November 5, 2018.  Couperin and much more.  François Couperin, Couperin le Grand, one of the greatest French composers of the end of the 17^th – early 18^th century, was born in Paris on November 10^th of 1668.  The most important French composer between Lully and Rameau, he was featured on these pages many times, for example here.  We know him mostly as a composer for the harpsichord and the organ, but Couperin wasn’t confined to keyboard instruments.  In 1714 he wrote the three Leçons de ténèbres (literally, Lessons of Darkness), vocal settings for the Tenebrae service, held during the three days preceding Easter.  During the traditional Catholic service candles are extinguished, and the service ends in total darkness.  The text is from the biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah.  Many composers set the Ténèbres to music, especially during the Renaissance era, for example, Palestrina, Thomas Tallis and, famously, Orlando di Lasso.  Couperin’s setting is among the best.  Here is the third Leçon for two sopranos; it’s performed by Montserrat Figueras and Maria Cristina Kiehr, Jordi Savall conducts Le Concert Des Nation.

Walter Gieseking, a French-German pianist, was also born this week, on November 5^th of 1895.  Gieseking was born in Lyon; his father was a well-known German doctor.  He began playing the piano at the age of four and didn’t receive any formal training till he entered the Hamburg Conservatory at the age of 16.  When he was 20, still in Hamburg, he performed a cycle of almost all Beethoven sonatas; it was extremely well received.  He then performed several very successful concerts in Berlin; his playing of the music of Debussy and Ravel was especially noted.  While some of his compatriots emigrated, Gieseking stayed in Germany during the Nazi period; Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein both accused him of being a Nazi collaborator.  After the war, he was practically banned from performing in the US but continued playing in the more forgiving Europe.  He eventually was cleared of cultural collaboration and returned to the US.  He was known is an outstanding performer of the music of Debussy and Ravel.  Here’s the 1953 recording Gieseking made in London of Debussy’s Image, Book I.  Gieseking died in London on October 26^th of 1956.  At the time he was in London, recording the full cycle of Beethoven’s sonatas.  He was in the process of recording Sonata no. 15, Op. 28 (“Pastoral”) when he suddenly fell ill.  By then, the first three movements had been already recorded; it was never finished.  This incomplete recording was issued by HMV.

October 29, 2018.  John Dunstaple.  Vincenzo Bellini was born this week, on November 3^rd of 1801 (here’s the final scene from La Pirata, with Maria Callas and the Philharmonia orchestra conducted by Nicola Rescigno).  Also, two wonderful conductors: Eugen Jochum, on November 1^st of 1902, and Giuseppe Sinopoli, on November 2^nd of 1946.  Jochum, one of the most interesting interpreters of the music of Bruckner, was a long-time conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic, which he directed during the Nazi era (Jochum never joined the Nazi party or any other Nazi organizations).  After the war he became the founding music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.  He also had long-term relationships with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and other major orchestras.  Here’s the first movement of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 6.  Jochum conducts “his” Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.  

The Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli was only 54 when he died of a heart attack while conducting Aida at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin.  He was best known as an opera conductor, having worked at the Bayreuth, the Metropolitan opera and most opera houses if Europe.  He led the Staatskapelle Dresden for almost 10 years.  Like Johum, Sinopoli made several interesting recordings of Bruckner; he was also an insightful Mahlerian.  Here Sinopoli is conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Robert Schumann’s Manfred Overture, Op. 115.  

October 22, 2018.  Liszt, Berio, Bizet, Paganini, Scarlatti.  What a wonderful group!  All born this week – that’s why they appear together in this entry – but how different, as if to demonstrate to us, yet again, the enormous breadth of the European musical tradition.  Here we have Domenico Scarlatti, a great representative of the Baroque clavichord tradition; Niccolò Paganini, a famous violinist and gifted composer, Franz Liszt, a Romantic composer and legendary pianist: he wrote some of the most exquisite music for the piano (a successor to the harpsichord, Scarlatti’s instrument); Georges Bizet, the French opera composer (Scarlatti’s father, Alessandro, who also wrote operas, wouldn’t have recognized the genre); and finally, Luciano Berio, another Italian, and one of the most interesting composers of the second half of the 20^th century.  We’ve written about all of them before, so we’ll present each of them with a piece of music.

Domenico Scarlatti was born on October 26^th of 1685, a prodigious year that also gave us Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.  Scarlatti wrote 555 keyboard sonatas.  Here’s one of them Sonata in B minor, K. 27, L. 449, performed by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

While Scarlatti composed mostly for the harpsichord, Niccolò Paganini (born on October 27^th of 1782) wrote much of his music for his favorite instrument, the violin.  Here’s the devilishly difficult Caprice No. 3 in octave double stops.  It’s performed by Augustin Hadelich, a young Italian violinist of German descent, who won a Grammy in 2016.

Franz Liszt, born on October 22nd of 1811, was for the piano what Paganini was for the violin, and more (he really was a much better composer).  In 1838, Liszt wrote Grandes études de Paganini, S.140, a set of six etudes after Paganini’s works; five of the etudes are based on Paganini’s Caprises and one, on the themes from his violin concertos.   In 1851 Liszt published a revised version, S. 141, which was, while still formidable, not as demanding technically as the almost unplayable original version.  The second one is the version that’s usually played in concerts, but Nikolai Petrov, a wonderful Soviet pianist, made a live recording of the first version.  Here’s La Chasse,Étude No. 5 in E major. 

October 15, 2018.  Gilels and Flier.  Last week we were celebrating the life of Monserrat Caballé, and missed the birthday of one of her stage partners, the incomparable Luciano Pavarotti, who was born on October 12^th of 1935 in Modena.  We mentioned a recording he made in 1984 with Joan Sutherland and Caballé.  Here’s the trio from Act I of Bellini’s Norma: Pavarotti is Pollione, Sutherland, who was 58 at the time of the recording, is Norma and Caballé – Adalgisa.

Two great Soviet pianists were also born this week in what was then the Russian Empire: Emil Gilels on October 19^th of 1916 and Yakov Flier, on October 21^st of 1912.  Gilels was born in Odessa (now in Ukraine), Flier – in a small town not far from Moscow.  Both were Jewish; with few exception (the rich merchants, the highly educated) Jews were not allowed to live outside of the Pale of Settlement, in the western part of the Empire.  How Flier’s parents, a poor family of a watchmaker, managed to live so close to Moscow, isn’t clear.

Gilels, a child prodigy, started his piano studies at the age of five and a half.  By the age of 12 he had acquired a considerable repertoire, gave his first recital and was accepted at the Odessa Conservatory.  In 1933, at the age of 16, he won the First All-Union Competition of Musicians-Performers.  That made him famous and allowed him to perform across the country.  In 1935-38 he studied with Heinrich Neuhaus, the famed Moscow Conservatory teacher.  By that time Yakov Flier was his main competitor: in 1936 Gilels lost to Flier at the International piano competition in Vienna, where Flier took the first prize, while Gilels took the second, but two years later he had his revenge at the Ysaÿe International Festival in Brussels (after the war this competition would be renamed the Queen Elizabeth): Gilels won and Flier took third place (Moura Lympany came in second).   The Second World War put the breakes on Gilels’s international career: he was scheduled to play in the US in 1939 but the tour was canceled.  After the war, the great Sviatoslav Richter became his main competitor and eventually overtook him in the Soviet hierarchy, which always needed one person at the top.  This had little to do with Gilels’s real achievements: in 1955 he made his US debut, which was highly successful; he played in a trio with Leonid Kogan and Mstislav Rostropovich; he was invited to every major concert hall of Europe.  Gilels had a heart attack in 1981 from which he never completely recovered.  He died on October 14th of 1985.  

October 8, 2018.  Caballé and Verdi.  Only three of the 20^th century sopranos were ever given affectionate monikers by their adoring fans: “La Divina,” “La Stupenda,” and “La Superba” were indeed the greatest.  La Divina – Maria Callas – died years ago, in 1977, she was just 53; La Stupenda – Joan Sutherland – just three years younger than Callas, lived a much longer life, and her singing career was also longer; she died in 2010.  We were going to write about Giuseppe Verdi, as his birthday happens to be this week, but on Saturday welearned that La Superba, Monserrat Caballé, had died in Barcelona after a long illness.  Caballé was an extraordinary singer.  She had a real bel canto technique, a huge vocal diapason that allowed her to sing coloratura arias, and an incomparable repertoire of more than 100 operas.  But more than anything else she was known for the purity of her voice and amazing vocal control that allowed her to sustain a long and even pianissimo line.

Monserrat Caballé was born in Barcelona on April 12^th, 1933.  She studied at the Barcelona Conservatory and graduated in 1954 with a gold medal.  She then moved to Basel, sung in the Basel Opera and then in Bremen.  In 1960, she appeared in a small role in La Scala.  Her breakthrough came in 1965 when she replaced, on short notice, Marilyn Horne in a New York concert staging of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia.  The public didn’t know her, but she earned a 25-minute ovation.  That evening launched her to stardom, which stayed with her for the rest of her life. 

October 1, 2018. CCCC.  It’s easy to remember and, if you’re interested in contemporary music, very much worth checking out.   CCCC stands for Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.  The recently established organization will present its inaugural season starting with a concert on October 13^th by Yarn/Wire performing music by the Japanese composer Misato Mochizuki, Enno Poppe, a German composer and conductor, and two young Chicagoans.   Like most of the season’s concerts it will take place at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E 60th Street.

The UChicago has a long tradition of presenting new music, beginning with the Contemporary Chamber Players under Ralph Shapey in 1964 and continuing as Contempo in 2002 under Shulamit Ran and in 2015 under Marta Ptaszyńska.  CCCC is led by one of the most interesting contemporary American composers Augusta Read Thomas (here, for example, is her Angel Musings, performed by the Orion Ensemble, and here – Aureole, performed by the DePaul University Symphony, Cliff Colnot conducting). A key component of the Center’s performance series is the newly formed Grossman Ensemble which comprises 13 leading contemporary music specialists.  Even the selection of the instruments comprising the ensemble is unusual:  a flute,oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, two sets of percussion, harp, piano plus the Grammy-nominated Spektral Quartet. The ensemble is co-directed by Ms. Thomas and two other young composers, Anthony Cheung, and Sam Pluta, both from the University’s Music department.

Over the course of the season, the Grossman Ensemble will participate in three performances at the Logan Center for the Arts, all with a focus on the process of creating new work. Eight rehearsals will lead up to each performance, enabling composers to write, workshop, and review new works in close collaboration with the ensemble. The public will be invited to attend an open rehearsal before each concert, allowing them unprecedented access to the creative process.  In this inaugural season, the Grossman ensemble will workshop and perform 12 world premieres by University of Chicago faculty, students, and guest composers in the concert season.

In addition to the Grossman Ensemble and Yarn/Wire, Tyshawn Sorey, a composer and performer working at the intersection of classical and jazz music, will play with his trio.  And on February 5^th of 2019 nine UChicago composers will have a unique occasion to be heard in a performance by the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, a training orchestra for the Chicago Symphony: all of them were asked to create new works to be premiered by this outstanding professional ensemble.

Seven more established composers (“established” being a relative term for a contemporary classical composer) have been commissioned to write new works.  They include Steve Lehman, who writes jazz and experimental music (his most recent album was called the #1 Jazz Album of the year by NPR Music and the Los Angeles Times); David Rakowski, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and recipient of many international prizes; Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, also a multiple prize-winner; composer and soprano Kate Soper, a Pulitzer Prize finalist whose works have been commissioned by many America orchestras; Chen Yi, known for blending Chinese and Western traditions in her music; and Shulamit Ran (here is her For an Actor: Monologue for Clarinet in a virtuosic performance by Alexander Fiterstein (Clarinet).

We strongly encourage our listeners to give this wonderful undertaking a try.