which either requires the master himself to conquer it, or at least the same skill and invention.’ He then points to his own transcription of the Piano Sonata op. 14 no. 1 for string quartet, and adds: ‘I know for certain that no other can easily emulate that.’” Ries (1784–1838) was Beethoven’s pupil, secretary, copyist, and friend. Born in Bonn, he was taught the piano and violin from the age of 5 by his father Franz, who had also taught a young Beethoven violin and aided the Beethovens generously. In his teens Ferdinand worked as a copyist earning a mere 3 pence a sheet, but managed to scrimp and save 7 ducats (gold coins)—enough to get him to Vienna to study with Beethoven in 1801. Upon his arrival, with a letter of recommendation from his father, Beethoven welcomed the penniless Ries, gave him financial assistance, got him tutoring jobs in aristocratic households, and allowed him to be the first to take the title of “Pupil of Beethoven” (Carl Czerny was his other pupil during this time). He taught Ries the piano for 3 years, but sent him to Georg Albrechtsberger for composition. In return, Ries became an indispensable secretary and copyist, assisting with the practicalities of composition, dealing with publishers, finding lodgings, and looking after him as his hearing declined. It was Ries who found the lodgings in Pasqualatihaus, where Beethoven resided longer than anywhere else. Although overshadowed by his master, Ries had talent and ambitions as a composer. In 1804 he made his public debut with the second premiere of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in Vienna, playing his own cadenza, which Beethoven allowed him to write; the reviews of his performance were glowing. He left Vienna in 1805 as he was ordered to return to Bonn to be conscripted into the French revolutionary army, which had occupied Bonn and the Rhineland. However, since he had lost an eye in childhood from smallpox, he was excused. He returned to Vienna in 1808 and again became Beethoven’s amanuensis before departing for good a year later. From 1809, for 4 years, Ries toured across Europe—Kassel, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Russia—before ending up in London, where he married and stayed for 11 years (1814–1824). After he was appointed director of the London Philharmonic Society in 1815, he promoted Beethoven’s music tirelessly, and was instrumental in securing the commission for a new symphony that became the Ninth. By the time Ries left London for Godesberg, he had accumulated considerable wealth from teaching and composing, but lost much of it when the London bank in which he had invested failed. Ries remained active, taking leadership positions and composing in Frankfurt am Main and Aachen. He died after a short illness at age 53, leaving nearly 180 works, including symphonies, operas, oratorios, chamber music, and solo piano pieces. His collaboration with Franz Wegeler on their recollections of Beethoven resulted in one of the most important early biographical sources still in use. Igor STRAVINSKY Suite de l’Histoire du soldat “The Soldier’s Tale” ▪ 1919 A poor soldier sells his soul (represented by the violin) to the Devil for youth, wealth, and power in this variant of the Faust legend, in a condensed version for violin, clarinet, and piano Toward the end of the Great War, Stravinsky was facing the harsh realities of economic deprivation: payments from his German publishers were being held back, and the Russian Revolution had cut off his income from the family estate. The bleak situation that affected Stravinsky and several of his friends led to the genesis of L’Histoire du soldat. As explained by the New Grove Dictionary, “One day he and [the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand] Ramuz had an idea. Why not write something quite simple, for two or three characters and a handful of instrumentalists, something that could be played in modest conditions, in village halls and the like? Out of this was born the idea of The Soldier’s Tale, a piece to be read, played and danced’. A backer was found (Werner Reinhart of Winterthur); the Lausanne Theatre hired; and on 28 September 1918 the new work had its first performance with [Ernest] Ansermet conducting. This was a great success; but unfortunately a severe outbreak of influenza forced the organizers to cancel the tour that had been planned to follow the Lausanne performance.” Already a marvel of ingenuity and economy, Stravinsky further condensed the work into a trio as a gesture of gratitude to Reinhardt, and it was first performed in Switzerland in November 1919. Reinhart, who had bankrolled the entire production, was also an amateur clarinetist. Johann Nepomuk HUMMEL Piano Quintet in D minor Op. 74a ▪ 1816 After a performance of Hummel’s Septet for piano, strings, and winds in 1892 at Steinway Hall in London, the Musical Times wrote that it was “at one time enormously popular, but now rarely heard. It is, however, quite worthy of occasional revival…. Mendelssohn performed the Septet in London on 21 May 1832, and it was also Mendelssohn’s piece of choice when he began teaching classes at the Leipzig Konservatorium.” By all accounts, the Septet was regarded by many in the 19th century as his greatest work. Dedicated to the Archduchess Marie Louise, the masterpiece was premiered by Hummel on 28 January 1816 at a house concert. Later that year, Hummel wrote a quintet version for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, upon which it is said that Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet of 1819 is modeled. Hummel was born in Pressburg, Hungary, then a part of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy. A pupil of Mozart, with whom he lived from the ages of 8 to 10, he also studied with Haydn, Salieri, and Albrechtsberger. Among his friends was Beethoven (in varying degrees), at whose funeral he was a pallbearer and for whose memorial concert he played the variations on the Prisoners’ Chorus from Fidelio, at Beethoven’s request. And he knew Schubert, who dedicated his last three piano sonatas to him. Hummel became one of Europe’s greatest composers and perhaps the greatest piano virtuoso in Europe for more than 2 decades (his art of improvisation is said to have been even better than Beethoven’s). In 1804 he succeeded Haydn as Konzertmeister and later as Kapellmeister at the court of Esterházy in Eisenstadt. Hummel died a rich man after a long and successful career, then faded into obscurity with the arrival of Romanticism. |
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December 16 Romantic Melodists
Robert KAHN Violin Sonata No. 2 in A minor Op. 26 ▪ 1896 The late-Romantic Sonata was dedicated to Carl Halir, second violinist in the Joachim Quartet and Kahn’s frequent partner in violin sonata recitals. Kahn was born in 1865, the son of one of the wealthiest Jewish families in Mannheim. After attending the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin directed by Joseph Joachim, Kahn studied with Joseph Rheinberger at the Musikhochschule in Munich, where he met Brahms in 1887. Brahms was so impressed with Kahn he offered to give him composition lessons. The young man, however, was too overawed to accept. As Kahn explained in 1947, “From my early youth I felt a deep love and veneration for Brahms the musician. To that was added, now that he welcomed me so warmly in Vienna, a deep, even rapturous love for Brahms the man. It filled my entire heart, but I kept it carefully hidden from him in shyness and restraint.” Kahn was also given support by Joachim, Clara Schumann, and the conductor Hans von Bülow (the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by von Bülow premiered Kahn’s one orchestral work). Kahn composed mostly Lieder, chamber, vocal, and choral music which were widely performed and published by major publishers. As a pianist he worked extensively with singers, and was much sought-after as a collaborative pianist with prominent artists, including Josef Szigeti and Adolf Busch. In 1897 Kahn was appointed full professor at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin, where he taught composition and piano for 36 years. Among his pupils were Arthur Rubinstein and Wilhelm Kempff. He was removed from his position at the Academy in 1934 by the Nazis, who vilified him and suppressed his work. In 1938 Kempff persuaded him to flee to England, where he lived in obscurity in Biddenden, Kent. His creativity unfettered, Kahn continued to write over 1100 piano pieces in his Tagebuch in Tönen (Diary in Sounds) until 1949. He died in 1951. From a distinguished family of bankers and merchants, his seven siblings included Otto Kahn, the financier and chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera; and Felix Kahn, a banker, director of Paramount Pictures, and noted violin collector. Max BRUCH Septet in Eb Major ▪ 1849 Bruch wrote his first composition, a song for his mother’s birthday, at age 9. From then on, music became his first love and he wrote many small works as well as an orchestral overture to a projected opera. The biographer Christopher Fifield commented that “the Septet has the early hallmarks of Bruch’s melodic writing, the freshness of his youth, and the charm of his Rhenish background. The scoring is remarkably assured, though he makes no distinctions in the three wind instruments, producing a horn part of some intricacy. In both the large-scale form and harmonic planning, the young Bruch was equally precocious.” His gift of melody was ingrained for life. Sir Donald Francis Tovey enthused, “it is not easy to write as beautifully as Max Bruch…it is really easy for Bruch to write beautifully, it is in fact instinctive for him.… Further, it is impossible to find in Max Bruch any lapses from the standard of beauty which he thus instinctively sets himself.” Born in Cologne in 1838, Bruch was awarded the prestigious Frankfurt Mozart Foundation Prize at the age of 14, and was well aware of Mozart’s importance. The Prize was recommended by the acclaimed composer and conductor Ferdinand Hiller, founder of the Cologne Conservatory. Hiller had heard a number of his works while visiting the Bruch home on occasion. The prize allowed Bruch to study composition with Hiller as well as piano with Carl Reinecke. At the age of 14, Bruch also wrote a symphony, and he later conducted orchestral and choral societies in Mannheim, Koblenz, Sondershausen, Berlin, Bonn, Liverpool, Breslau, and Wraclaw. His importance as a composer and to German musical life was finally acknowledged in 1890 when he was given a professorship and a master class in composition at the Hochschule für Musik (Berlin Academy), where he taught until his retirement in 1910. He died in Friedenau (now part of Berlin) in 1920. Bruch is best remembered for his Scottish Fantasy, Kol Nidrei, and 3 violin concerti. His music fell out of favor because he rebuffed the New German School, defending Romanticism instead, and carrying the banner for Mendelssohn and Schumann. Clara Mathilda FAISST 2 Songs Faisst (1872–1948) was the youngest of 6 children born in Karlsruhe to Emma and August Faisst, who died when she was a year old. A quiet and dreamy child, she suffered poor health throughout most of her childhood. Nevertheless, she received a sound musical education at an early age, and was the youngest student of harmony (at age 7) at the Hoftheater Karlsruhe. From 1894 to 1896 she continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in Berlin—composition with Max Bruch, piano and music theory with Robert Kahn, counterpoint with Clara Schumann’s half-brother Woldemar Bargiel, and piano with Ernst Rudorff (Clara’s pupil). She corresponded with Bruch for most of his later life. Bruch also wrote the lyrics and musical directions for her “Five Songs for Voice with Pianoforte.” After her graduation, Faisst embarked on an extended concert tour of Germany and Switzerland, performing her own works and those of other composers. The public was impressed by her compositions and interpretations of music. Her compositions are described as having very expressive melodies, and rich harmonies reminiscent of late Romanticism. Returning home in 1900, Faisst settled in Karlsruhe and was active as a composer, teacher, pianist, and poet. She organized chamber music concerts in her home—especially after World War II, when much of the infrastructure and cultural life of Karlsruhe was in ruins—playing her own pieces as well as those by Bach, Beethoven, and others. A prolific composer of over 100 works, her oeuvre comprises 33 opus numbers—collections of songs, ballads, choral music, and sonatas for violin and piano. Pieces written after 1918 were self-published; 20 of her songs were issued as music supplements in magazines. Among her famous friends was Albert Schweitzer, with whom she corresponded. Faisst never married. Many years after her death at age 76, some of her letters and music were rescued from a trash site in Karlsruhe Durlach in the early 1990s and preserved in the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe. BRAHMS Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major Op. 8 ▪ 1854, revised 1889 Originally composed at age 20, shortly after he met the Schumanns, Brahms began revising the Trio in the summer of 1889 while on holiday in Bad Ischl. The original version is the first piece of Brahms’s works that was performed in the United States—in New York on 17 November 1855, six weeks after its premiere in Danzig, Prussia. The revised version (the one now usually performed) premiered on 10 January 1890 in Budapest with Brahms at the piano, violinist Jenö Hubay, and cellist David Popper. His satisfaction is revealed in a letter to Clara Schumann, “I had already sent this piece to the grave and had no interest to play it anymore. Now I enjoy the fact that I did play it, and it was a very pleasurable day.” |
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January 6 Admired in Vienna
Franz Anton HOFFMEISTER Duo in F Major Op. 6 No. 2 ▪ n.d. Although Hoffmeister (1754–1812) had a flourishing publishing business, his passion was composing. He was madly prolific, writing 66 symphonies, 100 flute quartets, numerous quintets, and other pieces. As a composer he was highly respected by his contemporaries, and many of his Viennese works were popular in foreign cities. His most successful opera was performed in Budapest, Hamburg, Prague, Temesvár, Warsaw, and Weimar; his numerous chamber works were published in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Venice, and throughout the German-speaking regions. A tribute published in Gerber’s Neues Lexikon der Tonkünstler in the year of his death attests to Hoffmeister’s esteem: “If you were to take a glance at his many and varied works, then you would have to admire the diligence and the cleverness of this composer.... He earned for himself a well-deserved and widespread reputation through the original content of his works, which are not only rich in emotional expression but also distinguished by the interesting and suitable use of instruments and through good practicability. For this last trait we have to thank his knowledge of instruments, which is so evident that you might think that he was a virtuoso on all of the instruments for which he wrote.” Hoffmeister’s publishing business, established in 1784, was astute in its choice of composers. Its catalog included Albrechtsberger, Clementi, E.A. Förster, Pleyel, Vanhal, and Wranitzky (composers presented at Jupiter); as well as Beethoven, Haydn, and particularly Mozart (his personal friend). In 1795 Hoffmeister sold the firm, in part, to Artaria. Then he had a partnership with Ambrosius Kühnel of Leipzig under a new firm, the Bureau de Musique, which was later taken over by C. F. Peters, one of the oldest publishing houses still surviving today. Heinrich von HERZOGENBERG Piano Quintet in Eb Major Op. 43 ▪ 1884 Herzogenberg (1843–1900) was born in Graz, the son of an Austrian court official. He began studying philosophy and law in 1861 at the University of Vienna, then from 1862 to 1864 he studied composition with Felix Otto Dessoff, a professor at the Vienna Conservatory and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. It was at Dessoff’s house that Herzogenberg met Brahms, and the two formed a lifelong friendship. His wife Elisabeth, whom he married in 1868, was a pianist and close friend of Brahms as well; and the family met the Schumanns through Brahms. In 1872 Herzogenberg moved to Leipzig, where he founded the Bach Society two years later and served as its director for 10 years. In 1885 he was appointed professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he also conducted a master class in composition from 1889. He taught until 1900, with lengthy absences caused by ill health and his wife’s death. Herzogenberg’s musical activities were influenced by the various movements and composers of the 19th century. Among them were Wagner in his orchestral works, Brahms in his chamber music, Schumann in his piano works and songs, and Bach in his church music. The influential musicologist Wilhelm Altmann described Herzogenberg as “a composer of great refinement. He in his way was an original thinker and a musician of genuine emotional and poetic qualities. His chamber compositions in particular stand out...for they are not only masterly from the technical point of view, but interesting intellectually.” Fritz KREISLER Caprice Viennois Op. 2 ▪ 1910 Born in Vienna in 1875, Kreisler began to learn the violin at age 4 with his father, a doctor and enthusiastic amateur violinist. At age 7 he was the youngest ever to enter the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied violin for 3 years with Joseph Hellmesberger and theory with Anton Bruckner. He won a gold medal at age 10, an unprecedented distinction. He then studied composition and violin at the Paris Conservatoire. After a successful concert tour in the United States in 1888–1889, he returned to Vienna to study medicine. He next studied art in Paris and Rome and served as an officer in the Austrian army. In 1899 he resumed concertizing and became one of the most successful virtuosos of his time. In 1910 Kreisler premiered Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto (dedicated to him) with the London Symphony Orchestra and Elgar conducting; it was a triumph. After 1915 he lived mainly in the United States but continued to tour widely in Europe. In 1941 he was struck by a truck in New York City and nearly died from the injuries; although he recovered, his playing and hearing were never the same. He died in New York in 1962. As a violinist, Kreisler was unique. He played with a “tone of indescribable sweetness and expressiveness…. The matchless colour was achieved by [an intense] vibrato in the style of Wieniawski.… Kreisler applied vibrato not only on sustained notes but also in faster passages which lost all dryness under his magic touch. His methods of bowing and fingering were equally personal [New Grove Dictionary].” Kreisler was also a gifted composer, and wrote many pieces for the violin, string quartets, and the operetta “Apple Blossom.” And he was known as the “secret” composer of the Classical Manuscripts, published as his arrangements of works by the old masters, including Vivaldi and Couperin. When he admitted in 1935 that the pieces were a hoax, many critics were indignant while others accepted it as a joke. SCHUBERT Piano Trio in Bb Major Op. 99 ▪ 1827 Upon hearing this celestial, significant work, Schumann declared, “One glance at Schubert’s Bb Trio—and the troubles of human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again.” Schubert was Viennese through and through. He was born in Himmelpfortgrund, a district of Vienna, he lived much of his life in the city, and he died there. When he was away from Vienna, he would soon miss it. He would pine for his beloved Vienna and its life, his friends, and the theaters and cafes. |
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January 20 Romance with Finns
Oskar MERIKANTO Valse Lento Op. 33 ▪ 1898 Merikanto (1868–1924) was a household name in Finland—from the mid-1880s to the 1920s he influenced the taste of the Finns, from cities to rural towns, through his melodious folk songs that were inspired by salon romances. After studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1887–1888 and in Berlin in 1890–1891, he had an active career and his accomplishments were of great importance in the development of Finnish musical life in the early 20th century. He was an organist in Helsinki, teacher at the Helsinki Music College, music critic for the daily paper Päivälehti, an excellent accompanist for singers, and a conductor from 1911 until 1922 of the Finnish Domestic Opera, which he cofounded with Finland’s star soprano Aino Ackté and others. Merikanto believed in the beauty of music. In 1909 he wrote that “music will return to simple forms, clarity and esprit if the currents of the time dissolve into peace and harmony.” (Oskar Merikanto is not to be confused with his son, Aarre, who composed many notable works in the Modernist style.) Burmester (1869–1933) was a German violin prodigy to whom Sibelius originally dedicated his Violin Concerto. He studied under Joseph Joachim from 1882 to 1885 at the Hochschule in Berlin, but later departed from the classical tradition when he focused on music in the bravura style. A Paganini recital he gave in Berlin in 1894 led to his sought-after international breakthrough. Bernhard Henrik CRUSELL Divertimento in C Major Op. 9 ▪ 1822 The Divertimento was described by Peter Lawson as “more of a concerto piece...requiring a virtuosic almost operatic personality from the soloist.... It’s beautifully crafted, and...there’s an abundance of early-Romantic coloring, despite its obviously-Classical roots. Every commonplace idea is balanced by an agreeable surprise” in its unexpected shifts in mode and harmony. Crusell was born in 1775 to a poor bookbinder in the town of Uusikaupunki, then known for its wooden tableware and furniture production. His ticket out of Finland, and ultimately to Stockholm, was his facility on the clarinet, which he began playing at the age of 4. At age 12 he was apprenticed to a military band in Sveaborg, and moved with it to Stockholm, where in 1793 he was made a court musician. Among his teachers were Franz Tausch in Berlin, Jean Xavier Lefèvre in Paris, and Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, who founded a national music school in Stockholm. “His association with the greatest writers of his day through Stockholm’s Gothic Society, which he joined in 1818, led to his greatest successes, in settings of poems…. Crusell was also a brilliant linguist and his translations of the foremost French, German and Italian operas for the Swedish stage earned him the Swedish Academy’s Gold Medal in 1837 [New Grove Dictionary].” He was also the first Finnish composer whose music appeared in print, published by Peters in Leipzig (another measure of his success). He died in 1838 in Stockholm. Ernst MIELCK String Quartet in G minor Op. 1 ▪ 1895 After a brief meteoric rise, Mielck’s career was cut down by his death at the age of 21. During his short life he was excluded from the mainstream: he spoke German in a land where Finns and Swedes were striving for linguistic supremacy; his musical orientation was towards Romanticism influenced by Mendelssohn and Schumann at a time when Finnish Nationalism (colored by Wagnerism) was entering its prime; and he was a fragile recluse. Born in 1877 into a wealthy family of merchants in Viipuri and raised in a cultured home, Mielck was a sickly child and barely spoke at age 7. It is possible he had meningitis, rickets, and tuberculosis, as well as autism. He was homeschooled and began to study music at age 10. Before he turned 14, he was sent to Berlin to study at the Stern Conservatory with Robert Radecke and privately with Max Bruch. He made his debut as a pianist in Viipuri at the age of 17, and in the next few years he wrote a handful of compositions, including the first substantial symphony ever written in Finland in 1897, predating the First Symphony of Sibelius by two years. He died of tuberculosis in Switzerland in 1899. Although Mielck’s talent was viewed suspiciously, Sibelius was friendly to him and he was encouraged by the conductor Robert Kajanus, founder and conductor of the Helsinki Orchestral Society and notable interpreter and champion of Sibelius. The conductor Arthur Nikisch also gave him encouraging references, and he was a favorite pupil of Bruch, who wrote the following recommendation: “To Whom it May Concern: This is to certify that Ernst Mielck of Vyborg, Finland, has been my private pupil from October 1895 to May 1896. Under my direction he addressed himself to score reading, exercises in the art of orchestration, and the detailed formal analysis of the works of the masters, demonstrating a profound understanding. With my guidance he wrote a String Quartet which showed him to be in possession of an easy, felicitous, and remarkable flair for invention, and an ever-increasing and most pleasing understanding of the essence and the inherent aims and purposes of instrumental music. He was for me an exceptionally dear pupil, who has through his unquestionable talent and the greatest diligence—brought me nothing but joy and who, should he continue to develop in the same vein, must inspire the greatest hopes for the future.” Jean SIBELIUS Piano Quintet in G minor ▪ 1889–1890 The Quintet was written during a year of private study in Berlin, following his graduation from the Helsinki Music Institute. The premiere of its first and third movements was performed by none other than the great Italian pianist Ferruccio Busoni (his teacher and lifelong friend) and the Norwegian composer and violinist Johan Halvorsen, both of whom were impressed with the Quintet. It did not receive a full performance until 1965. Details of his year in Berlin is recounted at Sibelius.info: “In Berlin, the 23-year-old Sibelius had powerful musical experiences…. [He heard Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger, Hans von Bülow’s legendary piano concerts, Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, and performances by the Joachim Quartet of Beethoven’s Op. 50 String Quartet and Schubert’s String Quartet in C Major, both of which made deep impressions.] Sibelius became a student of Albert Becker and had to do the rigorous composition exercises that his teacher demanded…. The endless practice in fugal techniques and the laborious counterpoint exercises were no doubt useful, but Sibelius’s composing vein dried up for months on end. Sibelius did not like the atmosphere of Berlin…the spirit of the times was too pessimistic and conservative for his taste. He mainly socialized with other foreign students.… Sibelius played chamber music with his friends and bought cheap scores from local second-hand bookshops. In the evenings, he lived far beyond his means, buying tickets for the best seats at the opera and enjoying the cuisine of high-class restaurants. This merry student life led to illness—and even to venereal disease if we are to believe the uninhibited letters he wrote at the time. In November 1889, Sibelius was admitted to hospital. On his recovery, he met Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni invited Sibelius…to Leipzig to hear the first public performance of a piano quintet composed by their mutual friend Christian Sinding. Busoni was the pianist at the concert. Sinding’s work awakened in Sibelius the will to compose, and in the spring of 1890 he put the finishing touches to his only significant work during the Berlin year, the piano quintet in G minor…. Becker was satisfied with the piano quintet and wrote a positive report in which he emphasized the importance of additional studies. The piano quintet was sufficient proof for the senate, which granted Sibelius a scholarship of 2000 marks (about 8000 euros in today’s money) for the following academic year.” |
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February 3 Love Exposed
SCHUBERT Fantasia in F minor D.940 ▪ 1828 Composed the year he died at age 31, the dedication was announced on 21 February 1828. If Schubert and Caroline were the first to play the divine Fantasia, the first other person to hear it was likely Schubert’s great friend Eduard Bauernfeld, a music connoisseur and dramatist, for whom Schubert and Franz Lachner played it on 9 May at a Schubertiade. It was published posthumously in 1829. The arrangement by Claus Ludwig for string quartet is from the original for piano-4 hands, one of the most ravishing pieces in the piano literature. Countess Caroline Esterházy was born in 1805 into the wealthy and illustrious Esterházy family—the younger of two daughters of Johann Karl Count Esterházy of Galánta. She was a gifted pianist and sensitive musician. Schubert gave the sisters music lessons at their home in Vienna, as well as during the summers of 1818 and 1824 at the family estate in Zseliz. Thereafter, she and Schubert remained friends till his death in 1828. The memoir of Baron Karl von Schönstein, the Count’s close friend, throws some light on the relationship between Caroline and Schubert. However, because it was written in 1857, almost 30 years after Schubert’s death, the details of Schönstein’s recollections are inconsistent and not to be entirely trusted. Regardless, he disclosed that “a poetic flame sprang up in Schubert’s heart for Caroline. This flame continued to burn until his death.” He also recalled that “Caroline esteemed his talent very highly, but did not return this love; perhaps she did not realize the degree to which it existed. I say ‘the degree,’ because that he loved her must have been clear to her from a remark of Schubert’s—his only expression [of his love] in words. When she once jokingly teased Schubert that he had never dedicated a piece of his to her he responded: ‘Why do that? Everything is dedicated to you anyway.’” Further, Bauernfeld divulged in his diary in February 1828 that “Schubert seems to be seriously in love with Countess E[sterházy]. I like that in him. He is giving her lessons.” (To put the revelation in context, the diary entry was written at the time the Fantasia was dedicated to Caroline.) Love exists on many levels, and to say, as some have put forth, that she was the object of his unrequited love may not quite be the case. It could be more realistic that they were soulmates and shared a platonic love. We may never know for sure. For a deeper dive into the relationship between Schubert and Caroline, as well as his state of mind and health at the time, and the platonic love between Caroline and Schubert see https://figures-of-speech.com/2018/08/zseliz-1824.htm Ludwig THUILLE Sextet in Bb Major Op. 6 ▪ 1888 Written over a period of 2 years, the Sextet is anchored in the classicism of his teacher Josef Rheinberger, while reminiscent of Liszt and Brahms as well. It received the approval of Richard Strauss, his lifelong friend who was instrumental in arranging the premiere performance in 1889 at the Wiesbaden Festival, with Thuille playing the demanding piano part and the winds shining in their harmonies and solo turns. It was well received and appreciated by both the press and public. In the view of musicologist Byron Adams, “Thuille’s enthusiasm for the Mage of Bayreuth was further quickened by his marriage in 1887 to Emma Dietl, who was a passionate Wagnerite. Even so, Thuille retained a certain ambivalence towards Wagner; he once remarked approvingly to a student that ‘The astonishing thing is that you have kept yourself entirely free from the Wagnerian influence!’ As with Schumann, the years following Thuille’s marriage prompted a burst of creative activity. Among the scores that Thuille completed during this joyous period is an attractive Sextet…[which] exemplifies Thuille’s style at its most graceful, fluent, and polished.” Thuille (1861–1907) was both a pupil of Rheinberger, whom he later succeeded as counterpoint teacher at the Königliche Musikschule in Munich, and a lifelong friend of Strauss. Born of Savoyard ancestry in Bolzano (then in Austria, now in Italy), he was orphaned at the age of 11. His stepuncle took him in and oversaw his secondary education in Kremsmünster. There, he served as a chorister in the Benedictine Abbey and studied the organ, piano, and violin. From 1876 he lived with his half-sister’s family in Innsbruck, his expenses paid by the generous widow of Matthäus Nagiller. He continued his studies with Joseph Pembauer and in 1877 met Richard Strauss, who was three years his junior and whose parents were acquainted with the Nagiller family. They became and remained fast friends (interrupted by a quarrel) until his untimely death at age 45. In 1879 Thuille began his studies, steeped in Viennese Classicism, with Josef Rheinberger at the Royal Academy, graduating with honors in 1882. Although he was musically conservative and sternly disciplined by Rheinberger, “a decisive change suddenly occurred in his style through his association with Alexander Ritter, a forceful figure who converted him and…Strauss into rich orchestral colourists in the late Romantic vein. Ritter diverted Thuille’s attention to opera of Wagnerian proportions and encouraged the young composer to cultivate bold harmonic ideas [New Grove Dictionary].” Before his death, Thuille made one other contribution: his Harmonielehre—a treatise on harmony that survived into the 1930s. Antonín DVOŘÁK “Songs My Mother Taught Me” from Gypsy Songs Op. 55 ▪ 1880 Originally for voice and piano, Fritz Kreisler arranged it for violin and piano in 1914 and performed it frequently. Dvořák composed the songs at the request of the Viennese tenor, Gustav Walter, with texts from a collection of poems by Adolf Heyduk. The song was recommended by Classic FM (UK) as one of “10 beautiful pieces of classical music for Mother’s Day.” The nostalgic lyrics pay tribute to a mother’s tears, memories, and influence:
Bedřich SMETANA Piano Trio in G minor Op. 15 ▪ 1855 Smetana was devastated by the death of Bedřiška, a musical child with whom he had an especially close relationship. The rhapsodic, heartrending elegiac work with unbridled passion, completed in 2 months, is influenced by Bohemian folk music. It was condemned by critics at the premiere on 3 December 1855, but praised by Liszt (his friend and teacher), and in our time by Harold Schonberg, who said it is “of unusual loveliness.” Many years after its composition, Smetana wrote in a letter to one of his doctors, “The death of my eldest daughter, an exceptionally talented child, motivated me to compose...my Trio in G minor. It was performed the same year in Prague [with Smetana playing the piano part]... The audience was unresponsive and the critics hated it.” A year later, when the Trio was played in Smetana’s Prague apartment, Liszt was in attendance; he was profoundly moved and arranged for subsequent performances in Germany and Austria. Smetana’s wife, Kateřina Kolářová, whom he had married in 1849, was also not well at that time, having been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Smetana was the first major nationalist composer of Bohemia and the founder of the Czech national school of music. The 11th child and first son to survive infancy, Bedřich was born in 1824 to a keen amateur violinist and master brewer in the service of Counts Waldstein and Czernin. First taught by his father, he was playing the violin in a performance of a Haydn quartet by age 5. The following year, he made his debut as a pianist; at age 8 he was composing folk and dance tunes. Although he had no formal musical training, he completed a general education at a school in Pilsen. At the age of 20, Smetana studied composition with the distinguished teacher Josef Proksch in Prague. From 1844 to 1847 he was appointed as resident piano teacher to the family of Count Leopold Thun. This job lifted him out of dire poverty. He also met Liszt, Berlioz, and Robert and Clara Schumann in Prague. Encouraged by Liszt, he opened a piano school in Prague in 1848. Two months before the school’s opening, he participated in the Prague Revolution, which was aborted on 11 June and resulted in Bohemia’s failure to disentangle itself from the autocratic rule of the Austrian Hapsburgs. The event had strongly aroused Smetana’s patriotism—he helped to defend the barricades and wrote revolutionary marches. By 1856, he became so disenchanted with Prague’s stifling atmosphere and discouraged by the cool reception to his Piano Trio that he moved to Gothenburg. He was very productive in Sweden—he wrote his first symphonic poems and was appointed conductor of the Gothenburg Society for Classical Choral Music. After 5 years, he returned to Prague, where he played a leading part in the establishment of the national opera house. In 1874 Smetana became deaf from syphilis, yet he continued to compose until the last few days of his life when his mental faculties broke down, and he was cared for in a lunatic asylum. Before then, on 4 January 1880, Smetana played in his Piano Trio at a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of his first public performance. At one moment in the Trio, he horrified the audience when he cried out “Pianissimo!” in a stentorian voice. Smetana’s death in 1884 drew an outpouring of national mourning, with many tributes paid to him. Liszt lamented his passing, declaring that “he was undoubtedly a genius.” |
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February 17 Getaway to UK
Susan SPAIN-DUNK Phantasy Quartet in D minor ▪ published 1925 The Cobbett Competitions, designed to encourage the younger generation of British composers to write chamber music, was sponsored by the industrialist Walter Wilson Cobbett, a chamber music aficionado. He also wished to revive the Elizabethan fantasy form of a single movement that includes a variety of moods and structural elements usually found in 3 or 4 movements. Spain-Dunk’s Phantasy has 4 distinct sub-movements within the larger one, from a bold opening through pastoral and fugal sections, and ending with a chordal version of the theme. Almost forgotten today, Spain-Dunk enjoyed the spotlight in the 1920s. Born in Folkestone in 1880, she played her first concert at the age of 13 and participated with enthusiasm in the flourishing musical life of the town. In 1900 she performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and passed her music exams with honors. She then attended the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied violin with Alfred Gibson (she married his nephew Henry). She also was a pupil Stewart Mcpherson in harmony and won the Charles Lucas Medal for composition. After several of her early compositions were published, she achieved her breakthrough in 1924 when Sir Henry Wood included her “Suite for Strings” in one of his Promenade Concerts. From then till 1927 her works were featured annually at the Proms. Spain-Dunk was also the first woman to conduct a regimental band, and she became the second woman to conduct at the Proms (Dame Ethel Smyth was the first). She later taught harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music and at Trinity College in the 1930s. She died in 1962. Sir Charles Villiers STANFORD Serenade in F Major Op. 95 ▪ 1905 Written in London the same year he was composing his 6th Symphony as well as basking in the success of his Requiem in Düsseldorf, the Serenade premiered at a Broadwood Concert in London’s Aeolian Hall on 25 January 1906. Enthusiastically received, The Times noted its “spontaneity, charm, and classical purity of structure.” Sir Hubert Parry, Stanford’s severest critic, was also impressed, and when he heard it again in March 1913 at a performance by a student ensemble at the Royal College of Music, he described it as “a nice specimen of his [Stanford’s] work.” Professor Jeremy Dibble further stated that it “reveals a side of Stanford’s style in which formal craftsmanship is combined with an enchanting chemistry unique to the composer—Brahmsian adroitness united with Mendelssohnian felicity.” Born to a musical family, Stanford left Dublin at the age of 18 for Cambridge, where he distinguished himself. He also studied in Leipzig (with Reinecke) and in Berlin (with Friedrich Kiel, at the urging of Joachim). An illustrious career then ensued; he composed prolifically, conducted, and taught at the Royal College of Music, which he cofounded. Among his pupils were Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, John Ireland, and Frank Bridge, to name a few. The New Grove Dictionary summarizes his achievements and influences: “First, he swept away the empty conventions and complacencies which had debased English church music since Purcell.... Second, he set a new standard in choral music with his oratorios and cantatas.... Third, in his partsongs, and still more in his solo songs with piano he reached near perfection both in melodic invention and in capturing the mood of the poem.... [Fourth, he] exercised the most powerful influence on British music and musicians, that of the paramount teacher of composition....” Stanford was knighted in 1902; he died in 1924 and his ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey. BEETHOVEN Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Songs The tunes are winsome and the accompanying piano trio occasionally sounds unmistakably like vigorous echoes of his muscular style. Between 1806 and 1818 Beethoven collaborated with a Scottish collector of folk music by the name of George Thomson in arranging more than 100 folk songs for an estimated £550. Frank BRIDGE Piano Quintet in D Minor ▪ 1912 First written when Bridge was in his mid-20s, the Quintet was radically revised just after he turned 30. The refined version premiered on 29 May 1912 with pianist Harold Samuel and the English String Quartet. Bridge was considered one of the most gifted figures on the British music scene, wearing multiple hats well. He was a composer of poetic insight and consummate technique, an excellent violist, an outstanding conductor and chamber musician, and a remarkable teacher. Born in the seaside resort of Brighton in 1879 to a working class family, Frank was the 10th of a dozen children. His father was a lithographic printer, but was passionate about music; in middle age he switched professions, becoming music director of the Empire Theatre and a violin teacher. From childhood, Frank learned the violin and played in the orchestra, began composing, and substituted for his father as conductor at the Theatre. In 1899 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with the famously dismissive Charles Villiers Stanford in addition to the violin. When Bridge left RCM in 1903, he took up the viola and played in string quartets, most notably as a member of the English String Quartet, founded officially in 1908. While composing, he earned his income from long hours of playing all over London. He was also called upon to conduct as he was a phenomenal score reader. And he supplemented his income with teaching. Bridge was the private tutor of Benjamin Britten, who later championed his teacher’s music and paid homage to him in Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. He died in 1941 in Eastbourne. |
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March 3 The Franck Connexion
All 4 French composers on this program knew César Franck—“the dominating musical force of the period in France, both as a composer and as teacher, and he gathered unto himself a group of pupils who did everything but put a halo over him and worship [Harold Schonberg].” Although Saint-Saëns could not tolerate Franck’s music (the gulf between them was enormous), both men were original members of the Société Nationale de Musique, whose purpose was to promote contemporary French composers. Among them was Lalo, who was offered the opportunity to compose orchestral music, including the Symphonie espagnole written for Sarasate. Chausson, a disciple and close friend of Franck, was one of two of the honored teacher’s most famous pupils (the other was Vincent d’Indy). And Widor was also influenced by Franck and succeeded him as professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1890. At Franck’s funeral mass held at the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde, Saint-Saëns, Widor, and Lalo were amongst the large congregation paying their respects. Camille SAINT-SAËNS Caprice brillant in B minor ▪ 1859 The Caprice is, in effect, a “first draft” that evolved into the finale of his Violin Concerto No. 3 two decades later (and dedicated to Sarasate). The major themes of the Concerto first appeared in the Caprice, which contains more episodic material and a richer harmonic palette than the Concerto. The 2 instruments are equal partners, with cadences embellished in a Lisztian manner, a frequent use of rubato, and a variety of textures. In the 1850s, Saint-Saëns became acquainted with Sarasate, a fellow musical prodigy who made his concert debut at age 8, and began studying at the Paris Conservatoire in 1856 at age 12. In addition to the Caprice, Saint-Saëns wrote his Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Major for Sarasate in 1859. Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835. Although he was frail and tubercular as a child, he lived till the age of 86, when he died in Algiers. His body was brought back to Paris where he was buried in a state funeral at the Montparnasse Cemetery. The child prodigy was first taught the piano at the age of two and a half years old by his mother’s aunt. Following studies with other teachers, he entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1848. After attending organ classes and winning a second prix in 1849 and a brilliant premier prix in 1851, he began formal composition studies with Fromental Halévy, a protégé of Cherubini. In 1857 he became organist at the Madeleine, a post he held for 20 years. For those interested in Saint-Saëns before age 11, read on. “It is not generally realized that Saint-Saëns was probably the most awesome child prodigy in the history of music. His I.Q. must have soared far beyond any means of measurement. Consider: at 2 1/2 he was picking out tunes on the piano. Naturally he had absolute pitch. He also could read and write before he was three. At three he composed his first piece…. At five he was deep in analysis of Don Giovanni, using not the piano reduction but the full score. At that age he also gave a few public performances as a pianist. At seven he was reading Latin and interesting himself in science, especially botany and lepidoptery. He also collected geological specimens. His formal musical training started at seven, and he made his official debut at ten. As an encore at his debut recital he offered to play any of Beethoven’s thirty-two sonatas from memory. …an item in the Boston Musical Gazette…states that ‘there is a boy in Paris, named St. Saëns, only ten and a half years old, who plays the music of Handel, Sebastian Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and the more modern masters, without any book before him.’ Saint-Saëns had total recall. If he read a book or heard a piece of music it was forever in his memory [Harold Schonberg].” Ernst CHAUSSON Andante et Allegro ▪ 1881 Completed on 28 April 1881, Chausson’s choice of the clarinet is adventurous for its time when the instrument was rarely featured in the salons and concert halls. At age 22, he had a late start at the Paris Conservatoire. Nevertheless, he “experimented with all of the expressive and technical possibilities of the clarinet, bringing into play the colours of its different registers, its lyricism and virtuosity, its brightness and mellowness of tone. If the Andante and Allegro reflects the influence of his two professors—Franck’s density of texture and Massenet’s refined lyricism—it also reveals an individual style characterized by abundant modulations, numerous seventh-chords on the piano, and a fusion of binary and ternary rhythms [Jean Gallois].” Chausson (1855–1899) was one of the founders of the modern symphonic school in French music. He earned a law degree upon his father’s insistence before he studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers were Jules Massenet and Cèsar Franck. He also visited Germany to hear Wagner. “Although he absorbed traditional harmony as taught at the Conservatoire, Chausson was clearly influenced by Wagner and ‘Franckism’.... Indeed, Chausson was to become...one of the most prominent and influential members of the Franck circle...[and a] Wagnerian [New Grove Dictionary].” He later developed his own sumptuous late Romantic style, which influenced Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré, among others. Born in Paris into an affluent bourgeois family, Chausson died tragically at the age of 44 from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident while staying in Limay at one of his country retreats. He was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Edouard LALO String Quartet in Eb Major Op. 45 ▪ 1859, revised 1884 Stephen Hefling is of the opinion that “this work unquestionably marks a significant moment in the history of the genre in France. Lalo’s score, concise and animated with an intense rhythmic life, includes a slow movement whose density and harmonic daring baffled listeners at its first public hearing in 1859 [Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music].” It was dedicated to his father. After several years working as a string player and teacher in Paris, Lalo formed the Armingaud Quartet with friends in 1848, playing viola and later second violin. The Quartet, in vogue for many years, gained a reputation for technical perfection and the musical beauty of its performances. It popularized the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, and also played Lalo’s compositions, including the Eb Major String Quartet, which was rewritten in 1884 and published in its new form in 1886. When Lalo died, the journals did not print any eulogies, but nearly all the musicians of French renown were present at his burial at Père Lachaise, in tribute to a composer of great talent and character. Charles-Marie WIDOR Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor Op. 7 ▪ circa 1890 The knowledgeable and discerning critic, the late Fred Kirshnit, wrote in the New York Sun that “this quintet showcases a white-hot, passionate side. The work is Franckian in character…and even somewhat Lisztian in emphasis. [And]…there was a definite Wagnerian feel.” The Chamber Music Journal noted, “In his chamber music Widor displays a melodic elegance that is characteristically French. There is delicacy of texture and of tonal color, and yet, there is also much vigor and passages of great power.” The Quintet was dedicated to Charles Gounod, who had lobbied for Widor’s appointment as organist at the Église Saint-Sulpice. Widor (1844–1937)—the preeminent organist in Paris at the turn of the 20th century and one of the most noted organ composers—was the son and grandson of organ builders. For 64 years he was the organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris and he taught at the Conservatoire, succeeding César Franck as professor of organ in 1890 and Théodore Dubois as professor of composition in 1896. Among his organ pupils were Louis Vierne and Marcel Dupré, as well as Albert Schweizer, with whom he annotated an edition of the organ works of Bach. His composition pupils included Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud. While Widor’s oeuvre includes operas, symphonies, concertos, and chamber music, he is remembered mostly for his 10 symphonies for solo organ, a form he pioneered, and most especially for the ripping Toccata finale of his Organ Symphony No. 5. Widor was laid to rest at Saint-Sulpice, in the burial crypt below the nave. |
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March 17 Blazing Stars
Franz CLEMENT Introduction and Polonaise in E Major ▪ published 1802 Clement—a native son and favorite of the Viennese public who stood on chairs to applaud him—was a virtuoso violinist and composer. Born in 1780, the child prodigy began playing the violin at age 4 and was exploited by his father. By 1790, at age 10, he performed successful concerts in London, some of which were conducted by Haydn and Johann Peter Salomon. When Beethoven heard Clement perform in 1794, he lauded his talent, writing in Clement’s book of remembrances that he “would reach the greatest goal possible to an artist here on earth” and urged him to “return soon so that I may hear your dear magnificent playing.” From 1802 to 1811 Clement served as director and concertmaster of the newly-established Theater an der Wien. In his benefit concerts and in other musical concerts led by him, he performed Beethoven’s works at a time when the master’s genius was not yet recognized. In 1805, a benefit concert for Clement presented the first performance of the Eroica (conducted by Beethoven) at the Theater an der Wien, and in 1806 the premiere of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (written for and commissioned by Clement). These are merely two of the famous ones. As to his skill, Clement played some variations “mid umgekehrter Violin”—with the violin reversed—and a sonata on a single string! He is also known for his phenomenal memory. He wrote a piano reduction of Haydn’s The Creation, among other works, based only on his participation as a violinist. Louis Sphor also recorded in his autobiography that after hearing 2 rehearsals and a performance of the oratorio, The Last Judgement, Clement played several long passages from it on the piano the next day, with all the harmonies and accompanying passages, without ever having seen the score. He published several compositions of his own as well, including a Violin Concerto in D Major. In his later years, his decline as an artist was observed by Beethoven, who refused Clement the position of concertmaster at the premiere of the Ninth Symphony, and wrote in his conversation book, after a concert in 1819 featuring Clement’s variations on a theme of Beethoven, that Clement’s work was “Poor stuff.” Sadly, Clement’s career ended in distress because of financial mismanagement which left him impoverished when he died in 1842. Louis SPOHR 6 Deutsche Lieder Op. 103 ▪ 1837 While the Songs are rooted in the Classical tradition of Mozart (whom he revered), they anticipate the works of Richard Wagner (whose music he championed) with their grand virtuosic gestures and chromatic harmonies. As to the origin of the Songs, Spohr recounted in his autobiography, “I received a letter from [Johann Simon] Hermstedt in which, on the instructions of Princess Sondershausen, he invited me to write for the latter some songs for soprano voice with piano and clarinet accompaniment. Since this work very much appealed to me, I composed in the course of a few weeks six songs in this genre…which I dedicated to the Princess at her express wish, thereupon receiving from her the gift of a valuable ring.” At the premiere, the clarinet part was played by his longtime friend and the foremost clarinetist in his day, Hermstedt, for whom Spohr had already written four concertos. He was the Duke’s clarinet teacher and was known for his technical brilliance and a style marked by striking gradations of tone. In order to maximize Hermstedt’s mastery, Spohr wrote florid obbligatos as well as passages to show the clarinet’s lyrical qualities. Hermstedt included the Songs in his last recital in 1840. Spohr (1784–1859) was a dominant force in German music and was as famous as Beethoven—he served in a number of court positions, he was the celebrated leading violin virtuoso, he was one of the most sought-after and prolific composers of the first half of the 19th century, and is considered a forerunner of early Romanticism. He also was an ideas man—he invented the chin rest, introduced the use of the baton and rehearsal numbers, developed the double quartet after Andreas Romberg first proposed the idea, revived the music of Bach and Handel, and he was the author of an influential violin method, as well as a wonderful autobiography that included details his many travels throughout Europe. In addition to his musical activities, he was a family man who enjoyed a happy social life and varied pursuits like swimming, ice-skating, hiking, gardening, and painting. SCHUBERT Quartettsatz in C minor D.703 ▪ 1820 Schubert is known to have written 15 string quartets. As a teenager, from 1810 to 1816, he wrote 11 in the classicism of Haydn and Mozart for the family to play (his brothers Ferdinand and Ignaz on violin, himself on viola, and his father on cello); the incomplete Quartettsatz; and 3 later epic string quartets auguring the Romantic age. The 12th quartet thus stands at a tipping point in his life. According to musicologist Robert Winter, the Quartettsatz is “a work of furious intensity that heralded Schubert’s maturity as a composer of instrumental music.” As its name implies, Schubert wrote only the first movement, followed by 41 measures of the Andante; it was unfinished. Long after his death in 1828, the manuscript landed in the hands of Brahms who collected Schubert scores; he edited and published it in 1870. Its posthumous premiere was performed on 1 March 1867 in Vienna. BEETHOVEN Piano Trio No. 1 in Eb Major Op. 1 No. 1 ▪ 1795 Beethoven made an imposing statement when his three Op. 1 piano trios were performed at one of the soirées of his early and loyal patron Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. Haydn, one of the invited guests, remarked on their bold originality: “You give me the impression of a man with more than one head, more than one heart and more than one soul!” His first great patron in Bonn, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, recorded in his personal album, “You will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn.” More than a decade after publication, Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung proclaimed the trios “Strong, powerful, and moving.” He had labored over the extensive revisions before Artaria printed them, secretly subsidized by Prince Lichnowsky. Thomas May explained, “Beethoven’s first official declaration in print as a composer was a stunning success, both critically and commercially.... Even more, Beethoven’s successful assessment of the public demand for new pianoforte-centered chamber music allowed him to establish a formidable identity with Vienna’s leading publishers. The biographer Lewis Lockwood points out that, as a result, ‘he thought about composition and publication from early on as a single large-scale enterprise.’” |
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March 24 Classical Evolution
Anna Amalia von BRUNSWICK-WOLFENBÜTTEL Divertimento in Bb Major ▪ circa 1780 The use of the clarinet, a young instrument beginning to attract notice at the time, is remarkable in that it preceded Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto by 10 years. The “sensitive style”— Emfindsamer Stil—was an “important movement occurring in northern German instrumental music during the mid-18th century…characterized by an emphasis upon the expression of a variety of deeply felt emotions within a musical work…. [It sought] to give a composition an aura of simplicity and naturalness, qualities highly prized in the philosophical outlook of the Enlightenment [Encyclopedia Britannica].” Anna Amalia was an influential cultural force in Weimar. Born a princess in 1739 into a powerful royal dynasty, Anna Amalia became a duchess upon her marriage to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenbach when she was 18. Her husband died in 1758, before her 20th birthday, leaving her with 2 young children. Widowed, she assumed the role of regent until her son and heir reached his majority. During her enlightened reign, which lasted till 1775, she proved herself a talented stateswoman. Politically and financially astute, despite the challenges of the Seven Years’ War, she developed the economy of the Duchy, strengthening its reputation and resources. She also transformed her court and its environs into the most influential cultural center in Germany through the creation of the Musenhof, or court of muses. It was known throughout Europe for its rich musical and cultural life, and attracted artists, composers, and writers—leaders in the German Enlightenment, including Friedrich Schiller and Goethe, who became her friend. The literati wrote poems and texts for the songs of the new German opera, the Singspiel. The Duchess herself became a respected composer—she set some of Goethe’s texts (including Erwin and Elmire) to music, and wrote operas and symphonies that were performed at the court and beyond. Her compositions show her as an “elegant amateur free of ambition” who reflected the taste and spirit of her epoch. In 1766 she moved the court’s book collection that included 13,000 volumes of music to the Library in Weimar named after her—Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek—a unique source for the compositions of Bach and his contemporaries. When her regency ended, she devoted herself to culture and also toured Italy with Goethe. She died in 1807. Mozart’s pupil and piano virtuoso, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, elevated the musical standing of Anna Amalia and Goethe’s Weimar. When Hummel succeeded Goethe in 1818 as Kapellmeister of the Court Theatre, a position he held till his death in 1837, he brought the “Silver Age of Music” to Weimar and performed the works of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, as well as Weber’s Der Freischütz, an international success. Johann Christian BACH Keyboard Quartet in G Major W.B. 66 ▪ 1785 JC Bach was the youngest son and the 10th of 12 children born to Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach. As stated in the New Grove Dictionary, “His style, which was largely derived from Italian opera, was the most important single influence on Mozart, and rested on a foundation of excellent craftsmanship, graceful melody and a fine sense of form, texture and colour.” Born in Leipzig in 1735, JC spent several years in Italy before moving to London, where he was appointed Music Master to Queen Charlotte in 1762 and became known as the “London Bach” and the “English Bach.” When Mozart visited London at the age of 8, he admired JC’s charming, effortless music, and the two formed a warm friendship and would sometimes improvise together. Chris de Sousa described their relationship and JC’s influence in the BBC Music Magazine: “Mozart’s sister recalled how Bach put Mozart in front of him at the keyboard, where one would play a bar, the other would carry on, ‘and in this way they played a whole sonata, and someone not seeing it would have thought that only one man was playing’…. Haydn and JC Bach are the only composers in his vast correspondence with his father for whom only kind words are to be read…. When the Mozarts left London, they took more music by Johann Christian Bach with them, including the Sonatas Op. 17 No. 2, whose finale looks forward to Mozart’s own C minor Sonata. Mozart consciously modelled much of his music on specific works by JC Bach.” His death on 1 January 1782 at age 46 was noted by Mozart as “a loss to the musical world.” Franz DANZI Variations on a Theme from Mozart’s Don Giovanni ▪ n.d. The Variations was originally written for cello and orchestra. Its source is Don Giovanni’s attempted seduction of the village girl, Zerlina, with his invitation “Là ci darem la mano” (“Give me thy hand, my fairest”). The theme is followed by variations and concludes with the duet, “Andiam, andiam, mio bene” (“Let’s go, with thee, my treasure”). Danzi (1763–1826) was the German-born Italian composer best known for his chamber music. His father, the noted Italian cellist Innozenz Danzi, was one of the highest paid musicians in the famous Mannheim Orchestra and taught him the cello, piano, and singing. Franz himself joined the orchestra as a cellist at age 15. The teenager was thus immersed in a rich musical and cultural life at a significant time in the history of European concert music. The town made such an impression on Franz that when the court moved to Munich in 1778, he preferred to stay in Mannheim and join the orchestra of the newly founded National Theatre. Furthermore, the efforts to establish a native German opera at the Theatre gave young Danzi his first experience and successes as a composer and conductor. In 1783 Danzi succeeded his father as a cellist in the Munich court, after Karl Theodor moved his court there. In 1790 he married the singer Margarethe Marchand, with whom he toured successfully as a conductor. After his wife’s early death in 1800 he returned to Mannheim. In 1807 he was appointed Kapellmeister in Stuttgart where he met Weber, and in 1812 he accepted the post of Kapellmeister at the Baden court in Karlsruhe, where he was again able to stage operas by Weber. Danzi was a prolific composer in many genres. His career spanned the transition from the late Classical to the early Romantic styles—the origin of much of the classical music we hear today. Carl Maria von WEBER Andante e rondo ongarese J. 79 ▪ 1809 Originally written for his stepbrother Fritz for viola and orchestra, it was never published in Weber’s lifetime. In 1813, when Georg Friedrich Brandt (a bassoonist in the Munich Orchestra) asked for a bassoon concerto, Weber reworked it to feature the bassoon as the solo instrument. The new version, published as Op. 35, retains the character of the work, with the Rondo’s rhythms emphasizing the Hungarian flavor of the music. It is the version generally played today. Weber (1765–1826) was a first cousin of Mozart’s wife Constanze. (Her father Franz Fridolin was the half-brother of Weber’s father, Franz Anton, whose wife Genovefa Brenner was a Viennese soprano who was briefly engaged for Goethe’s theatre in Weimar). Constanze’s three sisters—Josepha, Aloysia, and Sophie—were all notable singers and performed in premieres of a number of Mozart’s works. In 1821 Weber wrote Der Freischütz, one of the first Romantic German operas. Its unearthly portrayal of the supernatural in the Wolf’s Glen scene has been described as “the most expressive rendering of the gruesome that is to be found in a musical score.” It was performed in Weimar under the directorship of Hummel. MOZART String Quintet No. 3 in C Major K. 515 ▪ 1787 The composer Maximilian Stadler recalled that Haydn and Mozart played the String Quintets (K. 515, K. 516, and K. 593) in chamber music performances, where the two of them took the viola parts. Although Mozart was successful as a pianist and composer, he was under serious financial strain during the last 5 years of his life (1786–1791)—his popularity had waned among the fickle Viennese, which meant a decline in income, while he continued to sustain a lifestyle to which he was accustomed. In February 1787 Mozart returned to Vienna (from Prague), where no Viennese appearances are recorded in that year. His father Leopold had also died on 28 May, and he buried his pet starling on 4 June. Written in the spring of 1787, Mozart made an effort to sell the String Quintets in 1788. He placed a “Musical Notice” in the Wiener Zeitung and the Weimar Journal des Luxus und der Moden: “Three new Quintets…which I offer on subscription, handsomely and correctly written. The price for the subscribers is 4 ducats or 18 fl. Viennese currency. The subscription tickets are to be had daily from Herr Puchberg at Sallinz’s warehouse at the Hohe Markt where the works will be available from 1 July….” The subscription was intended to help clear a debt to Michael Puchberg, the wealthy textile merchant. In the view of H.C. Robbins Landon, “It is now thought that Mozart simply wrote this set of three works on speculation.… He played them with his friends for a year and then decided to sell them in manuscript copies.” The quintets, however, were not snapped up by the amateurs, in part because they were beyond their instrumental ability. Eventually, he sold “two of the first set of three Quintets to Artaria who brought them out in 1789 (K.515) and August 1790 (K.516). Yet despite all these sources of extra income, Mozart was now living permanently beyond his means—and principally because of the costs incurred by Constanze’s lengthy cures.” |
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April 7 A“Dvořák” Medley
Rubin GOLDMARK Romanze for cello and piano Op. 3 ▪ 1896 Goldmark (1872–1936), a New Yorker of Austro-Hungarian descent, was a standout among Dvořák’s American students. His father Leo, a lawyer and cantor, was a founder and a singer of the Oratorio Society of New York, as well as a cofounder of the New York Symphony Society. His uncle was the famous Jewish-Austrian composer Karl Goldmark. After a year at City College, the 17-year-old studied for 2 years at the Vienna Conservatory, where his composition teachers were the Fuchs brothers, Robert and Johann Nepomuk, and his piano teacher was Anton Door. Upon returning to New York in 1891, he studied piano at the National Conservatory with the virtuoso Rafael Joseffy (former pupil of Moscheles, Tausig, and Liszt) and composition with Dvořák. After Dvořák left for Iowa in 1893, Goldmark taught piano and theory at the Conservatory till the following year, when poor health prompted his move to Colorado Springs, where he served as director of Colorado College. After regaining his health, he returned to New York in 1902. For 2 decades, he taught piano and composition privately and toured across the U.S. and Canada, giving over 500 lecture-recitals on music, theory, composition, and Wagner’s music. In 1907 Goldmark cofounded the “Bohemians,” the legendary New York Club of musicians (of which Jens Nygaard was a member). From 1924 till his death, he was head of the composition department at Juilliard. His compositions include Hiawatha, Samson, Negro Rhapsody, and The Call of the Plains, a favorite of the violinist Mischa Elman. Rudolf FRIML Suite mignonne Op. 35 ▪ published 1908 The titles of the movements suggest characteristics of the music: Solitude, Chanson matinale (Morning song), Valse romantique, Petite histoire (A little story), Danse bohémienne, and Un moment de rêve (Contemplation). The publisher Arthur P. Schmidt advertised the Suite as “valuable for what it offers as study in interpretation…[and as] many opportunities for applying…an artistic manner.” Friml was a pianist and composer mostly known for his 30 operettas and revue scores which showed strong European musical influences, and alluded to pre-World War I European lightheartedness. He was born in Prague in 1879, became an American citizen in 1925, and died in Hollywood in 1972. Friml studied with Dvořák at the Prague Conservatory around 1900 to 1903, and served as piano accompanist for the violinist Jan Kubelík in Europe and the United States, where he remained from 1906. He also made his American debut performing his First Piano Concerto with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall in 1904. His own reputation as a recitalist was made “for his keyboard improvisations as well as his character pieces, lyrical salon dances, etudes, violin and cello pieces and songs, some written under the pseudonym Roderick Freeman [New Grove Dictionary].” In 1912 he was called to replace the composer Victor Herbert and wrote his first and successful operetta, The Firefly, commissioned by the singer Emma Trentini. Even more popular were Rose Marie, best remembered for the song “Indian Love Call”; the Vagabond King with its popular songs “Only a Rose” and “Some Day”; and the Three Musketeers. From 1934 Friml composed for motion pictures. His last important song, “The Donkey Serenade,” was interpolated into a film adaptation of The Firefly in 1937. Otakar ŠEVČÍK “The Blue-eyed maiden” from Czech Dances Op. 10, No. 1 ▪ published 1900 Ševčík was a Czech violinist and very influential teacher. Born in 1852, his father taught him the piano and singing from the age of 5, and the violin at age 7. He studied at the Prague Conservatory in 1866–1870, then taught at the Mozarteum in Salzburg for 3 years, served as concertmaster of Vienna’s Comic Opera, and toured as a recitalist. In 1875 he became a violin professor at the Imperial Music School in Kiev until 1892, when he returned to the Prague Conservatory and taught there for 14 years, becoming professor in 1901. Ševčík also traveled abroad to promote his teaching methods in the United States and London. His base, however, was in Pisek, where pupils flocked from all over the world, especially from Britain and the United States, to receive their final training. He taught nearly 5000 violinists including Jan Kubelik, Efrem Zimbalist, and Marie Hall. When Dvořák was director of the Prague Conservatory, he was a great proponent of Ševčík’s teaching methods and made them compulsory for the school’s violin students. In 1909 Ševčík was appointed head of the Vienna Academy, working there until 1918. Known for his practical approach to performance and technique development, he is the author of several study books for the violin that are still in use today. He died in 1934 at the age of 81. Ferdinand LAUB Polonaise Op. 8 ▪ 1862 Laub’s virtuosity and artistry were greatly admired by Tchaikovsky, who called him the finest violinist of his time. Born in Prague in 1832, he was taught the violin by his father from age 4, and he began to appear in public at age 6. In 1841 the Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull, praised the 11-year-old’s virtuosity. In 1843 he was accepted straight into the second year at the Prague Conservatory. In his last year, in 1846, he caught the attention of Heinrich Ernst and of Berlioz, who invited him to Paris, but the Revolution of 1848 prevented his visit. Instead, Laub worked as a soloist in the Theater an der Wien, then toured in Europe. In 1853 he succeeded Joachim as Konzertmeister in Weimar, where he met Liszt and played chamber music with him. He then taught at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and in 1856 he was appointed chamber virtuoso to the Prussian king. At his peak Laub appeared with his most famous contemporaries, including Clara Schumann, Han von Bülow, Anton Rubinstein, Theodor Leschetizky, Smetana, and Joachim. In 1866 he became violin professor at the Moscow Conservatory, where he was acclaimed as a soloist, chamber musician, and conductor, and in demand as a teacher. Tchaikovsky’s first two string quartets were premiered by the Moscow String Quartet, led by Laub. In 1874 he stopped working because of illness. While on his way to a spa, Laub died in Gries, Italy, at the age of 43. After his untimely death, Tchaikovsky wrote his third string quartet in his friend’s memory. “In his time Laub was renowned for his beautiful tone, his technical virtuosity and his unfailing sense of style. …his interpretation of the Beethoven concerto was particularly celebrated. He was one of the first violinists to perform the Bach sonatas. His instruments included an Amati, a 1706 Guarneri and a 1727 Stradivari [New Grove Dictionary].” George Whitefield CHADWICK String Quartet No. 4 in E minor ▪ 1896 Both Chadwick and Dvořák, whose “American” Quartet was introduced by the Kneisel Quartet in Boston in 1894, created themes that sound like, but are not, folk song. For his 4th String Quartet, Chadwick created for each movement original themes that echo with New England hymns and fiddle tunes, and incorporates, in its finale, elements of passacaglia and fugue that recall a sea shanty. After its premiere by the Kneisel Quartet, it became his most popular string quartet during his lifetime. Chadwick was a composer of the “Second New England School,” its music rooted in the traditions of European Romanticism. Born in 1854 in the rural town of Lowell, Massachusetts, Chadwick was the son of an insurance salesman, a high school dropout, and a vagabond scholar. After studying the organ and music theory in Boston, he went to Leipzig in 1877 to study privately with Salomon Jadassohn, and then at the conservatory with Carl Reinecke, and in Munich with Josef Rheinberger. His success as a composer was surprisingly rapid. Upon his return to Boston in 1880 he taught music theory at the New England Conservatory, and by 1897 he became its director, a post he held until his death in 1931. As an educator, Chadwick played an important role in American music, counting among his pupils Horatio Parker, Henry Hadley, and Florence Price. He also conducted orchestral and choral concerts. As a composer, “his best works show him to have been a pioneer in freeing American musical expression from German conservatory style.” He also wrote music resembling Dvořák’s “American style”—using American themes since the 1870s. The New Grove Dictionary concludes that “Although he was not as popular as Edward MacDowell, as honoured as Horatio Parker or as imaginative as Charles Ives, George Chadwick was one of the most influential teachers in American music and one of the most versatile composers. He may be counted as a realist, one of that broad gathering of American creative personalities who flourished during the pre-World War I decades typified by the Ashcan school of painters, the social realism of such theatre directors as David Belasco and such writers as Stephen Crane and ‘O. Henry.’” Antonín DVOŘÁK Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor “Dumky” Op. 90 ▪ 1891 Dvořák’s popularity came from his embrace of the folk musical styles of Bohemia, expressed in folk-inspired works such as the Slavonic Dances. This led him to combine Eastern European vernacular styles and traditional chamber music forms. The epitome of this fusion is the “Dumky” Piano Trio, written in 6 dumka, a folk genre most likely of Ukrainian origin popular in Poland and Bohemia in the 19th century. Dumka means “a fleeting thought,” and the musical genre evokes an intense feeling that characterizes the Slavic soul in an emotionally charged vision. Each of the Trio’s dumka alternates between brooding melancholy and sharply contrasting interludes of dancelike exuberance. Completed on 12 February 1891, the Trio premiered in Prague on 11 April with violinist Ferdinand Lachner, cellist Hanuš Wihan, and Dvořák at the piano. The work was so well received that Dvořák performed it on his 40-concert farewell tour throughout Moravia and Bohemia, prior to leaving for New York to head the National Conservatory of Music of America. |
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April 14 Poles Vault
ANONYMOUS Clarinet Polka ▪ [1890s] The composer of the Clarinet Polka has not been irrefutably identified. The origins of a piece of folk music that resembles the Clarinet Polka, as it is presently known, can be traced to the turn of the 19th century. Entitled “Klarinetten Muckl” by an “Anonymous” composer, the piece is included in a collection of “Known Songs and Dances,” arranged for accordion by Otto Thirsfeld and published by J. Weinberger in 1906 in Bavaria (now Austria). A copy of the first edition is preserved in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Another version of the polka with the title “A Hupfata” is said to date in the late 1890s, and a vinyl recording of “A Hupfata” was released in 1907. It featured the graphic design of the 14th Bavarian Infantry Regiment Band. In 1913, the Polish composer Karol Namysłowski reorchestrated the anonymous piece for traditional Polish instruments, entitled “Dziadunio Polka” after the Polish word for “grandfather” (copyrighted 16 December 1913). It became a hit. In 1915, the Clarinet Polka was first recorded in the United States by Frank Przybylski for Columbia Records in Chicago. Since 1971 it has been used as the introduction to Lato z Radiem, one of the most popular shows on Polskie Radio Program I in Poland. Namysłowski (1856–1925) was the founder of Poland’s oldest symphony orchestra. He studied the trumpet and violin at the Warsaw Institute of Music, graduating with distinction. After a few years of teaching music and conducting concerts, he formed a band of talented farmers; it became the Peasant Orchestra in 1881, based in Zamość. The musicians, whom he taught, wore traditional Polish dress, and Namysłowski conducted facing the audience while playing the violin. The Orchestra gained enormous popularity, and by 1885 it gave its first performance in Warsaw, and in 1891 it played for Tsar Alexander III, who presented Namysłowski with a gold ring with diamonds. The Peasant Orchestra made a 3-month tour of the United States in 1925, performing 80 concerts in 14 states. Its first concert was at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and it also performed for President Coolidge at the White House. In addition, it recorded 10 vinyls for Victor in Camden, New Jersey. The Namysłowski Peasant Orchestra later became the Karol Namysłowski Symphony Orchestra. Michał Kleofas OGIŃSKI Polonaise “Pożegnanie Ojczyzny” ▪ circa 1831 The Polonaise was composed after Ogiński returned to Warsaw from a diplomatic mission to the Hague and London. Upon his return, he found out that Poland was being threatened with an invasion from Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Saddened, he wrote the Polonaise in A minor for solo piano. As a composer, Ogiński is noted for his piano music, especially polonaises, which influenced Chopin and other contemporaries, including Józef Elsner and Karol Kurpiński. The music’s melancholic, lyrical mood suited the taste of the times and expressed Polish patriotism. Although Ogiński was an accomplished politician and diplomat, he is remembered today as a musician and composer. Born in Guzów, near Warsaw, in 1765 into an aristocratic family, he first studied the violin and piano under Józef Kozłowski, and in 1798 took occasional violin lessons from Giovanni Battista Viotti while residing abroad. His political career began in 1786, when he was elected to the Sejm (Parliament), after which he held various ambassadorial and government positions in the Netherlands, London, Warsaw (as Grand Treasurer of Lithuania), Constantinople, and elsewhere. Among his numerous achievements, he was one of the leaders of the Kosciuszko uprising, and he collaborated with Napoleon (whom he met in 1797) in creating the Duchy of Warsaw, which he viewed as a stepping stone to eventual full Polish independence. Like Napoleon, he was a Freemason. After traveling throughout Europe, Ogiński settled in 1802 at Zalesie, near Vilnius, and in 1815 in Italy. He died in Florence in 1833. For details of Ogiński’s life and career, see https://oginski.by/en/history-oginski Karol Józef LIPIŃSKI String Trio No. 2 in A Major Op. 12 ▪ circa 1833 While known as the “Polish Paganini,” Lipiński rejected the appellation, noting that he played in a very different manner, with a modest demeanor, and an honesty of expression. In the view of the New Grove Dictionary, “Lipiński represented the orthodox Classical school of Viotti and Spohr, with an emphasis on good tone quality. [His] mastery of all the other elements of technique made his style unique.” Born in 1790 in Radzyń, Lipiński learned the violin and rudiments of music from his father, who was conductor of the Count Starzeński Orchestra in Lwów (Lviv); he later learned the cello from Ferdinand Kremes. As a violinist, he developed a beautiful, strong, and deep tone which became a hallmark of his playing. In 1809, at age 20, he became first violin (and later conductor) of the opera theater in Lviv. In 1814 he went to Vienna to meet Spohr, who encouraged him to further his violin studies, which he did upon returning to Lviv—he resigned from the theater and focused on practicing and composing. “After reading in the newspapers about Paganini, he decided to hear him and in 1817 left for Italy.… He met Paganini in April 1818 in Padua and played with him twice…in Piacenza. Between 1819 and 1828 he played in many Polish, German and Russian towns. He met Paganini for the second time in 1829 in Warsaw, during the coronation of Nicholas I of Russia as King of Poland, and their playing initiated a press controversy as to who was the greater [Chopin was in the audience]. When he returned from Warsaw he gave up public performance so as to perfect his technique.” In 1833 Lipiński resumed his artistic tours in Europe, then settled in Dresden in 1839, when he was appointed Konzertmeister by the Saxon king. In addition to the royal orchestra, he formed his own string quartet and taught; his pupils included Henryk Wieniawski, then age 13. Among his admirers were Berlioz, Wagner, and Schumann, who wrote: “Lipiński is here. These three words are enough for a music lover to set his pulse racing…. For those who have not yet heard the powerful violin master, who is so adept at ushering one into the realm of previously unfamiliar feelings, it is recommended that they pay attention to this special opportunity to relish in his art as this is going to be a musical performance they may not experience in years.” In 1861 he retired to his estate in Urlów, where he died after a severe asthma attack. Juliusz ZARĘBSKI Piano Quintet in G minor Op. 34 ▪ 1885 The Piano Quintet is Zarębski’s last work before he succumbed to tuberculosis in 1885 at age 31. It was rediscovered by Martha Argerich, who performed it at the Lugano Festival in 2011. The New Grove Dictionary asserts that “Zarębski was the most original Polish composer of the second half of the 19th century. His piano works were influenced by Liszt…. He also developed some of Chopin’s methods, drawing on folk music and making creative use of some of its modal characteristics in his harmony; and he had a comprehensive command of the technical resources of the piano. His compositions are marked by great variety of colour…and sometimes by an emancipation of unrelated chords which marks him out as a forerunner of impressionism. Zarębski’s finest work is his Piano Quintet…. Advanced harmony, richness of colour and an enterprising use of rhythm, as well as the full exploitation of the piano and its skillful blending with the strings combine to make it one of the most remarkable Polish chamber works of the second half of the century.” Born in 1854 in Zhitomir, Zarębski graduated from the Vienna Conservatory in 1872 with gold medals in composition and piano. He then studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1873, earning his Free Artist diploma in only 3 months. In 1874 he studied the piano for a year in Rome under Liszt, becoming his favorite pupil. By 1880 he was appointed professor of piano at the Brussels Conservatory, a post he held till his death. Zarębski also concertized throughout Europe with great success. And he mastered, within two months, the technique of playing the 2-keyboard piano (an invention of the brothers Edouard and Alfred Mangeot), then developed a repertoire for it, and gave concerts on the instrument during the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and later in London. The Mangeot double grand piano has the bizarre distinction of having the top keyboard running in the opposite direction to the keyboard below (that is, the bass to the right, and the treble to the left). Likewise, the 4 pedals are “mirrored”! Only 2 were ever made. Zarębski’s name is pronounced Yooliush Zarempski. |
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April 28 German Romantics
Wilhelm Maria PUCHTLER Notturno in F minor for Piano Quartet Op. 9 ▪ 1876 Puchtler was an “adherent of the New German School which was led by Liszt and Wagner, and whose followers were antagonistic towards the Conservatives like Brahms, Joachim, and Schumann [Michael Volpert].” Brahms thought his piano music “horrendously difficult to play” and that his other works were “just dreadful.” If you beg to differ, then phooey to Herr Brahms and succumb to the siren. Born in 1848 in the village of Remlingen (then in Bavaria), Puchtler put the priesthood before music so as to please his parents. However, after their deaths, he entered the Stuttgart Conservatory in 1868 and studied composition with its founder Immanuel Faisst. He also studied privately with Franz Liszt, with whom he became friends. After graduating, he obtained a position in Göttingen as a music teacher and choir director. He died in 1881 at age 33 from tuberculosis. Max BRAUER Sextett in G minor ▪ circa 1895 Brauer was born in 1855 in Mannheim, which then had the reputation of performing the largest repertoire of operas of any city in Germany. His first studies were with Vinzenz Lachner, the city’s court conductor from 1836 to 1873 (Lachner was so highly valued that his contract was renewed and extended whenever he received offers from other musical centers). Brauer then enrolled at the Cologne Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition with Ferdinand Hiller, Gustav Jensen, and Samuel de Lange. After graduating, he was appointed music director of Kaiserslautern, a Bavarian province in his day. After 2 decades, around 1905, Brauer moved to Karlsrühe, where he founded and became director of the Bach Choral Society, a position he held until his death in 1918. Brauer composed in most genres, including operas, orchestral music, chamber music, and sonatas. BRAHMS String Sextet No. 1 in Bb Major Op. 18 ▪ 1860 Written at age 27 during his first official appointment to the princely Court at Detmold, the string sextet was then a rare form. Upon finishing the piece—one of his earliest chamber works—Brahms sent it to his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. After playing through the piece with friends, Joachim was cautiously optimistic and arranged a premiere in Hanover on 20 October 1860. Brahms was present for the occasion, as was his dear friend Clara Schumann, who was quite taken with the piece and remarked, “It was even more beautiful than I had anticipated, and my expectations were already high.” |
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May 12 Russian Musical Society
Nikolay RUBINSTEIN Valse morceau de salon Op. 16 ▪ no date Rubinstein (1835–1881) was born the year his father opened a small pencil factory in Moscow. He and his older brother Anton were taught piano, first by their mother (a task master when it came to practicing) and then by Aleksandr Villoing. From 1844 to 1846 both boys studied music theory in Berlin. After returning home, he studied medicine at Moscow University to avoid conscription, barely graduating in 1855 (abetted by the notoriously lax exams). By 1860, preferring music, he established the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society in his own house, where music was taught and concerts were presented. Its success and popularity led to expansion and larger quarters. Nikolay’s personality was also an asset. He was reputed to be a “gregarious, extrovert, generous, charming bon vivant [and] was welcome in all the fashionable aristocratic houses in Moscow, a city for which he had a special affection.” In 1866 Nikolay Rubinstein cofounded (with Prince Troubetzkoy) the Moscow Imperial Conservatory (successor to the Russian Musical Society). He served as its director and piano professor; and he engaged young Tchaikovsky as a teacher of harmony and encouraged him to perform his compositions. Although Nikolay “attacked Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto at its first, private performance, later he recanted and became a celebrated interpreter of the work.” He promoted Tchaikovsky’s music and, between 1866 and 1880, he conducted the premieres of almost every orchestral composition. Tchaikovsky was very grateful for Nikolay’s support, dedicating more of his works to him than to anyone else. He also supported the work of Rimsky-Korsakov and Mily Balakirev and gave “a brilliant first performance of Balakirev’s enormously difficult piano piece Islamey only two months after its completion, despite a heavy programme of teaching, conducting and administration and his very full social life”—a testament to Nikolay’s extraordinary prowess as a pianist. As pedagogues, “Both brothers were vigorous, uninhibited teachers and frequently screamed at their pupils, who nevertheless adored them. Nikolay’s best-known pupils were [Sergey] Taneyev, [Alexander] Ziloti, and Emil Sauer. He died of consumption in a Paris hotel on his way to Nice for health reasons. It was typical of him that he ate a dozen oysters on his deathbed [New Grove Dictionary].” Paul PABST Melodie ▪ n.d. Pabst—considered one of the greatest pianists of his day—was influential in the development of the late Romantic style of piano playing in Russia. He was admired by Liszt and Tchaikovsky, who called him “a pianist of divine elegance” and “a pianist from God.” The boy gave his first public recitals at the age of 11. Later, he and a young Rachmaninoff performed many concerts together; and he was also the pianist for the premiere of Anton Arensky’s Piano Concerto. Born in 1854 in Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), his father August Pabst was his first teacher. He then studied at the Dresden Academy of Music, with Anton Door at the Academy of Music and Lyric Arts in Vienna, and with Liszt in Weimar. From 1875 he taught piano in Riga, and in 1878 was invited by Nikolay Rubinstein to teach piano at the Moscow Conservatory. After Rubinstein’s death he became professor of piano in 1881, and taught there the rest of his life. As a composer, Pabst wrote virtuosic piano transcriptions that were admired by the most outstanding pianists of the time, including Tchaikovsky, who was especially impressed by his Paraphrase on themes from his opera Eugène Onegin. Tchaikovsky also sought Pabst’s advice while writing his First Piano Concerto, and in 1884 he appointed Pabst to edit his piano works for publication. Pabst also wrote a Piano Concerto (once thought to be lost), a Piano Trio dedicated to Anton Rubinstein, and many smaller works, almost exclusively for piano (such as the Melodie). When he unexpectedly died from a heart attack in 1897 at age 43, the funeral wreath from the Russian Musical Society bore the epitaph, “To Honored Artist, Indefatigable Professor, Hardly Simply a Man.” Nikolay RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Quintet in Bb Major ▪ 1876 Unlike his String Sextet, which won an honorable mention at the chamber music competition sponsored by the Russian Musical Society, the Quintet for piano, flute, clarinet, horn, and bassoon was passed over by the jury, but was subsequently performed by the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society. Rimsky-Korsakov described the Quintet in his autobiography, Chronicle of My Musical Life, published in 1909: “The First Movement, Allegro con brio, is in the classical style of Beethoven. The Second Movement, Andante, contained a good fugato for the wind instruments with a very free accompaniment in the piano. In the finale, Allegretto vivace, I wrote in rondo form. Of interest is the middle section where I wrote cadenzas for the flute, the clarinet and the horn to be played in turns. Each was in the character of the instrument and each was interrupted by the bassoon entering by octave leaps.” As a member of the Mighty Five, Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) played a significant role in shaping the Russian classical music landscape by developing a nationalistic style of classical music. He drew from Russian folk song and lore and utilized orientalism—exotic harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic elements—instead of traditional Western compositional methods. Some of his works were performed at the Russian Musical Society. For example, Serbian Fantasy was premiered in December 1867 at the third symphony concert of the RMS in Moscow, conducted by Nikolay Rubinstein. His Symphony No. 2 “Antar” was composed in 1868 and the first version was premiered in March 1869 at the RMS. When the first revised version was played at the RMS in 1876, Rimsky-Korsakov was the conductor. His Symphony No. 3 in C Major (completed on 18 February 1874) was featured at the fifth symphony concert of the RMS on 1 January 1875, with Nikolay conducting. Even though Tchaikovsky’s reviews of the Serbian Fantasy and 3rd Symphony were pretty harsh, he concluded, “Let us not forget that Mr Rimsky-Korsakov is still very young, that his whole future lies before him, and there is no doubt that this remarkably gifted musician is destined to become one of the finest exponents of our art.” Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Trio in A minor Op. 50 ▪ 1882 Tchaikovsky was deeply upset to learn of Nikolay’s sudden and unexpected death from tuberculosis in Paris on 23 March 1881, at the age of 45, and he wrote an account of his passing for the Russian newspapers. Some months later, he composed the Piano Trio in remembrance of his mentor and close friend, Nikolay Rubinstein (younger brother of Anton), and dedicated it “to the memory of a great artist.” The massive trio was first performed at the Moscow Conservatory in March 1882, with Sergey Taneyev at the piano. In a letter to his patroness Nadejda von Meck on 20 January 1882, Tchaikovsky confessed, “I fear I may have arranged music of a symphonic character as a trio.” The variations were based on undisclosed events in Rubinstein’s life. At the age of 22, Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) “found out that the Russian Musical Society offered classes in music theory…I went immediately to those classes” and in September 1862, he was among the first students of the newly-opened St Petersburg Conservatory, where the director was Anton Rubinstein. Anton also taught, and his classes in orchestration and composition were central to Tchaikovsky’s studies. Several weeks before his graduation in 1866, he was invited by Nikolay to teach at the newly-founded Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky very quickly became a member of the musical family. He also began work on his first symphony, “Winter Daydreams,” composing through depression and insomnia. When he showed the unfinished score to his former teachers, Anton Rubinstein and Nikolay Zaremba, both men disliked it, but Nikolay Rubinstein liked it and presented the scherzo movement at a concert of the Russian Musical Society. The entire symphony, performed in February 1868, was a resounding success. Henceforth Nikolay continued to champion the music of Tchaikovsky. |
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| Summer Season 2025 | ||||||||||||
3 Mondays at 2 PM & 7:30 PM The summer concerts will be held
at: Tickets $25, $17, $10 • Reservations advised |
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Monday May 19, 2 pm & 7:30 pm
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Monday June 2, 2 pm & 7:30 pm
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Monday June 16, 2 pm & 7:30 pm
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*All programs are subject to change.
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Last updated 12/15/24
