September 24, 2012.  Rameau, Shostakovich.  Jean-Philippe Rameau was born on September 25, 1683 in Dijon.  Together with François Couperin, Rameau was the first truly French composer of the Baroque era: though Jean-Baptiste Lully was the pioneer of the French Baroque, he was born in Florence and moved to France as a teenager.  Most of Rameau’s early compositions were instrumental: he didn’t write an opera till he was 50, but once he had, they became a major event in France, not just musically but culturally.  Some people still preferred the operas of Lully, while others thought that Rameau was a much better composer.  In  17^th century France these were important matters: the “culture wars” erupted within the country, or at least among its literate part, dividing it into two camps, the "Lullyistes" and the "Rameauneurs"; the partisan pamphlets continued to be written for many years.  Rameau lived during the time of remarkable flourishing of the French culture in general.  He wrote operas to librettos by Voltaire.  He became a character in Diderot’s famous dialogue, Le neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew).  And he earned the enmity of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered himself a composer, not just a writer and philosopher.  The 1730s and ’40s were the most productive period of Rameau’s life.  He wrote a number of "musical tragedies," such as Castor et Pollux, and the newly restored Les Boréades, which were never performed during Rameau’s lifetime; and many opera-ballets - Les Indes galantes being probably the most famous.  He received the title of "Compositeur du Cabinet du Roi" and a nice pension.  In his later years he wrote less, and by then his operas lost some of their freshness: the "Italian" operas came into vogue, their major proponent being Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose Orfeo ed Euridice was premiered in October of 1762.  Rameau died on September 12, 1764, two weeks before his 81^st birthday.  Here is Rameau’s Gavotte and Doubles, performed by the Israeli pianist Matan Porat.  Rameau wrote the Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin in 1726-27.  This collection forms two large suites, in A Minor and in G Major.  Gavotte and Doubles is from the former.

Dmitry Shostakovich was born on the same day in 1906.  We duly celebrate his birthday each year (for example, here).  This time we’ll just present one piece, the first movement of Symphony no. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 - the so-called Leningrad Symphony.  It was completed in December of 1941 and premiered in Kuibyshev on March 5, 1942.  (Kuibyshev, now restored to its historical name of Samara, was the city where the Soviet government evacuated its most important institutions to fearing that Moscow may fall to the advancing German armies.  The government relocated there, a never-used bunker for Stalin was built, and the prestigious Bolshoi Theater was moved to Kuibyshev as well).  Samuil Samosud conducted the orchestra of the Bolshoi, and the performance was broadcast all over the world.  The Soviets considered the symphony the musical epitome of the resistance to the Nazi invasion.  These days it’s much less clear whether that was the case: Rostislav Dubinsky, the first violinist of the Borodin Quartet, who knew Shtostakovich very well, maintained that the first movement was completed a year before the war started.  We’re not going to resolve this controversy, but you can listen to this movement (here), performed by the orchestra with an awkward Soviet name of The USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra.  At the time of this recording (1984), the music director of the orchestra was one of the most interesting Russian conductors of that era, Gennady Rozhdestvensky.  He is on the podium.

September 17, 2012. We have some unfinished business from the two previous weeks.  With the explosion of anniversaries we had very little time to write about Arnold Schoenberg and Antonin Dvořák.  With Schoenberg we traced his career to the point when he abandoned tonality in pieces such as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, written in 1912. Though very radical in its completeness, Schoenberg’s atonal music was not truly revolutionary: even Wagner extensively used shifting tonalities in his operas, sometimes to such extent that the major tonal center would seem to completely disappear (many of you may have heard it last week on public television during the rebroadcast of the wonderful Ring Cycle from the Metropolitan Opera).  Some works of Debussy had the same quality, but of course not to the degree as used by Schoenberg.  As unusual as it sounds, the atonal music still maintains the traditional tonal relationships, except that they are dispersed in small droplets within the composition.  Schoenberg didn't stop there: he evolved his style to eliminate all traces of tonality, making all 12 tones of the scale equal throughout a piece of music.  This style became known as dodecaphone, or the twelve tone technique. Schoenberg "invented" it around 1921.  By then he had already established a group of followers and pupils who became known as the Second Viennese School.  The key participants in this group were the tremendously talented Alban Berg and Anton Webern.  Among other noted members were Hanns Eisler and Viktor Ullmann.  All of them continued composing in the twelve tone style, which became extremely influential by the middle of the century.  Composers such as Milton Babbitt in the US, the Frenchman Pierre Boulez, the Italians Luciano Berio and Luigi Dallapiccola, and the Austrian-American Ernst Krenek were major proponents of the system. Even Stravinsky experimented with it.

In 1924 Schoenberg moved to Berlin, accepting the position of Director of the Master Class in Composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts.  He held this position till 1933, when Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.  Fearing for his safety, Schoenberg moved to the United States and eventually settled in Los Angeles.  He taught at UCLA and the University of Southern California (John Cage and Lou Harrison were among his students).  He also continued composing; among the music written during this period are two concertos, one for the violin and another for the piano, and (the unfinished) opera Moses und Aron.  We'll hear the first movement of the Piano concerto, performed by Mitsuko Uchida and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Jeffrey Tate conducting (here, courtesy of YouTube). Schoenberg was also a serious amateur painter. The picture above is a self-portrait, painted in 1910.

It's hard to imagine a composer more different than Schoenberg, but here we are, celebrating Antonin Dvořák.  His anniversary was two weeks ago, but at that time we were too busy with Bruckner.  It's interesting that on a superficial but factual level, one can find a lot of similarities between Schoenberg and Dvořák.  A generation apart (Dvořák was born in 1841, Schoenberg in 1874) both were children of the Austrian Empire: Dvořák was born near Prague, the capital of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), which back then was an important part of the empire, Schoenberg in Vienna.  Both spent some time in the US: Schoenberg, the last 18 years of his life, Dvořák - three very productive years at the end of his.  Musically, both were influenced by Brahms, which, while unnoticeable in Schoenberg's later compositions, is very clear in all of Dvořák's oeuvre.  And during different periods of their respective careers, both were supported by Gustav Mahler.  But as far as their compositions are concerned, while Schoenberg was a revolutionary, Dvořák was everything but.  Which of course doesn't mean that he didn't write some wonderful music: his "New World" symphony, the cello concerto, the opera "Rusalka," some songs, quartets, and piano music are first class.  Here is his Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 81. It's performed by Tessa Lark and Yoon-Jung Yang, violins, Yiyin Li, viola, Sébastien Gingras, cello and Helen Huang, piano.

September 10, 2012.  This week, very much like the last one, is abundant in anniversaries.  The only person we wrote about last week was Anton Bruckner, but several other composers are also worth mentioning..  Darius Milhaud, a wonderful French composer and a member of Les Six, was born on September 4, 1892.  Johann Christian Bach, the youngest of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons and an influential composer of the Classical era, was born on September 5, 1735 (Mozart loved his music and wrote three piano concertos based on J.C. Bach’s keyboard sonatas). Anton Diabelli was also born on September 5, but half a century later, in 1781.  Diabelli, a music publisher, wasn’t a good composer, but his ditzy waltz inspired Beethoven to write one of the most profound pieces in all of piano literature, the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120, boring if played poorly, sublime if played well.  On the same day, but in 1867, Amy Beach, the first American woman to establish herself a classical composer, was born in Henniker, New Hampshire.  September 8th is the anniversary of the great Czech composer Antonin Dvořák, who was born in 1841.  We’ll write about Dvořák another time, but here’s his Romance, Op. 11. It’s performed by the violinist Natasha Korsakova, Charles Olivieri-Munroe conducting the North Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.  And on September 9 of 1583, Girolamo Frescobaldi, one of the most interesting composers of the later Renaissance, was born in Ferrara.  All of this in one week!

This week is almost as rich with birthdays.  William Boyce, one of the most important English composers of the 18^th century was born around September 11, 1711 (he was baptized that day).  Friedrich Kuhlau, a Danish composer, was born on September 11, 1786.  These days he may not be performed very often in concert halls, but anybody who ever studied piano has most likely played one of his pieces.  September 11th is also the birthday of the one of most interesting living composer, the Estonian Arvo Pärt.  He was born in 1935.  We’ll definitely write more about him at a later time.  Clara Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann, a pianist and composer and close friend of Johannes Brahms, was born on September 13, 1819.  But the person we’d like to commemorate today at least to some degree is Arnold Schoenberg.  He was born in Vienna on September 13, 1874 into a middle-class Jewish family.  The only musical lessons he ever took were from the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, his future brother-in-law.  Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss were early supporters of Schoenberg, even though initially Schoenberg didn’t like Mahler’s music (he was "converted" after hearing Mahler’s Third Symphony).  His first significant work was the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), written in 1899.  Clearly a late-Romantic piece, it’s still a tonal composition.  But in 1908 he wrote his Second Quartet, the fourth movement of which is Schoenberg’s first real atonal work (during that time his wife, Mathilde Zemlinsky, left him and started an affair with the young painter Richard Gerstl.  One wonders if there is a connection).  In 1912 he followed up with a hugely influential Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, a setting of 21 poems by the Belgian-French poet Albert Giraud.  It’s scored for a narrator (usually a soprano) and a chamber ensemble usually containing a clarinet, a flute, piano, and string instruments.  This is also an atonal work, but it’s still not a 12-tone composition: he would develop the 12-tone system several years later.

We’ll continue with Schoenberg and probably some other composers next week.  In the mean time, you can listen to Verklärte Nacht here.  It’s performed by Angelo Xiang Yu, violin, Yuuki Wong, violin, Hanna Lee, viola, Minkyung Sung, viola, and Karen Ouzounian, cello, Se-Doo Park, cello.

September 3, 2012.  Anton Bruckner was born on September 4, 1824.  This very fact gives one pause: Bruckner was born 9 year before Brahms!  Brahms has been part of the canon for more than a century, one of the “Three Bs.”  The music of Bruckner, while clearly of the Romantic tradition, feels new even today, fresh and absolutely original.  Its history was difficult; initially, Vienna rejected it.  Then, forty years after Bruckner’s death, the Nazis appropriated it, to some extent undermining it for the following generations.  Still, thanks to Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Karajan, Günter Wand, Sergiu Celibidache, and many other conductors, Bruckner’s music thrives today, becoming a touchstone of sorts for any great orchestra.

Bruckner was born in a small village outside of Linz, Austria.  His first music teacher was his father, a local schoolmaster.  He started playing the organ very early, and greatly improved in his second school, where the schoolmaster was an organist.  After his father’s death, the 13 year-old Anton was sent to the monastery in Sankt-Florian, which had a great Baroque organ (see the photo below).  He sometimes played the instrument during services.  The following years were very difficult for Bruckner: his mother sent him to a teacher’s seminar, following which he had a number of low-paying teaching positions in St.-Florian and other towns.  In 1855 Bruckner started studying musical theory and counterpoint with the Viennese composer, organist, and music theorist Simon Sechter.  They mostly corresponded by mail, but Bruckner also made several visits to Vienna.  That was also the time when Bruckner was introduced to the music of Wagner, which he liked and studied diligently.  When Sechter died in 1868, the Vienna Conservatory offered his position to Bruckner.  He accepted and taught there for a number of years.  He later taught at the Vienna University.  Bruckner wrote most of his symphonies while in Vienna (there was an unnumbered “study” symphony that he wrote while in St.-Florian, and started his 1^st symphony there, although the revisions were written in Vienna). 

A man of genius, Bruckner was a very unusual person, and very unusual as a composer.  Mahler, who admired him, called him “half simpleton, half God.”  He was a direct opposite of the archetypical creator, an auteur impervious to all criticism.  Very humble and unsure of himself, he sought advice from everybody, from his students to conductors, and readily incorporated their suggestions.  He significantly reworked many of his symphonies.  Symphony no. 1 has three versions, as do symphonies 2 and 4.  Symphony no. 3 has four different revisions.  A provincial, he never got comfortable living in the capital.  That the musical tastes in Vienna were dictated by the famous critic Eduard Hanslick, an admirer of Brahms and anti-Wagnerite, didn’t help either: Hanslick strongly disliked Bruckner’s music.  Bruckner never married, although he made numerous proposals to very young girls.  He died on October 11, 1896, at age 72, and was buried under his beloved organ in St.-Florian.

We’ll hear the 3^rd movement (Scherzo) of his Symphony no. 4.  There’s a story connected to this symphony.  Hans Richter, the famous conductor who by then had worked with Wagner, was rehearsing for the premier of the symphony.  According to Richter, "When the symphony was over, Bruckner came to me, his face beaming with enthusiasm and joy.  I felt him press a coin into my hand. 'Take this' he said, 'and drink a glass of beer to my health.'” Richter took the coin, and later wore it on his watch-chain.  We’ll hear the original version (there are two others, each in more than one form.  Even Mahler got into the game and created a version).  It’s performed by Staatskapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt conducting (to listen, click here, courtesy of YouTube).

August 27, 2012.  Nana Jashvili, a friend of the site, is a violin virtuoso recognized by the press and critics for the emotional intensity and the profound lyricism of her playing.  Nana’s musical ability was developed under the influence of two cultures, Georgian and Russian.  She was born in Tbilisi into a musical family.  Her father, Luarsab Jashvili, a violinist and violist, was a professor at the Tbilisi Conservatory.  He was Nana’s first teacher.  Nana’s older sister, Marina Jashvili (Yashvili), who also took her first lessons with her father, became a famous violinist and a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.  Marina died on July 9 of this year at the age of 79 after a long illness, and we mourn her passing.

After studying with her father, Nana moved to Moscow and entered the class of the great violinist Leonid Kogan at the Moscow conservatory.  As a student she won several national competitions.  Then, at the age of seventeen, she had her triumphant breakthrough when she won the "Premier Grand Prix" at the International Jacques Thibaud Competition, the youngest winner ever.  She was also awarded the "Prix Special" for the best interpretation of Maurice Ravel's "Tzigane."  Several years later she also won the "Concours International de Montreal."  Since then Nana has given concerts in the great music capitals in Europe, Canada and Japan.  She has appeared as a soloist with the Concertgebouw orchestra of Amsterdam, the Gewandhaus orchestra of Leipzig, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestre de Paris and the Moscow and Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestras.  She has worked with many great conductors, such as Claudio Abbado, Karl Böhm, Kurt Masur, Neeme Järvi, Yehudi Menuhin, Valerie Gergiev, Pavel Kogan, and Jansug Kakhidze.  Nana Jashvili is a welcome guest artist on the concert stages at the summer festivals of Vienna, Bregenz and Copenhagen.  Her repertoire extends from the Baroque to the contemporary.  Her interpretation of the violin concerto op.36 by Schoenberg at the Vienna state opera was celebrated as an exceptional event.  Nana is a professor at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen.  She plays a Nicola Gagliano violin.

Nana Jashvili’s recordings in our library suffer from many transfers from one media to another.  Still, we’re sure that you’ll enjoy several of them.  Here’s Béla Bartók’s Six Romanian Folk Dances.  Tchaikovsky’s Valse Scherzo in C Major is here.  Finally, the complete F-A-E Sonata, written by Albert Dietrich, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, can be heard here.  In all performances Nana is accompanied by the pianist Vladimir Skanavi.  We hope to bring you more and better quality recordings in the near future.

August 20, 2012.  Claude Debussy.  This week we celebrate a major event: the 150^th anniversary of one of the greatest composers of the late 19th – early-20^th century, Claude-Achille Debussy.  He was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a wealthy suburb of Paris (his family was not).  He started his musical studies at the age of eight, in Nice, where his mother, then pregnant again, fled during the Prussian occupation of Paris in 1870.  At the age of ten he entered the Paris conservatory and studied there for 11 years.  In 1884 he won the Prix de Rome and moved to the French Academy in Rome for a four-year residence.  He didn’t like it there, neither his companions nor the food.  He submitted several pieces, one of which was a symphonic cantata La damoiselle élue.  A pretty but rather straightforward piece with just a hint of the kind of harmonies that Debussy was to develop later, it was still labeled by the Academy as “bizarre.”  In 1888 he visited Bayreuth to see Wagner’s Parsifal and Die Meistersinger and, deeply impressed, made a return a year later for Tristan und Isolde. 1889.  As different as Wagner and Debussy are, it’s not surprising that the shimmering sonorities of Wagner’s orchestra affected the young Debussy.  He later disavowed both the influence and Wagner’s music in general.  Still, it seems that Wagner’s influence is discernable, and not only on Debussy’s only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande.

By about 1890, Debussy had fully developed his own musical language.  One of the first compositions to clearly manifest the new style was Suite bergamasque for piano (you can listen to it here, in the performance by the young Chinese pianist Xiang Zou).  During that period Debussy was spending a lot of time in Stéphane Mallarmé symbolist salon.  Four years later, influenced by a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, Debussy wrote a symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.  The poem was later made into a famous ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky.  His only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande premiered in 1902.  We had to borrow from YouTube to bring you an excerpt.  It is here; Pierre Boulez conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Donald McIntyre is Golaud, George Shirley – a Pelléas, Elisabeth Söderström is Mélisande.   One of Debussy’s most popular compositions, three symphonic "sketches" titled La mer was written in 1903.   A large number of piano compositions followed: Estampes, also in 1903, Children's Corner Suite in 1908, the first book of Préludes in1910 (the second book was written in 1913 and differs in style rather considerably).  Debussy’s works were becoming more angular, with a larger number of unresolved dissonances, such as in this Etude No.11 "Pour les arpèges composes," (1915) performed here by the pianist Jiyeon Shin.  And then in 1917 he wrote the violin sonata, which had much simpler harmonics (it is performed here by the Japanese violinist Mari Lee with Ieva Jokubaviciute on the piano).  We don’t know if there was a general shift in Debussy’s compositional style: he wanted to write six sonatas but completed just three, for violin, for cello, and for flute, viola and harp (you can find all of them in our library).  He died of cancer on March 25, 1918, while Paris was being heavily bombarded by the Germans.  He was buried at the Père Lachaise with no public ceremony.  The following year Debussy was re-interred at Passy, a small pretty cemetery behind the Trocadéro, in the 16^th arrondissement.