Archive of blurbs

This Week in Classical Music: April 15, 2024.  Marriner, Maderna.  Sir Neville Marriner, a great English conductor, was born one hundred years ago today, on April 25^th of 1924 in Lincoln, UK.  He started as a violinist, played in different orchestras and chamber ensembles, and in 1958 founded the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the chamber orchestra that became world famous.  Among Marriner’s friends and founding members were Iona Brown, who led the orchestra for six years from 1974 to 1980, and Christopher Hogwood, who later founded the Academy of Ancient Music.  Marriner and St Marin in the Fields made more recordings than any other ensemble-conductor pair.  Their repertoire was very broad, from the mainstay of the baroque and classical music of the 18^th century to Mahler, Janáček, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and other composers of the 20^th.  In the words of Grove Music, Marriner’s performances were “distinguished by clarity, buoyant vitality, crisp ensemble, and technical polish.”  Altogether, Marriner made 600 recordings, more than any other conductor except for Karajan.  In 1969 Marriner co-founded the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, he served as the music director of the ensemble till 1978.  Marriner was active till the very end of his life; he died in London on October 2^nd of 2016, at 92.

Bruno Maderna, one of the most interesting and influential composers of the 20^th century, was born in Venice on April 21^st of 1920.  Here’s our entry from some years ago.

This Week in Classical Music: April 8, 2024.  Sol Hurok, Impresario.  He was neither a musician nor a composer, but Sol Hurok did for classical music in America more than almost any other person we can think of.  Hurok was born Solomon Gurkov on April 9^th of 1888 in Zarist Russia and moved to New York in 1906.  A natural organizer, he started with left-wing politics in Brooklyn; that didn’t last long as he switched to representing musicians: Efrem Zimbalist and Mischa Elman, the talented violinists who also emigrated from Russia, were among his first clients.  He represented the Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin for several years (he also worked with Nellie Melba and Titta Ruffo).  He then turned to dance: Anna Pavlova, Isadora Duncan, and Michel Fokine became his clients, as well as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.  In 1942, he organized one of the first tours of the American Ballet Theatre. 

Hurok represented Marian Anderson when working with black singers was not a popular undertaking; he helped to organize Anderson’s famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which was broadcast nationwide and made her a household name.  Among Hurok’s longest associations were those with Arthur Rubinstein and Isaac Stern.  The list of Hurok’s clients read as Who-is-Who in American Music: he worked with the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, violinists Nathan Milstein and Efrem Zimbalist, and later represented the younger stars, Van Cliburn, Jacqueline du Pré, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman.

For many years Hurok tried to bring Soviet artists to America.  It became possible only after Stalin’s death.  The pianists Emil Gilels and violinist David Oistrakh came first, in 1955, then, later, such luminaries as Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Leonid Kogan and Mstislav Rostropovich.  Hurok also represented the singers Galina Vishnevskaya and Irina Arkhipova and conductors Kiril Kondrashin and Yevgeny Svetlanov.  Some of Hurok’s greatest coups were achieved with the ballet companies: the Bolshoi tour in 1959 was a sensational success, and so was Kirov’s, which Hurok brought in 1961.

Sol Hurok died in New York on March 5^th of 1974.

This Week in Classical Music: April 1, 2024.  Easter Sunday was yesterday.  Here is the first chorus of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, "Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen" (Come ye daughters, join my lament).  Collegium Vocale Gent is conducted by Philippe Herreweghe.

Two composers (great pianists both) were born on this day: Ferruccio Busoni in 1866 and Sergei Rachmaninov in 1873.

This Week in Classical Music: March 25, 2024.  Maurizio Pollini, one of the greatest pianists of the last half century, died two days ago, on March 23^rd in Milan at the age of 82.  His technique was phenomenal, even though he lost some of it in the last years of his life (he performed almost till the very end of his life and probably should’ve stopped earlier).  His Chopin was exquisite (no wonder that he won the eponymous competition in 1960), as was the rest of the standard 19^th-century piano repertoire, but he also was incomparable as the interpreter of the music of the Second Viennese School, and even more so as the performer of the contemporary music, much of it written by his friends: Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Maderna, and many other.  He will be sorely missed.  Speaking of Pierre Boulez: his anniversary is this week as well: he was born on March 26^th of 1925. 

Also this week: Franz Joseph Haydn, born March 31^st of 1732; Carlo Gesualdo – on March 30^th of 1556; Johann Adolph Hasse, onMarch 25 of 1699; and one of our favorite composers of the 20^th century, Béla Bartók, on March 25^th of 1881.

This Week in Classical Music: March 18, 2024.  Classical Connect is on a hiatus.  Johann Sebastian Bach was born this week, on March 21^st of 1685 (old style), in Eisenach.  Here is the first part of Bach’s St. John Passion, one of his supreme masterpieces.

This Week in Classical Music: March 11, 2024.  Classical Connect is on a hiatus. 

This Week in Classical Music: March 4, 2024.  Luigi Dallapiccola, Part II.  Last week, we ended the story of the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola at the beginning of WWII.  Mussolini’s fascist state had passed race laws that restricted the civil rights of the Italian Jews, affecting Dallapiccola directly, as his wife was one of them.  Later laws would strip the Jews of their assets and send them into internal exile.  Italy was no Germany, and these laws weren’t enforced by the Mussolini fascists as they were by the Nazis: no Italian Jews were killed by the regime just because they were Jews (many political opponents of Mussolini were imprisoned and executed, and some of them were Jewish).  That state of affairs abruptly changed in 1943 when the Italian army surrendered to the Allies, and in response, the Nazis occupied all of the northern part of Italy.  During those years, Dallapiccola and his wife lived in Florence, where he was teaching at the conservatory – Florence was part of the occupied territory.  In 1943 and again in 1944, they were forced into hiding, first in a village outside the city, then in apartments in Florence.

Once the war was over, Dallapiccola’s life stabilized.  His opera Il prigioniero (The Prisoner), which he composed during the years 1944-48, was premiered in 1950 in Florence (the opera was based in part on the cycle Canti di prigionia, the first song of which we presented in our entry last week).  The opera's music was serialist; it was one of the first complete operas in this style, as Berg’s Lulu, the first serialist opera, had not yet been finished.  Hermann Scherchen, one of the utmost champions of 20th-century music, conducted the premiere.  Despite the music’s complexity, it was often performed in the 1950s and ‘60s.  Times have changed, but it’s still being performed, occasionally.  Here is the Prologue and the first Intermezzo (Choral) of the opera, about eight minutes of music.  It was recorded live in Bologna on April 16^th of 2011; Valentina Corradetti is the soprano singing the role of Mother, the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna are conducted by Michele Mariotti.

In 1951, Serge Koussevitzky, the music director of the Boston Symphony and himself a champion of modern music, invited Dallapiccola to give lectures at the Tanglewood Festival.  After that first trip, Dallapiccola often traveled to the US, sometimes staying for a long time.  Dallapiccola, who spoke English, German and French, also traveled in Europe.  Interestingly, he never visited the Darmstadt Summer School, the gathering place for young composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono and Bruno Maderna, who were experimenting with serial music and developing new idioms.  It’s especially surprising considering that he was very close to Luigi Nono, and that Luciano Berio, also a Darmstadt habitué, was his former student.  It seems that the Darmstadt composers were too cerebral and too radical for Dallapiccola, whose pieces, while strictly serial during that period, were infused with lyricism, somewhat in the manner of one of his idols, Alban Berg.

Dallapiccola’s last large composition was the opera Ulisse, which premiered in Berlin in 1968; Lorin Maazel was the conductor.  After that, Dallapiccola composed very little, his time went into adapting some of his lectures into a book.  He died on February 19^th of 1975 in Florence.

In 1971 Dallapiccolo compiled two suites based on Ulisse.  Here is one of them, called Suite/A.  The soprano Colette Herzog is Calypso, the baritone Claudio Desderi is Ulysses.  Ernest Bour conducts the Chorus and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the French Radio.

This Week in Classical Music: February 26, 2024.  Missed dates and Luigi Dallapiccola.  For the last three weeks, we’ve been preoccupied with Alban Berg, and we feel good about it: Berg was a revolutionary composer (not by his constitution but by the nature of his creative talent) and he should be celebrated, even if our time, philistine and woke, doesn’t suit him well.  The problem we have is that we missed several very significant anniversaries: for example, George Frideric Handel‘s – he was born on February 23^rd of 1685; also, one of the most interesting German composers of the 16^th century, Michael Praetorius, was born on February 15^th of 1571.  We missed the birthday of Francesco Cavalli, a very important composer in the history of opera, on February 14^th of 1602.  Two famous Italians were also born during those three weeks, Archangelo Corelli on February 17^th of 1653 and Luigi Boccherini, on February 19^th of 1743.  Of our contemporaries, György Kurtág, one of the most important composers of the late 20^th century, celebrated his 98^th (!) birthday on February 19^th.  And then this week, there are two big dates: Frédéric Chopin’s anniversary is on March 1^st (he was born in 1810) and Gioachino Rossini’s birthday will be celebrated on February 29^th – he was born 232 years ago, in 1792.  We’ve written about all these composers, about Handel and Chopin many times.  Today, though, we’ll remember an Italian whom we’ve mentioned several times but only alongside somebody else; his name is Luigi Dallapiccola, and his story has a connection to Alban Berg. 

Luigi Dallapiccola was born on February 3^rd of 1904 in the mostly Italian-populated town of Pisino, Istria, then part of the Austrian Empire.  Pisino was transferred to Italy after WWI, to Yugoslavia after WWII, as Pazin, and now is part of Croatia.  The Austrians sent the Dallapiccola family to Graz as subversives (Luigi, not being able to play the piano, enjoyed the opera performances there); they returned to Pisino only after the end of the war.  Luigi studied the piano in Trieste and in 1922 moved to Florence, where he continued with piano studies and composition, first privately and then at the conservatory.   During that time, he was so much taken by the music of Debussy that he stopped composing for three years, trying to absorb the influence.  A very different influence was Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, which Luigi heard in 1924 at a concert organized by Alfredo Casella (in the following years, Casella would become a big supporter and promoter of Dallapiccola’s music). 

Upon graduation, Dallapiccola started giving recitals around Italy, later securing a position at the Florence Conservatory where he taught for more than 30 years, till 1967 (among his students was Luciano Berio).  In 1930 in Vienna, he heard Mahler’s First Symphony, which also affected him strongly: at the time, Mahler’s music was practically unknown in Italy.  In the 1930s, Dallapiccola's life underwent major changes.  Musically, he became more influenced by the Second Viennese School, and in 1934 got to know Alban Berg (in 1942, while passing through Austria to a concert in Switzerland, he met Anton Webern).  The policies of Italy also affected him greatly: first, he was taken by Mussolini’s rhetoric, openly becoming his supporter.  This changed with the Abyssinian and Spanish wars, which Dallapiccola protested, and then much more so when Mussolini, under pressure from Hitler, adopted racial (for all practical purposes, antisemitic) policies: Dallapiccola’s wife, Laura Luzzatto, was Jewish.  They married on May 1, 1938; the racial laws were adopted in November of that year.  Here, from 1938, is the first of the three Canti di Prigionia (Songs of Imprisonment), Preghiera di Maria Stuarda (A Prayer of Mary Stuart) written, in part, as a protest against Mussolini’s racial laws.  The New London Chamber Choir is conducted by James Wood, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, by Hans Zender.  We’ll continue with the life and music of Luigi Dallapiccola next week.   

This Week in Classical Music: February 19, 2024.  Alban Berg, Part III, Lulu.  Frank Wedekind was a famous (and controversial) German playwright.  Among his more famous plays 

were two, Earth Spirit, written in 1895, and Pandora's Box, from 1904, usually paired together and called Lulu plays, after the name of the protagonist.  For a while, the plays were banned for presumed obscenity.  Berg saw the plays in the early 1900s in Berlin, with Wedekind himself playing Jack the Ripper in Pandora's Box.  He was much taken by the plays, and some quarter century later, following the success of his first opera, Wozzeck, decided to write another one, based on Wedekind’s plays.  The storyline of the plays is convoluted: Lulu, an impoverished girl, is saved by a rich publisher, Dr. Schön, from life on the streets.  Schön brings her up and makes her his lover.  Later, he marries Lulu off to one Dr. Goll.  The painter Schwarz gets involved; Lulu seduces him, and poor Dr. Goll dies of a heart attack upon learning of Lulu’s betrayal.  Lulu marries painter Schwarz while remaining Dr. Schön’s mistress.  Dr. Schön tells Schwarz about Lulu’s past; overwhelmed, Schwarz kills himself.  Eventually, Lulu marries Dr. Schön but is unfaithful to him, sleeping with Schön’s son Alwa and other men and women.  Once Schön discovers her affairs, he gives Lulu a gun to kill herself - but instead, she shoots him.  Lulu is imprisoned at the end of Earth Spirit.  In Pandora's Box, Lulu escapes from prison with help from her lesbian lover and marries Alwa, Dr. Schön’s son, (whose father Lulu killed in cold blood).  She’s then blackmailed by her former companions and subsequently loses all her money when a certain company’s shares, Lulu’s main asset, become worthless.  Lulu and Alwa move to London; destitute, she works as a streetwalker.   One of her clients kills Alwa, and eventually, Lulu herself is killed by Jack the Ripper. 

By 1929, when Berg started working on Lulu, he was financially secure and quite famous, thanks to the popularity of Wozzeck.  He used Wedekind’s Earth Spirit to write the libretto for Act I and part of Act II, and Pandora's Box for the rest of what he planned as a three-act opera.  He worked on it for the next five years and mostly completed it in what’s called a “short score,” without complete orchestration, in 1934.  By then the Naxis were in power and the cultural situation had changed dramatically.  Berg’s position was difficult on two accounts: first, because of the kind of music he was composing (by now not just atonal but 12-tonal) – the Nazis considered it “Entartete,” that is “Degenerate.”  And secondly, he was a pupil of a famous Jewish composer, Schoenberg, and that, in the eyes of the regime, tainted him even more.  Wozzeck was banned (Erich Kleiber conducted the last performance of the opera in November of 1932), practically none of his music was being performed, and Berg’s financial situation was precarious.  In January of 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg a violin concerto; financially, that was of great help and the concerto, dedicated to the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, who died of polio, became one of Berg’s most successful compositions.

Understanding that Lulu most likely wouldn’t be staged in Germany – or anywhere else – anytime soon, Berg decided to write a suite for soprano and orchestra based on the opera, the so-called Lulu Suite.  Erich Kleiber performed it in November of 1934, it was well received by the public but the level of condemnation by Goebbels and his underlings was such that Kleiber was not only forced to resign from the Berlin Opera but emigrated from Germany.  Berg continued working on the orchestration of Lulu but never completed it: in November of 1935 he was bitten by an insect, that developed into a furuncle, which led to blood poisoning.  Berg died on Christmas Eve of 1935.  In 1979, the Austrian composer Friedrich Cerha completed the orchestration of the third act; this became the standard version of Lulu.

Here is Berg’s Lulu Suite.  It’s performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle conducting.  Arleen Auger is the soprano.

This Week in Classical Music: February 12, 2024.  Alban Berg, Part II.  In 1911, Arnold Schoenberg moved from Vienna to Berlin but the intense relationship between Berg and his teacher continued through letters.  Schoenberg’s notes often contained demands that were about more than just the music: some were domestic, some financial.  Though Berg adored his teacher, Schoenberg’s demands were difficult and time-consuming, and the relationship was getting more difficult – so much so that in 1915 their correspondence broke off.  WWI was in full swing; Berg was conscripted into the Austrian Army and served for three years (the 42-year-old Schoenberg, who moved back to Vienna in 1915, also served in the army, but only for a year).  Things changed in 1918 after Berg was discharged: he returned to Vienna and reestablished his relationship with his teacher.

In May of 1914 Berg attended a performance of Woyzeck, a play by the German playwright Georg Büchner.   He immediately decided to write an opera based on the play; it would become known as Wozzeck, a misspelling of the original play’s name that somehow stuck.  Berg wrote the libretto himself, selecting 15 episodes from Woyzeck, a macabre story of a poor and desperate soldier, who, suspecting that the mother of his illegitimate child is having an affair with the Captain, murders her, and then drowns.  Berg started writing sketches soon after he saw the play but had to stop in June of 1915 when he was drafted.  He continued composing while on leave in 1917 and 1918, finished the first act in 1919, the second act two years later, and completed the opera in 1922.  It premiered at the Berlin State Opera in December of 1925, with Erich Kleiber conducting.  Wozzeck created a scandal, which is understandable, given that it was the first full-size opera written in an atonal idiom, unique not only musically but also in its emotional impact.  What is more important (and somewhat surprising) is that the premier was followed by a slew of productions across Germany and Austria.  Wozzeck was staged continuously in different German-speaking cities for the next eight years, but also internationally: in Prague, Philadelphia, and even in such an unlikely place as Leningrad.  It all came to an end when the Nazis banned it as part of their campaign against Entartete Musik (Degenerate music) and the Austrians dutifully followed.  Wozzeck’s success made Berg financially secure, brought him international recognition and some teaching jobs.  We’ll listen for the first 15 minutes of Act II of Wozzeck.  In Scene 1, Marie puts her son to bed, then Vozzeck arrives, gets suspicious of her earrings (they were given to her by the Captain), gives her some money and leaves.  In Scene 2, the Doctor and the Captain walk the street; they see Wozzeck, make fun of him and insinuate that Marie isn’t faithful.  Wozzeck runs away in despair.  Claudio Abbado conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Vienna State Opera (we know the orchestra as the Vienna Philharmonic); Wozzeck is sung by Franz Grundheber, his common-law wife Marie is Hildegard Behrens.  Heinz Zednik is the Captain, Aage Haugland is the Doctor.

Wozzeck was an atonal opera, but it wasn’t a 12-note composition, the technique which by then was being developed by Schoenberg.  Berg was receptive to it and soon moved in a similar direction.  He wrote two pieces, Kammerkonzert (Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin with 13 Wind Instruments), completed in 1925, and Lyric Suite, a year later, which broadly used the 12-tone technique.  In 1929 he started work on his second major opera, Lulu, a much larger and more complex composition than Wozzeck.  We’ll cover it next week, in our the third and final installment on Berg.

This Week in Classical Music: February 5, 2024.  Berg, Part I, Early Years.  Alban Berg, a seminal German composer of the first half of the 20^th century, was born in Vienna on February 9^th of 1885.  Berg, with Anton Webern, was a favorite pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and was one of the first composers to write atonal and 12-tonal music.  While Schoenberg was often cerebral, even in his more expressive works and Webern a much stricter follower of the technique in his succinct, perfectly formed pieces, Berg’s music was more lyrical and Romantic, even as he abandoned the tonal format.  Berg’s background was very different from his Jewish teacher’s: his Viennese family was well-off, at least while his father was alive (he died when Alban was 15), they lived in the center of the city (Schoenbergs lived in Leopoldstadt, a poor Jewish neighborhood).  Berg was a poor student: he had to repeat the 6^th and the 7^th grades.  Even though Alban was interested in music from an early age and wrote many songs, he clearly wasn’t suited for studies in a formal environment and lacked the required qualifications, so, instead of going to a conservatory he became an unpaid civil servant trainee.  In 1904, without any previous musical education, he became Schoenberg’s student.  By that time Schoenberg, who was struggling financially and took students to support himself, had already written Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) and a symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande.  Both had a fluid tonal canvass as Schoenberg was already researching the atonal idiom, but it would be another three years till he’d write his Quartet no. 2, his first truly atonal piece; all these developments took place while Berg was his student.  Berg studied with Schoenberg till 1911, first the counterpoint and music theory, and later composition.  During that time he sketched several piano sonatas and later completed one of them, published as his op. 1.  That was a big departure, as before joining Schoenberg all he could write were songs.   

We should note that the pre-WWI years in Vienna were a period of tremendous cultural development; despite the overall antisemitism of the Austrian society, many of the leading figures were Jewish, and sexuality was explored deeply for the first time.  In music, it was Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, Egon Wellesz, Ernst Toch, and of course, Webern and Berg, with many younger composers to follow.  Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil and Stefan Zweig were important novelists and playwrights (Frank Wedekind, their German contemporary, was the source for Berg’s opera Lulu).  The painter Gustav Klimt was Berg’s friend, and so was the architect Adolf Loos.  And we shouldn’t forget Sigmund Freud, who was not just a psychoanalyst famous around Vienna but a leading cultural figure.   

A characteristic episode happened in March of 1913 when Schoenberg conducted what became known as the Skandalkonzert ("scandal concert") in Vienna’s Musikverein.  Here’s the program: Webern: Six Pieces for Orchestra; Zemlinsky: Four Orchestral Songs on poems by Maeterlinck; Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1; Berg: Two of the Five Orchestral Songs on Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg.  Mahler's Kindertotenlieder was supposed to be performed at the end, but during the performance of Berg’s songs fighting began and the concert was cut short.   The Viennese public’s response could be expected, if not necessarily in its physical form (after all, their favorite music was Strauss’s waltzes), but how many American presenters would dare to program such a concert in our time, more than 100 years later?  We can listen to Berg’s songs that were performed during the concert, no. 2 of op. 4 here and no. 3 here.  The soprano is Renée Flemming; Claudio Abbado leads the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. 

We’ll continue with Berg and his two masterpieces, operas Wozzeck and Lulu, next week. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 29, 2024.  Schubert, Mendelssohn and more.  What an exceptional week: Franz Schubert was born on January 31^st of 1797, and February 3^rd is the anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn, born 12 years later, in 1809.  We just celebrated Mozart’s birthday; he died very young, at 35.  Schubert’s life was even shorter: he was 31 when he passed away, and Mendelssohn – only 38.  All three could’ve lived twice as long, and our culture would’ve been so much richer.  Schubert is one of our perennial favorites (tastes and predilections change, Schubert stays) and we’ve written many entries about him (here and here, for example), including longer articles on his song cycles.  There are hundreds of his pieces in our library – he remains one of the most often performed composers.  His life was not eventful, his music was sublime, so here’s one of his songs: An die Musik, that is, To Music that Schubert composed in March of 1817 (he was twenty).  Nothing can be simpler and more beautiful.  We could not select a favorite recording, there are too many excellent ones, so we present three, all sung by the Germans: soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with the great pianist, Edwin Sicher, released in 1958 (here); the 1967 recording made by the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Roger Moore (here); and Fritz Wunderlich, an amazing tenor who also died at 35, accompanied by Hubert Giesen in a 1967 recording (here).  You can decide for yourself which one you like better. 

As for Mendelssohn, his most famous “songs” were not vocal butfor piano solo:Songs without Words.  Still, he also composed “real” songs – not as many as Schubert, of course, who wrote about 600 – and some of them are wonderful.  Here, for example, is Gruss (Greeting), a song from his op. 19a on a poem by Henrich Heine.  It’s performed by the Irish tenor Robin Tritschler, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau.  When he wrote his songs op. 19a, Mendelssohn wasn’t much older than Schubert of An die Musik: he started the cycle at the age of 21.  

Three Italian composers were also born this week: Alessandro Marcello, on February 1^st of 1673, Luigi Dallapiccola, on February 3^rd of 1904, and Luigi Nono, on January 29^th of 1924.  We’ve never written about Dallapiccola even though he was a very interesting composer; we’ll do it next week. 

Also, yesterday was Arthur Rubinstein’s birthday (he was born in 1887, 137 years ago, but his ever-popular recordings evidence that he was one of the greatest pianists of the 20^th century).  Two wonderful singers were also born this week, the Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi on February 1^st of 1922, and the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling, one of the few non-Italians who could sing Italian operas as well as the best of the locals, on February 5^th of 1911. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 22, 2024.  Mozart.  The main event of this week is Mozart’s birthday, on January 27^th.  Wolfgang Amadeus was born in 1756 in Salzburg.  One of the greatest composers in history, he excelled in practically every genre of classical music.  His operas are of the highest order (just think of the Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, the Marriage of Figaro, or Così fan tutte, but then there are several operas, though not as popular, such as La clemenza di Tito, The Abduction from the Seraglio, or Idomeneo, that would make any other composer proud).  His symphonies are the pinnacle of the orchestral music of the Classical period, and so are his piano concertos.  His violin concertos were written when he was very young (the last one, no. 5, “Turkish” was completed when Mozart was 19) but were already very good.  He wrote many piano sonatas that predate Beethoven’s, and wonderful violin sonatas (he was a virtuoso performer of both instruments).  And then there is his chamber music: trios, quartets for all combinations of instruments, not just the strings, quintets, and much more.  He did all that in just 35 years.  In addition to the “standard” piano and violin concertos, Mozart wrote concertos for many different wind instruments: the horn (four of them), bassoon, flute, oboe, and clarinet.  His Clarinet concerto in A major, K. 622 is marvelous.  It’s a late piece, late, of course, in Mozart’s terms – he was 35 in 1791 when it was completed, less than two months before his death of still unknown causes (one thing we know for sure is that he has not been poisoned by Antonio Salieri): Mozart was already quite ill while working on the concerto.  The concerto was written for Anton Stadler, a virtuoso clarinetist and a close friend of Mozart’s (they had known each other since 1781) for whom he also wrote his Clarinet Quintet.  Stadler invented the so-called basset clarinet, a version of the instrument that allows the performer to reach lower notes, and that was the instrument for which Mozart wrote the concerto.  We’ll hear it performed by a talented German clarinetist Sabine Meyer with the Staatskapelle Dresden under the direction of Hans Vonk.

Muzio Clementi, who competed as a keyboard player and composer with Mozart at the court of Emperor Josef II, was born on January 23^rd of 1752.  He, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutoslawski, the pianists Josef Hofmann, John Ogdon and Arthur Rubinstein, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré and Wilhelm Furtwängler, a great conductor, all of whom were born this week, will have to wait for another time.

This Week in Classical Music: January 15, 2024.  Schein and much more.  Several composers were born this week: Niccolò Piccinni (b. 1/16/1728), a nearly forgotten Italian composer who was famous in his day for his Neapolitan opera buffa; Cesar Cui (b. 1/18/1835), a Russian composer of French descent (his father entered Russia with Napoleon) and a member of the Mighty Five; Emmanuel Chabrier (b. 1/18/1841), a mostly self-taught French composer, whose España is his best-known symphonic work but who also wrote some very nice songs; Ernest Chausson (b. 1/20/1855), another Frenchman, who wrote the Poème for the violin and orchestra which entered the repertoire of all virtuoso violinists; Walter Piston (b. 1/20/1894), a prolific and prominent American composer of the 20^th century who often used Schoenberg’s 12-note method; Alexander Tcherepnin (b. 1/20/1899), a Russian composer who was born into a prominent musical family (his father, Nikolai Tcherepnin was a noted composer and cultural figure), left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, settled in France, moved to the US after WII and had several symphonies premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and, finally, another Frenchman, Henri Duparc (b. 1/21/1848), best known for his art songs.  None of these composers were what is usually called “great” but all were talented and some of their works are very interesting.  Listen, for example, to Alexander Tcherepnin’s 10 Bagatelles, op. 5 in a version for piano and orchestra (here).  Margrit Weber is at the piano, Ferenc Fricsay conducts the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.  Or, in a very different way, here’s Duparc’s fine song, L'invitation au Voyage.  Jessye Norman is accompanied by Dalton Baldwin.

One composer, also born this week, interests us more than all the above, even though his name is almost forgotten- Johann Hermann Schein.  Schein, a good friend of the better-known Heinrich Schütz, was one of the most important German composers of the pre-Bach era.  He was born on January 20^th of 1586 (99 years before Bach) in Grünhain, a small town in Saxony.  As a boy, he moved to Dresden where he joined the Elector’s boys’ choir; there he also received thorough music instruction.  In his twenties, on the elector’s scholarship, he studied law and liberal arts at the University of Leipzig.  He published his first collection of madrigals and dances, titled Venus Kräntzlein, in 1609.  Starting in 1613 he occupied several kapellmeister positions, starting in smaller cities, till 1616, when he was called to Leipzig.  He passed the audition and was accepted as the Thomaskantor, the most senior position in the city and the one Bach would assume 107 years later.  Like Bach a century later, he was responsible for the music at two main churches, Thomaskirche and the Nicolaikirche, and for teaching students at the Thomasschule.  Schein held the position of Thomaskantor for the rest of his life, which, unfortunately, was short: in his later years, he suffered from tuberculosis and other maladies and died at the age of 44 (Heinrich Schütz visited him on his deathbed).

Here's Schein’s motet, Drei schöne Ding sind (Three beautiful things), performed by the Ensemble Vocal Européen under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe.  And here’s another motet, Ist nicht Ephraim mein teurer Sohn (Isn't Ephraim my dear son?), performed by the same musicians.

This Week in Classical Music: January 8, 2024.  Catching up.  Last week we simply wished you a happy New Year, so this week we’ll try to make up for it and cover the first two weeks of the year.  January 5^th should be officially named Piano Day, as on this day three great pianists were born: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, in 1920, Alfred Brendel, in 1930, and Maurizio Pollini, in 1942.  Pollini still performs, but we stopped attending his concerts some years ago: he’s now just a shadow of his great self.  This doesn’t diminish his prodigious talent that he brilliantly displayed for decades with virtuosity and incisive repertoire, which, unique to a pianist of his stature, included the music of many modern composers.  (In comparison, the repertoire of his compatriot, the perfectionist Michelangeli, was very narrow). 

Two prominent Soviet cellists were born during these two weeks, Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, on January 6^th of 1908, and Daniil Shafran, on January 13^th of 1923.  Knushevitsky is not well known outside of Russia but in his day, he was considered one of the very best (in the rank-obsessed Soviet Union, he was the third best cellist, after Rostropovich and Shafran; had he not drunk, he might have been number one).  In 1940, Knushevitsky, David Oistrakh and Lev Oborin organized a very successful trio; they performed worldwide to great acclaim.  Knushevitsky and Oistrakh also played together in one of the incarnations of the Beethoven quartet.  Knushevitsky died at the age of 55 from a heart attack, alcoholism probably contributing to his early death.  Here’s the famous second movement from Schubert’s Piano Trio no. 2, which Stanley Kubrick used so effectively in his Barry Lindon.  It’s performed by David Oistrakh, violin, Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, cello, and Lev Oborin, piano.  The recording was made in 1947.  You can also find the complete Triohere.  And here, from 1950, is Sviatoslav Knushevitsky’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations.  Alexander Gauk leads the Great Radio Orchestra.  As for Shafran, you can read more about him in one of our earlier entries. 

Another Russia-born string player has an anniversary this week: Nathan Milstein, one of the greatest violinists of the 20^th century.  Odessa, where Milstein was born on January 13^th of 1904, was back then part of the Russian empire.  Now, spelled Odesa, it is in free Ukraine, being bombed by Russia almost daily.  Speaking of Russia, Aleksander Scriabin was born on January 6^th of 1872 in Moscow.  His early piano pieces were charming imitations of Chopin’s but later he developed a musical language all his own, with a very fluid tonality, if not quite atonal.  His grandiosity, both personal and musical, and his attempts to synthesize music and color didn’t age well (especially in his orchestral output), but his piano music is still played very often and is of the highest quality. 

Among other anniversaries: Francis Poulenc’s 125^th was celebrated on January 7^th (he was born in 1899).  Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, who died tragically young, aged 26, from tuberculosis, but left us a tremendous Stabat Mater and a brilliant intermezzo La serva padrona (Sonya Yoncheva is great as Serpina in this production), was born in a small town of Jesi, Italy, on January 4^th of 1710. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 1, 2021.  Happy New Year!

This Week in Classical Music: December 25, 2023.  Christmas.  We wish our listeners a Merry Christmas!  On this wonderful day, we won’t bother you with disquisitions and analyses but will present some Christmas music for your pleasure – and this joyful piece is perfect for the occasion.  It’s the first section of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, a cantata known for the initial words of the first chorus as Jauchzet, frohlocket! (Shout for joy, exult).  It was first performed on this day in 1734, in the morning, at St. Nicholas; and then in the afternoon, at St. Thomas in Leipzig: Bach, as Thomaskantor, was the music director of both churches and led both performances.  What we will hear is a recording made in January of 1987 by John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir and several prominent soloists, Anne-Sophie von Otter among them.  Enjoy and see you in 2024!

This Week in Classical Music: December 18, 2023.  Three Pianists.  During the last month, we were preoccupied with composers and completely ignored the performers, who bring their music to the public.  So today we bring you three wonderful pianists: Radu Lupu, a Romanian, Mitsuko Uchida, born in Japan, and András Schiff, a British-Hungarian.  All three belong to the same generation: Lupu was born in 1945 (on November 30th), Uchida in 1948 (on December 20th), and Schiff – in 1953, on December 21st.   Uchida and Schiff are still performing, Lupu died on April 17th of last year. 

Radu Lupu is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of his time.  He studied in Moscow with Heinrich Neuhaus, who also taught Richter and Gilels.  In the three years from 1966 to 1969, he won three major piano competitions, the Cliburn, the Enescu, and the Leeds, and embarked on an international career with successful concerts in London.  Though he played all major composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, he was most closely associated with the music of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms.  Here is Schubert’s Impromptu in A flat major, D. 935, no. 2 from a legendary 1982 Decca recording of Schubert’s Impromptus D. 899 and D.935. 

Lupu probably didn’t need any competition wins for his tremendous talent to be noticed by the public and the critics.  Mitsuko Uchida didn’t need them either: all she got from competing in the majors was second place in the 1975 Leeds (a solid Dmitry Alekseyev won, and Schiff shared the third prize).  Uchida’s family moved to Vienna when she was 12.  She studied there at the Academy of Music (Wilhelm Kempff was one of her teachers).  In the 1980s Uchida moved to London and has lived there since.  In 2009, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the second-highest British award.  Uchida is rightfully famous for her Mozart, but her repertoire is very broad, from Haydn to Schoenberg.  Here’s Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major, K.332, and here – one of the 12 Etudes by Debussy, no. 3, Pour les Quartes. 

András Schiff fared even worse than Uchida in international competitions: in addition to third prize at the Leeds which we mentioned above, all he got was a shared fourth prize at the 1974 Tchaikovsky competition (the 18-year-old Andrei Gavrilov was the winner; a talented pianist, he had an interesting but brief career, which in its significance could not be compared to Schiff’s).  András Schiff was born into a Jewish family in Budapest.  He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music there (György Kurtág was one of his professors and Zoltán Kocsis, who studied there at the same time, became a friend).  He also took summer classes with Tatiana Nikolayeva and Bella Davidovich.  Since the late 1980s he, like Uchida, has been living in London, and like her, was knighted (in 2014).  Schiff is one of the most admired pianists of his generation; he feels comfortable in many venues: he plays recitals and concertos, loves ensemble playing, and often accompanies singers.  His Bach is wonderful, but so are his Mozart and Haydn, Schubert and Schumann.  He often played the music of his fellow Hungarian Bela Bartók but is very critical of the current political situation in his country of birth and even said that he’ll never set foot there.  Here’s András Schiff playing Bach’s French Suite no. 4, recorded in 1991.  This recording was made in Reitstadel, a former animal feed storage barn built in the 14th century and in our time converted into a concert hall.  It’s located in the Bavarian town of Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz. 

This Week in Classical Music: December 11, 2023.  Beethoven and Berlioz.  On December 16^th we’ll celebrate Ludwig van Beethoven’s 253^rd anniversary.  As we thought of it, we remembered what happened on this date three years ago when the world was supposed to celebrate a monumental date, Beethoven’s 250^th.  It didn’t happen, as our musical organizations couldn’t bring themselves to honor a white male composer – that was the year of Critical Race Theory run amok, DEI ruling the world, and sanity running for cover  On the website Music Theory’s White Racial Frace, Philip Ewell, a black musicologist, published an article titled “Beethoven Was an Above Average Composer – Let’s Leave It at That” which contained a sentence: “But Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is no more a masterwork than Esperanza Spalding’s 12 Little Spells.”  Alex Ross, our most important public music critic, felt compelled to respond to this nonsense with an article of his own, publishing “Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy in Classical Music” in the New Yorker magazine.  The article's subtitle was: “The field must acknowledge a history of systemic racism while also giving new weight to Black composers, musicians, and listeners.”  In the New York Times, Anthony Tomassini, the chief classical music critic who is no longer with the newspaper, wrote an article about the harm of the blind, behind-the-curtain orchestral auditions.  Those were widely accepted a quarter century ago to avoid any racial or gender biases, but Tomassini argued that it hinders the racial diversification of our orchestras: “The audition process should take into account race, gender and other factors.”  We wonder if he still thinks that way, or was that just intellectual cowardice, an attempt to cover his hide: after all, for decades he was toiling in a field that purportedly turned out to be racist through and through, and in all these years it never occurred to him to assess it in racial terms.  All of this was just three years ago.  This major burst of insanity seems to be behind us and hopefully will dissipate completely, sooner rather than later.  Do we need to add a disclaimer that we are totally against any racial and gender discrimination, whether in music or any other cultural or social sphere?  We hope not. 

Back to Beethoven.  We looked up our library, and it turns out that while we have most of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, we don’t have the sonata no. 19, a short and misnumbered piece, easy enough to be well known to practically all young pianists.  Beethoven composed it sometime in 1797, about the same time as his sonatas nos. 3 and 4, but it wasn’t published till 1805 and thus acquired its late opus and number. Here it is, performed by Alfred Brendel in a 1992 recording. 

Also, on this day 220 years ago Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André, a small town halfway between Lyon and Grenoble.  Berlioz was one of the greatest composers France ever produced, and a very unusual one at that: he didn’t follow any established schools and didn’t leave any behind.  We’ve written about Berlioz many times, and he requires a separate entry, so for now, here is his symphony cum viola concerto Harold in Italy (parts 1, Harold in the mountains,2, March of the pilgrims, 3, Serenade of an Abruzzo mountaineer, and 4, Orgy of bandits).  The great violinist Yehudi Menuhin is playing the viola, with Sir Colin Davis conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. 

This Week in Classical Music: December 4, 2023.  Ernst Toch and more.  Erns Toch, the Jewish-Austrian composer, was born on December 7^th of 1887 in Leopoldstadt, a poor, mostly Jewish area in Vienna.  Toch was one of a group of Austrian and German composers whose lives were upended by the rise of Nazism (Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, Karl Weigl, Egon Wellesz, Hans Gál, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Berthold Goldschmidt, all Jewish, mostly forgotten except of course for Schoenberg, all talented if to a different degree, had their lives broken in 1933).  One thing we find interesting is the ease with which they moved from Austria to Germany.  These were two very different empires, one, declining, ruled by the peace-seeking Emperor Franz Joseph from Vienna, another – very much on the ascent, economically, politically and militarily, ruled by the arrogant and insecure Keiser Wilhelm II.  But musicians thought nothing of moving from one country to another, from Vienna to Berlin and back, conducting in Hamburg or Leipzig one year and then returning to Austria, teaching at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik and then at Universität für Musik in Vienna.  And they didn’t need permission to work as long as positions were available.  Musically, the pre-WWI Austria and Germany were one space, even more so than they are now.

Toch was at his most productive in the 1920s, when he wrote the Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra, Bunte Suite, two short operas, many chamber pieces and piano music.  Here’s Bunte Suite, whose sophisticated humor reminds us of the music of another Austrian composer, Ernst Krenek.  The Suite is performed by the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Cornelius Meister conducting.  You can read about Toch’s life after Hitler assumed power in last year’s post.

Jean Sibelius was also born this week, on December 8^th of 1865.  We have to admit that we’re not big fans of the Finnish composer, but his one-movement Symphony no. 7, is a masterpiece.  Even though it’s his shortest, about 23 minutes long depending on performance, it took Sibelius 10 years (from 1914 to 1924) to complete.   During that time, he managed to complete two more symphonies, nos. 5 and 6.  Here’s the Seventh, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Herbert von Karajan.

While Sibelius may not be one of our favorites, Olivier Messiaen, born on December 10^th of 1908, clearly is.  We’ve written about him on several occasions and will get back to the great French master soon.  Also this week: Henryk Górecki, a Polish composer whose minimalist symphonies became very popular with audiences worldwide, born on December 6^th of 1933, and César Franck, the composer of one of the best violin sonatas, on December 10^th of 1822.  

This Week in Classical Music: November 27, 2023.  Maria Callas.  We’re a bit early, but next Sunday is the 100^th anniversary of Maria Callas, La Divina, as she was known worldwide: she was born on December 2^nd of 1923.  It feels very strange that’s already been a century since her birth, as her presence is felt as strongly today as on the day she died in 1977: her instantly recognizable voice could be heard on classical music radio stations, on streaming services, on YouTube and (still) on CDs.  The means have changed – back then it was LPs that people were buying and listening to – but she’s as adored as ever.  Her Casta Diva alone has been heard on YouTube about 35 million times.  Callas was so closely associated with Italian opera – Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini – that she seemed Italian, but in fact was American, of Greek descent.  She married an Italian, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, and, while they were married used his name with her own as Maria Meneghini Callas.  She moved to Greece in 1940 and studied voice at the Athen Conservatory.  There, she sang in the opera for the first time, appearing as Tosca in 1942.  She returned to the US in 1945 but soon left for Italy.  Tulio Serafin, the famous conductor who coached generations of singers, became her mentor.  In 1947, at the Arena of Verona, he conducted Callas in her first Italian role, as La Gioconda in Ponchielli’s eponymous opera.  Her appearance was tremendously successful and brought her career to a different level.  During that time she often sang in the rarely produced bel canto operas, mostly because she was the only one who could sing these very difficult roles.  She was exceptional as Donizetti’s Anna Boleyn, as Imogene and Norma in Bellini’s Il Pirata and Norma, Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Lady Macbeth and Violetta in Verdi's Macbeth and Traviata, and, of course, as Tosca.  For three years she sang in smaller theaters, then, in 1950, she appeared, as Aida in La Scala.  Even though her relationship with the management was troubled, in the 1950s La Scala became Callas’s home.  Neither did Callas have a rapport with Rudolph Bing, the manager of the Met, where she premiered only in 1956.  She had a reputation as a temperamental diva, but many of her colleagues thought that it was her exactness that made her difficult to work with.  Later in the 1950s, she started experiencing problems with her voice, which may have contributed to her sometimes-erratic behavior.  Some think that it was the loss of weight that affected her voice; in the early 1950s Callas was rather heavy, but then went on a diet and lost about 80 pounds.  By the late 1950s, her vibrato was too heavy, sometimes the voice was forced and one could hear pronounced harshness, even though other performances were still excellent.  Overall, Callas sang at the top of her form for just 10 years but what glorious years they were!  Even her detractors, and there are some, recognize that the interpretations of the roles she sang were incomparable, it’s her voice that some people have problems with.  We think that at its peak her voice was uniquely beautiful, and she created exceptional operatic characters that in other interpretations seem dull.  Even the often mediocre music (and Italian operas are full of it) sounded exciting when she sang.  There are none even close to La Divina on the opera stage today, and we don’t expect to hear anybody of that rank anytime soon.

This Week in Classical Music: November 20, 2023.  The Spaniards and a bit of Genealogy.  Three Spanish composers were born this week: Manuel de Falla, on November 23^rd of 1876, Francisco Tárrega, on November 21^st of 1852, and Joaquin Rodrigo, on November 21^st of 1901.  Falla is probably the most important of the three – some might say the most important Spanish composer of the 20^th century – although Tárrega was also instrumental in advancing Spanish classical music, which prior to the arrival of Tárrega and his friends Albéniz and Granados had been stagnant for many decades, practically since the death of Padre Antonio Soler in 1783.  (It’s interesting to note that the Spanish missed out almost completely on symphonic music).  Falla’s most interesting works were composed for the stage: the drama La Vida Breve, ballets El Amor Brujo and Three-Cornered Hat, the zarzuela (a Spanish genre that incorporates arias, songs, spoken word, and dance) Los Amores de la Inés.  A fine pianist, he also composed many pieces for the piano, Andalusian Fantasy among them.  Tárrega’s preferred instrument was the guitar: he was a virtuoso player, and he also composed mostly for the instrument.  (Tárrega had a unique guitar with a very big sound, made by one Antonio Torres, a famous luthier).  Here’s one of his best-known pieces, Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra), performed by Sharon Isbin.

Rodrigo also wrote mostly for the guitar: his most famous piece is Concierto de Aranjuez, from 1939, for the guitar and orchestra.  Here’s the concerto’s first movement; John Williams is the soloist; Daniel Barenboim leads the English Chamber Orchestra.  The recording is almost fifty years old, from 1974, but still sounds very good.

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann Sebastian’s eldest son and a wonderful composer in his own right, was born on November 22^nd of 1710.  Here’s our entry about Wilhelm Friedemann from some years ago. We sympathize with Friedemann: he was brooding, mostly unhappy, and quite unlucky, but he wrote music that we find superior to that of his much more famous brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.  And here’s an interesting historical tidbit: one of Wilhelm Friedemann’s harpsichord pupils was young Sara Itzig, daughter of Daniel Itzig, a Jewish banker of Frederick II the Great of Prussia.  Daniel, one of the few Jews with full Prussian citizenship, had 13 children; Sara was born in 1761.  She was a brilliant keyboardist and commissioned and premiered several pieces by Wilhelm Friedeman and CPE Bach.  Sara married Salomon Levy in 1783 and had an important salon in Berlin.  One of her sisters, Bella Itzig, married Levin Jakob Salomon; they had a son, Jakob Salomon, who upon converting to Christianity, took the name Bartholdy.  His daughter Lea married Abraham Mendelssohn, son of the famous Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.  Lea and Abraham had two children, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn; their full name was Mendelssohn Bartholdy.  Sara had a big influence on the musical education of her grandnephew Felix.  Bella gave a manuscript of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion to her grandson in 1824; Felix conducted the first 19^th-century revival of the Passion in 1829.  So, there’s a line, quite convoluted but fascinating, going from the Bach family to Felix (and Fanny) Mendelssohn.  The Itzigs were a remarkable family: in addition to all the connections above, two other sisters, Fanny and Cecilie Itzig, were patrons of Mozart.  Maybe we’ll get to that  someday.

This Week in Classical Music: November 13, 2023.  Transitioning.  Not in the sense of Classical Connect’s gender identity, but as a state of mind, which being in Rome largely is.  CC is back in the US, but already missing Rome.

Papa Mozart (Leopold) was born this week, in 1719.  He was a minor composer and music teacher but is remembered as the father of his genius son, whose career he managed (or exploited, as some would say) for many years. 

Johann Nepomuk Hummel was born on November 14^th of 1778 in Pressburg (now Bratislava).  When he was eight, the family moved to Vienna.  Like Mozart, he was a child prodigy: according to his father, he could read music at the age of four, and at the age of five he could play the piano and the violin very well.  In 1786, Hummel was offered music lessons by none other than Mozart, who also housed him for two years, all free of charge.  Even though Mozart was 22 years older than the boy, they played billiards and spent time together.  At the age of nine Hummel performed one of Mozart’s piano concertos.  Very much like Leopold Mozart, Hummel’s father took his child on a European tour.  They ended up in London and stayed there for four years, Hummel taking lessons from Muzio Clementi.  In 1791, Haydn, who knew the young Hummel from his visits to Mozart’s house in Vienna, was also staying in London; he dedicated a piano sonata to the boy, who performed it in public to great success.  The French Revolution, the Terror and the subsequent wars changed the Hummels’s plans, and in 1793 they returned to Vienna.  There Hummel continued taking music lessons, with Antonio Salieri and Joseph Haydn.  One of Haydn’s pupils was Beethoven; the young men became friends.  Hummel played at Beethoven’s memorial concert in 1827, and there he met Franz Schubert, who later dedicated his last three piano sonatas (some of the greatest piano music ever written) to Hummel.

In 1804 Hummel succeeded Haydn as the Kapellmeister to Nikolaus II, Prince Esterházy in Eisenstadt.  He stayed there for seven years, returning to Vienna in 1811.  After successfully touring Europe with his singer-wife and working in Stuttgart, Hummel settled in Weimar, being offered the position of the Kapellmeister at the Grand Duke’s court.  He arrived there in 1819 and stayed for the rest of his life (Hummel died in 1837), making numerous touring trips in the meantime.  He became friends with Goethe and turned the city into a major music center.  At the court theater, he staged and conducted new operas by Weber, Rossini, Auber, Meyerbeer, Halévy, and Bellini.  He also established one of the first pension plans for retired musicians, sometimes playing benefit concerts to replenish the funds.  In 1832, Goethe died, Hummel’s health was failing, and he semi-retired, formally retaining his position of the Kapellmeister.  Hummel died five years later.

During his lifetime, Hummel was one of the most celebrated pianists in the world and a very popular composer.  He was also an important cultural figure, a music entrepreneur, and a famous, sought-after, and very expensive piano teacher.  As a composer, he was a transitional figure between the Classical style and Romanticism.  Even though he heavily influenced many composers of his time, Chopin and Schumann among them, nowadays Hummel’s music is mostly forgotten.  He wrote operas, sacred music, many orchestral pieces, concertos, chamber music, and of course numerous piano pieces.  Very little of it is still performed.  Here’s Hummel’s Piano Sonata no. 4, Op.38.  It’s played by the Korean pianist Hae-Won Chang.

This Week in Classical Music: November 6, 2023.  Rome, II.  Classical Connect is still in Rome.  On Saturday we went to a Santa Cecilia concert with Antonio Pappano conducting the Accademia's Orchestra and Igor Levit playing Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto.  But we'd like to start with a decidedly non-musical detail.  The Santa Cecilia Hall, inaugurated in 2002, was designed by the famous Italian architect, Renzo Piano.  Many of Piano's pieces are airy and light, but not this one.  It has little ambiance, despite the use of wood, and looks uninviting.  The seating, which follows that of the Berliner Philharmonie, is placed all around the orchestra in shallow layers.  We're not sure about the acoustics of the hall, as this was our first visit and we've never heard the Accademia Orchestra live, so it's not clear if the numerous imbalances (shrill winds, for example) are the orchestra's fault or the hall's.

But the most fascinating part of the hall's design is the men's bathroom.  It has no urinals, only cabins.  Men stand in line, not sure which cabin is empty, and enter one that's just vacated.  When things get tough, they go around knocking on doors.  The question is, were the urinals eliminated as a gesture of support for some feminist causes, or was Signor Piano not aware of how most men's toilets are usually (and efficiently) constructed? 

But let’s get back to music.  The program consisted of Cherubini’s Anacréon overture, Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, Sibelius’s En Saga, and Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel.

Pappano’s entrance was accompanied by thunderous applause.  The wind’s first entrance in the Cherubini was not a happy event.  Things got better as they moved along, but even though Beethoven rated Cherubini highly, it’s little surprise that his music is played rarely these days. 

Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto was a very different story.  Igor Levit was superb.  His technique seems to have improved since the last time we heard him in Chicago, and his command of the piece was total, even if one may disagree with some of his tempi.  The performance was greeted ecstatically, and he played, exquisitely, an encore, Brahms’s Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118.

After the intermission, Pappano presented Sibelius with a speech and made the audience sing a tune from what was to follow.  That was much more entertaining than the En Saga itself.  The choice of the final piece, Till Eulenspiegel, would seem rather unusual, as the winds are not this orchestra's strong suit, but it went well, better than one might have expected judging by the three previous pieces.

If you add a hair-raising ride in a Roman taxi to the concert and back, this was, overall, quite an exhilarating event.

This Week in Classical Music: October 30, 2023.  Rome, I.  Classical Connect is in Rome this week, so this entry is short.  Rome overwhelms visually: the sites, interiors of churches worthy of museums, and Roman museums, some of the best in the world.  And of course, the magical Roman light.  Aurally, things are very different: the usual cacophony of crowds and the ever-jammed traffic, the sirens of the police cars and ambulances trying to get through, and awful street musicians, strategically positioned where the largest crowds congregate but also wandering the streets, assailing the dining public with their renditions of the European schlagers of the 1980s.

Historically, Rome has always been one of the greatest musical centers of Europe, and there are dozens of places, from the Vatican to the palaces of the cardinals and nobility, that are linked to major musical events of the past, but sometimes these connections take a different shape, quite literally: the enormous Borghese palace, which is still the major residence of the family (part of the palazzo is occupied by the Spanish embassy) is nicknamed Il Cembalo, and its plan does look like a harpsichord, with the narrowest side facing the Tiber.

In the next couple of days, Antonio Pappano will be conducting the orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in a program of Cherubini, Beethoven (Piano Concerto no. 3 with Igor Levit), Sibelius and Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel.  The site classictic.com, which sells tickets online, decided that the composer of the last piece is Johann Strauss.

This Week in Classical Music: October 23, 2023.  Short notes, II.  Today is Ned Rorem’s 100^th anniversary.  Rorem died last year, just days short of his 99^th birthday.  He was a wonderful composer of songs and a whimsical writer.  He spent almost a decade in France, where for a while he studied with Arthur Honegger (rather than Nadia Boulanger, as many American composers and pianists had done).  In 1966 he published a book, Paris Diaries, based on his real diaries, full of gossip, gay stories, and a good read overall.  In addition to about 500 art songs, some exceptionally good, he wrote two full-length operas, one of which, Our Town, based on a play by Thornton Wilder, was successfully staged in the US and abroad (he also wrote several smaller, one-act operas).  In addition to that he composed three symphonies and a lot of piano music, including two concertos, but none of that music was as successful as his songs.  Here is Rorem’s Sonnet.  Susan Graham is accompanied by the pianist Malcolm Martineau and Ensemble Oriol.

If Rorem wrote about 500 art songs, Domenico Scarlatti, who was born on October 26^th of 1685, wrote more than 500 piano sonatas.  They are mostly short, about as long as Rorem’s songs.  Domenico was born in Naples, where his father, the renowned opera composer Alessandro Scarlatti, was working as maestro di capella at the court of the Spanish Viceroy of Naples.  Though a thoroughly Italian composer, his link with Spain lasted throughout his life.  He moved to Spain in 1729 and lived there for the remaining 25 years of his life.

Another Italian, Luciano Berio, was also born this week, on October 24^th of 1925.  He was one of the most influential composers of the 20^th century.  You can read more about him here.

Niccolo Paganini and Georges Bizet both had their anniversaries this week, as did a minor but talented Russian composer of liturgical music, Alexander Gretchaninov.  Next year is his 160^th anniversary, so we’ll dedicate a post to him.

This Week in Classical Music: October 16, 2023.  Short notes.  It could’ve been a pretty good week, considering the talent we could celebrate, but the horrendous events of October 7^th and their aftermath overwhelmed everything else.  So, we’ll go over our list very briefly.  The Italian composer Luca Marenzio was born on October 18^th, 1553 (or 1554) in Coccaglio, near Brescia.  Marenzio was one of the most prolific (and famous) composers of madrigals of the second half of the 16^th century.  Marenzio was lucky in finding great benefactors.  For many years he had served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, son of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara.  After the cardinal’s death, Marenzio found employment with Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII, and later, with Ferdinando I de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany.  We can assume that while in Florence, he met the three Florentine composers whose lives we had followed closely in our recent posts – Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri, and Emilio de' Cavalieri, but while he inhabited the same intellectual circles as the three, Marenzio never got interested in their ideas about monody and opera.  He did, nevertheless, write music for two out of six intermedi to the play La Pellegrina, composed for the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinando to Christina of Lorraine in 1589 (Cavalieri oversaw the production and composed one of the intermedi, Caccini composed another one, Peri was both composer and a singer).  That same year Marenzio returned to Rome and went on an adventurous trip to Poland, to the court of King Sigismund III Vasa in Warsaw.  He stayed in Poland for a year, got seriously ill there, and returned to Rome, where he died in 1599.

Franz Liszt was also born this week, on October 22^nd of 1811 in a small Hungarian village next to the border with Austria.  One interesting snippet about Liszt that we were not aware of till recently: he didn’t speak Hungarian.  Two fine Soviet pianists, Emil Gilels and Yakov Flier, both excellent interpreters of Liszt’s music, also have their anniversaries this week: Gilels was born on October 19^th, 1916 in Odesa, Flier – on October 21^st, 1912 – in a small town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo not far from Moscow.

Baldassare Galuppi and Georg Solti were also born this week, but as with so much else, we’ll leave them for better days.

This Week in Classical Music: October 8, 2023.  Verdi, War.  Today is the 210^th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, but we’re not in the mood to celebrate it: it seems inappropriate with the war raging in Israel and Gaza after the Hamas barbaric terrorist attack.  There are many trite sayings about the power of music to heal, to make peace, but they all seem shallow in comparison to the news of civilians being killed in cold blood or the horror of the Israeli kids being abducted by Hamas into Gaza.  If anything, throughout history music has been used to make war, from military bands leading troops into battle to Nazis using it in concentration camps.  (And no, the Ride of the Valkyries wasn’t used in Vietnam by the US helicopter pilots, it was Francis Ford Coppola’s brilliant invention).

We thought of maybe using parts of Verdi’s Requiem or the famous chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, Va', pensiero (Fly, my thoughts), from his opera Nabucco, but that didn’t feel right either.  So we’ll leave it at that.

Two great pianists were also born this week, Evgeny Kissin, who’ll turn 52 tomorrow, and Gary Graffman, who will celebrate his 95^th birthday on the 14^th of October.  Both are Jewish; Kissin was born in Russia (then the Soviet Union), Graffman’s parents came from Russia.  Hamas, if they could, would like to kill all Jews, no matter where they live.  And they would definitely not spare musicians.

This Week in Classical Music: October 2, 2023.  Giulio Caccini.  During the last couple of months, we’ve published several entries on two subjects: one, the musical transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque and early opera, and another, about some unsavory but talented characters in music.  The protagonist of today’s entry falls into both categories.  Giulio Caccini was born in Rome on October 8^th, 1551.  One episode that puts him into the “unsavory” category happened in 1576 when Caccini was in Florence employed by the court of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici.  Francesco had a brother, Pietro, who was married to the beautiful Eleonora (Leonora) di Garzia di Toledo.  Pietro was known to be gloomy and violent, the marriage was unhappy, and Leonora had several affairs.  Caccini, attempting to curry favors from the Duke’s family, spied on Leonora and then denounced her and her lover, Bernardino Antinori, to Pietro.  Pietro brought Leonora to Villa Medici at Cafaggiolo, where he strangled her with a dog leash.  Leonora was 23.  Bernardino Antinori was imprisoned and also killed.  The whole story is even more sordid and involves other characters and victims, but though fascinating, it goes even further into Italian history and away from music.  One note: if the name of Antinori sounds familiar to wine lovers, it’s not by chance – Bernardino’s family has been making wines since 1385.  These days Antinori produce some of the best Chiantis and Super-Tuscans in Italy. 

Other episodes are not as gruesome but still attest to Caccini’s character.  Two more talented composers worked at the court at the same time, Emilio de' Cavalieri and Jacopo Peri.  In 1600, the wedding of Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici was a very important event.  Cavalieri, who oversaw all major festivities of the house of Medici, was expected to direct this one as well.  The conniving Caccini had him denied the position, and while Cavalieri did write some of the music, it was Caccini who managed the staging (we described this event here).  The disappointed Cavalieri left Florence never to return.  As for Peri, the stories are more comical.  Upon learning that Peri was writing an opera, Euridice, for the wedding of Maria de' Medici to Henry IV, he rushed to compose his own version using the same libretto and had it published before the first performance of Peri’s work.  That wasn’t all; Caccini’s daughter Francesca, a talented singer, was to participate in the performance of Peri’s Euridice.  Even though Peri wrote the music for the whole opera, Caccini rewrote the parts performed by Francesca and several other singers under his command, all that just to spite Peri and promote himself.  Francesca Caccini, by the way, turned into an excellent composer in her own right.  Her opera, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina) was just staged by the Chicago Haymarket Opera Company (yesterday was the last performance).

Even though Caccini wrote three operas, he’s better remembered for his collection of songs called Le nuove musiche (the New Music), published in 1602.  Here are two songs from this collection, Amor, io parte and Alme luci beate, but the whole collection is wonderful.  In this 1983 recording, the soprano is Montserrat Figueras, the wife of Jordi Savall, who accompanies her on the Viola da Gamba (Figueras died in 2011).  Hopkinson Smith is playing the lute.

This Week in Classical Music: September 25, 2023.  Florent Schmitt.  We have to admit that we’re fascinated with the “bad boys” of music.  They are invariably “boys,” as there are no “bad girls” in music historiography that we’re aware of.  As for the male composers, there are plenty, Richard Wagner being the quintessential one.  In the last couple of years, we’ve written about several of them, mostly the Germans in the 20^th century, even though they are not the only ones: there were plenty of baddies in the Soviet bloc and, in a very different way, several Italians of the Renaissance.  This week it’s Florent Schmitt’s turn, a French composer infamous for shouting “Vive Hitler!” during a concert.  (Dmitri Shostakovich was also born this week, and, as talented as he was, he was no angel either, but we’ll return to Shostakovich another time).  Schmitt was born on September 28^th of 1870 in the town of Meurthe-et-Moselle, Lorraine, the area that was passing from France to Germany and back for centuries – thus the German name.  At 17, he entered the conservatory in nearby Nancy, and two years later moved to Paris where he studied composition with Gabriel Fauré and Jules Massenet.  While in Paris, Schmitt became friends with Frederick Delius, the English composer of German descent who was then living in Paris.  In the 1890s he befriended Ravel and met Debussy.

Schmitt tried to get the prestigious Prix de Rome five times, submitting five different compositions every year from 1896 to 1900, when he finally won it with the cantata Sémiramis.  He spent three years in Rome and then traveled extensively, visiting Russia and North Africa, among other places.  One of his most popular pieces composed during the period after Rome is the Piano Quintet op. 51 (1902-1908).  Schmitt dedicated it to Fauré.  Here’s the final movement, Animé, performed by the Stanislas Quartet with Christian Ivaldi at the piano.  The ballet La tragédie de Salomé was composed during the same period, in 1907.  Igor Stravinsky was taken by it; in Grove’s quote, he wrote to Schmitt: “I am only playing French music – yours, Debussy, Ravel’.   And later, “I confess that [Salomé] has given me greater joy than any work I have heard in a long time.”  In 1910 Schmitt created a concert version of the ballet.  Here’s the second part of it (the New Philharmonia Orchestra is conducted by Antonio de Almeida).  It’s not surprising that Stravinsky liked it, as it clearly presages parts of Rite of Spring.  Another important piece, Psalm XLVII, was written in 1906.

During WWI Schmitt wrote music for military bands but returned to regular composing once the war was over.  He also worked as a music critic for the newspaper Le Temps.  Schmitt was a nationalist with pronounced sympathies toward the Nazi regime.  The episode we referred to at the beginning of this entry happened in November of 1933.  During a concert of the music of Kurt Weill, a Jewish composer who had beenrecently forced into exile by the Nazis, he stood up and shouted “Vive Hitler!”  According to a witness, he added: “We already have enough bad musicians to have to welcome German Jews.”  That makes him not only a Nazi sympathizer but also an antisemite.  During the German occupation of France, Schmitt collaborated with the Vichy government and was a member of the Music section of the France-Germany Committee.  He visited Germany and in December of 1941 went to Vienna to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of Mozart’s death.  After the liberation, Schmitt was investigated as a collaborator, but these proceedings were later dropped, although a year-long ban was imposed on performing and publishing his music.  Soon after everything was forgotten and in 1952, just seven years after the end of the war, Schmitt was made the Commander of the Legion of Honor.  In 1996, the controversial past of this "one of the most fascinating of France's lesser-known classical composers," as he’s often described, came into prominence again, and his name was removed from a school and a concert hall.

This Week in Classical Music: September 18, 2023.  Several conductors.  We missed a lot of anniversaries while exploring the music of the transitional period between the Renaissance and early Baroque.  Today we’ll get back to a group of conductors.  First, Karl Böhm, one of the most successful of them.  Böhm was born on August 28^th of 1894 in Graz, Austria.  His career took off in the 1920s, with some help from Bruno Walter; in 1927 Böhm was appointed the chief musical director in Darmstadt, and in 1931 he took the same position at the prestigious Hamburg Opera.  In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany and Böhm took over the Dresden Semper Opera, after Fritz Busch, the previous director, went into exile.  Böhm was a friend of Richard Strauss and conducted several premiers of his operas.  In 1938 Böhm appeared at the Salzburg Festival, and in 1943 took over the famous Vienna opera.  For many years Böhm was a Nazi sympathizer, though never a member of the NSDAP; after the war, he went through a two-year denazification period, and then his career took off again.  He continued his engagements with Vienna and Dresden, conducted in South America, and made a very successful New York debut in 1957.  He frequently led the Metropolitan, premiering operas by Berg and Strauss and successfully conducting many of Wagner’s operas (Birgit Nilsson debuted under Böhm’s baton).  Böhm’s final engagements were in London, at Covent Garden and with the London Symphony.  He died on August 14^th of 1981, two weeks shy of his 87^th birthday.

Here is Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), a tone poem from 1898.  Karl Böhm conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.  This recording was made in 1976.  Also, quite recently we came across a DW documentary from 2022 called Music in Nazi Germany: The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz (here).  It’s very much worth watching.  The maestro in question is not Karl Böhm but Wilhelm Furtwängler, eight years older than Böhm and more established.  Still, much of what is said in the documentary about Furtwängler applies to Böhm (we think that to an even higher degree).  A note: the “kapellmeister” of the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, Alma Rosé, mentioned in the documentary, died there in April of 1944.  Alma was the daughter of Arnold Rosé, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic for 50 years and the leader of the famous Rosé Quartet.  Alma’s mother was Gustav Mahler’s sister. 

We mentioned Bruno Walter’s name above; he also happens to be one of the conductors we wanted to write about.  Walter was born on September 15^th of 1876 in Berlin.  We celebrated him several years ago here.  At least as talented as Böhm, his life couldn’t have been more different.  Walter was Jewish, for many years he collaborated closely with Mahler and, in 1912, led the posthumous premier performance of the composer’s Ninth Symphony.  He was the music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he conducted most of Wagner’s operas.  Walter escaped from Germany in 1933 (at the time he was the principal conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra).  After working in Europe, he moved to the US in 1939 and settled in Beverly Hills, the area that hosted a large German expat community.  In the US, he worked with many orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Bruno Walter was 85 when he died in 1962.  Here Bruno Walter is playing the piano and conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20.  This is a live recording made on November 3^rd of 1939.

Just to list other conductors in our group: István Kertész (b. August 28, 1929); three conductors, born on September 1: Tullio Serafin (in 1878), Leonard Slatkin (in 1944), Seiji Ozawa, (in 1935).  Christoph von Dohnányi was born on September 8, 1929, and Christopher Hogwood, on September 10, 1941.

This Week in Classical Music: September 18, 2023.  Several conductors.  We missed a lot of anniversaries while exploring the music of the transitional period between the Renaissance and early Baroque.  Today we’ll get back to a group of conductors.  First, Karl Böhm, one of the most successful of them.  Böhm was born on August 28^th of 1894 in Graz, Austria.  His career took off in the 1920s, with some help from Bruno Walter; in 1927 Böhm was appointed the chief musical director in Darmstadt, and in 1931 he took the same position at the prestigious Hamburg Opera.  In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany and Böhm took over the Dresden Semper Opera, after Fritz Busch, the previous director, went into exile.  Böhm was a friend of Richard Strauss and conducted several premiers of his operas.  In 1938 Böhm appeared at the Salzburg Festival, and in 1943 took over the famous Vienna opera.  For many years Böhm was a Nazi sympathizer, though never a member of the NSDAP; after the war, he went through a two-year denazification period, and then his career took off again.  He continued his engagements with Vienna and Dresden, conducted in South America, and made a very successful New York debut in 1957.  He frequently led the Metropolitan, premiering operas by Berg and Strauss and successfully conducting many of Wagner’s operas (Birgit Nilsson debuted under Böhm’s baton).  Böhm’s final engagements were in London, at Covent Garden and with the London Symphony.  He died on August 14^th of 1981, two weeks shy of his 87^th birthday.

Here is Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), a tone poem from 1898.  Karl Böhm conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.  This recording was made in 1976.  Also, quite recently we came across a DW documentary from 2022 called Music in Nazi Germany: The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz (here).  It’s very much worth watching.  The maestro in question is not Karl Böhm but Wilhelm Furtwängler, eight years older than Böhm and more established.  Still, much of what is said in the documentary about Furtwängler applies to Böhm (we think that to an even higher degree).  A note: the “kapellmeister” of the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, Alma Rosé, mentioned in the documentary, died there in April of 1944.  Alma was the daughter of Arnold Rosé, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic for 50 years and the leader of the famous Rosé Quartet.  Alma’s mother was Gustav Mahler’s sister. 

We mentioned Bruno Walter’s name above; he also happens to be one of the conductors we wanted to write about.  Walter was born on September 15^th of 1876 in Berlin.  We celebrated him several years ago here.  At least as talented as Böhm, his life couldn’t have been more different.  Walter was Jewish, for many years he collaborated closely with Mahler and, in 1912, led the posthumous premier performance of the composer’s Ninth Symphony.  He was the music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he conducted most of Wagner’s operas.  Walter escaped from Germany in 1933 (at the time he was the principal conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra).  After working in Europe, he moved to the US in 1939 and settled in Beverly Hills, the area that hosted a large German expat community.  In the US, he worked with many orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Bruno Walter was 85 when he died in 1962.  Here Bruno Walter is playing the piano and conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20.  This is a live recording made on November 3^rd of 1939.

Just to list other conductors in our group: István Kertész (b. August 28, 1929); three conductors, born on September 1: Tullio Serafin (in 1878), Leonard Slatkin (in 1944), Seiji Ozawa, (in 1935).  Christoph von Dohnányi was born on September 8, 1929, and Christopher Hogwood, on September 10, 1941.

This Week in Classical Music: September 11, 2023.  Transitions.  For the last four weeks, we were preoccupied with two Florentine composers, Emilio de' Cavalieri and Jacopo Peri.  In a way, this is unusual, as neither of them was what we would call “great,” as were, for example, Tomás Luis de Victoria, just two years older than Cavalieri, or Giovanni Gabrieli, born sometime between Cavalieri and Peri.  But somehow the Florentines became instrumental in furthering one of the great shifts in classical music, from polyphony to monody of the early Baroque.  This is a fascinating topic in itself: How could the relatively simplistic works of Cavalieri and Peri replace the grand and sophisticated music of the High Renaissance?  How could such stunning works as Victoria’s Funeral Mass or Gabrieli’s In Ecclesiis fall out of favor while the first rather clumsy attempts at opera became all the rage?  As far as we can tell, Baroque music, as interesting as it was in its early phases, didn’t reach the level of Palestrina or Orlando di Lasso till the late 17^th century and into the 18^th, when Handel and Bach composed their masterpieces.  This introduces another great example: Johann Sebastian Bach, who, in his later years, was considered old-fashioned, past his time; his great Mass in B minor was completed in 1749, a year before his death, when the music of his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, was much more popular.  The first public performance of the Mass had to wait for more than 100 years (the history of St. Matthew Passion was similar).  In the meantime, composers of the Mannheim school, nearly forgotten now, were working at the court with the best orchestra in Europe and developing, unknowingly, the style that would bring us, several decades later, the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.  The “not-so-greats” leading the way, leaving the greats behind but paving the way for a new generation of supreme talents…

Yet again we don’t have the time to properly acknowledge the composers born this week (among them are Arnold Schoenberg and Girolamo Frescobaldi, and also Arvo Pärt, Clara Schumann and William Boyce, who, like Beethoven, went deaf but continued, for a while, to compose and play the organ).  We wanted to go back a month and commemorate some of the composers born during that time: too many to mention, but two of them, Henry Purcell and Antonin Dvorak, were born last week.  And of course, we’ve missed a lot of performers and conductors, among whom were the pianists Aldo Ciccolini and Maria Yudina, Ginette Neveu (violin) and William Primrose (viola), the singers Kathleen Battle and Angela Gheorghiu, and conductors Wolfgang Sawallisch and Karl Böhm.  Till next time, then.

This Week in Classical Music: September 4, 2023.  Jacopo Peri and Florence.  Last week we started the story of Jacopo Peri, an important but mostly forgotten composer.  Before we get back to it, we’d like to mention a Florentine institution that was instrumental in the development of ideas that Peri followed in his work.  This institution is called Camerata de’ Bardi, or Florentine Camerata.

Count Giovanni de’ Bardi was a nobleman, writer, composer, and, in his younger years, a soldier.  He was also an important patron of the arts and organized a society dedicated to the study of ancient Greek music in relation to the music of the day.  That was in the 1570s and ‘80s, so we have to remember that the important music of the time was composed in the form of polyphony by the likes of Palestrina.  We love his music, and that of Orlando Lasso or Tomás Luis de Victoria Victoria, and consider it the pinnacle of the Renaissance, but for Bardi and his circle, it felt outdated.  They believed that the polyphonic idiom doesn’t allow the creation of emotionally expressive works and makes the words unintelligible (the criticism shared by many in the church).  Thus, as an alternative, they came up with the “monody,” which replaced the multi-voiced polyphony with a single melodic line and instrumental accompaniment.  The ideas of the Camerata were based on the members’ understanding of the music of Classical Greece, which most likely was wrong: they believed that Greek plays were sung, not spoken.  That didn’t matter much as these ideas led to the creation of the recitative and the aria, and soon after, the cantata and, importantly, opera.

The most active members of the Camerata were composers Giulio Caccini, Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo Galilei, and Pietro Strozzi, but the society included many Florentine intellectuals and composers.  Jacopo Peri was one of the first to put these ideas into practice, creating Dafne and Euridice, the first two operas in history.  The librettos to the operas were written by another member of the Camerata, the poet Ottavia Rinuccini.

Euridice was performed in October of 1600 in the Palazzo Pitti during the celebrations of the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV, King of France.  Peri’s rivals, composers Caccini and Cavalieri, also took part in the production: the jealous Caccini rewrote the parts sung by his musicians, and Cavalieri staged the opera’s production (that was not enough for Cavalieri: he expected to be put in charge of all the festivities, which didn’t happen; disappointed, he left Florence for good.  We recently mentioned this episode while writing about Cavalieri). 

In the 1600s, while residing in Florence and continuing to compose for the Medici court, Peri established a close relationship with Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.  He wrote two operas for the Mantuan court, neither of which were performed, and many songs and instrumental pieces, the majority of which are now lost. Later in his life, he worked mostly in collaboration with other composers, a practice quite unusual for our time.  He wrote two operas with Marco da Gagliano, the second, La Flora, for the occasion of the election of Ferdinand II as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  Pery died in 1633 and was buried in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

Here is the Prologue from Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, and here – the first scene of the opera, about five minutes of singing, with two wonderful choruses.  The soloists and the Ensemble Arpeggio are conducted by Robert de Caro.

This Week in Classical Music: August 28, 2023.  Jacopo Peri.  For the last two weeks, we've been preoccupied with Emilio de' Cavalieri, partly because his music is so interesting, but also because he and his parents had fascinating lives.  And the period during which they lived – the Italian Renaissance and early Baroque – is captivating.  One composer, whose birthday we missed while being engaged with Cavalieri, lived during the same time and was Cavalieri’s rival.  His name is Jacopo Peri.  Peri was born on August 20^th of 1561, either in Florence or, more likely, in Rome, like Cavalieri.  About 10 years younger than Cavalieri, he spent most of his productive life at the court of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, in Florence, the place where Cavalieri was employed for about 20 years.  There was a difference in their position: the older composer was also the duke’s confidant, while Peri was “only” a musician and organizer of dramatic events. 

Peri’s youth was spent in Florence; he had a very good voice and was employed in different churches (it seems he also sang in the choir of the Baptistery).  He was a virtuoso player of the theorbo (chitarrone in Italian), a lute with a very long neck.  Severo Bonini, a Florentine composer and Peri’s younger contemporary, said that “he could move the hardest heart to tears through his singing” and superb accompaniment.  Peri also excelled at playing  the organ and keyboard instruments.  He was hired at the Medici court in 1588, soon after the accession of Grand Duke Ferdinando I.  Like Cavalieri, he took part in composing music for different intermedi (we discussed these “proto-operas” last week), and participated in staging the festivities celebrating Ferdinando’s marriage to Christine of Lorraine.  He also performed in these intermedi, singing and accompanying himself. 

Peri’s interests were broad and, as a member of different learned Academies, he actively participated in the vigorous intellectual life of Florence.  He became friends with Jacopo Corsi, a fellow composer and important patron of the arts, second only to the Medicis.  Through Corsi he met the poet Ottavio Rinuccini.  In 1597, Rinuccini wrote a libretto for Dafne, a dramatic piece, the music for which was composed by Peri and Corsi.  Dafne is now considered the first opera in the history of music.  While the libretto survived, the music for Dafne is mostly lost, with only six fragments extant; four were written by Peri and two by Corsi.  The opera’s instrumental accompaniment is small: a harpsichord, an archlute (a type of theorbo), a regular lute, a viol, and a flute.  Claudio Monteverdi, who by many is considered the “father of the opera,” even though his L’Orfeo was written 10 years later, in 1607, significantly expanded the accompanying ensemble.  Dafne was a big success, and in 1600, for the festivities surrounding the marriage of King of France Henry IV and Marie de' Medici, Grand Duke Francesco’s daughter, the court requested another opera.  Rinuccini was again the librettist, but this time Peri collaborated with Giulio Caccini.  Their effort produced Euridice, the second opera ever written and the first whose music fully survived.  (These days Caccini is best known for the music he never wrote, the so-called Ave Maria, composed around 1970 by a Russian lutenist Vladimir Vavilov, author of many musical hoaxes).  Euridice was very successful (Peri himself sang the role of Orfeo and his performance was highly praised) and was later staged in other cities.

We’ll finish our story of Jacopo Peri and play some of his music next week.  One last note before we go: Itzhak Perlman will turn 78 in three days.

This Week in Classical Music: August 21, 2023.  Cavalieri, part II.  Last week we began writing about the Italian composer Emilio de' Cavalieri and all we had time for were his illustrious parents.  Emilio started his musical career in Rome – we know that he was an organist at the Oratorio del Santissimo Crocifisso and was responsible for the Lent music there.  While in Rome, he made the acquaintance of Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici. A historically important fact about the Cardinal is that soon after he became the Grand Duke of Tuscany, returned to Florence and brought Cavalieri with him.  A minor, but curious, detail is that the Cardinal was an art lover and acquired the famous collection of Roman statues from Cardinal Andrea della Valle, the uncle of Emilio’s mother, Lavinia, thus connecting the families of Cavalieri, della Valle, and Medici.

In Florence Cavalieri became not just a court composer and overseer of crafts and music, but also a trusted personal diplomatic envoy to the Duke.  Elections of the Pope were among the most important political events in Italy, and Cavalieri helped Ferdinando to elect popes predisposed toward the Medici family, often going on secret missions to buy cardinals’ votes.  This was a turbulent time, with popes lasting no longer than the Politburo Secretaries General at the end of the Brezhnev era.  Pope Urban VII, elected in September of 1590, died of malaria just 12 days after taking office, Pope Gregory XIV followed and ruled for 315 days, then Pope Innocent IX, who ruled for 62 days, and finally, Clement VIII, who would go on to rule for more than 13 years.  The turmoil kept Cavalieri’s diplomatic career busy.

In Florence, Cavalieri was provided an apartment in the Palazzo Pitti, the main residence of the Duke of Tuscany, and a handsome salary.  As the court administrator and composer, he was responsible for staging intermedi, theatrical performances with music and dance.  The famous ones were set up in 1589 for the marriage of Duke Ferdinando to Christine of Lorraine.  Cavalieri produced many of these intermedi in the following years, often to his own music. 

He traveled to Rome often and maintained relations with major composers in the city.  In 1600, his work titled Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo (Portrayal of the Soul and the Body) premiered in the Oratorio dei Filippini in Rome.  Rappresentatione is considered the first oratorio in the history of music and, with the intermedi, a predecessor to opera.  The significance of it becomes apparent if we consider how the oratorio, also developed by Cavalieri’s contemporaries Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini, has evolved since 1600: this was the musical form that Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Caldara, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel used to create some of their most important compositions.

Cavalieri left Florence for Rome in 1600 under a cloud: the wedding of Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici was lavishly celebrated, and the main event was the staging of the opera Il rapimento di Cefalo.  Cavalieri expected to be in charge, but the staging was given to his rival, Caccini.  Cavalieri died in Rome two years later and was buried in Cappella de' Cavalieri in Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill. 

Together with Rappresentatione, Lamentations of Jeremiah for the Holy Week is Cavalieri’s major work.  It consists of four parts, to be performed on consecutive days.  Here’s the first section, Lectio prima, of the Lamentations for the first day.  It’s performed by the Concerto Italiano under the direction of Rinaldo Alessandrini.

This Week in Classical Music: August 14, 2023.  Lukas Foss and Emilio de' Cavalieri.  The richness and diversity of classical music is almost infinite.  Of course, we’re not talking about the false, woke diversity of race and gender.  We mean the diversity of sound, organized by composers of different eras into amazing combinations that we call “music,” combinations of the aural entities so different that composers of yesteryears would not even recognize the work of their followers as belonging to the same art (if they would consider it art at all).  We, on the other hand, are lucky to have access to this enormous body of work and can enjoy music composed in the 15^th century as much as music from half a millennium later.  We have two composers this week, one born in the first half of the 20^th century, and another – in the middle of the 15^th.

Lukas Foss was born in Berlin on August 15th of 1922 as Lukas Fuchs.  His family was Jewish, and as soon as Nazis came to power, the Fuchses emigrated to France and four years later to the US where they changed their name to Foss.  In the US, Lukas, who studied music while in Paris, went to the Curtis Institute where he took piano classes, composition, and conducting (his teacher at the Curtis was Fritz Reiner).  Lukas started composing at seven, and in 1945, at 23, he became the youngest composer ever to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.  In 1953 Foss was appointed Professor of Music at UCLA, a position previously occupied by Arnold Schoenberg.  While in California, Foss founded the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble and became the music director of the Ojai Festival.  Later he served as the music director of several orchestras: the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Milwaukee Symphony.  He also guest-conducted many European and American orchestras. 

Musicologists divide the development of Foss’s art into three phases: neo-classical; transitional, which was dominated by what he called “controlled improvisation,” and the third, experimental, even more improvisational, with more freedom given to the performer, and the forays into serialism.  Let’s listen to two pieces, Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird for voice (mezzo-soprano RoseMarie Freni) and small ensemble from 1978, here; and, from 1967, unfortunately in a rather low-quality recording, his great Baroque Variations for Orchestra: I. On a Handel Larghetto, II. On a Scarlatti Sonata, III. On a Bach Prelude "Phorion" (here).  The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is led by the composer Lukas Foss, was one of the most interesting American composers, and we’ll come back to his art another time

Italian composer Emilio de' Cavalieri was born in Rome in 1550 into an illustrious family.  His father, a nobleman Tommaso Cavalieri, was the great love of Michelangelo’s life (Michelangelo dedicated 30 of his sonnets to Emilio and called him "light of our century, paragon of all the world").  When they met, Tommaso was 23 and very handsome, Michelangelo – 57 years old; whether the relationship was platonic or not, we don’t know.  Emilio’s mother was a cousin of Cardinal Andrea della Valle.  The cardinal was one of the first collectors of Roman art; the sculptures in the courtyard of his palace across the street from the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle were restored in one of the first efforts of its kind, and his antiquities were described by Vasari.  We will continue with the story of Emilio de' Cavalier next week.  In the meantime, let’s listen to Cavalieri’s wonderful Viae Sion Lugent from Lamentations.

This Week in Classical Music: August 7, 2023.  Chaminade and Jolivet.  Two French composers were born this week, Cécile Chaminade, on August 8^th of 1857, and André Jolivet, on the same day but in 1905.  We suspect that in the last three years the music of Chaminade has been played more than throughout the previous 100: we live in the era of Wokeness when a composer’s gender (or race) is considered more important than his or her talent, and as there is a limited number of female composers, even the salon music of Chaminade becomes popular among presenters and performers, if not necessarily the listening public.  This is not to say that in the past, women composers weren’t discriminated against: Chaminade, for example, was accused by her contemporary music critics of being both too feminine in her songs and lyrical piano pieces, and too masculine in the larger, more energetic pieces, such as the Konzertstück, (you can listen to it here).  We don’t find anything excessively “masculine” in the piece, we’re not even sure what that term means when applied to music – it would’ve never been used by our contemporaries while discussing the music of Jennifer Higdon, Shulamit Ran, Libby Larsen, or Augusta Read Thomas.  We just don’t find the Koncertstück very interesting – it has lots of trills in the style of the worst of Liszt and not much real musical material.  (In this recording James Johnson plays the piano, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Paul Freeman).  Chaminade’s music became popular not only in her native France but also in England and the US in the 1890s, and that continued for another 20 years after which the interest in her music practically disappeared – her salon pieces clearly became obsolete.  Chaminade lived till 1944, the last years in relative obscurity.  She composed around 400 short piano pieces and songs, some of which are not without their charm.  Here Anne Sofie von Otter sings her short song L'anneau d'argent.  Bengt Forsberg is on the piano.

In the last three years, there has been no resurgence of interest in the music of André Jolivet, even if of the two, he is the more interesting, more inventive composer.  We have several of his pieces in our library and have written about him more than once (for example, here).  A prolific composer, Jolivet wrote several concertos.  One of them was for the Ondes Martenot, an analog synthesizer invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot; the sound of the Ondes (waves in French) is somewhat similar to that of a Theremin, another electronic instrument invented by the Russian researcher Leon Theremin around the same time).  Jolivet also composed three symphonies, chamber and keyboard music, operas, and many songs.  Here, from 1954, is Jolivet’s unusually scored Basson Concerto with the string orchestra, piano and harp (André Jolivet conducts the Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra; Maurice Allard is the bassoonist).

And speaking of French music and musicians: the wonderful violinist Ginette Neveu was born on August 11^th of 1919.  You can read about her here.

This Week in Classical Music: July 31, 2023.  Catching up.  For the last three weeks we’ve been preoccupied with two German composers, Carl Orff and Hanns Eisler, and with that, we missed several notable anniversaries.  We were going to write about Alfredo Casella who was born 140 years ago, on July 25^th of 1883, in Turin.  We’ll come back to him soon, in the meantime you can read our earlier entry.  Eugène Ysaÿe was born 165 years ago, on July 16^th of 1858.  The wonderful Spanish composer Enrique Granados was born on July 27^th of 1867.  Hans Rott’s birthday is this week; he was born on August 1^st of 1858.  We have to admit our fascination with this underappreciated composer who predates Mahler in many ways. 

Several outstanding pianists were born in the previous three weeks, all in July: Van Cliburn on the 12^th in 1934, Leon Fleisher on the 23^rd in 1928, also on the 23^rd of July, but in 1944 – Maria João Pires, and Alexis Weissenberg, on the 26^th, in 1929.  The Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires is the only one still alive, and at the age of 79 is very active, performing about 50 concerts a year.

During this period we also could’ve celebrated three violinists: Pinchas Zukerman, born on the 16^th, in 1948; Isaac Stern, on the 21^st, in 1920, and Ruggiero Ricci, on the 24^th, in 1918.  Zukerman is alive and well, and, like Pires, is still very active.

We’ll turn to conductors: Igor Markevitch was born on July 27^th of 1912.  He was also a composer, but we’ve never had a chance to write about his creative (rather than interpretive) talents.  Riccardo Muti just left, with great pomp and circumstance, the post of Music Director of the Chicago Symphony.  He was born on July 28^th of 1941.  And Erich Kleiber, a wonderful conductor and the father of the even more famous Carlos Kleiber, will have his anniversary on August 5^th; he was born in 1890.

And finally, the singers.  They were especially bountiful, so we’ll list their names only.  Every person in this unbelievable group had a birthday in the previous three weeks: Nicolai Gedda, Kirsten Flagstad, Carlo Bergonzi, Pauline Viardot, Susan Graham, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Sergei Lemeshev, Mario Del Monaco, and Peter Schreier.  We’ve written about many of them, and if we’ve missed some, like Ms. Graham, we’ll get to it later.

This Week in Classical Music: July 24, 2023.  Hanns Eisler and Carl Orff, Part III.  In the previous two posts, we told the story of two German composers whose lives were upended by the Nazi regime.  So what are the legacies of Carl Orff and Hans Eisler?  Eisler, as you may recall, spent his last years in East Germany, the Communist country subjugated by the Soviet Union, with an indoctrinated and controlled cultural life.  Even though he was GDR’s most famous composer, who wrote the music to the national anthem, Eisler had to live and create according to the Party rules.  His more “formalist” music was criticized and much of his output in the last years was populist by design: music for films and choruses and of course for the plays of his dear friend Brecht who was also living in East Germany.  But we should remember that Eisler was a committed Marxist who had written propagandist music for years, so the atmosphere of the GDR fitted him better than it probably would any other creative artist.  Eisler died in 1968, pretty much forgotten by the West.  Then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, the country reunited under the leadership of the Western, democratic part, and Eisler was “rediscovered,” if not with great enthusiasm.  Eisler’s music isn’t performed often, even though some of his output is clearly of very high quality.  Listen, for example, to his late collection of eight “Serious songs (Ernste Gesänge): it’s absolutely wonderful.  (The baritone Günther Leib is accompanied by the Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin under the direction of Günther Herbig).

Carl Orff, who survived, and quite comfortably, the Nazi regime while not leaving Germany for a day, was investigated by the Americans in 1946 and underwent the denazification process.  According to the musicologist Michael Kater, during the process Orff made up some facts, presenting himself in opposition to the Nazi regime.  That helped him to receive the classification allowing a return to public life.  In Orff’s defense, he never joined the Nazi Party and never held any leadership positions.  He was in many respects a compromised figure (he fulfilled Nazi’s commissions by writing the music for the 1936 Olympic games and replacement music for the Midsummer Night’s Dream), but we cannot say that his music in itself was “fascist.”  After the war, Orff taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich and received many awards.  In 1951 he completed the cantata Trionfo di Afrodite, which, with Carmina Burana and Catulli Carmina formed a triptych called Trionfi.   The first part of the triptych, Carmina Burana, remains not just Orff’s most popular composition, but one of the most popular music composed in the 20^th century.  It has been used in dozens of movies and advertisements.  Orff is also remembered for his work in music education.  His Schulwerk ("School Work") is some of the best music composed for children.

 Here’s Catulli Carmina, composed by Orff in 1941-43.  The Münchner Rundfunkorchester orchestra and the Mozart-Chor, Linz are conducted by Franz Welser-Möst.

This Week in Classical Music: July 17, 2023.  Hanns Eisler and Carl Orff, Part II.  We’ll continue with the story of the lives of two German composers, both talented, born at about the same time, but whose lives took very different turns during the Nazi era.  Carl Orff became one of the Nazi establishment’s favorite composers; his Carmina Burana (1937) and Catulli Carmina (finished in 1943) were performed across Germany.  Hanns Eisler, on the other hand, had it much harder.  In 1933 his music was banned (as were the works of his friend Bertolt Brecht).  Both emigrated the same year; Brecht settled in Denmark, while Eisler became peripatetic: he went to the US on a speech tour, then Vienna, France, Moscow, Mexico and Denmark.  In some of these places he worked on film scores; while in Denmark he collaborated with Brecht, writing music for one of his plays.   He visited Spain during the Civil War where he went to the front lines.  During one of his subsequent visits to the US he taught composition at the New School for Social Research in New York.  In 1940 he received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and moved to New York, and two years later to southern California where there was already a large German émigré community.  Brecht moved there too (in 1941), and again Eisler joined him in writing music to Galileo and other plays.  He also collaborated with the philosopher and musicologist Theodor Adorno, one of the many German emigres living in “Weimar on the Pacific,” on a book about music in films.  And Eisler wasn’t just writing, he was also composing music for films, and many of them, thus making a decent living.

It all came to an end when Eisler, Brecht, and several other Hollywood personalities were brought before the Congress’ Committee on Un-American Activities.  He was accused, among other things, of being a brother of a “communist spy” Gerhart Eisler, and was labeled "the Karl Marx of music" (his brother Gerhart very likely was a spy as for many years he worked for the Comintern as a liaison – not that this somehow excuses the actions of the HUAC).  Eisler’s case became an international cause célèbre, and many artists came to his defense, Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse among them.  Eisler was expelled from the US in 1948.  He returned to Vienna but soon after moved to East Berlin, then the capital of the German Democratic Republic.  There he wrote a song which became the national anthem of the GDR.  He became a professor at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and a member of the Academy of Arts.  And while he was feted and living in a “workers’ paradise” consistent with his doctrinaire political beliefs, the reality of GDR wasn’t easy even for him.  In 1953 he decided to write an opera about Faustus, but the libretto was criticized as “formalistic” – that was Eisler’s last attempt to write an opera.  One big positive was that his good friend Brecht was also living in Berlin, and they continued to collaborate on many of his plays (Eisler’s brother Gerhart was also there: he escaped the US in 1948, moved to East Germany, and became a senior executive in the governing Socialist Unity Party).  But in 1956 Brecht died and that scarred Eisler for the rest of his life.  He continued to compose, mostly songs but also what he called Angewandte Musik (applied music)” music for film and plays.  Eisler died in East Berlin in 1962.

We’ll finish our story and listen to some music by Orff and Eisner next week.

This Week in Classical Music: July 10, 2023.  Hanns Eisler and Carl Orff.  Carl Orff was born on this day in 1895.  Hanns Eisler’s anniversary was three days ago, he was born in 1898.  Last week we promised to write about these two composers: close contemporaries, they lived through the dreadful 12 years of Nazi rule.  It’s interesting how differently their lives turned out.  In a way, some of it was inevitable, given the antisemitism of the Nazi ideology: Eisler’s father was Jewish while Orff was a Bavarian whose father was an officer in the German Imperial Army.  Still, many personal choices lead to their very different paths.  (While this is the first time we’re writing about Hanns Eisler, we posted a detailed entry on Orff four years ago, you can read it here).   Both Orff and Eisler served during the Great War, both were wounded (Orff severely, barely surviving).  After the war, Orff moved to Munich, while Eisler returned to Vienna where he became Arnold Schoenberg’s student; five years later Eisler moved back to Germany and settled in Berlin.  The cities, Berlin and Munich, were musical centers of Germany, though Berlin at the time was an epicenter of experimentation, while Munich’s musical establishment was more conservative.  During the early years of the Weimar Republic, Orff and Eisler were adventuresome composers, though Eisler more so: he was the first of Schoenberg’s students to write music in the 12-tone system, while Orff was more inspired by Stravinsky.  Both were profoundly influenced by the playwright and Marxist firebrand Bertolt Brecht, again Eisler more so than Orff – he maintained a relationship with Brech for the rest of his life, in Germany, then in the US, and later in the GDR. 

In the mid-1920s their paths started to diverge: Orff got interested in musical education and in the music of early Italian opera composers, especially Monteverdi.  Eisler in the meantime was turning more and more political.  Here’s one of the songs from Eisler’s cycle Zeitungsausschnitt or Newspaper Clippings.  It’s called Kriegslied eines Kindes (War Song of a Child).  The soprano Anna Prohaska is accompanied by Eric Schneider.  And here’s another wonderful song from the same cycle, Mariechen.  This short “clipping” is performed by Irmgard Arnold (soprano) and Andre Asriel (piano).  Also during those last years of the Weimer, Eisler wrote music to several of Brecht’s plays.  Sometime around 1931, Eisler composed a then-famous (or in our opinion, infamous) song Solidaritätslied (Song of Solidarity) for the German Communist Party with the lyrics by Brecht.  For all we know, with very little change in the lyrics it could’ve been a Nazi march, but as is, it was tremendously popular with the German Left before the Nazis took over.  Here it is; Hannes Wader, a popular West German singer and a member of the German Communist Party, performs it to an appreciative audience sometime around 1977. 

Things changed dramatically with the Nazi’s rise to power in 1933. Orff felt quite comfortable with the new regime, even though he never joined the Nazi party.  In 1937 he composed his most famous work, Carmina Burana, a cantata based on the German Latin-language poems from the 11^th-12th centuries.  It became very popular in Germany and, after some hesitation, was embraced by the Nazi regime.  It’s not clear why would the Nazi ideologues accepted this piece and its rather salty lyrics, but they did.  But so did many liberal opponents of the regime, clearly there was no “fascist message” in the music itself.  Unfortunately, Orff compromised himself on other occasions. For example, when the Nazis decided that Mendelssohn’s music to Midsummer Night’s Dream was no longer acceptable, because of its Jewish provenance, he answered their call and agreed to write a replacement.  Here’s a scene from Ein Sommernachtstraum called Mondaufgang (Moonrise).  The Academy of the Munich Radio Orchestra is conducted by Christian von Gehren.  Our feeling is that were it performed more widely these days it would become very popular (as is, its story makes it a rather politically incorrect piece).

Eisler’s life after 1933 couldn’t have been more different.  We’ll continue with it next week.

This Week in Classical Music: July 3, 2023.  Mahler and more.  Gustav Mahler was born on July 7^th of 1860.  With all the ebbs and flows in classical music tastes, he remains at the very top, acknowledged as one of the greatest European composers, beloved both by the regular listeners, judging by the number of “views” his symphonies receive on YouTube, and by music critics, based on their very subjectively compiled “best” lists.  Here’s the finale (the fifth movement, Im Tempo des Scherzos) of his Symphony no. 2, Resurrection.  The London Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Georg Solti.  The Second Symphony was written between 1888 and 1894, while Mahler was moving from one city to another as an itinerant opera conductor.  In 1888 he resigned from the Leipzig opera and went to Budapest, assuming the directorship of the Royal Hungarian Opera.  He stayed there, rather unhappily, till 1891, when he was sacked, though by that time he was already negotiating a contract with the Stadttheater Hamburg, the city’s main opera house.  Hired in Hamburg as the chief conductor, he later succeeded Hans von Bülow as director of the city's subscription concerts.  It was also during the years in Hamburg that he established the pattern of composing during the summer months, first in Steinbach on Lake Attersee, then in Maiernigg on Lake Worthersee in Carinthia, and later in Toblach in South Tyrol.  In Steinbach, the family stayed in an inn, but for his own purposes, Mahler built a tiny one-room house on the lake where he would retire to for hours and compose.  It was in this hut that he completed the Second Symphony and wrote most of the Third.

Several interesting composers were born this week, all deserving their own entry.  Leoš Janáček, a Czech composer, was born on July 3^rd of 1854.  Six years older than Mahler, he was born in the same country, Austria-Hungary: Mahler in Kaliště, Bohemia, Janáček in Hukvaldy, Moravia.  Bohemia and Moravia are now parts of the Czech Republic but back then were ruled by the Austrian Emperor from Vienna.  But of course, this is where the similarities end.  Mahler, a Jew, eventually moved to Vienna, and assumed the leadership of the Hofoper, the main opera house of the Empire (in the antisemitic Vienna to get the post he had to convert to Christianity) and composed symphonies with universal appeal (and at times, almost universal rejection).  Janáček, on the other hand, became a Czech nationalist, politically supported the independence of Czechia and is considered, together with Dvořák and Smetana, one of the most important Czech composers.   One of Janáček’s best-known works is the opera Jenůfa, completed in 1902.  Here’s the finale, with Gabriela Beňačková in the title role.  In this 1992 live recording, James Conlon conducts the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.

Ottorino Respighi, one of the most important Italian composers of the early 20^th century, was born on July 9^th of 1879 in Rome.  Some years ago, we wrote an entry about him, you can read it here.  Also, an interesting composer with a fascinating biography, Hanns Eisler was born on July 6^th of 1898.  We’ll write about him next week, together with his contemporary and compatriot, Carl Orff.

This Week in Classical Music: June 26, 2023.  Jiří Benda  Jiří Antonin Benda, who is better known by his Germanized name, Georg Anton Benda, came from an illustrious family of Bohemian musicians.  His father, his mother’s family and four of his siblings were musicians.  Jiří was born in Staré Benátky (now Benátky nad Jizerou), a village about 25 miles from Prague on June 30^th of 1722.  His older brother Franz (František) became a famous violinist and found employment with the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick who later became the King of Prussia Frederick II, known as the Great.  In 1743 Franz helped his family move to Prussia where Jiříjoined his brother, the Kapellmeister, in the court orchestra.  In 1750 Georg, as was by then his name, became Kapellmeister at the court of Duke Friedrich III of Saxe-Gotha.  There he started composing cantatas and Italian operas.  After several years at the court, the Duke allowed Benda to go to Italy and even provided him with the money for the trip.  In Venice Benda met the famous opera composer Johann Adolph Hasse.  He also visited Bologna, Florence and Rome, where he was introduced to the modern operas of Gluck, Galuppi and others.  Upon returning from Italy in 1767, Benda composed several intermezzi (short comic operas) and one of a regular length.  An important event happened in 1774: a famous theatrical troupe arrived in Gotha, and Abel Seyler, the director, commissioned Brenda a “melodrama,” a staged dramatic work somewhat similar to opera but with the text being spoken rather than sung.  His first melodrama, Ariadne auf Naxos, was very successful.  The second melodrama, Medea, followed shortly after.  Benda then composed several operas, Romeo und Julie among them.  He left Gotha in 1778 to live in Hamburg and Vienna, but after failing to receive important court appointments, he returned to Gotha a year later.  He retired soon after and lived on a small pension in the village of Köstritz nearby but traveled once in a while, even going to Paris to stage Ariadne at the theater Comédie-Italienne.  Benda died in Köstritz on November 6^th of 1795.

As far as we can tell, Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea are the best pieces of music Benda has written.  Mozart enjoyed Benda’s melodramas and in a letter to his father called them “very excellent,” adding “I like those two works of his so much that I carry them about with me.”  The problem with them as a genre is that it doesn’t really work.  Melodramas consist of short bursts of music, usually no longer than a minute, often of very high quality, interspersed with spoken text.  The text breaks down the music’s development ark, and the text begs for a melody.  No wonder it didn’t take long foropera to completely replaced the melodrama.   Still, we think it’s very much worth a try.  Here’s Ariadne auf Naxos.  Some of the music is quite Mozartean – no wonder Wolfgang liked it.  The Prague Chamber Orchestra is conducted by Christian Benda, the composer’s descendant.  Ariadne is about 40 minutes long; if you want a shorter sample, even if the music is not on the same level, here’s a scene from Romeo und Julie.  Michael Schneider leads La Stagione Frankfurt and the soloists in a four-minute excerpt from Act III of the opera.

Also, June 26^th is the birthday of one of our favorite conductors, Claudio Abbado.  He was born 90 years ago in Milan.

This Week in Classical Music: June 19, 2023.  Mid-18^th Century Music, Watts, and two Conductors.  Johann Stamitz, a Bohemian composer and the founder of the so-called Mannheim school, which, with its sudden crescendos and diminuendos, became very popular in the middle of the 18^th century, was born on June 18^th of 1717.   The mid-18th century was a bit short on major talent unless you count Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach who was about three years older than Stamitz (we’re not big fans of CPE Bach but we understand that many people are).  Johann Sebastian Bach died in 1750, George Frideric Handel – in 1759, but their music had went out of vogue many years earlier.  Domenico Scarlatti, born like the previous two in 1685, was living in Madrid and by then mostly engaged in copying and editing his numerous sonatas; in any event, his output wasn’t well known outside of Spain.  In 1750 Joseph Haydn was only 18, so of the living composers there were Telemann, who was getting old and not as productive as in his prodigious youth, and minor stars like Johann Friedrich Fasch and Johann Joachim Quantz.  The opera was faring better: Rameau still reigned on the music scene in Paris, and Christoph Willibald Gluck, born the same years as CPE Bach, while not yet on the level of Orfeo ed Euridice, was dispatching operas at the rate of a couple a year.  The world had yet to wait for Haydn to develop and for Mozart to appear.

Let’s hear one of Johann Stamitz’s symphonies, this one in A major, the so-called “Mannheim no. 2”.  Taras Demchyshyn conducts what seems to be mostly the Ukrainian Hibiki Strings ensemble of Japan.

The American composer André Watts was born on June 20^th of 1946 in Nuremberg.  Watts’s mother was Hungarian and his father – an African-American NCO serving in Germany.  Watts spent his childhood in different American military posts in Europe.  He started his musical lessons studying the violin and later switched to the piano.  At around nine, Watts went to the US and enrolled at the Philadelphia Musical Academy.  His breakthrough came in 1963 when he played Liszt’s First Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.  He later studied with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory.  From an early age, Watts had a prodigious technique, and his musicianship grew with experience (and studies with Fleisher).  His repertoire, while mostly Romantic, was broad.  For many years he taught at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University.  Here’s the 1963 recording of Liszt’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with the NYPO and Leonard Bernstein.

Two conductors were born this week, Hermann Scherchen on June 21^st of 1891 in Berlin, and James Levine, on June 23^rd of 1943 in Cincinnati.   Scherchen was one of the more adventuresome German conductors: he promoted the music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Hindemith after WWI, and conducted Mahler’s symphonies when very few did so.  After WWII he was active at Darmstadt and championed the music of Dallapiccola, Henze, and other young composers.  He was the first to conduct parts of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron. 

James Levine was probably the most talented conductor to ever lead the Metropolitan Opera.  His place in the musical history of the US would’ve been very different were it not for a sex scandal that broke out in 2017.  We’ll dedicate an entry to him shortly.

This Week in Classical Music: June 12, 2023.  Maher’s 9^th at the CSO.  Jakub Hrůša, a Czech conductor, came to Chicago to perform one work, Mahler’s Ninth, his last completed symphony.  Any performance of this work by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an event, and so was the concert this past Thursday.  The CSO doesn’t play the Ninth often: the last performance at the Symphony Center was five years ago, under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen, a wonderful Finnish conductor and the current San Francisco Symphony music director.  But we vividly remember it being played in December of 1995 when Pierre Boulez led the orchestra in a profound reading.   Boulez and the CSO then recorded it at Medinah Temple and received a Grammy for it.  Those were the times when Grammys were worth something.  By the way, Riccardo Muti, the outgoing Music Director, has never conducted this symphony, or, as far as we know, any other of Mahler’s, except for his youthful no. 1. 

Jakub Hrůša is 41 years old and somewhat of a late-rising star.  After conducting several orchestras in his native Czech Republic for several years, in 2016 he was made the chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, one of Germany’s better orchestras.  The following year he was appointed as one of two principal guest conductors of the Philharmonia Orchestra, London.  In 2021 he was made the principal guest conductor of the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.  Hrůša’s big break came in 2022, when he was appointed the music director designate of the Royal Opera House (the Covent Garden), with the formal appointment as Music Director coming in 2025.

But what about the performance in Chicago?  We want to preface our brief assessment with this: we think that no performance by a major orchestra can be bad these days (this was not the case 40 years ago).  What we mean is that Mahler’s music contains so much material, both at any given moment and in temporal relation to each other, that even if certain episodes are not done very well, there’s still an enormous amount of substance to overwhelm the listener.  For example, under Hrůša’s baton, the opening bars and the first “breathing theme” of the first movement (Andante Comodo) sounded a bit disjointed – maybe nerves and the fact that it was the first of three performances, but it didn’t matter much as things settled down quickly and proceeded wonderfully.  The second movement, a series of rustic dances, and the third, Rondo-Burleske, were nervy, sardonic, and at times violent, altogether very well played.  We have some qualms with the magnificent final Adagio marked Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend (very slowly and reserved).  Everything was in place, but somehow not revelatory.  This was good, but “good” is not exactly what one expects from this music: Boulez’s finale broke one’s heart.  Maybe it’s his younger age and Hrůša will eventually go deeper.  The public rewarded the conductor and the musicians with prolonged and enthusiastic applause.  The gracious Hrůša went around the orchestra, thanking all the principal players, and then patted the score, indicating the most important element of the proceedings.  We thought that to be a very proper gesture: even though the orchestra’s playing was excellent and Hrůša’s interpretation fine, it was Mahler’s genius that made the evening so memorable.

A couple of extraneous points.  The Orchestra Hall was full, which is great, considering that Hrůša isn’t that well known in Chicago.  As expected, no reviews were published in the major newspapers.  Larry Johnson published a nice one in his Chicago Classical Review.  And, despite some quibbles, we would be happy if Jakub Hrůša became Muti’s successor.

This Week in Classical Music: June 5, 2023.  Schumann and much more.  First thing, today is Martha Argerich’s 82^nd birthday.  Happy Birthday, Martha!

The great German Romantic composer Robert Schumann was born on June 8^th of 1810, Richard Strauss – on June 11^th of 1864.  Several other names among the composers born this week: Tomaso Albinoni, once thought of as an equal to Corelli and Vivaldi, on Jun 8^th of 1671.  Carl Nielsen, Denmark’s by far most famous composer, on June 9^th of 1865.  The Soviet-Armenian Aram Khachaturian, whose ballets Spartacus and Gayane are still regularly staged in Russia, was born in Tiflis, now Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, on June 6^th of 1903 (in those years Tiflis boasted a large Armenian community).  Erwin Schulhoff, the Jewish composer, was born in Prague into a German-speaking family on June 18^th of 1894.  His fate was tragic: his 1941 desperate attempt to escape to the Soviet Union failed; he was arrested, imprisoned in Bavaria, and died there of tuberculosis in 1942.  Schulhoff went through many phases in his life and composed in many styles; his musical progression is quite unique: he started composing atonal pieces, then moved to the Dada, then Romantic, and then, finally (and incredibly) the Social Realism.  A couple of years ago we promised to dedicate an entry to him but we’re still not there yet.  In the meantime, here is Schulhoff’s Piano Concerto no. 2 (concerto with a chamber orchestra).  The pianist is Dominic Cheli; RVC Ensemble is conducted by James Conlon.

Then there are two conductors, Klaus Tennstedt and George Szell.  Szell, born on June 7^th of 1897, is considered one of the greatest conductors of the 20^th century.  We published an entry about him a couple of years ago.  Klaus Tennstedt was born on June 6^th of 1926 in Merseburg, in the eastern part of Germany which, after WWII, became the GDR.  He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and, in 1958, became the director of the Dresden opera.  Tennstedt emigrated from East Germany in 1971.  First, he settled in Sweden, where he conducted the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra but a year later moved to West Germany.  Tennstedt guest-conducted all major US orchestras and many in Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw.  He was closely associated with two London orchestras, the London Symphony, and London Philharmonic.  He became the principal conductor of the latter in 1987.  Tennstedt’s interpretations of the music of Mahler were highly acclaimed.  Here is the majestic Finale of Mahler’s Symphony no. 3 with the London Philharmonic.

And let’s not forget about Gaetano Berenstadt, a favorite alto-castrato of George Frideric Handel.  He was born in Florence on June 6^th of 1687.  His parents were German, serving at the court of the Duke of Tuscany.  Berenstadt first appeared in London in 1717, singing in the operas by Handel, Scarlatti and Ariosti.  He then moved to Germany and back to Italy, returning to London in 1722 to join Handel’s Royal Academy of Music.  He sang in several of Handel’s operas, including Giulio Cesare, Flavio, and Ottone.  Berenstadt returned to Italy for good in 1726; he sang in Rome and Florence for another six years.  In bad health for the last few years, he died in Florence at the age of 47.

This Week in Classical Music: May 29, 2023.  Warmly, but without much enthusiasm.  Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born on this day in 1897.  A child prodigy, he had a fascinating, and in many ways difficult life that spanned several epochs.  He was born in Brünn, Austria-Hungary, now Brno, the Czech Republic, at the end of the Empire’s culturally brilliant era, which was open enough to allow the assimilated Jews to flourish.  A child prodigy, he was a darling of Vienna, where the family moved when Erich was four.  His father, Julius Korngold, was the most prominent music critic of the time, working for the newspaper Neue Freie Presse, the New York Times of Vienna.  Erich’s first piano sonata was composed at the age of 11; another piano and a violin sonata followed shortly after, then a Sinfonietta and a couple of short operas.   World War I ended with the disappearance of Austria-Hungary, and Vienna, the capital of a world power and a cultural center of the world turned into a provincial Middle-European city.  Korngold, by then in his early 20s, turned to the opera.  Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City), composed in 1920 when Korngold was 23, was a tremendous success and staged all over Germany, then Europe, even reaching the Met two years later.  In the meantime, Korngold turned to writing and arranging operettas.  They were very popular and brought in quite a bit of money.  His father, whose idol was Gustav Mahler and who didn’t care much for operettas, wasn’t pleased, considering this a waste of his son’s talent.  In retrospect, the technique of writing lighter music with lots of words thrown in became an asset when Erich earned money in Hollywood writing music scores some years later.

In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany and banned Korngold’s music in that country (after the Anschluss, it would be banned in Austria too).  In 1934, an invitation from Max Reinhardt, the famous German theater director, who was then working in New York theaters and trying his hand at film, brought Korngold to Hollywood.  Nobody in the US was much interested in Korngold’s more “serious” music but his career in the movies took off.  He wrote music for some of the most popular films of the 1930s, such as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and many others, singlehandedly creating a new musical genre.  He did write some “serious” music as well, but not much of it: the Violin Concerto in 1945 and a large-scale symphony in 1947, which used themes from his 1939 film The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.   These works are romantic, flowery, and pretty, but they sound rather dated – and, not surprisingly, remind one of his film music.  We’re afraid that we agree with Julius Korngold that Erich, with all his obvious talents and tremendous promise, didn’t go “deep” enough.  But maybe it was just inherently not in his nature: if you listen to his Sinfonietta, composed when Erich was 16, you can already hear the theatricality of Robin Hood.

Marin Marais was born on June 1^st of 1653 in Paris.  A student of Jean-Baptiste Lully, he became famous after the film Tous les matins du monde, featuring his music, premiered in 1991.  We find most of it repetitive and not very imaginative (somehow the repetitious phrases in the music of Padre Antonio Soler work much better).

Mikhail Glinka, also born on June 1^st but in 1804, is widely considered the father of Russian classical music and to that extent, is important.  And Edward Elgar was born on June 2^nd of 1857.  He’s one of the most significant English composers of the modern era, but we’ve already confessed to being rather cool to his music, the Cello concerto in the interpretation of Jacqueline du Pré notwithstanding.

This Week in Classical Music: May 22, 2023.  Wagner.  These days when one says “Wagner” the first assumption is that the person is talking about the Russian military group fighting in Ukraine on behalf of the Russian government.  The image of the great German composer comes in second.  It is not clear why the Russian nationalistic paramilitary organization took such a Western name.  As one theory goes, the original founder of the organization, one Dmitry Utkin, a neo-Nazi interested in the history of the Third Reich, took the call sign of Wagner, after Richard Wagner, Adolph Hitler’s favorite composer.  This is almost too much: Richard Wagner had enough problems of his own doing to be associated with this murderous group.

Richard Wagner was born on May 22^nd of 1813 in Leipzig.  That he is a composer of genius goes without saying.  That he was a rabid and active antisemite is also very clear.  This gets us into a very complicated predicament: what do we do about an evil genius?  Do we ignore all the “extraneous” biographical facts and just concentrate on the quality of his music?  Or do we, as the Israelis have done, ban his music altogether?   We don’t have an answer.  A litmus test, suggested by some thinkers, goes like this: if the aspects of the creator’s philosophy, in this case, his antisemitism, have directly affected his works, then we cannot ignore them.  If, on the other hand, they did not, then maybe we should concentrate on the work itself and ignore the rest while letting biographers dig into the sordid details.  Even given this test we don’t quite know how to qualify Wagner’s work.  Wagner’s writings are full of antisemitism, but clearly, they are not what he’s famous for – there were too many antisemites in Germany during his time.  His opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg has a whiff of antisemitism while most other operas are free of it.  We’re not going to solve this problem today, so just to confirm that we’re talking about a flawed genius, let’s listen to the Prelude to Act I of Parsifal, Wagner’s last opera.  This is from the 1972 recording made by Sir Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.  This amazing recording also features René Kollo, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Christa Ludwig, all at the top of their form.  Wagner prohibited any performances of Parsifal outside of Bayreuth, and that’s how it was for the first 20 years after the premiere.  Even though Wagner died in 1883, his widow Cosima, Liszt’s daughter and also an antisemite, wouldn’t allow any other staging.  Then, in 1903, a court decided that the Metropolitan Opera could perform Parsifal in New York.  Cosima banned all singers who participated in that performance from ever appearing in Bayreuth.   Only in 1914 was the ban lifted and immediately 50 opera houses presented it all over Europe.  Since then, Parsifal has remained on the stage of all major opera theaters around the world.

This Week in Classical Music: May 15, 2023.  Monteverdi and Goldmark.  One of our all-time favorite composers, Claudio Monteverdi, was born (or at least baptized) in Cremona on this day in 1567.  A seminal figure in European music history, he spanned two traditions, the old, Renaissance, and the new, Baroque, and in the process created the new art of opera.  We’ve written about him many times, so today we’ll just present one section, Laudate pueri, from his Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin), also known as his 1610 Vespers.  Monteverdi composed the Vespers while in Mantua, at the court of the Gonzagas.  It was published in Venice and dedicated to Pope Paul V, famous for his friendship and support of Galileo Galilei (but also for nepotism: he made his nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese so rich that it allowed Scipione to start what is now known as the Borghese Collection of paintings and sculptures).  Back to the music, though: here is Laudate pueri, performed by the British ensemble The Sixteen under the direction of their founder, Harry Christophers.

Carl Goldmark is almost forgotten, but in his day, he was one of the most popular composers in the German-speaking world.  His opera Die Königin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba) was performed continuously from the day it successfully premiered in 1875 in Vienna’s Hofoper, till 1938, when Austria was taken over by the Nazis in the so-called Anschluss.  Goldmark was born on May 18^th of 1830 in Keszthely, a Hungarian town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Goldmark was Jewish (his father was a cantor in the local synagogue); the family came from Galicia, and Goldmark’s first language was Yiddish – he never spoke Hungarian and learned German as a teenager.  Goldmark studied the violin in Vienna and later supported himself by playing the instrument in various local orchestras.  Around this time, he accepted the German culture as his own, which was the path for many upwardly mobile Jews in Austria and Germany in the second half of the 19^th century.  Around 1862 he became friends with Johannes Brahms, who had recently moved to Vienna from Hamburg.  Goldmark’s first successful composition was a concert overture Sakuntala, based on the Indian epic Mahabharata, which premiered in 1865.  Goldmark followed it with another exotic composition, the above-mentioned opera Die Königin von Saba.  It was a spectacular success and performances of the opera were mounted internationally.  Goldmark became part of the establishment, receiving prizes and honors, and presiding over important musical juries.  His 70th and 80th birthdays were celebrated nationally with great pomp.  He helped Mahler get his appointment at the Court Opera in 1897; some years later, he did a similar favor to Arnold Schoenberg, who was seeking an appointment to the Imperial Academy of Music and Arts.  Goldmark died several months into WWI, grieving the loss of his grandchild who was killed in one of the first actions in Serbia.

Goldmark’s Violin Concerto no. 1 was composed in 1877.  It’s a wonderful composition, rarely performed these days.  Here is a marvelous recording made by Nathan Milstein in 1957.  Harry Blech conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra.  We wonder why it’s not being played more often.

This Week in Classical Music: May 8, 2023.  A Listless List.  A whole bunch of composers were born this week, and none of them inspire us.  This may change with time: many of our musical attachments ebb and flow.  Let’s list the more interesting names: two Frenchmen, born on the same day, May 12^th, three years apart: Jules Massenet in 1842 and Gabriel Fauré in 1845.  Massenet is famous (or at least known) for his operas; two of them, Manon and Werther, are staged often.  His most popular piece, though, is not vocal: it is Meditation, from his opera Thaïs, for the violin and orchestra.  Here it is played by Mischa Elman, at his Russian Romantic best.  While Massenet was rather conservative, Fauré, was forward-looking and influenced many composers of the early 20^th century.  Here is Fauré’s Pavane, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Simon Rattle.

Carl Stamitz, the eldest son of Johann Stamitz, both prominent representatives of the Mannheim School, was baptized on May 8^th of 1745.  The American composer and pianist, Louis Moreau Gottschalk was born on that day in 1829 in New Orleans.  Even if his music is mostly forgotten, his life was fascinating, and we’ll return to him someday.  Giovanni Battista Viotti, an Italian violin virtuoso and composer, was born on May 12th of 1755.  Viotti composed 29 violin concertos, some of them still in the active repertory, but we didn’t have a single piece of his in our library.  We’re correcting the omission with this performance of his Violin concerto no. 22 with the wonderful Belgian-Romanian violinist Lola Bobesco.  Kurt Redel conducts the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz orchestra.  Another Italian, Giovanni Paisiello, was born on May 9^th of 1740.  His most popular opera was Il Barbiere di Siviglia, composed in 1782 with the libretto adapted from Beaumarchais’s play, as was Rossini’s famous masterpiece, written some 36 years later.

Milton Babbitt was one of the most interesting (and difficult) American composers of the 20^th century, and we wrote about him here.   And speaking of fascinating lives, Arthur Lourié’s certainly was: he was linked, romantically or otherwise, with a good part of the Russian  Silver Age artists, from the poet Anna Akhmatova to the painter Sudeikin, to Stravinsky and Vera de Bosset, Stravinsky’s eventual wife.  Some of these relationships were rather unconventional; we’ve touched upon them here.

Two conductors were also born this week, Carlo Maria Giulini, on May 9^th of 1914, and Otto Klemperer, on May 14^th of 1895.  Giulini, together with Arturo Toscanini, Victor de Sabata, and Claudio Abbado, was one of the few truly great Italian conductors (we probably should add Giuseppe Sinopoli and Riccardo Muti to the list).  During his long career (he died at the age of 91) Giulini was closely associated with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London's Philharmonia, the Vienna Philharmonic, and sever other major ensembles.  The number of prominent German 20th-century conductors is much larger, and Otto Klemperer was always considered one of the best.  We wrote about him recently here.  An interesting note: Giulini’s first instrument was the viola, and as a young man, he played in the orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.  Among the conductors whose music-making affected him the most were the Germans: Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter – and Klemperer.

This Week in Classical Music: May 1, 2023.  Pfitzner, Double Birthday and Alessandro Scarlatti.  The German composer Hans Pfitzner was born in, of all places, Moscow, Russia, on May 5^th of 1869.  We wanted to write about him not because of his talent but because of the period he lived in, the one preceding the 1933 Nazi takeover and then the Nazi period in Germany and later Austria.  We find this time frame of Austro-German music fascinating.  Never before were music and politics as intertwined as then and there, and never in modern times were the ethics of the musicians tested to the same degree.  Then it occurred to us that just two weeks ago we wrote about Max von Schillings, whose path was somewhat similar to Pfitzner’s.  So, we decided to return to Pfitzner at a later date.  Pfitzner was a better composer and not as rabid a Nazi supporter as Schillings, so we feel that we can play some of his music.  Here are Three Preludes from his most successful opera, “Palestrina” (preludes to Acts I, II, and III).  Christian Thielemann conducts the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

May 7^th is special: Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Johannes Brahms were both born on this day, Tchaikovsky in 1840 and Brahms seven years earlier, in 1833.  This is a rather unfortunate coincidence as both of them deserve separate entries.  On the other hand, we’ve written so many entries about these composers, together and separately, that we’ll skip them this time.

These days Alessandro Scarlatti’s son Domenico is much better known than his father, but we think this is a purely technical issue: Alessandro was famous for his operas whereas Domenico – for his small clavier sonatas.  It’s much easier to squeeze a three-minute piano piece into a recital or as a filler on a classical music radio station than stage a three-hour opera production.  Scarlatti composed 65 operas, most of them in three acts.  The exceptions being the famous (or as famous as Alessandro Scarlatti’s opera can get), Il Mitridate Eupatore, and Il trionfo della libertà are in five acts; both composed in 1707.  Of all of his operas, probably five have been recorded (his oratorios fared a little bit better; Scarlatti wrote more than 30 of them, and being shorter, they are easier to produce).  Alessandro Scarlatti was born on May 2^nd of 1660 in Palermo.  He spent most of his time in Rome and Naples and is considered “the father” of the Neapolitan opera.  Even though opera was his favorite art form, he also wrote some church and orchestral music.  We can listen to two examples: here’s his short (just five minutes) Concerto Grosso no. 4, performed by the ensemble Europa Galante under the direction of Fabio Biondi.  It was composed around 1715.  And here is Kyrie, from his St. Cecilia Mass (1720).  The Wren orchestra, the choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and the soloists are led by George Guest.

This Week in Classical Music: April 24, 2023.  Benedetto Pamphili.  Occasionally we write about historical figures that, while not directly involved in composing or making music, greatly affected musical culture, for example, through their patronage, as librettists, or as music producers.  Queen Christina is probably the most famous example of a patron.  In a very different way, Pietro Metastasio, who wrote libretti to operas by Vinci, Caldara, Hasse, and many other opera seria composers, was also very influential.  And then there was Lorenzo da Ponte: we know him as the librettist to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and The Marriage of Figaro, but he also wrote libretti for 25 other operas by 11 composers, Antonio Salieri among them.  The famous impresario Sol Hurok is an example of a powerful producer who shaped several musical careers.

Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, whom we are celebrating today, was prominent in all three areas: he was an important benefactor, he wrote several libretti, and he staged many productions, some of which were premiers.  Benedetto Pamphili was born in Rome on April 25^th of 1653 into a prominent family whose name in Italian is often spelled Pamphilj, the ending “j” indicating a long “e” sound.  Benedetto’s great-grandfather was Pope Innocent X, whose portrait you can see below.  (The portrait, one of the greatest ever created, was painted by Diego Velázquez.  It now hangs in a separate room in Galleria Doria Pamphilj; it alone is worth the price of the ticket.  Read more about it here).  Benedetto’s parents were Cardinal Camillo Pamphilj and Olimpia Aldobrandini, from a no less powerful Aldobrandini family.  In order to marry Olimpia, Camillo had to renounce his cardinalship.  The Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, which houses the gallery, was part of Olimpia’s dowry; prior to her marriage, it was called Palazzo Aldobrandini (the original Palazzo Pamphilj is on Piazza Navona and is now owned by the Brazilian embassy).

Benedetto, who inherited a fortune, also had a considerable income from numerous ecclesiastical positions he was granted by Pope Innocent XI.  He spent much of it on art and patronage.  Benedetto was a gifted writer and was admitted into two prestigious Academies: Accademia degli Umoristi, a literary society whose members were some of the best writers of the time (despite its name the Academy wasn’t necessarily dedicated to humoristic arts), and Accademia dell'Arcadia, about which we wrote an entry some time ago.  As music was Benedetto’s favorite art, he applied his literary talents to writing libretti.  Operas were prohibited in Rome by Pope Clement XI in 1703, so most of these libretti were for oratorios and cantatas, which temporarily replaced operas as accepted genres (texts for 88 cantatas are extant).   A few of Benedetto’s operas were staged before the prohibition went into effect, for example, Alessandro Scarlatti’s La santa Dimna, presented in Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in 1687. 

Benedetto employed several maestro di musica, among them Lulier and Cesarini.  Arcangelo Corelli played in his orchestra and was handsomely rewarded for it.  Bernardo Pasquini, a composer of operas and oratorios, was also supported by Benedetto, as was Giovanni Bononcini.  His most famous charge was Handel during the young composer’s stay in Rome.  They became friends and Handel dedicated several cantatas and oratorios to his patron.

Benedetto held weekly musical events in his palace, as did some other powererful cardinals, like Pietro Ottoboni and Carlo Colonna; he also sponsored productions in other theaters.  What is interesting about these productions is the size of the orchestras they employed.  We are used to the staging of Baroque operas supported by scaled-down groups, often consisting of just several players: a couple of violins, a viola da gamba, a theorbo, and a harpsichord.  According to Lowell Lindgren, Benedetto employed 32 musicians in Scarlatti's Il trionfo della gratia and 60 for Lulier's S Maria Maddalena de' pazzi.  Maybe the musical accompaniment of Baroque operas doesn’t have to sound so thin after all.

This Week in Classical Music: April 17, 2023.  Schillings and the problem of evil.  In his “little tragedy” Mozart and Salieri, the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin made a profound, if not necessarily true statement: “Genius and villainy are two things incompatible.”  We’d like to believe it to be true, and in some higher sense it should be true, but we know that history is full of villainous geniuses.  As far as music is concerned, Richard Wagner’s name is the first to come to mind.  He was a vile antisemite and made statements that today are difficult to comprehend.  One thing we’d like to make clear about Wagner is that in no way was he responsible for the atrocities committed by the Nazis, though much of them were accompanied by his music.  Wagner’s music was favored by Hitler, but the Führer also loved Bruckner and Beethoven.  Wagner’s place in the Nazi culture was unique, partly because of the Bayreuth Festival, run by the antisemitic Winifred Wagner, the wife of Richard’s son Siegfried and Hitler’s dear friend, but in no way does this make Wagner, as terrible a person as he was, an accomplice.  Then there was Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, who murdered his wife and Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria, after finding them in flagrante.  Alessandro Stradella, a wonderful composer, embezzled money from the Catholic church, seduced and abandoned many women, and was killed by three assassins hired by a nobleman who found out that Stradella had become a lover of his mistress (or, in another version of the story, the nobleman’s sister).  One person we find especially fascinating is the painter of genius, Caravaggio, who murdered several people, maimed many more, belonged to a gang, was arrested on many occasions, and had fled from justice for half of his life.  We tend not to remember these things when we look at his pictures, some of the most profound ever created. 

The musician whom we decided to write about this week never had the talent of the artists just mentioned, but neither were his sins as deep; nonetheless, his story, which is much closer to our time, seems to be more relevant.  His name was Max Schillings, he was born on April 19^th of 1868 in Düren, the Kingdom of Prussia.   He studied the piano and the violin in Bonn and later entered the University of Munich, where he took courses in law, philosophy, and literature.  While in Munich, he met Richard Strauss who became his friend for life.  In 1892 Schillings was appointed assistant stage conductor at Bayreuth; in 1903 he was made professor in Munich (Wilhelm Furtwängler was one of his students).  In 1908 he became the assistant to the Director of the Royal Theater in Stuttgart, the city’s main opera house, where he staged several premieres, including Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos; later he also conducted Strauss’s Salome and Elektra.  By then he had composed several operas, most of them unsuccessful imitations of Wagner.  Then, in 1915, he had a breakthrough with his opera Mona Lisa, which became the most often staged opera of the time.   In 1918 Schillings succeeded Richard Strauss as the Intendant of the State Opera in Berlin (we know it as Staatsoper Unter den Linden; Barenboim lead it for years).  He then spent several years outside of Germany, conducting and staging operas in Europe and the US.  Upon his return in 1932, he was appointed President of the Prussian Academy of the Arts.

Schillings was a rabid antisemite, a nationalist and an opponent of the Weimar Republic.  As soon as he became the President of the Academy, he fired some of the most talented members, among them Heinrich and Thomas Mann; Alfred Döblin, the author of Berlin Alexanderplatz; the composer Franz Werfel.  He terminated Arnold Schoenberg’s contract and sent Franz Schreker into retirement.  God only knows what else he would have done had he lived through the Nazi period, but he died on July 24^th of 1933, four months after the Enabling Act gave Hitler dictatorial powers.  We don’t want to keep Schillings’s music in our library, but you can find Mona Lisa on YouTube.

This Week in Classical Music: April 10, 2023.  Pletnev and Caballé.  Mikhail Pletnev is a wonderful pianist and an interesting conductor.   He was born on April 14^th of 1957 in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk.  In 1978, when he was 21, Pletnev won the first prize at the sixth Tchaikovsky competition.  That brought him international recognition and his career took off.   He debuted in the US the following year and since then has performed in all major venues and played concerts with the best conductors, Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Mazel, and Zubin Mehta among them.  As a pianist, Pletnev has a special affinity with Rachmaninov and is acknowledged as one of the best performers of his music.  In 1990, Pletnev founded the Russian National Orchestra (RNO), the first non-governmental orchestra in the country since 1917, and developed it into one of the best orchestras in Russia.  The NRO recordings of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies are especially good.  Everything changed in 2022 with the Russian aggression against Ukraine.  Pletnev’s reaction was both negative and direct.  In an interview, he said: “Who starts the wars?  Only stupid politicians.  Not a single normal person likes the war.  But the politicians use propaganda and manipulation, and they use them for their own benefit, not ours.”  Of course, in a country with only one politician, Mr. Putin, this couldn’t be tolerated.  First, the Russian government fired RNO’s executive director, a Pletnev supporter, and then practically banned Pletnev from conducting his own orchestra.  Since then, Pletnev has created another ensemble he calls the Rachmaninoff International Orchestra.  Among its members are musicians from Eastern and Western Europe, and 18 former members of the RNO.

Here are several piano recordings by Mikhail Pletnev.  First, Rachmaninov’s Corelli Variations, recorded live in Moscow in 2001 (here).  Then, another live recording, made in Luxemburg in 2015: a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor op. posth. (here).  And lastly, from Carnegie Hall, also live, the year 2000 recording of Chopin’s Scherzo no. 1 (here).

The great Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, “La Superba,” was born on April 12^th of 1933 in Barcelona.  Here she sings the aria Donde Lieta Usci from Puccini’s La Bohème.  Charles Mackerras conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

This Week in Classical Music: April 3, 2023.  Two Italian Tenors.  Only one of these singers has an anniversary this week, and that’s Franco Corelli, who was born on April 9^th of 1921 in Ancona.  Another tenor is Beniamino Gigli, whose name we mentioned several weeks ago when we were celebrating the birthday of the great Enrico Caruso.  We promised then to write about Gigli, probably second only to Caruso among tenors of the first half of the 20^th century.  Gigli was born on March 20^th of 1890, but with Bach and Rachmaninov’s 150th anniversaries intervening, this is the earliest we could get to Gigli. 

Forty years separate Gigli from Corelli; that gap affected their legacies in many ways, but two of them are very important: one is technology, the other – politics.  Gigli made a large number of records, but the recording technology of his time was rather poor, and the sound quality of his shellac records cannot compare with the ones made by Corelli.  Subsequently, we rarely can hear the tone quality for which Gigli was famous.  And politics is the second important factor: Gigli lived during the fascist years of Mussolini’s reign, and as was the case with many German, Soviet, and Italian musicians of the time, he compromised himself politically and ethically.

Beniamino Gigli was born in Recanati, a small town not far from Ancona on the Adriatic side of Italy.  In 1914 he won a competition in Parma, and later that year made a successful début in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda.  His career took off almost immediately, and he was invited to sing in all major opera theaters of Italy, from San Carlo in Naples to La Scala in Milan.  In 1917 he sang in Spain and in 1920 made a highly successful debut in New York at the Met.  He stayed in the US for the next 12 years, becoming, after Caruso’s death in 1921, the Met’s most popular tenor, even though the opera’s roster also included such singers as Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Giovanni Martinelli.  Even though the public called Gigli “Caruso Secondo,” the comparison is not fair: Caruso’s voice was bigger and darker than Gigli’s, whereas Gigli’s was “sweeter” and probably naturally more beautiful.  In 1932, after refusing a pay cut, Gigli left the Met and returned to Italy.  He became Mussolini’s favorite singer, which in itself, of course, is not a sin.  Unfortunately, Gigli went much further: in 1937 he recorded the official hymn of the Italian fascist party, Giovinezza; in 1942 he wrote a book, Confidenze, in which he praised fascism.  He valued his “friendship with Hitler, Goering and Goebbels.  In 1944, he collaborated with the Germans after they occupied Rome.  Were he in Germany at the end of the war, he would probably had been banned for years as a collaborator, but in Italy, he was forgiven almost immediately.  Not everybody forgot his past, though: he wasn’t let into the US till 1955.  That didn’t prevent Gigli from singing in Italy, Europe and South America.

Gigli’s recordings don’t do justice to his honeyed tone but we have two samples that seem to better reflect his voice.  Here, from 1943, is his Vesti la giubba, from Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci (it’s a live recording and we had to cut down part of the prolonged ovation).  And here, from 1949, is Nessun dorma, from Puccin’s Turandot.

Gigli was one of Franco Corelli’s favorite singers; mostly self-taught, he learned to sing by listening to the recordings of Caruso, Lauri-Volpi and Gigli.  Here’s Corelli’s rendition of Nessun dorma.  Two years ago we celebrated Corelli’s 100^th anniversary, you can read more about this great singer here.

This Week in Classical Music: March 27, 2023.  Rachmaninov 150.  One day of this week is very special: April 1^st marks the 150^th anniversary of the great Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, Sergei Rachmaninov (some outlets were celebrating his birthday on the 20^th of March, as that was his birthdate according to the old Russian Julian calendar, but this is like observing the Russian Revolution on October 25^th, rather than the conventional November 7^th).  We’re not going to trace Rachmaninov’s life; suffice it to say that it was divided into two irreconcilable parts, one, from his birth till the Russian Revolution, and then, from 1918, emigration and life in the United States.  In terms of his creative output, these two parts are incomparable.  The vast majority of his compositions were created while Rachmaninov lived in Russia: his piano pieces, such as the Études-Tableaux and the Preludes, the first three Piano concertos, two symphonies and Isle of the Dead, the Second piano sonata (the first one was a juvenile piece), the early operas, most of his songs, the choral works, such as The Bells and the All-Night Vigil – all of these were written in Russia.  In America Rachmaninov had to earn his living by playing piano and conducting, with very little time left for composing.  All he wrote while in America were (not counting several miscellaneous pieces) a not-very-successful Piano Concerto no. 4, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Symphony no. 3, Variations on a Theme of Corelli, and Symphonic Dances.  We’ve always wondered if one could explain such a tremendous disparity just by Rachmaninov’s need to earn money by performing.  We suspect there was more to it, but this is not the place to address this issue.

That Rachmaninov was one of the greatest pianists of the 20^th century is accepted by practically everybody.  But what about his compositions?  He’s one of the most popular composers ever, if one judges by the number of his pieces being performed and broadcasted, the Piano concertos nos. 2 and 3 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in particular.  But was he a great composer?  Here opinions differ.  Clearly, he wasn’t an innovator, but not all great composers were: we recently talked about Bach, whose music was considered outdated by many of his contemporaries.  Eric Blom, a famous music critic and the editor of the 5^th edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music, was one of the skeptics.  He wrote that the composer “did not have the individuality of Taneyev or Medtner.  Technically he was highly gifted, but also severely limited.  His music is ... monotonous in texture ... The enormous popular success some few of Rakhmaninov's works had in his lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it with much favour.”   This seems to be both wrong and unfair, and Harold Schonberg, the chief music critic of the New York Times, responded (in his book on great composers) in kind: “It is one of the most outrageously snobbish and even stupid statements ever to be found in a work that is supposed to be an objective reference.”  We have to confess that sometimes, listening to somewhat shallow, formulaic passages that appear quite often in many of Rachmaninov’s pieces, we have our doubts.  But that’s not the way to judge any creative artist: it should be done by what he did best, and Rachmaninov did write brilliant music.  That’s what will keep him in the pantheon of composers of the first half of the 20^th century.

Let’s listen to some music.  First, Sviatoslav Richter plays two of Rachmaninov’s Etudes-Tableaux op.33: no. 5 and no. 6, but from 1911.  And here Richter again, in Prelude no. 10, from op. 32, composed a year earlier, in 1910.  And finally, a sample of Rachmaninov’s late symphonic work: from 1940, his Symphonic Dances.  Vladimir Ashkenazy leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

This Week in Classical Music: March 20, 2023.  Bach and Four Pianists.  Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21^st of 1685 in Eisenach.  Four pianists were also born this week; we’ll present them briefly and then have them play several of Bach’s works.  A word on dating Bach’s compositions: even though we know a lot about his life, the dating of his output is very approximate, so sometimes it’s not clear where Bach was when he wrote some of the pieces.  Different sources often provide different dates and estimate ranges.

Our pianists are: Sviatoslav Richter, born on March 20^th of 1915 in Zhytomyr, then in the Russian Empire, now a city in independent Ukraine.  Richter is acknowledged by many as one of the greatest pianists of the 20^th century.  His repertoire was enormous, he said that he could play eighty different programs, not counting chamber pieces.  He continued adding to it even in his 70s.

Egon Petri, a German pianist of Dutch descent, was born on March 23^rd of 1881 in Hanover.  He was the favorite pupil and associate of Ferruccio Busoni.  Petri had an illustrious international career and in 1923 became the first foreign pianist to perform in the Soviet Union.  Like his teacher, much of Petri’s repertoire was concentrated on Bach, and like him, he became a famous pedagogue.

The American pianist Byron Janis will turn 95 on March 24^th.  He was born in McKeesport, PA into a Jewish family (the original family name was Yankelevitch).  As a child, he studied with Josef and Rosina Lhévinne in New York.  Vladimir Horowitz was in the audience when Janis, age 16, played Rachmaninov’s 2^nd Piano Concerto and immediately took him as his first pupil.  In 1960 Janis had a tremendously successful tour of the Soviet Union, just two years after Van Cliburn’s win of the First Tchaikovsky competition.  Janis’s career was cut short in 1973 when he developed arthritis in both hands.

Wilhelm Backhaus, one of the most interesting German pianists of the 20^th century, was born on March 26^th of 1884 in Leipzig.  An early protégé of Arthur Nikisch, he studied for a year with Eugene d’Albert but was mostly self-taught.  In 1900, Backhaus toured England, and four years later he became a professor of music in Manchester.  In 1912-1913 he toured the US, the first of his many highly successful tours of the country.  In 1931 he became a Swiss citizen.  His technique was legendary, and he maintained it well into his 80s.  Backhaus was compromised by his association with the Nazis after their takeover in 1933.  We’ll address this chapter of his life later.

So now to some Bach, as performed by our pianists.  Here is an early (1948-1952) Sviatoslav Richter recording of Fantasia and Fugue in A minor, BWV 944.  Bach wrote it sometime between 1707-1713/1714 when he was most likely in Weimar, where he was an organist and Konzertmeister at the ducal court.

And here is a much later work, Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998, from 1740-1745, when Back was Thomaskantor in Leipzig.  It’s performed by Egon Petri.

Here, 19-year-old Byron Janis plays Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543 as arranged by Liszt.  The dating of this piece is all over the place: Grove Music says “after 1715,” Wikipedia – after 1730.

And finally, Wilhelm Backhaus plays the English Suite No. 6 in D minor, BWV 811 (here), composed sometime between 1720 and 1725.  This is a bit problematic because in 1720 Bach was living in Köthen, serving as the Kapellmeister to the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, while in 1725 he was already in Leipzig. 

This Week in Classical Music: March 13, 2023.  Telemann and Two Singers.  Georg Philipp Telemann, the prolific friend of Johann Sebastian Bach, was born on March 14^th of 1681.  We’ve written about the “Telemann problem”: he was so abundant in his output as to make it practically impossible to account for all his compositions and to select – if not the best, then at least the most representative – pieces.  Not just a wonderful composer, Telemann was also a very interesting person of apparently boundless energy: in addition to composing, he produced concerts, published music, taught, and wrote theoretical treaties.  We’ll dedicate another entry to him, but this time we’ll just play some of his music – as it happens, an Orchestra suite La Bizarre (here).  It’s performed by the Akademie Für Alte Musik Berlin.

Two great singers were also born this week, both mezzo-sopranos and both born on the same day, March 16^th: the German mezzo Christa Ludwig, and the Spanish  Teresa Berganza, five years later, in 1933.  Teresa Berganza died less than a year ago, on May 13^th of 2022.  We paid a tribute to her that year.  Christa Ludwig died a year earlier, on April 24^th of 2021 at the age of 93.  She was born in Berlin, studied with her mother, and debuted at the age of 18 in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus.  In 1954 she sang the role of Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at the Salzburg festival.  In 1959 she made her American debut as Dorabella in Cosi fan Tutti at the Lyric opera in Chicago (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was Fiordiligi).  She would return to Chicago five more times, singing Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Fricka in Die Walküre, and roles in Boito’s Mefistofele, Verdi’s La forza del destino, and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.  She had a rich, very focused voice with no unnecessary vibrato.  Her repertoire was large, from Monteverdi to Gluck, Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, and Berg.  She was also a great lied singer and a wonderful Mahlerian, performing in his song cycles, such as Kindertotenlieder and Rückert-Lieder, and in Das Lied von der Erde and Symphony no. 3.  She worked with the best conductors of her time, from Böhm and Klemperer to Bernstein, Solti, and Karajan.

Here is her Dorabella in the aria È amore un ladroncello from Mozart’s Così fan tutte.  Karl Böhm conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in this 1962 recording.  And here Christa Ludwig is in an exceptional recording of Gustav Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder.  Herbert von Karajan conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

This Week in Classical Music: March 6, 2023.  Honegger.  The always popular Maurice Ravel was born this week, on March 7^th of 1875.  And so were Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, probably the most important composer among Johann Sebastian’s sons (on March 8^th of 1714); Carlo Gesualdo, the brooding murderer and composer of huge talent (on the same day in 1566);  Josef Mysliveček, a Czech friend of Mozart’s (on March 9^th of 1737); and Samuel Barber, one of the most popular American composers of the 20^th century (on March 9^th of 1910).  All of them we’ve written about on many occasions.  One composer whom we’ve mentioned often but, quite undeservedly, only in passing, is Arthur Honegger, a Swiss and unusual member of Les Six.

Honegger was born on March 10^th of 1892 in the French port city of Le Havre to Swiss parents (there was an old Swiss colony in the city).  As a child, Honegger studied the violin and harmony in Le Havre and then, for two years, in Zurich.  At the age of 18, while still living in Zurich, he enrolled in the Paris Conservatory; he commuted there by train twice weekly.  In Paris Honegger studied with Charles-Marie Widor, the famous organist and composer, and Vincent d'Indy.  In 1913 Honegger settled in Montmartre, where he lived for the rest of his life.  While at the Conservatory, he met Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric, Darius Milhaud, all future members of Les Six (Milhaud became his closest friend), and Jacques Ibert, with whom he would later collaborate on two pieces.  In 1926 Honegger married a fellow pianist Andrée Vaurabourg.  Their married life was unusual: Honegger required solitude to compose, so Andrée resided with her mother, while Honegger visited her every day for lunch.  They lived apart for the rest of their married life, except for a period following Vaurabourg’s car accident, when Honegger took care of her, and at the end of Honegger’s life.  Despite this arrangement, they had a daughter who was born in 1932.  Vaurabourg was Honegger’s most trusted musical advisor; an excellent pianist, she was also a prominent teacher: among her students was Pierre Boulez.

During WWII Honegger remained in Paris and taught at the Ecole Normale de Musique.  Depressed during the war, he further suffered from heart problems (a heart attack in 1947 almost killed him).  He was in poor health for the rest of his life and died in November of 1955, the first of the Les Six.  And speaking of Les Six, it was never a unified group, and esthetically, a serious-minded Honegger, mostly interested in large-form compositions like operas and musical dramas, was an odd man out.  What kept them all together was stimulating companionship and appreciation of each other’s talent.

A composition that brought Honegger international fame was a 27-movement incidental score to a biblical drama Le roi David.  Among his most popular pieces is Pacific 231, inspired by the sounds of a steam locomotive (Honegger was a big train enthusiast, he also loved fast cars and rugby).  Here’s his last symphony, no. 5, subtitled “Di tre re” (or Of the three Ds, “re” is note D in the French notation.  This note is played at the end of each movement).  The Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Neeme Järvi.

This Week in Classical Music: February 27, 2023.  A mystery composer.  Whom do you write about when you have Frédéric Chopin, Antonio Vivaldi, Gioachino Rossini, Bedřich Smetana, and Kurt Weill among the composers born this week, plus the pianist Issay Dobrowen, the violinist Gidon Kremer, the soprano Mirella Freni, and the conductor Bernard Haitink?  The obvious answer is, you write about Sergei Bortkiewicz.  Yes, we’re being facetious, but we’ve written about Chopin, Vivaldi, and Rossini many times (we haven’t had a chance to write about Dobrowen yet, a very interesting figure).   Bortkiewicz, on the other hand, is a composer we knew only by name until recently when we heard his Symphony no. 1 and thought it was something from the late 19^th century, maybe a very early Rachmaninov – but no, it turned out to be a piece composed in 1940.  While conservatism is not the most admirable feature, Bortkiewicz is not alone in that regard: the above-mentioned Rachmaninov was also not the most adventuresome composer.  Neither was Rimsky-Korsakov, not even Tchaikovsky, which didn’t preclude both of them from writing very interesting (and popular) music.  Richard Strauss, for all his talent, was a follower of the Romantic tradition.  Even Johann Sebastian Bach in his later years was well behind the prevailing trends of his time.  Listen, for example, to two pieces written at about the same time: 1741-1742, Johann Sebastian’s wonderful, if somewhat archaic, Cantata Bekennen will ich seinen Namen BWV 200 (here), and then C.P.E.’s Symphony in G major, Wq. 173, written in the then “modern” style (here).   They belong to different eras, even if the cantata is much better.  We admire and love the pioneers like Mahler, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, but as important as they are, there is a lot of space in the musical universe for the less daring composers.  We’re not comparing the talent of Sergei Bortkiewicz with that of the “conservatives” mentioned above, but some of his music is pleasant and his life story is interesting.

Sergei Bortkiewicz was born in Kharkiv on February 28^th of 1877.  Back then Kharkiv was part of the Russian Empire; now it is a city in Ukraine being constantly attacked by Putin’s Russian army.  He studied music first in his hometown, then in St.-Petersburg, where one of his teachers was Anatoly Lyadov.  In 1900 he entered the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition for two years.  From 1904 to 1914 he lived in Berlin.  While there he wrote a very successful Piano Concerto no. 1.  At the outbreak of WWI, he, as a Russian citizen and therefore an enemy, was deported from Germany.   Bortkiewicz settled temporarily in St.-Petersburg and then moved back to Kharkiv.  After the October Revolution, amid the chaos of the Civil War, he emigrated to Constantinople and then, in 1922, to Vienna, where he lived for the rest of his life (he died there in 1952).  In 1930 he wrote his Piano Concerto no. 2 for the left hand; it was one of the pieces commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist who lost his right hand during the Great War.  Altogether Bortkiewicz composed three piano concertos, two symphonies, an opera and several other symphonic and chamber pieces, all in the late-Romantic Russian style.  It was as if the music of the 20^th century hadn’t existed.

Here's Bortkiewicz Piano Concerto no. 1.  It’s performed by Ukrainian musicians: Olga Shadrina is at the piano; Mykola Sukach is conducting the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra. 

This Week in Classical Music: February 20, 2023.  Caruso.  To our surprise, we realized that we’ve never written about Enrico Caruso, probably the greatest tenor of all time.  (Come to think of it, we’ve never written about Beniamino Gigli either – we’ll certainly have to do it on his birthday, which comes in a month).  Caruso was born in Naples on February 25^th of 1873, so we’re celebrating not just any anniversary, but his 150^th! 

Caruso’s family was poor and had little formal education.  As a boy, he had a nice but small voice, and one of his vocal teachers, upon first hearing him, pronounced that his voice was "too small and sounded like the wind whistling through the windows."  Because he had little formal vocal training, his career had a bumpy start.  Caruso had strained high notes and sounded more like a baritone than a tenor.   His appearance at La Scala during the 1900–01 season in La bohème with Arturo Toscanini was not a success.  Knowing how brilliant Caruso’s upper register was once he had fully developed his voice, it’s difficult to imagine his early struggles. 

Caruso sang at several premieres: in 1897 in Milan, the title role in Francesco Cilea’s L'arlesiana, and in 1902 at the premiere of Adriana Lecouvreur, also by Cilea.  It seems that somewhere around 1902 Caruso gained full control of his voice and from that point on went from one triumph to another, singing in Italy, then at the Convent Garden, and later at the Met.  What used to be problematic had by then turned into an advantage: to quote Grove Music Dictionary, “the exceptional appeal of his voice was, in fact, based on the fusion of a baritone’s full, burnished timbre with a tenor’s smooth, silken finish, by turns brilliant and affecting.” 

The Met became Caruso’s main stage: he sang 850 performances there and created 38 roles, some legendary, such as Canio in Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci, Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème and Cavaradossi in Tosca, and Radames in Verdi’s Aida.  A unique aspect of Caruso’s career was his relationship with the nascent recording industry.  In 1903 he signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company and later with the related Gramophone Company.  During his time, all recordings were made acoustically, with the tenor singing into a metal horn (the electric recording was invented around 1925, after Caruso’s death).  The records contained just 4 ½ minutes of music, which limited the repertoire Caruso could record (often music was edited to fit a record).  And of course, these were not high-fidelity records, they distorted the timber of Caruso’s voice and lost some overtones.  Still, they proved to be tremendously popular, helping both the industry and the singer.  It was said that Caruso made the gramophone, and it made him.

During his career, Caruso partnered with the best singers of his generation, such as Nellie Melba, Amelita Galli-Curci, and Luisa Tetrazzini.  He toured, triumphantly, across Europe and South America.  Unfortunately, his career was short.  In September of 1920, he fell ill with an undetermined internal pain; eventually got better but the December 11^th performance of L'elisir d'amore had to be canceled after the first act, as Caruso suffered throat bleeding.  It was later determined that he had pleurisy.  His lungs were drained, and he started recuperating.  Caruso returned to Naples in May of 1921, which probably was a mistake: his care there was inadequate, and he died on August 2^nd of 1921.

With all the deficiencies of the old recording, we still can enjoy Caruso’s magnificent voice.  Here are several of them. Se quel guerrier io fossi! Celeste Aida, from Act 1 of Verdi’s Aida; Una furtiva lagrima, from Act 2 of Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore; La donna è mobile from Act 3 of Verdi’s Rigoletto; Ella mi fu Rapita...parmi veder le lagrime, from Act 2 of the same opera; Addio alla madre, from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana; and Vesti la giubba from Act 1 of I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo.

This Week in Classical Music: February 13, 2023.  Eight composers.  This is one of those weeks when practically every day brings an interesting composer – sometimes two – to commemorate.  Some of them are more interesting than others, but all are worth mentioning.  So, let’s go through the list.  Fernando Sor, a Spanish composer best known for his music for the guitar, was born on this day in 1778.  Sor himself was a guitar virtuoso and wrote hundreds of pieces for the instrument, from easy exercises for beginners to some extremely difficult ones.  Here are Sor’s Variations on a theme from Mozart’s The Magic Flute (they are from the “difficult” category).  The Variations are performed by the Spanish guitarist Rafael Serralet.

On the 14^th of February, we have two birthdays: Francesco Cavalli, in 1602, and Alexander Dargomyzhsky, in 1813.  Cavalli, a Venetian, was one of the pioneers of what was then a very new Italian art form, opera.  Almost forgotten for centuries, his work has been revived in the past decades with operas staged at Glyndebourne and by small companies like Chicago’s Haymarket Theater.  Here is Cavalli’s version of Ombra mai fu, from his opera Xerse.  Dargomyzhsky was a Russian composer of the generation between Glinka and Mighty Five, a generation rather scant on musical talent.  Two of his operas, Rusalka and The Stone Guest, which he didn’t complete (it was finished by Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov) are regularly staged in Russia.  Dargomyzhsky wrote about 100 songs, some of them lovely.

On the 15^th we have either one or two anniversaries.  One is clear: Georges Auric, the French composer and a member of Les Six, was born on this day in Lodève, a small town not far from Montpellier (you can read more about Auric here).  The second birthday is more speculative: Michael Praetorius may have been born on February 15^th in 1571.  A prolific and talented composer, he was 14 years older than Heinrich Schütz and one of the earliest German composers of note.  Here’s our detailed entry from some years ago.

Two composers, the Italian Arcangelo Corelli, and the Belgian, Henri Vieuxtemps, were born on the 17^th of February, the former in 1653, and the latter in 1820.  Even though their music could not be more different (one was a Romantic, while the other worked during the height of the Baroque era), their lives present many similarities.  Both were virtuoso violinists and created schools of violin playing.   And both had fine violins: about Corelli’s instruments we know only indirectly as it is said that his only indulgence was buying art and fine violins, whereas Vieuxtemps played what is now considered one of the greatest instruments ever made, the Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù.  In the 20^th century, this instrument was played by Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman.  The violin is in perfect condition, and in 2013 the Economist magazine estimated its price to exceed $16 million.  We can safely assume that today it’s much higher.

Luigi Boccherini was born on the 19^th of the month, in 1743.  And last but not least, on that day György Kurtág will turn 97!  He’s one of the most interesting (and widely recognized) contemporary composers.  Here, from 1988, is his ...quasi una fantasia… for the piano and orchestral ensemble.  This piece comes from the time when Kurtág was interested in the special effects of sound, placing instruments in different parts of the hall and on different levels.  And here is his early set called Eight Piano Pieces, op. 3 (all eight run less than seven minutes).  It’s performed by the pianist I-Ting Wen.

This Week in Classical Music: February 6, 2023.  Berg, Arrau and more.  It so happened that for the last month, we’ve been preoccupied with Austro-German composers, first with the mostly Jewish, and now mostly forgotten, composers who flourished early in the 20^th century, then with Mozart and Quantz.  This week brings another name, which would firmly fit into the same category – that of Alban Berg, who was born in Vienna on February 9^th of 1885.  Fortunately, we’ve written about Berg many times, so, in addition to the recent posts, we can refer you, for example to theseentries.  In the meantime, we’ll turn to performers whom we’ve neglected in our recent posts.  Arthur Rubinstein and John Ogdon were born in late January, the former on the 28^th in the year 1887, and the latter on the 27^th, exactly 50 years later, in 1937.  Rubinstein lived a wonderfully long life, almost 96 years, and performed well into his 80s (he gave his last concert in London in 1975, when he was 89). On the other hand, Ogdon’s career was brief: at the age of 36 he experienced a mental breakdown, and from that time till his death in 1989 at the age of 52, he gave just a few concerts.

Two wonderful cellists were also born in late January: Jacqueline du Pré, on the 26^th in 1945, and Lynn Harrell, on the 30^th in 1944.  Here we have a similar story: Harrell performed till the ripe age of 76 (he died, suddenly, in 2020).  The du Pré tragedy is widely known, it was portrayed in books and film: a tremendously talented musician, she was struck by multiple sclerosis in 1971, when she was only 26 (she died on 19^th of October 1987 at the age of 42).  Let’s listen to both cellists in the same Cello concerto by Antonin Dvořák.  Here Jacqueline du Pré performs the first movement of the concerto.  This recording was made live in Stockholm in 1967 with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sergiu Celibidache conducting.  And here Lynn Harrell plays the second movement.  This recording was made in 1982 in London with Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra.

This week we commemorate the anniversary of the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, who was born on this day in 1903.  A child prodigy, he gave his first public concert at the age of five.  At the age of 11, he played all of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes; that was also the year when he gave his first concert in Berlin, where he would live and teach from 1924 to 1940.  In 1935 he gave 12 concerts playing all of Bach’s keyboard compositions.  In 1941 he settled in New York.  He played several complete cycles of Beethoven’s sonatas, both in the US and in Europe, and continued to perform into his 80s.  Arrau had an enormous repertoire.  It was said that he could play 76 different recitals without repeating a single piece, not counting the piano concertos.  We can think of only Sviatoslav Richter having a broader range.  Considering that much of Arrau’s repertoire was recorded, it’s difficult to pick one piece to demonstrate his talent.  So, we’ll give you two Beethoven sonatas: first, Piano Sonata No. 21 "Waldstein" in C major, op. 53, recorded in 1963, and then, Piano Sonata No. 17 “Tempest” in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, recorded in 1965.  The tempos are slow but the results are profound.

This Week in Classical Music: January 30, 2023.  Quantz, not an obvious choice.  Two - maybe three great composers were born this week and, in addition to that, several more of the lower rung: Franz Schubert, on January 31^st of 1797, Felix Mendelssohn, on February 3^rd of 1809, and, possibly, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, on February 3^rd of 1525, although the latter is far from certain.  Of the “lesser ones,” Alessandro Marcello, the Italian composer who wrote the Oboe Concerto which Bach transformed into the famous concerto for the keyboard (D minor, BWV 974), was born in Venice on February 1^st of 1673.  And then there was Johann Joachim Quantz.  What caught our eye (and ear) was not as much his music but his patron.  Just the last week we wrote about Mozart and Emperor Joseph II, Mozart’s most important benefactor.  Joseph, one of the enlightened monarchs of the 18^th century, was very musical: he played the keyboard (we know that not just from the movie Amadeus, where he’s presented playing very poorly, almost comically, but also from paintings in which he’s portrayed sitting by the instrument with scores around).  He also played the violin and cello and, according to his contemporaries, sang well.  Joseph supported the creation of the German-language opera (what was then called “National Singspiel") and while he preferred the lighter opera buffa to opera seria, he commissioned Mozart for two operas: The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Impresario.  Quantz’s patron, on the other hand, was Joseph’s contemporary and rival, the King of Prussia Frederick II the Great.  Frederick was involved with music even more so than Joseph.  In his youth, music was his main interest, much more than military affairs which were supposed to be most important to the young king.  He played the flute and was a prolific composer, writing more than 120 flute sonatas.  He supported many composers, for example, C.P.E. Bach and Franz Benda.  In 1747 Frederick met Johann Sebastian Bach, after which Bach used a tune composed by the emperor as the theme for his collection of keyboard pieces called The Musical Offering.  But compared to the other composers, Quantz spent more time at Frederick’s court than anybody else.

Johann Joachim Qauntz was born on January 30^th of 1697 near Göttingen.  He studied music as a boy and eventually became a virtuoso flutist.  In his early 20s, he traveled Europe, meeting Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples and Handel in London (Handel recommended Quantz to stay there, advice he didn’t take).  In 1728, in Dresden, Quantz met the young Frederick, then still the Crown Prince and they played music together.  Soon after, though, Quantz settled in Dresden at the court of August II, the Elector of Saxony, and stayed there for years.  In 1740, after his father’s death, Frederick, now King of Prussia, invited Quantz to come to Berlin. Quantz accepted; his position was that of a composer, flute teacher, and flute maker.  He stayed at the court till his death in 1773.

Most of Quantz’s music is for the flute, his patron’s favorite instrument.  He wrote around 200 sonatas and 300 concertos for it.  We’ll listen to several movements from Quantz’s concertos.  Here’s the 1^st movement from his Flute Concerto in G minor (QV 5:196); here -- the 2^nd movement for the Flute Concerto in G minor; here – the 3^rd (final) movement from the Flute Concerto in A minor (QV 5:236); and here – the 1^st movement from Concerto for Two Flutes (QV 6:8a).  Click on the recordings’ links for details on the performances.  We think the music is nice and not worse than, say, Gemignani’s music for the violin, which is much better known.

This Week in Classical Music: January 23, 2023.  Mozart.  For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been involved with the Jewish composers from Austria-Hungary and Germany, their lives during the flourishing of the Jewish culture at the end of the 19^th and the first third of the 20^th centuries, despite the underlying societal antisemitism, and how it all ended with the arrival of the Nazis. This week we’re in the same place geographically but centuries apart: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27^th of 1756 in Salzburg.  We never thought of it till we engaged with the Austrian music after Mahler, but it seems that there were not that many great Austrian composers before Mozart, which seems rather strange.  Of course, there was Haydn, Mozart’s direct predecessor, but otherwise, the music in Vienna was mostly Italian and German.  We can’t think of any significant Austrian composers of the Baroque era other than Heinrich Ignaz Biber, and in the Classical 18^th century there was the Bohemian-born Johann Stamitz and his sons, but they spent most of their lives in Mannheim, Germany.  Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf had a funny-sounding name and was a friend of both Haydn and Mozart, but his music is mostly forgotten these days, though his oboe and double bass (yes, double bass!) concertos are not without interest.   The Habsburgs, the Austrian family of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire who ruled from Vienna for centuries, were especially partial to Italian music.  There was not a single Austrian-born Kapellmeister till Mozart’s time: in 1787, when his genius was evident to everybody, Emperor Joseph II appointed Mozart Kammercompositeur (Chamber composer), while Antonio Salieri continued to be the more senior Kapellmeister.

But back to Mozart’s music.  We have hundreds of his pieces in our library, but not, until now, the Piano Concerto no. 22, and we’re glad to rectify this omission.  The concerto was composed in 1785.  This was a good period In Mozart’s life: he was happily married; he was friends with Haydn and played quartets with him (and Dittersdorf); he composed and performed several piano concertos and was paid handsomely for it; he moved to a more expensive apartment and bought a fine pianoforte for himself.  It was also the time when he became a Freemason.  The 3^rd movement, Allegro, of the concerto was used by Milos Forman in his wonderful film Amadeus.  There it was performed (brilliantly) by Ivan Moravec, with The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields conducted by Neville Marriner.  You can listen to it here in the performance by Murray Perahia and the English Chamber Orchestra.  Mr.  Perahia conducts from the keyboard.  The cadenza at the end of the first movement is his, after Johann Hummel, and the one at the end of the 3^rd movement is by Hummel.

This Week in Classical Music: January 16, 2023.  German and Austrian (Jewish) Music from Mahler to 1933, Part II.  In our previous post, we promised to play some music of the Austrian-German, mostly Jewish composers whose careers flourished during the first third of the 20^th century and then were completely upended by the Nazis.   There were nine of them, not counting Mahler himself, and we selected three for this entry: Franz Schreker, Egon Wellesz, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.  All three, while modern in the musical idiom, didn’t accept Schoenberg’s atonality and wrote in a somewhat flowery, Romantic style. We’ll start with two excerpts from Schreker’s opera Der ferne Klang, which premiered in Frankfurt in 1912.  This was Schreker’s breakthrough opera, staged in Germany hundreds of times.  Schreker’s popularity waned in the mid-20s, as new operas in the zeitoper style, an angular German version of Italian verismo, became fashionable.  Still, he was a highly esteemed composer and teacher when the Nazis came to power in 1933.  Then, practically overnight, his music was banned, and he was dismissed from the Prussian Academy of Arts.  Without means to support himself (his greatest triumphs happened during the period of hyperinflation), he suffered a stroke in December of 1933 and died in March of 1934, two days before his 56^th birthday.  Michael Haas rightly calls him the first victim of Nazism.  Here’s Nachtstück, an interlude from Act 3 of Der ferne Klang.  It’s performed by the Royal Swedish Orchestra under the direction of Lawrence Renes.  And here is the final scene, Grete! Horst Du den Ton? (Do you hear the sound?) with the tenor Thomas Moser and soprano Gabriele Schnaut.  The scream at the end reminds one of the final moments of Puccini’s Tosca, written 12 years earlier.  Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Gerd Albrecht.

Next, we’ll turn to Egon Wellesz, whose life, fortunately, was not as tragic as that of many of his Jewish contemporaries: he stayed in Vienna till Anschluss and then emigrated to England, where his life wasn’t easy (he was interned for a while as an “enemy alien”) but where he eventually built a career as an expert in Byzantine music and teacher.  However, he was forgotten as a composer,  which is a pity, as you can judge for yourself.  Here’s Wellesz’s Idyllen, op.21, five short pieces for piano in the impressionistic style, written after poems by Stefan George.  It’s performed by Margarete Babinsky.  And here is his String Quartet no. 6, op.64, composed in England in 1947.  The first several bars remind us of the famous 4^th movement of Shostakovich’s Quartet no. 8 from 1960.  It’s performed by Artis-Quartett Wien.

Finally, probably the most famous of the three, Erich Wolfgang Korngold.  Even though he’s better known than many of his contemporaries, he also suffered greatly from Nazism.  A child prodigy and the most famous composer of the pre-1933 Austro-German music world, he’s now mostly remembered for the music he wrote for Hollywood films, creating the so-called “Hollywood sound.”  During the 20 years leading to the Nazi takeover, the German-speaking world was mad about operas and the young Korngold was at the top of the field.  Operas by Zemlinksy, Schreker, Wellesz, Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf, and d’Albert’s Tiefland were staged hundreds of times a year all across Germany.  Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, written when the composer was 23, was the most successful opera of its time.  Following his earlier successes, Die tote Stadt was so anticipated that it had two simultaneous premieres, one in Hamburg and another in Cologne, where Otto Klemperer was the conductor.  Here is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing the aria Glück das mir verb lie (Happiness that remained) from Die tote Stadt.  Hamburg Rundfunkorchester is conducted by Wilhelm Schüchter.  And here Renée Fleming is doing at least as good a job in the aria Ich ging zu ihm (I went to him) from Das Wunder der Heliane, from 1927, which Korngold considered his best composition.  The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Gianandrea Noseda.

This Week in Classical Music: January 9, 2023.  German and Austrian (Jewish) Music from Mahler to 1933.  Since about a month ago, when we published an entry dedicated to the Austrian Jewish composer Ernst Toch, we’ve been preoccupied with that tragic but remarkably fecund period of European art of the period.  We must give credit to Michael Haas, whose book Forbidden Music and his eponymous blog have guided us in our search.  Haas brilliantly explores the history of Austro-Hungarian and German Jewry starting with the Congress of Vienna in 1814 through the midcentury and Wagner’s antisemitism; the Austrian Constitution of 1867 proclaimed by the emperor Franz Joseph I, which emancipated the Jews of much of the Empire and helped to liberate the talents of the country’s Jewry, especially in arts; the underlying antisemitism of the society and first antisemitic political movements, relatively innocuous back then but eventually murderous and later catastrophic; the problems of the German minority of the Empire, and so much more.

For the Jews, the way to become accepted in society, formally free but practically still antisemitic, was through the arts, especially music.  The flourishing that followed was quite unprecedented.  We’re not even talking about the performing artists or conducting, where Jewish musicians came to occupy very prominent positions – we’re focusing on the composers who changed the music scene of the German-speaking world.  Gustav Mahler, born in 1860, was the oldest of this group. Alexander von Zemlinsky, who fell in love with Alma Schindler before Mahler convinced her to marry him, was 11 years younger but still one of the most celebrated composers of the early 20^th century, right there after Mahler and Richard Strauss (Strauss, born in 1864, wasn’t Jewish).  Arnold Schoenberg, who changed the way we listen to music and even what we consider music, was born in 1874 (you may want to check our three entries here, here, and here).  Franz Schreker, for a while more famous than all of the above, was the most popular opera composer in Austria and Germany.  He was born in 1878.

Then there were three composers who are practically forgotten these days.   Who remembers Karl Weigl, even though his music was praised by Mahler, Schoenberg, and Strauss?  Weigl was born in 1881.  Egon Wellesz, born in 1885, was one of the most successful pupils of Arnold Schoenberg: his music was published by Universal Edition, the most prestigious music publishing house in Europe, before Berg’s or Webern’s.  He was also a noted scholar of Byzantine music.  Ernst Toch, to whom we dedicated a recent entry, was born in 1887; his music was admired by Mahler and widely performed, till the Nazis banned it after assuming power.  

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an amazing child prodigy (many compared him to Mozart), was born in 1897 and wrote a ballet (Der Schneemann) at the age of 11, before the much older Zemlinksy composed the bulk of his work.  Korngold became one of the most celebrated (and rich) composers of the time.  Hanns Eisler, also Schoenberg’s student, was born in 1898 and became famous for his communist sympathies and for composing the national hymn of the German Democratic Republic.  And Berthold Goldschmidt, the youngest of this group, was born in 1903.  Franz Schreker’s student and a successful composer, he was considered by many to be the brightest star of his generation.

By 1933, when the Nazis took power, Mahler had been dead for 22 years, but everybody else’s careers and personal lives were brutally upended.  Their music was declared “degenerate,” and their livelihoods destroyed.  Franz Schreker suffered a stroke in December of 1933 and died three months later.  Everybody else was forced to emigrate.  Most of them never regained the fame they had in Europe.  We’ll talk about the aftermath of the Nazi takeover and listen to some of the music in our next post.

This Week in Classical Music: January 2, 2023.  Yes, 2023!  The first week of the year is rich in pianistic talent: January 5^th alone is the birthday of three tremendously gifted pianists, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (born in 1920) Alfred Brendel (1931), and Maurizio Pollini (1942).  The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was also born this week, on January 6^th of 1872.  Scriabin, himself a piano virtuoso, wrote many pieces for the instrument: numerous preludes, etudes, impromptus, mazurkas, poèmes, and ten numbered sonatas, not counting two early piano pieces in that form.  We thought that we would find some Scriabin recordings by our pianists to celebrate both their art and that of the composer, but alas, there were none.  Michelangeli had a rather limited repertoire, Brendel’s was much broader but even though he did play some 20th-century music, he mostly concentrated on German classics.  What surprised us the most was the absence of Scriabin’s recordings in Pollini’s discography.  Pollini played so many composers, from Bach to Luigi Nono, that we thought he would’ve recorded some Scriabin along the way, but we were mistaken: not a single record exists.  Whether Pollini played Scriabin in concerts we don’t know, so we had to turn to a great interpreter of Scriabin’s music, Sviatoslav Richter.  Here’s Sonata no. 5 in F sharp major, Op 53, recorded by Richter in Prague on September 24, 1972.

The wonderful French composer Francis Poulenc was also born this week, on January 7^th of 1899.  Soirées de Nazelles (Nazelles evenings) is a set of variations that Poulenc composed between 1930 and 1936 (Nazelles is a small town on the Loire not far from Tours).  Here’s the description at the top of the score, written by Poulenc himself: “The variations that form the center of this work were improvised at Nazelles during long country evenings wherein the composer played "portraits" for friends gathered around his piano.  We hope that these variations, each one somewhere between a first draft and a finished work, will have the power to evoke this game in the spirit of a Touraine region living room – with a window open to the night.”  Here’s Soirées de Nazelles performed by the French pianist Pascal Rogé.

This Week in Classical Music: December 26, 2022.  End of Year.  This year will be remembered for the brutal, unprovoked war Russia unleashed against Ukraine in February.  Peace in Europe has failed, yet again, but this time to an extent not seen since WWII.  And yet again we see that culture doesn’t help us to fight evil: the country of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky is killing people very much like the country of Beethoven and Goethe was doing it eighty-some years ago.  Neither words nor music, only deadly weapons can stop the aggressor.  If we were to play some music to acknowledge the barbarity of the events, that would be Britten’s War Requiem.  Written in 1961-62, the music was commissioned to mark the consecration of the Coventry Cathedral, recently rebuilt after being destroyed by German bombs during WWII.  For the text of the Requiem, Britten used parts of the Latin mass and nine poems of Wilfred Owen, the English poet who died during the Great War just one week before the armistice (despite all the modern rocketry, what’s happening in Ukraine today reminds one of the hellish trench battles of WWI). 

At the premiere of the Requiem Britten wanted to show the newfound European unity, inviting his friends from different countries to perform: the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya from the Soviet Union, Peter Pears, an Englishman, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a German.  But there was no “unity” between the East and the West in 1962: the Soviet Government didn’t allow Vishnevskaya to travel to the UK and Heather Harper had to substitute on very short notice.  Several months later the Soviets relented and let Vishnevskaya go to London to record the piece.  It’s from this recording that we can hear the first movement, Requiem aeternam.  Benjamin Britten conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

It became a tradition of sorts for us to celebrate the approaching New Year by commemorating the numerous composers of the Renaissance whose birth dates were lost in history.  We regularly write about the “greats,” such as Guillaume Dufay, Josquin des Prez, Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, and Tomás Luis de Victoria, but there are scores of talented composers born in the 16^th and even 17^th centuries that we often miss for the only reason that their birthdays are not fixed in the musical calendar.  So here is a madrigal Queste Non Son Più Lagrime Che Fuore (These are no longer real tears which rise) by Giaches de Wert.  It’s based on a canto from Orlando furioso, a poem by the great Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto and performed by the ensemble La Compagnia del Madrigale.  Giaches de Wert was born in 1535 and spent many years at the courts of the Gonzaga and Este families in Mantua and Ferrara, then the musical centers of Italy.  Luca Marenzio was 18 years younger than de Wert; he was also famous for his madrigals and also for many years served different branches of Estes and Gonzagas, though mostly in Rome and Florence.   Here’s Amor, i' ò molti et molt'anni pianto (Love I've cried many and many years), Marenzio’s madrigal for five voices.  It’s set to a text by Petrarch and is performed by the ensemble La Venexiana.

Happy New Year!

This Week in Classical Music: December 19, 2022.  Puccini and Christmas.  Giacomo Puccini was born this week, on December 12^th of 1858.  Not long ago we came across a story involving him, it’s interesting but rather circuitous so bear with us for a moment.  It starts with Michael Haas, the author of a very interesting book, The Forbidden Music, the story of Jewish composers and musicians banned by the Nazis – we highly recommend it.  Mr. Haas runs a blog which we also find interesting.  One of the recent entries was devoted to the 1903 article by Eduard Hanslick who reviewed the performance of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Vienna Hofoper, the court opera, conducted by Gustav Mahler.  It’s fascinating, but we need to set the scene and try to put things into perspective.

Eduard Hanslick was a famous music critic (we had an entry about him several years ago).  He worked for a Viennese newspaper called Die Neue Freie Presse (The New Free Press).  The newspaper, probably the most influential in the Austrian Empire, was unusual in that it employed a large number of prominent Jewish writers, including Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism.  Julius Korngold, the father of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, also Jewish, succeeded Hanslick as the chief music critic.  Remember that Austria at that time was highly antisemitic; Karl Lueger, the Mayor of Vienna at the time, was one of the leading antisemites.  Hanslick, who worked at the newspaper for 40 years, was enormously influential.  He was a preeminent supporter of the music of Brahms and a critic of Wagner, Bruckner, and Hugo Wolf (he also disliked Tchaikovsky’s Violin concerto, saying that it “stinks to the ear”).  This was the person who wrote a scathing review of Puccini’s La Bohème, a production mounted under the supervision of the then Director of Hofoper, Gustav Mahler, who also conducted the premiere.  

We know La Bohème as one of the most popular operas ever, and one of Puccini’s very best; it’s being staged constantly on every continent.  In 1903, though, it was quite new: the premier was held in 1896 in Turin with the young Arturo Toscanini conducting.  Practically at the same time Ruggero Leoncavallo, the author of Pagliacci, also wrote a La Bohème, now totally forgotten.  It was based on the same book by Henri Murger and had a successful premiere; back then it wasn’t that clear which one was better (Hanslick, who hated both operas, didn’t hesitate to let us know which one he thought was worse).  Then there is another aspect of the performance: in Austria, as in Germany, the UK, or Russia, operas were staged in the native language.  Even though Hanslick liked the singing, La Bohème in German would probably grate our ears today.  Finally, about the form of the article.  It’s presented not as a brief review we would expect today but as a tremendously detailed, long account of all aspects of the performance.  Some articles back then, called feuilleton, could run three-four pages – and people read them.  This one is also long, so you may not want to read the whole thing, but skim it, it’s fun and Mr. Haas has wonderful photographs and musical snippets. 

So here is the article.  And here is O soave fanciulla from Act I, sung by Renata Tebaldi (Mimi) and Jussi Bjoerling (Rodolfo) in 1956.  Hard to imagine that Hanslick didn’t like it.

And of course, Merry Christmas to all!

This Week in Classical Music: December 12, 2022.  Beethoven.  Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn on the 16^th of December of 1770.  We wanted to celebrate Beethoven with performances made by two musicians whose anniversaries we also commemorate this week, the pianist Rosalyn Tureck and the violinist Ida Haendel, but it turned out to be a more difficult task than we expected.  We knew that Rosalyn Tureck, who was born in Chicago on December 14^th of 1914 into a poor family of Jewish immigrants from Russia, was one of the most important interpreters of the music of Bach.  So much so that Glenn Gould said in an interview that Tureck was his only influence.  What we didn’t realize is how few recordings of Tureck playing music other than Bach’s there are.  If you check out Discogs, that online bible of available recordings, you’ll find none, even though we know that in 1936, when she made her New York orchestral début she played Brahms's Piano Concerto no. 2 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and earlier in her career played many concerts with a broad repertoire.  All we could find for this occasion was her Carnegie Hall live recording of Beethoven’s Emperor concerto no. 5.  It was radio broadcast on March 17^th of 1940.  On that occasion, Sir John Barbirolli conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.  Here are the second and third movements of the Concerto (we trimmed a very long ovation at the end).

Ida Haendel was more of a surprise.  We knew that Tureck specialized in Bach but we thought we’d find many Haendel recordings of Beethoven, considering that his 10 violin sonatas and the concerto are a staple of concert repertoires.  That turned out tonot quite be the case.  Haendel was 14 years younger than Tureck and also Jewish.  She was born in Poland, but her family moved to Britain before WWII.  Haendel was a real child prodigy.  In 1935, at the age of seven, she participated in the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Warsaw.  It was a celebrated event, broadly covered by the European (and Soviet) press, and its results were surprising.  The 16-year-old Ginette Neveu won the first prize, beating the already famous 29-year-old David Oistrakh, who took second.  Another child prodigy, the 12-year-old Boris Goldstein took a rather disappointing fourth prize.  But the greatest sensation was probably the performance of Ida, who took the 7^th prize, ahead of scores of talented violinists.  She went on to have a wonderful career and lived to the ripe age of 91, still performing into her eighties.  She made a significant number of recordings, even though many of them were still mono.  Among them are just two pieces by Beethoven, his Violin concerto and the Violin sonata no. 8.  We know that she performed his other sonatas in concert, why she never recorded them is a mystery.  Here’s a recording of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata no. 8 that Ida Haendel made in 1941.  At that time she was 12 years old.  Noel Mewton-Wood, then 18, is at the piano.  (Mewton-Wood, a talented Australian-born British pianist, had a short life: in tragic circumstances he committed suicide at the age of 31.)

This Week in Classical Music: December 5, 2022.  Ernst Toch.  For the last several weeks we’ve been preoccupied with the music of Rome.  It’s now time for us to get back to important dates in the musical calendar.  Today it’s about the composer who was very prominent early in the 20^th century Europe but is practically forgotten these days, Ernst Toch.  Toch was born on December 7^th of 1887 in Leopoldstadt, the same poor Jewish district of Vienna where Arnold Schoenberg was born some 13 years earlier.  Toch started composing early but for a while wasn’t sure what his real calling was: he studied philosophy and medicine at fine universities before turning to music full time.  In 1909 his Quartet no. 6 was performed to great acclaim by the Rosé Quartet (the quartet, one of the best in Austria, was founded by Arnold Rosé, the longtime concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Mahler’s brother-in-law).  During WWI Toch served in the Austrian army in South Tyrol.  The war affected him profoundly, and his post-war style changed from the late-Romantic to much edgier, sometimes atonal.  Also at that time Toch moved from Austria to Mannheim, Germany.  Here’s Toch’s Quartet no.9, from 1920, performed by the Verdi Quartet.  And to compare, the lyrical Violin Sonata from the end of his early Romantic period; it’s performed by the violinist Annette von Hehn and the pianist Katya Apekisheva.

The 1920 were very productive for Toch: he composed two short operas, a Concerto for Cello, and several orchestral pieces.  His works were regularly performed at the prestigious Donaueschingen Festival.  All this ended in 1933 with Hitler coming to power.  Toch, who was Jewish, moved to Paris, and from there to London.  (An interesting aside concerning Toch’s stature in Germany at that time: he was in Florence in April and May of 1933 at the very first Maggio Musicale Festival, representing Germany along with Richard Strauss.  From Florence he went to Paris, rather than returning to Germany).  For a Jew, refugee life in Europe wasn’t easy, and in 1935 Toch moved to the US: he received a position at the New School for Social Research, or, as it was then known, the “University in Exile,” as many emigrees from Europe found jobs there.  To support himself, he started writing music scores for movies, following the path of many exiled composers (Erich Wolfgang Korngold was the most successful of them), and eventually moved to California.  All along he was trying to establish himself as a serious classical composer in the US – a position he rightfully held back in Europe.  That didn’t work out, as the American public wasn’t very interested in his more modern compositions (though his film music was quite successful).  After the war, Toch attempted to reestablish himself in Europe but that also didn’t work out: while “too radical” for the conservative late-1940s – early 1950s America, Toch wasn’t radical enough for the post-war Europe, where the likes of Stockhausen, Boulez and other composers of the Darmstadt school were gaining prominence.  Eventually Toch reverted to teaching and composing symphonies, mostly in the late-Romantic style. 

Here, from 1932, is Toch’s Piano Concerto, with Todd Crow at the piano and the NDR-Hamburg Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein.

This Week in Classical Music: November 28, 2022.  Rome, yet again (Palestrina).  In our previous entry, while discussing composers who had worked in Rome, we were moving 

historically and made it all the way to one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.  Palestrina, born in 1525, was not only a supremely talented composer, he also lived during a period of profound social and religious changes.  The major one was the Reformation, which started in 1517 with Martin Luther publishing his 95 theses.  By the time of Palestrina, it was in full swing and profoundly affecting the Catholic church.  Another one was the Sack of Rome.  It happened two years after Palestrina’s birth, in 1527, when Rome was pillaged by the renegade soldiers of the Emperor Charles V.  As a result, the population of the city fell from 55,000 to just 10,000 (it would grow to about 100,000 by the end of the 16^th century).  In 1537, aged 12, Palestrina came to Rome and sung in the choir of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.  He then returned to his native town of Palestrina but three years later, in 1540, moved back to Rome, this time to settle for the rest of his life.  In 1551, Pope Julius III, who in his earlier life was the bishop of Palestrina, appointed him maestro di cappella of the Cappella Giulia, the second, after Capella Sistina, most important choir in the Vatican.  During his life Palestrina held several major musical positions, serving as the maestro di cappella in the papal basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, in Santa Maria Maggiore, and later in his life, back to Capella Giulia.  His first book of masses was published in 1554 and soon after he established himself as the most significant Italian composer of his generation.

The Council of Trent was called by Pope Paul III in response to the Reformation and lasted from 1545 to 1563.  While the most important decision made by the bishops were doctrinal and liturgical, it affected church music as well.  Two most important changes were as follows:  secular themes for the music were prohibited, as many of the so-called “parody masses” written prior to that were based on secular songs, some with quite provocative lyrics.   And the second one had to do with comprehension of the text: the words of the masses had to be understandable..  That was a high order for the polyphonic style of masses, where different voices were sung in different rhythm and different registers.  That often made the text practically incomprehensible.  Palestrina is often considered the “savior” of the polyphonic mass: his Missa Papae Marcelli convinced Carlo Borromeo, one of the leading counter-Reformation cardinals, that the words of a polyphonic mass can be intelligible.  Here are Sanctus and Benedictus from Missa Papae Marcelli, performed by the Tallis Scholars.

Palestrina wrote more than 100 masses and many more madrigals and motets.  He was considered the ideal Catholic composer and his fame spread all over Europe, even to the Protestant countries.  We have several pieces by Palestrina in our library and here are two of them.  First, the Kyrie section of his mass Benedictus Es, published in 1593.  As the recording of Missa Papae Marcelli, It’s performed by the Tallis Scholars.  And here, performed by the same ensemble, is Palestrina’s Missa Nigra Sum.  The whole mass runs for about 35 minutes.  We think it’s worth your time.

This Week in Classical Music: November 21, 2022.  Rome again.  Even though there are many significant anniversaries this week (composers Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Benjamin Britten, Manuel de Falla, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Alfred Schnittke, the pianists Wilhelm Kempff and Earl Wild, the violinist Hilary Hahn, the tenor Alfredo Kraus among them) we’ll return to Rome.  Rome was central to the musical life of Europe for centuries, and it couldn’t have been otherwise: much of the music was written for religious services, while Rome was the place of papacy, the spiritual center of the Western world till the Reformation and to a considerable extent even later.  It was especially so when polyphony was the predominant style in which church music, mass in particular, was written.  Even though Rome was not the place where the first significant and identifiable European musical school had appeared – that was the Flanders and France (Belgium and Northern France now), where the Franco-Flemish school originated – many of the important composers traveled to Rome and served at the papal court.  And why wouldn’t they if popes were rich patrons and the papal choir was considered the best in Europe?  The choir had a long history, going back all the way to Scuola Cantorum, instituted by Pope Sylvester I in the fourth (!) century.  It was reorganized by Pope Gregory I the Great (a great pope but not the inventor of the Gregorian chant which was a later creation).  By the time of the Renaissance, it was the private choir of the powerful popes and in 1470 it got a magnificent new home in the chapel built by Pope Sixtus IV, first called Capella Magna and then by the name we all know, the Sistine Chapel.  Officially called Coro della Cappella Musicale Pontificia Sistina, it was acknowledged as the best musical ensemble in all of Europe.

Guillaume Dufay, born around Brussels in 1397, was one of the first and probably most influential composers of the early Renaissance.  He moved to Rome in 1428, became a member of the papal choir and, while there, wrote several motets and masses.  Josquin des Prez, probably the greatest composer of the next period, was born around 1450 in the French-speaking part of the Low Countries; he came to Rome in 1489 and became the composer and music director of the Capella for the next five years.  Some of the greatest composers of the younger generations followed suit.  Jacob Arcadelt (born in 1507 and better known for his secular madrigals), moved to Rome in 1538 and sung in the Capella for several years.  Orlando di Lasso, one of the geniuses of the High Renaissance (he was born in 1532), was employed as maestro di cappella at the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, for centuries, till the new St. Peter’s Basilica was built, the most important church of Rome.  Giaches De Wert (born in 1535), another influential composer, spent much time in Ferrara but also found work in Rome.  But if there was a composer most closely associated with Rome, that would clearly be Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.   Palestrina, the Council of Trent and some composers that came up later – all that we’ll address in a subsequent entry.  In the meantime, some music from Rome. By Guillaume Dufay, a motet Apostolo glorioso. By Josquin des Prez, also a motet, but for 24 voices Qui habitat.  By Jacob Arcadelt, another motet, a beautiful Ave Maria.  From Orlando di Lasso, one of the motets from Prophecies of the Sibyls.  By Giaches De Wert, a madrigal Misera, che faro.  And from the talented Luca Marenzio (1553-1599), who also spent most of his career in Rome, another madrigal, Madonna, sua mercé. 

This Week in Classical Music: November 14, 2022.  Rome.  On one of our recent walks in Rome, while coming down the Janiculum Hill (the Belvedere at the top offers a magnificent view of the city), we came across a sign on a gate, Accademia degli Arcadi.  The gate was closed and led, it seemed, into the gardens.  That was puzzling: could it be the Academy?  Wasn’t it dissolved many years ago?  We had to investigate, and the answers were surprising – but first let’s look back at what Accademia degli Arcadi was about and when.  The beginnings of the Academy go back to the time of Queen Christina of Sweden’s sojourn to Rome.  Christina, who abdicated the Swedish throne in 1654 but kept much of her riches, converted to Catholicism, settled in Rome in the Palazzo Farnese and surrounded herself with the most illustrious Roman intellectuals – poets, composers, philosophers.  She became a patron to many of them.  On January 24^th of 1656 she opened an Academy, providing a space in the Palazzo Farnese, and called it Accademia degli Arcadi; it was a society devoted to cultural and intellectual affairs; its member met to discuss matters they deemed important, whether in poetry, music or arts.  Much of it in those days was directed against the predominant Baroque style. 

After Christina’s death in 1689 the Academy had to move several times and, in 1723, thanks to the generosity of King John V of Portugal, it settled in a newly built villa in a garden on the slope of the Janiculum, called Bosco Parrasio.  The gate leading to the villa was what we saw on our walk down the hill.  The Academy functioned as an important cultural institution for many years but with time it became less relevant, and, by the end of the 19^th century, quite conservative.  It still exists to this day, but instead of being a place where new ideas are generated and new arts promoted, it became a research institution, branching into such fields as history and archeology.  It also moved, and Bosco Parrasio stays mostly empty, though some concerts are being played there occasionally.  The Academy’s new headquarters are located not far from Piazza Navona, in the Biblioteca Angelica on Piazza di S. Agosino.

During the Academy’s early, and most vigorous, days, many prominent composers were its members, among them Alessandro Scarlatti, Arcangelo Corelli, Giovanni Bononcini, and brothers Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello.  The famous opera librettist Pietro Metastasio also was a member. The young Handel, while he lived in Rome, attended its meetings.  Let’s hear some of the music created by the Arcadians.  Alessandro Scarlatti was famous for his operas, but he also wrote some church music.  Here’s Credo, from his Messa di Santa Cecilia.  Maurice Abravanel leads the Utah Symphony Orchestra and the University of Utah Chorus.  Giuseppe Valentini, another Arcadian, was born in 1681; he is not as well-known as Scarlatti but his Concerto in A minor, op. 7, no. 11 is delightful.  Here it is, in the performance by the Musica Antiqua Köln.

This Week in Classical Music: November 7, 2022.  Brief Italian entry 2.  We’re still under the Italian spell, but this week it’s harder to maintain the Italian theme: we have only one Italian composer, and, unfortunately, rather mediocre – Luigi Legnani, born on November 7^th of 1790 in Ferrara.  He started as a tenor but switched to playing the guitar when he was almost 30.  He turned out to be very good at that: after making a name for himself in Italy, he went to Vienna in 1822 and performed there to great acclaim.  Critics calling him a worthy successor to Mauro Giuliani, another Italian, a virtuoso guitar player and composer, who spent many years in Vienna, built a highly successful career and made friends with Beethoven, Rossini and members of the Imperial court.  Legnani toured many European countries and at some point, met Paganini, himself an excellent guitar player.  They became friendly and even planned a concert together but at the last moment Paganini got sick.  Legnani composed about 250 works, most of them for the guitar.  Later in life he settled in Ravenna where he built fine guitars and violins.   Here is Luigi Legnani's Capriccio no. 28, op. 20, played by the Italian guitarist Federica Canta.

Our second Italian, Giuseppe Sinopoli, was a very talented (and unorthodox) conductor and composer.  Born on November 2^nd of 1946 in Venice, he studied with Bruno Maderna, one of most prominent Italian modernist composers, and later with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt.  In 1975 Sinopoli formed the Bruno Maderna Ensemble to perform contemporary music; in 1978 he conducted his first opera, Aida, in Venice.  During that period, he composed an opera, Lou Salomé, which was staged in Munich in 1981.  He later dropped composing and devoted himself to conducting.  Sinopoli’s career developed rapidly: in 1983 he became the Chief conductor of the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome, went on to conduct the New York Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestra from London, worked at the Bayreuth Festival.  In 1990 he was appointed to the prestigious position of music director at the Berlin Deutsche Oper but didn’t take it, moving instead to Dresden’s Staatskapelle as their principal conductor.  Sinopoli died on April 20^th of 2001 of a heart attack while conducting the third act of Aida at the Deutsche Oper.  Here’s Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden orchestra in the first movement of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 5.

This Week in Classical Music: October 31, 2022.  Brief Italian entry 1.  A short hiatus with Italian flavor calls for an Italian theme for this week’s entry, and history, so rich on Italian music, obliges.  Vincenzo Bellini, the creator of La sonnambula, Norma, and I puritani, was born on November 3^rd of 1801 in Catania, Sicily.  Just last week we wrote about the great soprano sfogato Giuditta Pasta: she sung at the premier performances of two of these operas, as Anna in La sonnambula, in Milan’s Teatro Carcano, in March of 1831, and in December of the same year, the role of Norma, also in Milan but in Teatro alla Scala.   Bellini was 33 when he died of dysentery.  His first opera was written when he was 23, still a student at the Naples San Sebastiano Conservatory – Bellini had only ten creative years but still left us some of the most memorable bel canto operas.

And also this week, two historical Italian singers were born: the great castrato Senesino, on October 31^st of 1686, and Tarquinia Molza on November 1^st of 1542.  Senesino, an Italian alto castrato, born Francesco Bernardi in Siena (thus Senesino), was one of Handel’s favorite singers.  He came to London in 1720, became enormously popular and was paid equally enormous fees (after leaving London, he built a fancy house in Siena, which carried an inscription: “the folly of the English had laid the foundation of it.”  Senesino sung in 20 Handel operas, of which 17 were written for his voice; his performance in Giulio Cesare was called “beyond all criticism.”   Here, from a 2012 Salzburg production of Giulio is Andreas Scholl, the German countertenor, as Cesar, singing the aria Va tacito e nascosto (Silently and stealthily).  This, alas, is only an approximation of Senesino’s voice.  And from the same production, here’s Cleopatra’s aria E pur così in un giorno (And even so in a day) sung by Cecilia Bartoli.  We suspect that she’s not worse than the famous Fancesca Cuzzoni who premiered the role in February of 1724.

Tarquinia Molza was an extraordinary woman: a brilliant singer, a virtuoso player on bass viol in a style called “viola bastarda,” and poet.  She was born in Modena and around 1583, already a widow, moved to Ferrara, one of the musical centers of Italy, as a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess Margherita Gonzaga d’Este.  In Ferrara she served as an advisor to the famous Concerto delle donne, of which we’ve written several times, for example, here.  While at the court, she had a tryst with the composer Giaches De Wert, deemed inappropriate (she was a minor nobility while composers were considered of a serving class) and had to leave Ferrara.  She moved to Rome and died there in 1617.

This Week in Classical Music: October 24, 2022.  Brief entry: Scarlatti and Pasta.  Domenico Scarlatti, a son of Alessandro , was born on October 26^th of 1685, the year that also gave us Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.  Domenico’s piano sonatas are as popular as ever, though out of the 555 that he had written during his lifetime in Italy and Spain, only a few are played often, while most of them remain unknown.  Several pianists and harpsichordists, on the other hand, have recorded all of Scarlatti’s sonatas; Scott Ross, who was the first one to record the complete set in 1985.  The British keyboardist Richard Lester also recorded all of them and the Italian pianist Carlo Grante is in a middle of his Scarlatti project, he’s playing them on a Bösendorfer piano.  Here, almost randomly is Ivo Pogorelić playing Sonata in G minor, K. 450.

Luciano Berio, one of the most interesting composers of the second half of the 20^th century, was born on October 24^th of 1925.  And Georges Bizet was also born this week, on October 25^th of 1838. 

One somewhat unusual anniversary: Giuditta Pasta.  Pasta, born on October 26^th of 1797 near Milan, was one of the greatest voices of the early 19^th century.  Based on the descriptions of her contemporaries, she was a real “soprano sfogato”.  Sfogato, a rare voice, has a very large range, from mezzo, or even contralto, to the coloratura soprano.  Many of the soprano sfogato roles were written by the bel canto composers of the 19^th century, Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini.  Maria Callas may be considered a soprano sfogato: she sung mezzo roles, such as Carmen, Rosina and Cenerentola, and also Norma, Lucia de Lammermoor and Anna Bolena, which require a very high tessitura, reaching the E above the high C.  Three famous roles were created specifically for Giuditta Pasta: Donizetti's Anna Bolena, which she premiered in 1830, Amina in Bellini's La sonnambula and Norma in Bellini’s opera, both of which she sung in 1831.  In the absence of the recordings of Pasta’s voice, here’s Maria Callas in the Mad scene (Il dolce suona) from Lucia de Lammermoor, in a 1953 recording. 

Pasta performed in all major opera houses of Europe and also visited St-Petersburg: the portrait, above, by the Russian painter Karl (Kirill) Bryullov, was made there in 1830.

This Week in Classical Music: October 17, 2022.  Liszt, Solti and more.  Of all the composers and musicians born this week, Franz Liszt is by far the most important.  A great composer and, judging by the numerous ecstatic reviews left by his contemporaries, an even greater pianist, Liszt was born on October 22^nd of 1811 in a small Hungarian village next to the border with Austria, both countries back then part of the Austrian Empire.  We’ve written about Liszt many time and also published short articles on his piano cycle, Années de pèlerinage: Year One, Switzerland (Première année: Suisse), here, and Year Two, Italy (Deuxième année: Italie) here and Year Three, named just Troisième Année, here.  Our library has about 250 different performances of Liszt’s works, many by young talented musicians, you can browse it here.  Listen, for example, how 18-year-old Daniil Trifonov plays, live in concert, Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s song Die Forelle.

Luca Marenzio, a fine composer of late Renaissance, was born on October 18^th of 1553 or thereabouts in a village near Brescia.  He served in courts of many notables – first, Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo; then, for a long time, Cardinal Luigi d’Este, son of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara; then Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII; and finally, Ferdinando I de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany.  You can read more about Marenzio here.  He was one of the finest madrigalists of his time; listen, for example, to this madrigal for four voices, Madonna, sua mercé, performed by the Mirandola Ensemble

Another Italian composer, Baldassare Galuppi, was also born on October 18^th but a century and a half later, in 1706.  During his lifetime he was famous for comic operas, which he wrote to the librettos by Carlo Goldoni.  A Venetian, he spent time in European capitals, Vienna, St. Petersburg and London.  One of his piano sonatas (no. 5 in C Major), which is often played in music schools, was made famous by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.  He also wrote a fine mass, Messa di San Marco.  Here’s the section Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris (Thou who sits at the right hand of the Father) performed by the Vocal Concert Dresden.

Finally, a round date: Georg Solti was born as György Stern into a Hungarian Jewish family on October 21^st of 1912, 110 years ago, in Buda.  One of the greatest symphonic and opera conductors of the 20^th century, he led the Chicago Symphony from 1967 to 1991.  Even though we have many samples of his art in our library, we’ve never written about him at length.  We’ll do it soon, in the meantime, here’s Solti conducting Liszt: Le Preludes, in the 1992 live recoding from Salzburg, with the Chicago Symphony.

This Week in Classical Music: October 10, 2022.  Catching up.  For most of the last month we’ve been preoccupied with Arnold Schoenberg and we’re glad we were while he may not have been the greatest creative genius in the history of classical music, few, if any, composers affected it so much and in the process changed the listeners’ perception of what music is and how to listen to it.  While we were engaged with Schoenberg and the genesis of atonal music, we missed a lot of interesting dates, so today we’ll look back at the month since Schoenberg’s birthday.  Girolamo Frescobaldi, one of the most important composers of keyboard music of the late Renaissance, was born on the same day as Schoenberg but three centuries earlier, on September 13^th of 1583.  Jean-Philippe Rameau, the great French composer of the Baroque, was born on September 25^th of 1683, one hundred years after Frescobaldi.  Rameau was famous for his operas, but the ultimate opera composer was, no doubt, Giuseppe Verdi who was born on October 9^th of 1813.  And Dmitry Shostakovich, one of the most important Russian-Soviet composers was born in St.Petersburg on the same day as Rameau, September 25^th, in 1906.

Several more names: Heinrich Schütz of the early Baroque era, considered by many as the most important German composer before Bach, was born on October 8^th of 1585.  Camille Saint-Saëns was born a day and two and a half centuries later, on October 9^th of 1835.  And then there were several composer who were very important to their particular nations if not necessarily on the same level as some of the names we’ve just mentioned: Komitas, the national Armenian composer; Mikalojus Čiurlionis, who occupied a similar place in Lithuanian culture; the Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik; and the American, George Gershwin, born on September 26^th of 1898.  And finally, Alexander von Zemlinsky, who played such an important part in the life of Schoenberg – and also was a very interesting composer -- was born on October 14^th of 1871.

Several eminent pianists were born during the same period, among them the American William Kapell, whose 100^th anniversary was on September 20^th, (he tragically died in a plane crash in 1953, at just 31 years old); Glenn Gould, who also had a round anniversary (90^th), on September 25^th.  And Vladimir Horowitz was born on October 1^st of 1903.  We certainly should mention the strings: the violinist Jacques Thibaud (9/27/1880), David Oistrakh (9/30/1908) and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who turned 67 on October 7^th.  We’ll mention just one conductor, Charles Munch, born on September 26^th of 1891.  We’ve mentioned him several times in the past but failed to write about him at any length; we should correct this lapse - he was one of the best interpreters of French music and led the Boston Symphony for 13 years.  And finally, several singers: Anna Netrebko, who’s been in the media quite a bit lately, not because of her singing – she hasn’t been doing much of that, being temporarily banned from the Met and several European stages – but because of her perceived closeness to Vladimir Putin who is conducting a murderous war in Ukraine; she turned 51 on September 18^th.  And two of our all-time favorite (and very different) tenors, the German Fritz Wunderlich, who excelled in Mozart and Schubert, born on September 26^th of 1930, and Luciano Pavarotti, on October 12^th of 1935.

This Week in Classical Music: October 2, 2022.  Schoenberg, Part IV, In America.  This is the fourth, and – we promise – last installment of our notes on the great Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.  He arrived in the United States on October 31^st of 1933 and spent the first year in Boston.  He probably would’ve stayed longer but Boston’s weather made his asthma worse, and in September of 1934 Schoenberg moved to Los Angeles.  He wrote to his friend, the conductor Fritz Stiedry, who was then working in the Soviet Union: "We are going to California for the climate and because it is cheaper (sic!)".  He eventually settled in Brentwood and lived there for the rest of his life.  To support himself, he gave private lessons (Oscar Levant was one of his students), but soon was invited to lecture at the University of Southern California.  In 1936 he was made a professor at the UCLA.  Otto Klemperer, who emigrated from Germany in 1933, was at the time the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  He performed several of his pieces (to very good reviews) and offered Schoenberg to guest-conduct a concert.  That didn’t go too well, and after another attempt (and scathing reviews) Schoenberg gave up on the LA Philharmonic, whose musicians were openly hostile to him and his music.  Klemperer, who left for the East Coast in 1936 was one of many eminent German refugees living around LA.  Many of them settled in the Pacific Palisades, not far from Brentwood.  One of their meeting places was Villa Aurora, the house of the writer Lion Feuchtwanger.  Here are some of the German refugees living in Pacific Palisades at the time: writers Tomas Mann and his brother Heinrich, Franz Werfel and Alfred Döblin; the playwright Bertolt Brecht; philosophers Theodor Adorno, Ludwig Marcuse and Max Horkheimer; Schoenberg’s pupil composer Hanns Eisler; F. W. Murnau, the filmmaker and Albert Einstein.  Schoenberg knew most of them but was not necessarily friendly with all.  He developed a difficult relationship with Tomas Mann who wrote Doctor Faustus, a book about the fictitious German composer Adrian Leverkühn who invents a new musical technique, a 12-tone system.  Schoenberg was outraged, accusing Mann of “stealing” from him.  Mann, who did talk to Schoenberg about his music, was helped mostly by Adorno.  Schoenberg’s relationship with Adorno was also strained as he felt that the latter didn’t quite understand the creative process behind his method.  Here is an interesting quote from Schoenberg himself on the way he composed: “All I want to do is to express my thought and get the most possible content in the least possible space.... I write what I feel in my heart... “

On the other hand, he became close with Hanns Eisler, who became quite successful writing film music.  Eisler worshiped Schoenberg and tried to help him financially, with Schoenberg often refusing the offers.  (Eisler, a life-long Marxist, was one of the targets of the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation.  He had to leave the US in 1948, settled in East Germany and composed the national anthem of the country).

Even though Schoenberg lived in America for the last 18 years of his life, he never became quite comfortable there and often thought of emigrating to Europe.  That didn’t happen.  In 1944 he was diagnosed with diabetes; his health was deteriorating, and he had to give up his UCLA professorship.  He was 70 but had to support himself, as his pension was too small, so he reverted to giving private lessons and occasional lectures.  In 1946 he had a heart attack which almost killed him, but he lived another five years, mostly in seclusion.  Schoenberg died on July 13^th of 1951.

During the American period of his life, Schoenberg composed several important works, among them two concertos, one for the violin (“unplayable” in Heifetz’s opinion) and one for the piano; one of the few tonal works of the period, Kol Nidre, for chorus and orchestra; and A Survivor from Warsaw, dedicated to survivals of the Holocaust.  Here’s Kol Nidre; Riccardo Muti conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

This Week in Classical Music: September 26, 2022.  Schoenberg, Part III, from WWI to Nazism.  We ended our previous entry on the life of Arnold Schoenbergas the world was inexorably descending into the madness of war.  Schoenberg was 40 and not very healthy, as he had been suffering from asthma for years.  As the war started in August of 1914, his teaching income evaporated.  A patron (one Frau Lieser) offered him free board in Vienna (as it turned out, for a rather short period), where he moved later in 1914.  Much of the European intelligentsia went mad with national and military fervor, denouncing the enemy and expecting their side’s win in a matter of months if not weeks.  Schoenberg, unfortunately, wasn’t an exception: he supported the war against France and in a letter to Alma Mahler, Gustav’s widow, wrote: “Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers” (referring to the music of Stravinsky, who then lived in France, Ravel and, for some reason Bizet) “into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God.” 

During the war, Schoenberg was conscripted several times, usually being released soon after because of his ill asthma.  He was composing very little; one piece he was working on for years (and never finished) was the oratorio Die Jakobsleiter (Jacob’s Ladder), the libretto for which he completed in 1915.  Here’s Grand Symphonic Interlude from Die Jakobsleiter, performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Kent Nagano conducting,

In Berlin, the Schoenbergs were struggling financially, and, once Frau Lieser’s generosity was over, the family had to move to cheap boarding rooms.  Still, Schoenberg managed to establish a music seminar, which gained some prominence, and in time, after the war was over, the seminar grew into the Society for Private Musical Performances.  The Society existed till the end of 1921, when the post-war hyperinflation wiped out much of the donor’s money.  It was an amazing undertaking, which could’ve never existed today.  The music, selected by Schoenberg himself, but usually not his own, was from the period “from Mahler to the present” and included, among other, works by Bartók, Busoni, Debussy, Korngold, Mahler, Ravel, Reger, Satie, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg’s students, Berg and Webern.  Each work was rehearsed and often repeated in different performances; difficult pieces were sometimes repeated during the same concert.  Only paying members of the Society were admitted to the concerts, but the payment was voluntary, as much as one could afford.  The Society gave 117 concerts, playing 154 different works in 353 performances (so the music was repeated twice on average).

With peace in Europe, Schoenberg’s fame (and notoriety) grew.  He was made president of the International Mahler League in Amsterdam and conducted many concerts across Europe.  Also, in 1923 his wife Mathilde died.  Even though the marriage never recovered after her 1908 romance with Richard Gerstl, Schoenberg was deeply pained.   Soon after, though, he married Gertrud Kolisch, the sister of his pupil, the violinist Rudolf Kolisch (Kolisch performed at the Society’s concerts, and later, once the Society was dissolved, he founded a quartet which often played the music of Schoenberg and his students).

 In 1926 Schoenberg was offered a position at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, previously occupied by the recently deceased Busoni, and he moved to Berlin for the third time.  This was also a time of active artistic development, as Schoenberg transitioned from atonal music to the newly invented 12-tone system, sometimes called “serialism” (we’ll write about this another time).  Here’s one of the pieces from that period, the first large-scale serial work, Variations for Orchestra, op. 31.  Daniel Barenboim conducts the Chicago Symphony.

Even though the third Berlin period was mostly comfortable financially, the rising antisemitism was affecting the lives of all German Jews, Schoenberg’s included.  In 1933 he resigned from the Academy of Arts, left Berlin, moved to France and soon after to the United States.

This Week in Classical Music: September 19, 2022.  Schoenberg, Part II, 1905 to WWI.  We ended our first entry about Arnold Schoenberg  around 1905.  It a the time of great flourishing of the Austro-Jewish culture – think of Gustav Mahler, Zemlinsky and Erich Korngold, the writers Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig and Franz Kafka, the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and numerous other scientists, artists and intellectuals – but parallel to that, also a time of rising antisemitism: Karl Luger, for example, was the mayor of Vienna, a famous antisemite and the founder of the Christian Social Party, often viewed as a proto-Nazi organization.  Schoenberg would not be able to avoid it.

Schoenberg was struggling financially, as his teaching classes were bringing in very little money.  Mahler, a staunch supporter, lent him some money, and his student, Alban Berg, collected funds on Schoenberg’s behalf.  All along, his music was developing in more dissonant ways, away from tonality, and, not surprisingly, with every premiere ending in a scandal.  Mahler, by the way, who believed in his talent, confessed that he didn’t understand much of Schoenberg’s music.  In 1907 Mahler lost his position as the music director of the Hofoper (Vienna Imperial Opera) and that indirectly affected Schoenberg, as the influence of his supporter had waned.  Here’s one of the important pieces written by Schoenberg during that period, his String Quartet no. 2 (1908).  It’s performed by the young musicians of the Steans Institute.  The quartet was dedicated to his wife, Mathilde, who at that time was having an affair with their friend and neighbor, artist Richard Gerstl (later that year Gerstl committed suicide; you can read more about this sordid story here).  During that time Schoenberg became very interested in painting and Gerstl gave him several lessons; Schoenberg also befriended Oscar Kokoschka and Wassily Kandinsky.   Schoenberg’s paintings were even displayed at exhibitions held by Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group founded by Kandinsky.  Schoenberg’s infatuation with painting didn’t last long, even though he painted, occasionally, in his later years.

One of the largest compositions that Schoenberg wrote during that period was the one-act opera Erwartung (Expectation), Op. 17.  Even though it was completed in 1909, it wasn’t premiered till 1924.  In 1910 Schonberg was hired as a lecturer at the Akademie für Musik, Vienna’s largest conservatory.  He hoped for a professorship, but instead was hounded out by the end of the first year by antisemitic colleagues and politicians (the Akademie was then an imperial institution and important positions were discussed in the parliament).  Disappointed, Schoenberg decided to move to Berlin, which he did in the autumn of 1911.

In Berlin he returned to teaching at the Stern Conservatory, a place where he had worked eight years earlier during his first sojourn to Berlin.  Many conservative music critics disapproved of his latest pieces, but, rather surprisingly, Schoenberg proved to be interesting for the public, probably due to his international notoriety; also, his earlier, Romantic music was accessible, and his new music was curious.  In 1912 he composed and later that year presented Pierrot lunaire, a setting of 21 poems scored for the voice (usually soprano), flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (you can listen to it here, it's performed by Lucy Shelton and Da Capo Chamber Players).  Even though it was atonal, Pierrot was unexpectedly successful, and performed in eleven cities in Austria and Germany.  His music even enjoyed some, rather limited, success in Vienna.  In the meantime, Schoenberg came up with a new way to earn some money: even though he was never trained as a conductor, he took several lessons from Zemlinsky and went on a European tour with his own music.  That was in 1914 and WWI was just days away.

This Week in Classical Music: September 12, 2022.  Schoenberg, Part I, the Early Years.  Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most consequential composers of the 20^th century, was born on September 13th in 1874.  It has been some time since we last attempted to write about him, and clearly, it’s impossible to describe the life and music of such a complex figure in one entry.  We’ll try to sketch part of it here and will continue at a later date.

Schoenberg was born in Leopoldstadt, a heavily Jewish district of Vienna.  His family was lower middle class, the father a shoe-shopkeeper, the mother a piano teacher.  Musically, Schoenberg was mostly self-taught: he learned to play the cello himself, and the only lessons he took were from Alexander von Zemlinsky, a friend in whose amateur orchestra Schoenberg played, while working full time as a bank clerk.  Even though Zemlinksy was by then an established composer, writing in a late-Romantic style, it’s not clear how much help he provided to his student: Zemlinksy said that they mostly exchanged scores and commented on each other’s work.  In 1897 Schoenberg’s quartet, edited according to Zemlinksy’s suggestions, was performed in Vienna and was well received.  The following piece, the string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), submitted by Schoenberg in 1899, was rejected by the Vienna Music Society and premiered only three years later.  The piece was tonal but heavily chromatic and wondering away from the home key (you can listen to it here, played by the young students of the Steans Institute).  The performance created a scandal, which would become a constant in practically all premieres of Schoenberg’s work from that point on.  In the meantime, he was earning a living conducting choral societies and orchestrating operettas, a popular entertainment in Germany and Austria-Hungary.  He was also composing and in 1901 completed a large cantata, Gurre-Lieder.  That same year he married Zemlinsky’s sister Mathilde; later that year the couple moved to Berlin.  For a while Schoenberg worked as the music director of Überbrettl, a fashionable cabaret frequented by the literati and musicians.  That job ended a year later but in a lucky break, Schoenberg met Richard Strauss and showed him two pieces, Gurre-Lieder and the new symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande.  Strauss was impressed and helped Schoenberg to obtain a stipend at the Stern Conservatory, a prestigious private school which is now part of Berlin University of the Arts.  He returned to Vienna in 1903.

In Vienna Schoenberg joined Zemlinky in teaching several private music classes.  Some of the attendees were students of one Guido Adler.  Adler is now half-forgotten, but his role in the Austro-German music world is interesting.  Adler, Jewish, like Schoenberg and Zemlinksy (and Mahler), was Mahler’s friend and Bruckner’s pupil at the Vienna Conservatory.  Adler practically created musicology as the scientific field we know today.  He taught at the University of Vienna and the German University of Prague.  One of his students was Anton Webern, who joined Schoenberg’s class.  Another young composer, Alban Berg soon also joined the group.  The relationship between Schoenberg and his two students, Webern and Berg, is legendary, and became central in Schoenberg’s life, as of course it was for the younger composers.

Private teaching and composing weren’t bringing much money, so, to get some funding, Schoenberg, together with Zemlinsky, managed to create a music society.  Moreover, they succeeded in appointing Mahler their honorary president (Mahler had heard Verklärte Nacht a year earlier and was very impressed).  The society survived for one year only but managed to present, among other piece of new music, Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande.  Here it is, in the performance by the Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim conducting.

This Week in Classical Music: September 5, 2022.  An overly-abundant week.  Here are some of the composers born this week: one of the greatest English composers Henry Purcell; his compatriot William Boyce; Johann Christian Bach, or “the London Bach,” Johann Sebastian’s youngest son; Giacomo Meyerbeer, a Jewish-German composer who spent much of his time in France and, according to the musicologist Matthias Brzoska was “the most frequently performed opera composer during the 19th century, linking Mozart and Wagner”; Isabella Leonarda, an Italian nun and a prolific composer, a contemporary of Lully, Buxtehude, Corelli and Purcell (Purcell’s life was very short, just 36 years, whereas Leonarda lived for 84 years; she was born 39 years before Purcell and outlived him by almost nine years).  Then, as we jump ahead more than a century, we meet the Czech composers Antonin Dvořák (probably the most famous of a rather small number of Czech classical composers) and soon after – the very popular Amy Beach, known as the first successful female composer of large-scale music, even though we think it’s her small-form pieces that are more interesting and inventive.  Ms. Beach died in 1944, which brings us into the 20^th century (Dvořák also died in the last century, 40 years earlier) and here we have one of the most unusual of avant-garde American composers, John Cage; and also Arvo Pärt, a very popular Estonian who will be 87 on September 11^th. 

There are more, most not as famous as the ones listed above, and we’ll mention only two of them, Hernando de Cabezón, the son of more notable Antonio de Cabezón, a composer, music publisher and the organist to the Spanish King Philip II (Philip was also the most important patron of the great Italian painter Titian – the Prado museum in Madrid contains the greatest collection of Titians’ paintings).  Also, the Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau, familiar to many who had studied the piano and played his sonatinas.

We’d like to give you a couple of samples of the music of our composers taken from very different eras.  First, Isabella Leonarda’s Magnificat, composed in 1696.  It’s performed by the Italian ensemble Musica Laudantes (here).  And here, from 1950, is John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts, recorded by the Adritti Quartet.

Two Russian pianists were also born this week, Maria Yudina and Lev Oborin, and so was the famous Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti.  And the mercurial soprano Angela Gheorghiu will turn 57 this week.  Here is the great (and heartbreaking) final scene of Tosca with Gheorghiu and her then husband Roberto Alagna.  Antonio Pappano leads the orchestra of the Covent Garden Opera in this recording from year 2000.

This Week in Classical Music: August 29, 2022.  Bruckner and three conductors.  Sometimes we write about a composer and a musician born the same week and can illustrate the music of the former as interpreted by the latter.  This week we have three famous conductors, all born on the same day, but it turns out that only one of them ever recorded a symphony by our composer of the week, Anton Bruckner.  It’s not very surprising that one of our conductors never played the music of Bruckner: Tullio Serafin, who was born on September 1^st of 1878, was one of the greatest opera conductors of the 20^th century and had a limited symphonic career.  On top of that, the music of Bruckner wasn’t popular in Italy till much later in the 20th century.  Serafin, born not far from Venice, studied at the Milan Conservatory and made his conducting debut in Ferrara in 1898.  He became the Principal Conductor at the La Scala in 1914.  His main repertoire there came from the 19^th century, but he also premiered operas by Richard Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dukas and several other contemporaries.  From 1924 to 1934 he worked at the Metropolitan Opera where he staged several first American productions of what’s now considered the staples of the operatic repertoire, for example, Simon Boccanegra and Turandot.  In 1934 he returned to Italy and was appointed the artistic director of Teatro Reale in Rome.  He remained there for nine years.  After WWII he conducted the first season of the reopened La Scala. 

Serafin was famous for coaching several generations of singers, from Rosa Ponselle at the Met to Magda Olivero, whom he encouraged to sing in the bel canto repertoire, at La Scala.  He also worked with the three greatest sopranos of the century - Joan Sutherland, while she was at the Covent Garden, Renata Tebaldi, and Maria Callas.  With Callas he made several legendary recordings, such as the 1953 Tosca (which also featured Giuseppe Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi), the 1954 Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, recorded in 1959, and other.  Serafin continued conducting into his 80s.  In 1962, when he was 84, he was appointed the Artistic adviser of the Rome opera.  Serafin died in Rome on February 2^nd of 1968 in his 90^th year.

It is much more surprising that our second conductor has never recorded a Bruckner symphony: Leonard Slatkin, who was born in 1944, also on September 1^st, lead many American and European orchestras in a broad selection of works.  On the other hand, he has never recorded a single Beethoven’s symphony either (we’re talking about recordings, Slatkin often conducted Beethoven in concerts, he even led a series of Beethoven festivals with the San Francisco Symphony during the late 1970s and 80s).  Slatkin was born in Los Angeles, studied at the Juilliard and other schools, and started conducting in 1966.  In the 1980s he made the Saint Louis Symphony into a world class orchestra.   For eight years he was the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington and led the BBC Symphony orchestra for four years.  From 2008 to 2018 Slatkin was the Music director of the Detroit Symphony and did much to rebuild the orchestra in the aftermath of the disastrous strike.  These days Slatkin continues an active guest-conducting career although at a slower pace.

Finally (and very briefly) the conductor who did record a Bruckner: Seiji Ozawa, born on September 1^st of 1935.  One of the most important conductors of the last 50 years, Ozawa was sometimes criticized, especially at the end of his tenure at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  We have a special feeling for Ozawa, as we heard him conduct the Boston Symphony in the most remarkable Mahler 3^rd in 1998 in Vienna’s Musikverein.  Here’s the first movement of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 7.  Seiji Ozawa conducts the Saito Kinen Orchestra.

This Week in Classical Music: August 22, 2022.  Likas Foss and Ivry Gitlis.  Last week we inadvertently missed an important anniversary: the 100^th birthday of the German-American composer, pianist and conductor Lukas Foss, who was born in Berlin on August 15^th of 1922 (he moved to Paris in 1933 and to the US in 1937).  We wrote an entry about him two years ago, so today we’ll just play some of his music.  Here’s a charming Lulu’s song, from Foss’s 1953 comic opera The Jumping Frog Of Calveras County. Judith Kellock is the soprano, the composer is on the piano.  And here, from 1959-60, is the first part, We’re Late, of Foss’s Time Cycle for soprano and orchestra.  Adele Addison is the soprano, Leonard Bernstein leads the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.  (A note about Adele Addison:  she was born in New York in 1925 and is still with us, at the age of 97.  Addison was educated at Princeton and later continued her studies at the Juilliard.  She sang several opera roles but was better known as a recitalist and concert singer, especially in the contemporary repertoire and Baroque music.  She was at her peak in 1950s and 60s, when she often sung with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.  She later taught at the Manhattan School of Music – Dawn Upshaw was one of her students.  Though not especially relevant, but Adele Addison, like Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, Grace Bumbry, Jessye Norman, and Maria Ewing, is black.)

We also have another centenary: the Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis was born on August 22^nd of 1922 in Haifa.  His parents had emigrated from Kamianets-Podilskyi in western Ukraine the previous year.  Ivry took up the violin at the age of five, and at the age of eight played to Bronisław Huberman, the famous Polish violinist who was visiting Palestine (several years later, in 1936, Huberman founded Israel’s first symphony orchestra, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, now called Israel Philharmonic).  Huberman was impressed and organized a fundraiser to send Ivry to France for further studies.  In Paris Gitlis went to the Conservatoire where his teachers were George Enescu and Jacques Thibaud.  During WWII Gitlis moved to the UK (which probably saved his life) and performed many concerts for the troops.  In the 1950s he traveled to the US, where he met Jascha Heifetz and, under the management of Sol Hurok, established himself as one of the premier violinists.  Later in the 1950s he returned to France. 

Even though Gitlis played a wide contemporary repertoire (and had many pieces written for him), he was rather old-fashioned when playing the Romantics.  You can hear it in this interpretation of César Franck’s Violin sonata which he played in 1998 with none other than Martha Argerich (this is a live recording).  Gitlis was then 78.  He died in Paris on December 24^th of 2020 at the age of 98.

Several composers were born this week, Ernst Krenek, Leonard Bernstein and Karlheinz Stockhausen among them.  Claude Debussy, who was born on this day in 1862, 160 years ago has a special place in our heart.  Check out our library, it has about 250 recordings of Debussy’s works, so if you wish to celebrate him today, browse it and find something to your liking.  It’s very much worth it.

This Week in Classical Music: August 15, 2022.  Coleridge-Taylor and Lili Boulanger.  Two composers, whose music has probably been performed more often in the last two years than during all the years since it has been written, were born this week: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a composer of Afro-British origins, and Lili Boulanger, a French female composer.  Coleridge-Taylor was born in London on August 15^th of 1875.  His mother was English, his father – a descendant of freed American slaves who settled in Sierra Leone.  His father returned to Africa before Samuel was born, and his mother named him Samuel Coleridge Taylor after the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  They lived with his mother’s father in a family that loved and played music, and it was recognized early on that Samuel was musically talented.  Later, he was helped by Edward Elgar, who recommended him to the “Three Choirs Festival,” a music festival which rotates among three cathedrals, Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford and takes its name from the choirs of these cathedrals (the festival is still going strong today).  In 1898-1900 Coleridge-Taylor composed three cantatas under the name of The Song of Hiawatha.  They became very popular, especially the first part, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast.  In 1904 Coleridge-Taylor went on a tour of the United State and was received in the White House by Theodore Roosevelt.  He toured the US and Canada in 1906 and the US again in 1910, visiting New York, Boston, Detroit, St-Louis, and other major cities.  For many years Coleridge-Taylor was the conductor of the Handel Society of London.  He died September 1^st of 1912 of pneumonia, at  just 37 years old.  Here’s Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha's Wedding Feast.  Malcolm Sargent conducts the Royal Choral Society and the Philharmonia Orchestra.  While it’s not clear to us why Coleridge-Taylor is sometimes called "the African Mahler" we sure are glad that his piece is not considered a cultural appropriation.

Lili Boulanger’s life was even shorter than Coleridge-Taylor’s: she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24.  Boulanger, like Coleridge-Taylor, was also born (on August 21^st of 1893) into a musical family, but of a much higher social status: her father, Ernest Boulanger, was a noted pianist, composer and conductor who counted Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod and Gabriel Fauré among his friends.  Lili’s mother was born in St.-Petersburg, probably an illegitimate daughter of a Russian aristocrat; she studied singing in the St.-Petersburg Conservatory, moved to Paris at the age of 20, and soon became Ernest’s wife (he was then 62, she was 21).  When Lili was two years old, Fauré discovered that she had perfect pitch.  Also at the age of two, Lili got ill with pneumonia, which compromised her immune system for the rest of her short life.  She attended some classes at the Paris Conservatoire (her frail health didn’t allow her to attend them all), and in 1913 won the coveted Prix de Rome for composition with the cantata Faust et Hélène, the first woman to do so (her father won it in 1835 but her talented sister Nadia who would become one of the most influential music teachers of the 20^th century, failed to do so, coming in second; Nadia did win several First prizes, though).  Lili went to Rome but return to Paris soon after as WWI broke out.  She went back in 1916 for several months; in Rome she started working on a five-act opera La princesse Maleine and several other pieces but again returned to Paris, this time because her health was deteriorating.  Her last piece, Pie Jesu for soprano, string quartet, harp and organ, was dedicated to her sister Nadia.  Lile died on March 15, 1918 (Claude Debussy died ten days later).  Here’s Pie Jesu, performed by the soprano Isabelle Sabrié, Eric Lebrun (organ), Francis Pierre (harp), and the strings.

This Week in Classical Music: August 8, 2022.  Seven composers.  Yes, that many, all interesting, none of them great, at least in our opinion, and three of them French.  Cécile Chaminade, one of the few women composers of the 19^th century, and André Jolivet were born on August 8^th and both in Paris, Chaminade in 1857, Jolivet in 1905.  Reynaldo Hahn, a songwriter and Proust’s friend,was born on August 9^th of 1874 in Caracas but spent his adult life in France.  You can read about all three here. 

The Russian composer Alexander Glazunov was born on August 10^th of 1865.  He wrote a wonderful Violin concerto and a very popular ballet, Raymonda.  He also wrote eight complete symphonies (he never finished his ninth), two piano concertos and much more.  Outside of Russia very little of this music is performed or broadcast.  But Glazonov was very important as a public cultural figure and a supporter of classical music in Russia and the early Soviet Union.  He became the Director of the St-Petersburg’s Conservatory in 1905 and served in that position until 1928, one of the few administrators who wasn’t fired after the revolution of 1917, most likely because Glazunov was friends with Anatoly Lunacharsky, Soviet Union’s first minister of education and culture.  In 1928 Glazunov was invited to Vienna to a composer’s competition, organized to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of Schubert’s death.  He was allowed to go (again thanks to Lunacharsky) and decided not to return to Russia.  He eventually settled in Paris and died in 1936.  Here’s a typical Glazunov’s piece, a symphonic poem Sten’ka Razin, which extensively uses the theme from the Song of the Volga Boatmen (actually, barge haulers, who pulled barges by a rope).  In Russian this song is called Эй, ухнем, usually and inaccurately translated as Yo, heave-ho!.  The song was made famously by the great Russian bass Feodor Shalyapin.  The American bass Paul Robeson also had it in his repertoire and in 1941 Glenn Miller arranged the song for his orchestra – it became a hit.  Here is Chaliapin’s recording with an unnamed orchestra from 1923 – the quality isn’t high, but Chaliapin’s voice comes through.

Heinrich Ignaz Biber, an Austrian-Bohemian composer, was born on August 12th of 1644.  Read about him (and more on Jolivet)  here.  On the same day but 52 years later, in 1696, the English composer Maurice Greene was born in London.  He’s the author of some of the most popular pieces of English church music, the anthems Hearken Unto Me, Ye Holy Children (here) and Lord, let me know mine end (here).

We have to admit that sometimes we do not understand the music of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, our seventh composer, especially his longer works.  Sorabji, whose father was a Parsi from Bombay, was born on August 14^th of 1892.  We last wrote an entry about him nine years ago (here) and were reticent to come back to the topic.  That said, his Piano Sonata no. 1, from 1919, is quite accessible, lasts only 22 minutes and has a reasonably developed form.  Here it is, brilliantly performed by Marc-André Hamelin in a 1990 recording.

This Week in Classical Music: August 8, 2022.  Seven composers.  Yes, that many, all interesting, none of them great, at least in our opinion, and three of them French.  Cécile Chaminade, one of the few women composers of the 19^th century, and André Jolivet were born on August 8^th and both in Paris, Chaminade in 1857, Jolivet in 1905.  Reynaldo Hahn, a songwriter and Proust’s friend,was born on August 9^th of 1874 in Caracas but spent his adult life in France.  You can read about all three here. 

The Russian composer Alexander Glazunov was born on August 10^th of 1865.  He wrote a wonderful Violin concerto and a very popular ballet, Raymonda.  He also wrote eight complete symphonies (he never finished his ninth), two piano concertos and much more.  Outside of Russia very little of this music is performed or broadcast.  But Glazonov was very important as a public cultural figure and a supporter of classical music in Russia and the early Soviet Union.  He became the Director of the St-Petersburg’s Conservatory in 1905 and served in that position until 1928, one of the few administrators who wasn’t fired after the revolution of 1917, most likely because Glazunov was friends with Anatoly Lunacharsky, Soviet Union’s first minister of education and culture.  In 1928 Glazunov was invited to Vienna to a composer’s competition, organized to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of Schubert’s death.  He was allowed to go (again thanks to Lunacharsky) and decided not to return to Russia.  He eventually settled in Paris and died in 1936.  Here’s a typical Glazunov’s piece, a symphonic poem Sten’ka Razin, which extensively uses the theme from the Song of the Volga Boatmen (actually, barge haulers, who pulled barges by a rope).  In Russian this song is called Эй, ухнем, usually and inaccurately translated as Yo, heave-ho!.  The song was made famously by the great Russian bass Feodor Shalyapin.  The American bass Paul Robeson also had it in his repertoire and in 1941 Glenn Miller arranged the song for his orchestra – it became a hit.  Here is Chaliapin’s recording with an unnamed orchestra from 1923 – the quality isn’t high, but Chaliapin’s voice comes through.

Heinrich Ignaz Biber, an Austrian-Bohemian composer, was born on August 12th of 1644.  Read about him (and more on Jolivet)  here.  On the same day but 52 years later, in 1696, the English composer Maurice Greene was born in London.  He’s the author of some of the most popular pieces of English church music, the anthems Hearken Unto Me, Ye Holy Children (here) and Lord, let me know mine end (here).

We have to admit that sometimes we do not understand the music of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, our seventh composer, especially his longer works.  Sorabji, whose father was a Parsi from Bombay, was born on August 14^th of 1892.  We last wrote an entry about him nine years ago (here) and were reticent to come back to the topic.  That said, his Piano Sonata no. 1, from 1919, is quite accessible, lasts only 22 minutes and has a reasonably developed form.  Here it is, brilliantly performed by Marc-André Hamelin in a 1990 recording.

This Week in Classical Music: August 1, 2022.  Hans Rott, Leonel Power. Today is the birthday of the Austrian composer Hans Rott; he was born in Braunhirschengrund, a suburb of Vienna, in 1858.  A composer of obvious talent who lived a short and tragic life, he in a way anticipated Mahler.  Both Bruckner and Mahler recognized him as a major talent.  We wrote an entry about Rott, you can read it here.  It seems that we’re not the only ones fascinated by Rott: his Symphony no. 1, the only one he completed, and some of his other works are being recorded on a regular basis.  In the past two years a two-volume CD set was issued by the Capriccio label; it  features the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, one of the two major Cologne orchestras, under the direction of Christopher Ward and contains practically all of Rott’s symphonic music. 

This week is also a putative anniversary of Guillaume Dufay, who, according to some research was born on August 5^th of 1397.  We’ve written about this very important composer on a number of occasions (for example, here about his extensive travels around Europe).  We’ve also written about his contemporary, another Franco-Flemish composer, Gilles Binchois (Dufay and Binchois were born about 25 miles from each other, the former in Beersel, the latter in Mons, both in modern day Belgium).  Antoine Busnois ,who was a generation younger, is usually considered the third of the most consequential Franco-Flemish composers of the mid-15^th century.  The Franco-Flemish school was one of the two dominant music schools of the time, the other being developed in England (notice the absence of the Italians).  Two English composers overshadowed the rest in the flourishing music scene: John Dunstaple and Leonel Power.  Up till now we were amiss in not addressing Power’s life and music.  Power was older than either Dunstaple or Dufay: he was born sometime between 1370 and 1385.  There are few records of his life.  Power’s name is first mentioned on a list of clerks of the household chapel of Thomas, Duke of Clarence: he’s listed as an instructor of the choristers (Thomas was a brother of Henry V, the great warrior-king of England immortalized by Shakespeare).  In 1423 Power was mentioned as being admitted to the fraternity of Christ Church, Canterbury (the Canterbury cathedral).  In 1439 Power became master of the choir at the cathedral.  Not much else is known about his life.  He died at Canterbury on June 5^th of 1445.  About 40 pieces of music are attributed to Power, many of them represented in the Old Hall Manuscript, a unique document compiled in the first half of the 15^th century.  We know of about eight of his masses, although two of them could have been written by Dunstaple: the styles of the two composers were similar, what the French called Contenance angloise, or English manner.   Power was one of the first composers to create a unified mass cycle.  To demonstrate Power’s music, here are two mass sections: Gloria and Credo.  Both are performed by the Hilliard Ensemble.

This Week in Classical Music: July 25, 2022.  Dohnányi, Conductor and Composer.  Ernst von Dohnányi (Ernő Dohnányi in Hungarian), was born on July 27^th of 1877 in Pozsony, now Bratislava, Kingdom of Hungary, then part of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Ernst von Dohnányi is the German version of his name and how he used to sign his compositions.  Dohnányi studied the piano and composition at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music (and convinced his friend, Béla Bartók, to join him there).  In 1898, one year after he graduated, the conductor Hans Richter took Dohnányi to London where he played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4 to great acclaim.  He was also composing (Brahms liked his Op. 1, a Piano Quintet), and by 1900 the young Dohnányi was acknowledged as the greatest Hungarian pianist-composer since Liszt.  He became friends with the famous violinist Joseph Joachim, 46 years his elder; Joachim invited Dohnányi to Berlin, to teach at the Hochschule für Musik.  In 1915 Dohnányi returned to Budapest where he embarked on a very ambitious program of reshaping the musical life of Hungary, first as the Director of the Budapest Academy, and then in the position of Music Director of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra.  He promoted the music of Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Leo Weiner and other Hungarian composers, and also played extensively, for example, performing all of the piano works of Beethoven, and taught at the Academy.  Among his students were Annie Fischer, Georg Solti, Georges Cziffra and many other musicians who later made big careers.  In 1934 Dohnányi was again appointed Director of the Academy of Music while keeping his position at the Philharmonic Orchestra. 

These were difficult times in Hungary, which was ruled by Miklós Horthy, an autocrat and semi-fascist.  Hungary was anti-Semitic under Horthy, but became murderous once Germany occupied it and replaced Horthy with a “real” fascist, Ferenc Szálasi.  564,000 Jews out of the 825,000 pre-war population perished during the Holocaust.  (This history is vividly depicted in a poignant 1999 film Sunshine made by the renowned Hungarian director István Szabó; we highly recommend it).  Dohnányi was an anti-Nazi and tried to help Jewish musicians.  In 1941, with anti-Semitism gaining steam, he quit the Academy of Music rather than following the demands of anti-Jewish legislation.  At the Philharmonic Orchestra he kept all his Jewish musicians till after Germany occupied Hungary in March of 1944 and his position became untenable.  He also helped several Jewish musicians to escape Hungary.  In November of 1944 Dohnányi moved to Austria, then under the Nazi regime and part of Germany, and that lead to the unfair and unfounded criticism that somehow Dohnányi was pro-Nazi, which haunted him for years.  Despite the support and testimonials from his Jewish friends, these rumors made Dohnányi‘s life in Europe difficult and were the reason that Dohnányi emigrated to the US.  He settled in Tallahassee and taught at Florida State University.  He continued to compose and conduct, and died in New York in February of 1960 while making a recording of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

As composer, Dohnányi was rather conservative, following the Romantic traditions of the 19^th century.  Still, his chamber music is of very high quality.  Here for example, is his Serenade in C Major for String Trio, Op. 10, from 1902.  It’s performed by the Spectrum Concerts Berlin.  And here’s is his Konzertstück op.12.  János Starker is the soloist, with the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Walter Süsskind in this 1956 recording.  As conductor Dohnányi was famous for his interpretation of the music of Béla Bartók, which shows how open-minded Dohnányi was, as the music of his friend was different from his own in every possible way.

This Week in Classical Music: July 18, 2022. Instrumentalists and Singers.  We’ll skip several anniversaries, such as Francesco Cilea’s, his opera Adriana Lecouvreur notwithstanding, even though the title soprano role has been sung by such luminaries as Magda Olivero, Renata Tebaldi, Leyla Gencer, Montserrat Caballé, Renata Scotto, Mirella Freni, Joan Sutherland and Angela Gheorghiu.  We’ll also skip Ernest Bloch, a Swiss-Jewish-American composer mostly famous for his Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque, a large-scale work for cello and orchestra. And we’ll also leave out Adolphe Adam who wrote music for such popular ballets as Giselle and Le corsaire.  All three of them were born this week, on July 23^rd of 1866, July 24^th of 1880 and July 24^th of 1803 respectively.  Instead, we’ll acknowledge several interpreters: the pianists, violinist, and singers.

First, the pianists. Leon Fleisher was born on July 23^rd of 1928.  Fleisher lived a long life (he died two years ago) but his phenomenal career was cut short in 1964 by problems in his right hand.  He continued playing arepertoire for the left hand while trying to find a cure.  In 2004, 40 years after being diagnosed with focal dystonia, he regained some use of his right hand, but not on the level of his early years.  For almost 60 years Fleisher taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music; among his students were André Watts, Yefim Bronfman, Hélène Grimaud, and Louis Lortie.   Here’s the famous recording of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto Fleisher made in 1962.  George Szell conducts the Cleveland Orchestra.

The Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires (pronounced “piresh” in Portuguese) was also born on July 23^rd, in 1944.  She’s an unusual musician in that she clearly tries to avoid the demands of a virtuoso concert pianist’s life: hundreds of concerts, media presentations and such.  Her career is punctuated by pauses, as when she stopped playing in public from 1978 to 1982.  Pires’s repertoire is broad, but she seems to be especially close to the music of Mozart and Chopin.  Here is Maria João Pires playing Chopin’s Nocturne no.20 In C Sharp Minor, Op. Post.  And here she plays Mozart’s Piano Sonata no.11 In A Major K.331.  “Crystalline technique” seems to be a very appropriate description of her playing.  And integrity.

The violinists.  Isaac Stern was born on July 21^st of 1920.  Two years ago we celebrated his 100^th birthday, you can read it here.  Ruggiero Ricci was two years older than Stern: he was born on July 24^th of 1918 in San Francisco, a son of Italian immigrants.  A child prodigy, he played a concert in San Francisco at the age of 10 and at Carnegie Hall at 11.  He was the first violinist to record all 24 caprices of Paganini.  Even though he had a special affinity for Paganini (in 1971 he premiered the newly discovered Fourth Violin concerto by the composer) he also played a lot of contemporary music, premiering violin concertos by Ginastera, Gottfried von Einem and several other composers.  ’s Paganini’s Le Streghe, arranged by Fritz Kreisler.  Louis Persinger, who was Ricchi’s teacher when he was eight and then much later, when Ricci was already an acknowledged virtuoso, is on the piano.

We’ll have to come back to the singers another time, but will name them in this post:Pauline Viardot, the famous French mezzo born in Paris to Spanish parents, a lover of many celebrated French writers (and of a Russian, Ivan Turgenev) and also the sister of the diva soprano Maria Malibran, was born on July 18^th of 1821.  Susan Graham, the wonderful America mezzo, born on July 23^rd of 1960.  And of course, the great Giuseppe Di Stefano, born on July 24^th 101 years ago.

This Week in Classical Music: July 11, 2022. Birtwistle and Bergonzi.  One of the best-known British modern classical composers, Harrison Birtwistle, was born on July 15^th of 1934 not far from Manchester (Birtwistle died less than three months ago at the age of 87).  His music was thoroughly modern, sometimes evocative of Stravinsky and Messiaen, other times more formal, following Boulez and Stockhausen.  In any event, it was very different from the music of the preceding generations of British composers, from Frederick Delius and Ralph Vaughan Williams to Benjamin Britten, although, like Britten, Birtwistle had written a number of operas (seven, to be exact). 

The Triumph of Time is one of Harrison Birtwistle’s better known orchestral compositions.  It was written in 1971-72.  The title came from a complex (and quite macabre) 1574 woodcut by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which Birtwistle stumbled upon while working on the composition.  You can see it here in good resolution.  In the woodcut the Time, a muscular middle-aged man, is in a carriage drawn by horses representing Sun and Moon.  He’s followed by Death.  Part of Bruegel’s inscription at the bottom of the carving says: “All that Time cannot grasp is left for Death,” but Time itself is devouring a child.  Birtwistle’s work is far from being literal or macabre, but it is funerial in its overall tone.  Birtwistle said of the piece that it’s "a processional in which nothing changes.”  Whether it changes or not (and it does), the piece is fascinating and anything but dull, one reason being Birtwistle’s virtuosic use of multiple percussion.  You can listen to The Triumph of Time here; it’s performed live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Peter Eötvös.

Carlo Bergonzi, born on July 13^th of 1924, was one of the greatest tenors of the mid-20^th century and would’ve been even more famous had he not been a contemporary of Franco Corelli, Giuseppe di Stefano and Mario Del Monaco.  What a time it was, when all of them were at the top of their careers in the 1960s!  Add to the four Italians - a Spaniard, Alfredo Kraus, and compare these magnificent singers with the tenors of today…

Bergonzi started as a baritone (as, by the way, did Placido Domingo) and made his debut in a baritone role as Rossini’s Figaro in 1948.  For the following three years he sung many challenging baritone roles, including Silvio in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Lescaut in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, and Rigoletto.  Then in 1951 he realized that his voice is naturally better suited for tenor roles and, after retraining and studying the tenor repertory he made a second debut, this time as a tenor in the title role of Andrea Chénier.  He made his La Scala debut in 1953 and went on to sing at the famed opera theater for the next 20 years.  He first sang in the US in 1955, in Chicago, and a year later debuted at the Met, where he regularly appeared for the next 30 years, till 1988.

Bergonzi sang in more than 40 roles, Verdi’s operas constituting the core of his repertory.  Here is the famous Celeste Aida from Act I of Verdi’s Aida in Bergonzi’s superb rendition.  Nello Santi conducts the New Philharmonia Orchestra.

This Week in Classical Music: July 4, 2022. Mahler.  Gustav Mahler was born this week, on July 7^th of 1860.  We freely admit that for us Mahler remains one of the most important and beloved composers and that he has been so for a long time.  This is rather unusual, as other composers of genius (and there were many in the last several hundred years) drift in and out, becoming more important and then receding somewhat as tastes change and other music periods come to the fore (take, for example, the overwhelmingly Romantic piano repertoire of the mid-20^th century, now being performed sparingly).  To think of it, this is unusual for a composer who wrote just nine full symphonies, part of a tenth, a symphony/song cycle (Das Lied von der Erde), and several other song cycles – that’s practically it.  All of Mahler’s music could be played in less than 20 hours.  Compare it with Beethoven’s output (nine symphonies, five piano concertos, plus 32 piano sonatas, a violin concerto, nine violin sonatas, a full-length opera, 17 string quartets and much more) or Bach’s, with more than 200 cantatas alone, plus Passions, oratorios, concertos, and numerous other pieces for individual instruments and ensembles.  During the last century, Mahler also played a significant extra-musical role, serving as a litmus test in the ongoing culture wars, starting with the Nazis and all the way to our time (we’ll come back to this issue later).

For several years we’ve been traversing Mahler’s life using his symphonies as guideposts.  A couple of years ago we finished our entry about the Seventh symphony writing, “The years 1904 – 1905 were good to Mahler.  He was acknowledged as a great opera conductor, and his symphonic programs with the Philharmonic were popular.  Some of his compositions even had critical and popular success (Symphony no. 7 would not go on to be one of them).  He lived very comfortably, was happily married, and his second daughter, Anna, was born in 1904.  He had many friends and admirers among musicians and developed a special relationship with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and its conductor Willem Mengelberg.  Just three years later Mahler would have to leave Hofoper, hounded by antisemitic music critics; in 1907 his first daughter, Maria, would die of scarlet fever and his marriage to Alma would be on the rocks.” 

Mahler composed most of his Eighth symphony in the summer of 1906, at the end of his “happy period,” not, of course, that he was aware of it and of what was to come.  His Sixth symphony was premiered in May of that year in Essen, with Mahler conducting, and in June he took his family to Maiernigg in Carinthia, where he had a villa overlooking the Wörthersee (lake Wörth).  He had been going to Maiernigg since 1900 and in 1901 had a “composing hut” built there, to which he would retreat, alone, to write and contemplate.  That’s where he composed all of his symphonies from the Forth to the Eighth.  The latter was written very quickly, in just two months, though some changes were made later.  The Eighth was called “Symphony of a Thousand” by its original promoter, Emil Gutmann, as it required a huge orchestra, vocal soloists, two regular choirs and one children’s choir (the real number of performers was smaller than one thousand and Mahler disapproved of the moniker).  The symphony consists of two parts rather than the usual several movements -  a relatively short Part One, based on the traditional Latin text of the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, and Part Two, which runs about an hour or more, depending on the conductor, and is based on the closing scene of Goethe's Faust.

The Eighth was premiered in Munich on September 12^th of 1910.  It was the last time that Mahler would conduct a premier of his symphony.  Emil Gutmann promoted it heavily and the public’s anticipation was enormous.  Here are just some of the cultural figures in attendance: composers Richard Strauss, Camille Saint-Saëns and Anton Webern; the leading writers of Germany, Thomas Mann, and Austria, Arthur Schnitzler; and Leopold Stokowski, who would conduct the American premier of the symphony several years later.  The performance was an unqualified success, which is rather surprising, considering that a more accessible Sixth symphony was received coolly.  Thomas Mann sent Mahler an effusive congratulatory letter and later gave the writer Gustav von Aschenbach, the protagonist of his novella Death in Venice the “Mask of Mahler.”  Some year later the great Italian director Luchino Visconti took it a step further and made Aschenbach into a composer and used the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth symphony as the movie’s main theme, popularizing it for years to come.

We’ll hear the famous 1972 recording of the symphony made by Sir Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Boys Choir, the Choir of the Vienna Musikverein, the Choir of the Vienna State Opera, the Chicago Symphony, and several vocalists, among them the soprano Lucia Popp, the tenor René Kollo and the bass Martti Talvela.  Part 1 is here, part 2 – here.

This Week in Classical Music: July 4, 2022. Mahler.  Gustav Mahler was born this week, on July 7^th of 1860.  We freely admit that for us Mahler remains one of the most important and beloved composers and that he has been so for a long time.  This is rather unusual, as other composers of genius (and there were many in the last several hundred years) drift in and out, becoming more important and then receding somewhat as tastes change and other music periods come to the fore (take, for example, the overwhelmingly Romantic piano repertoire of the mid-20^th century, now being performed sparingly).  To think of it, this is unusual for a composer who wrote just nine full symphonies, part of a tenth, a symphony/song cycle (Das Lied von der Erde), and several other song cycles – that’s practically it.  All of Mahler’s music could be played in less than 20 hours.  Compare it with Beethoven’s output (nine symphonies, five piano concertos, plus 32 piano sonatas, a violin concerto, nine violin sonatas, a full-length opera, 17 string quartets and much more) or Bach’s, with more than 200 cantatas alone, plus Passions, oratorios, concertos, and numerous other pieces for individual instruments and ensembles.  During the last century, Mahler also played a significant extra-musical role, serving as a litmus test in the ongoing culture wars, starting with the Nazis and all the way to our time (we’ll come back to this issue later).

For several years we’ve been traversing Mahler’s life using his symphonies as guideposts.  A couple of years ago we finished our entry about the Seventh symphony writing, “The years 1904 – 1905 were good to Mahler.  He was acknowledged as a great opera conductor, and his symphonic programs with the Philharmonic were popular.  Some of his compositions even had critical and popular success (Symphony no. 7 would not go on to be one of them).  He lived very comfortably, was happily married, and his second daughter, Anna, was born in 1904.  He had many friends and admirers among musicians and developed a special relationship with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and its conductor Willem Mengelberg.  Just three years later Mahler would have to leave Hofoper, hounded by antisemitic music critics; in 1907 his first daughter, Maria, would die of scarlet fever and his marriage to Alma would be on the rocks.” 

Mahler composed most of his Eighth symphony in the summer of 1906, at the end of his “happy period,” not, of course, that he was aware of it and of what was to come.  His Sixth symphony was premiered in May of that year in Essen, with Mahler conducting, and in June he took his family to Maiernigg in Carinthia, where he had a villa overlooking the Wörthersee (lake Wörth).  He had been going to Maiernigg since 1900 and in 1901 had a “composing hut” built there, to which he would retreat, alone, to write and contemplate.  That’s where he composed all of his symphonies from the Forth to the Eighth.  The latter was written very quickly, in just two months, though some changes were made later.  The Eighth was called “Symphony of a Thousand” by its original promoter, Emil Gutmann, as it required a huge orchestra, vocal soloists, two regular choirs and one children’s choir (the real number of performers was smaller than one thousand and Mahler disapproved of the moniker).  The symphony consists of two parts rather than the usual several movements -  a relatively short Part One, based on the traditional Latin text of the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, and Part Two, which runs about an hour or more, depending on the conductor, and is based on the closing scene of Goethe's Faust.

The Eighth was premiered in Munich on September 12^th of 1910.  It was the last time that Mahler would conduct a premier of his symphony.  Emil Gutmann promoted it heavily and the public’s anticipation was enormous.  Here are just some of the cultural figures in attendance: composers Richard Strauss, Camille Saint-Saëns and Anton Webern; the leading writers of Germany, Thomas Mann, and Austria, Arthur Schnitzler; and Leopold Stokowski, who would conduct the American premier of the symphony several years later.  The performance was an unqualified success, which is rather surprising, considering that a more accessible Sixth symphony was received coolly.  Thomas Mann sent Mahler an effusive congratulatory letter and later gave the writer Gustav von Aschenbach, the protagonist of his novella Death in Venice the “Mask of Mahler.”  Some year later the great Italian director Luchino Visconti took it a step further and made Aschenbach into a composer and used the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth symphony as the movie’s main theme, popularizing it for years to come.

We’ll hear the famous 1972 recording of the symphony made by Sir Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Boys Choir, the Choir of the Vienna Musikverein, the Choir of the Vienna State Opera, the Chicago Symphony, and several vocalists, among them the soprano Lucia Popp, the tenor René Kollo and the bass Martti Talvela.  Part 1 is here, part 2 – here.

This Week in Classical Music: June 27, 2022.  Three Conductors.  We’re not going to ignore the three composers that were born this week, Christoph Willibald Gluck (on July 2^nd of 1714), Leoš Janáček (on July 3^rd of 1854) and Hans Werner Henze (July 1^st of 1926), but would rather refer to the entry of two years ago where we wrote about all three.  Instead, we’ll write about another three conductors whose birthdays are also celebrated this week: Claudio Abbado, born June 26^th of 1933 in Milan; the Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík, who born on June 29th, 1914, one day after Archduke Ferdinand's assassination, as a result of which his country, Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary, became Czechoslovakia; and Carlos Kleiber, born July 3^rd of 1930.  We must confess that of these three we especially love Abbado, even though all three are considered among the best in the last century, and many think that Carlos Kleiber was the greatest.

During his life Abbado led, as Music director, several major orchestras, starting with the orchestra of the La Scala, then Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony (as the Principal guest conductor), and finally, the Berlin Philharmonic, which he headed from 1990 to 2002.  His tenure there was interrupted by a diagnosis of stomach cancer, but he returned to Berlin several times from 2006 to 2014.  He also founded two orchestras, the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.  While Abbado was a major champion of the music of 20^th century composers (for example, he recorded many of Henze’s works for Deutsche Grammophon), he was also a great interpreter of the traditional classical repertoire, from Mozart and Beethoven to Mahler (of whose music we think he was one of the greatest interpreters).  Abbado was also a major opera conductor, having worked at La Scala, the Vienna Staatsoper, Metropolitan Opera, and London’s Covent Garden.

The Wikipedia entry for Carlos Kleiber states directly that “[he] was an Austrian conductor who is widely regarded as among the greatest conductors of all time,” and refers to the 2015 poll conducted by BBC Music Magazine among 100 top conductors working today (in the same poll, Abbado was placed third, after Leonard Bernstein). Kleiber, baptized Karl, was born in Berlin, the son of a renowned conductor, Erich Kleiber.  In 1935 the family emigrated to Argentina, and Karl was renamed Carlos.  He studied music as a kid in Argentina and Chile, then chemistry in Zurich.  He worked his way starting as a repetiteur in Munich, eventually making his conducting debut in 1954.  He then worked at the opera theaters of Düsseldorf, Zurich and Stuttgart.  In the 1970s he became acknowledged as one of the finest young conductors, working in the Vienna Staatsoper, at Bayreuth, in Covent Garden and La Scala.  He led the best orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, London Symphony, and the Berlin Philharmonic.  He was the first choice of the Berlin Phil to succeed Karajan, but declined the offer after which the position went to Claudio Abbado.

Kleiber was famous for rehearsing extensively, almost obsessively (it’s said that he had 34 rehearsals of his first performance of Berg’s Wozzeck) and also for canceling many performances: in his almost 50-year career he conducted just 90 orchestral concerts and 620 opera performances.  Kleiber knew six languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Slovenian) but never gave a single formal interview (he never had a professional music agent either).  His formal discography is small: it consists of several symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert and several operas, though after his death a number of pirated live recordings have been published. 

We thought it would be interesting to present the same symphony conducted by Abbado and Kleiber, both with excellent orchestras.  One piece we could find that both had recorded was Brahms’s Symphony no. 4.   Here’s Abbado and Berlin Philharmonic in the 1991 recording.  And here’s Carlos Kleiber conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. This recording was made in March of 1980.  And we promise to write about Rafael Kubelík another time.

This Week in Classical Music: June 20, 2022.  A Horszowski encounter.  Langhe is an exceptionally beautiful part of Italy, a stretch of hilly land south of Turin famous for its Barolo and Barbaresco wines and white truffles.  It’s dotted with hilltop villages and castles and reminds one of much more popular (and crowded) Tuscany.  The area around the village of Barolo is particularly pretty, with 12^th-century castles facing each other across the vineyard-covered valleys.  Monforte d'Alba is about two and a half miles from Barolo as the crow flies and twice as much to drive (which is a pleasure to do, so delightful are the ever-changing vistas), it has the requisite castle and a church at the top of the hill.  It also has an unusual Roman-style open theater next to it, pictured here.  What is completely unexpected, though, is to see the name of the pianist Mieczysław Horszowski: it’s right there on a plaque which says: “Auditorium Miecio Horszowski “Nostro piccolo gran consolatore”(our little great comforter),” and dated 1986.  “Miecio” is probably the best Italians could do with the name Mieczysław, “Piccolo” clearly refers to Horszowski’s stature – he was about five feet tall, but Gran (short for Grande) indicates his status as a musician and cultural figure.

Mieczysław Horszowski, a wonderful Polish-Russian-Jewish-American pianist is famous for his art and his longevity, both artistic and physical: he played his last concert at the age of 99 and died one month short of his 101^st birthday.  We don’t know the details of his association with the auditorium, but Horszowski did live in Milan for 25 years, which is  less than a two-hour drive away.  Also, when Horszowski was 89, he married the Italian pianist Bice Costa, thirty plus his younger.  It’s our guess that this may’ve been the connection, but what we do know for sure is that Horszowski played at the inaugural concert and the venue was later named after him, Auditorium Horszowski.  A jazz festival takes place there every year.

Mieczysław Horszowski was born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine) on June 23^rd of 1892.  He became Theodor Leschetizky’s student at the age of seven and played Beethoven’s Piano concerto no. 1 in Warsaw at the age of eight.  In 1906 he made his American debut, playing at the Carnegie Hall.  Since 1914 till the outbreak of WWII he lived in Milan and then moved to the United States where he joined the staff of the Curtis Institute (among his students were Murray Perahia, and Richard Goode).  Despite his small hands, Horszowski had a fabulous technique, and his favorite repertoire – works by Bach, Beethoven and Chopin – didn’t require huge hands.  As many of Leschetizky’s pupils (we can think of Artur Schnabel, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Ignaz Friedman), Horszowski had a beautiful singing sound.  For 50 years he partnered with his friend Pablo Casals, who preferred Horszowski to any other pianist.

Here's Bach’s Partita No. 2 in C minor, recorded live in 1983.  This live recording was made in Italy, but not in Monforte d'Alba but in a church of a Tuscan village of Castagno d'Andrea.

This Week in Classical Music: June 13, 2022.  Stravinsky. On June 17^th we’ll celebrate Igor Stravinsky’s 140^th anniversary: he was born on that day in 1882 in Oranienbaum, a small town outside of Russia’s capital, Saint Petersburg.  After 1910 Stravinsky spent much of his time in France and Switzerland, and in 1918, soon after the Russian Revolution, he left the country for good.  We just visited Montreux, Switzerland; in 1910 Stravinsky lived in Clarens, which is one of Montreux’s neighborhoods, and that’s where his second son, Soulima, was born. (This area is rich in Russian cultural connections: in 1878 Tchaikovsky stayed in Clarens as he was recovering from depression after his disastrous marriage to Antonina Miliukova; he wrote his Violin Concerto there.  Vladimir Nabokov lived the last 16 years of his life in Montreux and is buried in Clarens).  Stravinsky returned to Clarens in 1914 and a year later moved to Morges, another town on the shores of Lake Geneva.  Montreux remembers Stravinsky: there’s a statue of the composer in the city, and one of the major auditoriums is named after him.

This period was tremendously productive for Stravinsky: he wrote ballets Petruska and The Rite of Spring for Diagilev’s famous dance company, the Ballets Russes, and The Nightingale, an opera-ballet, also premiered by Diagilev’s Ballets Russes at the Palais Garnier in Paris in 1914.  For this production, the Russian painter Alexandre Benois designed the sets and costumes (one of Diagilev geniuses was his ability to bring together the best composers and painters to work on his productions).  In 1917, Stravinsky wrote The Song of the Nightingale, a symphonic poem based on the opera.  Here it is, performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz conducting.

This Week in Classical Music: June 6, 2022.  Schumann, Strauss, Albinoni. This is the sequence in a descending order of talent quality (or at least the way we perceive it): Schumann, one of the great geniuses of the 19^th century music, Strauss, who in a self-deprecating manner said: "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer" (we disagree: we think he’s absolutely first rate – and the more we listen to his music, the more we think so); and Albinoni, popular for his tuneful, rather repetitive pieces of limited imagination.  Schumann was born in Zwickau on June 8^th of 1810, Richard Strauss – on June 11^th of 1864 in Munich, and Tomaso Albinoni – on June 8^th of 1671 in Venice.  Here’s Artur Rubinsten playing Schumann’s Carnaval op.9.

This Week in Classical Music: May 30, 2022.  Two Pianists.  Zoltán Kocsis and Marth Argerich were born this week: Kocsis in Budapest, Hungary, on May 30^th of 1952, Argerich in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 5^th of 1941.  Argerich is famous and widely considered one of the greatest pianists of her generation.  She doesn’t need any introductions, especially considering that we’ve written about her on many occasions (for example, here).  And, at the age of 81, she actively performs, often introducing new repertoire.  Kocsis, on the other hand, as talented as he was, isn’t that well known, which is a pity.  Kocsis studied at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest (György Kurtág was one of his teachers).  At the age of 18 he caused a sensation, winning the Hungarian Radio Beethoven Competition.  He was recognized as one of the outstanding musicians and at the age of 21 was awarded the Ferenc Liszt Prize, the highest musical award in Hungary.  He soon developed an international career, touring the US in 1971 and playing in London and Salzburg a year later.  His repertory was broad, from Bach (one of his favorites – he recorded all of Bach’s concertos) to Bartok and on to his contemporaries (he made several premier performances of his teacher, Kurtág).  Kocsis was also a composer and worked with the avant-garde group the New Studio.  Kocsis had a life-saving heart surgery in 2012; the surgery prolonged his life by four years.  He died of heart decease in 2016.

We’ll present two very different samples of Kocsis’s art: first, recorded in December of 1984, his wonderful interpretation of Bela Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 3 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer conducting (here).  And 30 years later, in 2014, Kocsis conducted and played Bach’s Bach Keyboard Concerto no. 5, BWV 1056 (here).

A note: next two weeks we’ll be traveling, so our entries will be (mercifully) short.

This Week in Classical Music: May 23, 2022.  Four Composers and Teresa Stratas.  Jean Françaix, William Bolcom, Isaac Albéniz and Erich Wolfgang Korngold were all born this week – a Frenchman, an American, a Spaniard and an Austrian who emigrated to the US.  There is a similarity between Françaix (born on May 23^rd of 1912) and Bolcom (b. 5/26/1938), not necessarily in the style of their music but rather in the wonderful sense of humor and lightness (it may not be quite a coincidence, as Bolcom had studied with two French composer, Darius Milhaud at Mills College in California and with Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory).  Here’s Françaix’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano and here – one of Bolcom’s Twelve New Etudes, Hymne a l'amour.  The Trio is played by Julien Hardy (Bassoon), Frédéric Tardy (Oboe), Simon Zauoi (Piano).  The pianist in the Bolcom is Marc-André Hamelin.

The biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold is very unusual.  Born on May 29^th of 1897 in Vienna, he was a child prodigy, composing a piano sonata at the age of 11 (it was published and performed), a ballet Der Schneemann that same year and a large-form orchestral piece he called Sinfonietta (it runs for about 42 minutes) when he was 15.  Korngold was Jewish and emigrated to the US in 1934, where he became one of the most influential movie composers of the time.  We would have thought that Korngold had to change his compositional style to accommodate films, but this is not quite true: listen, for example, to the first movement of Sinfonietta and you’ll hear the echoes of the Korngold of The Adventures of Robin Hood. 

Teresa Stratas, the wonderful Canadian soprano of Greek descent, was born on May 26^th of 1938 in Toronto.  Stratas was famous for many contemporary roles, singing in the operas of Gian Carlo Menotti, Francis Poulenc, Kurt Weill, John Corigliano, and especially, the role of Lulu in the Berg eponymous opera’s first complete performance and recording (in 1979, with Pierre Boulez conducting).  But Stratas didn’t limit herself to the 20^th century repertoire, her range was actually very broad.  She was wonderful as Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Despina in Così fan tutte, and sung two roles, Cherubino and Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart.  She performed in several Puccini’s operas, in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, Strauss operas and also Verdi’s.  Here, from 1968, is her wonderful Susanna in the aria Deh vieni, non tarda, from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.  This is a live recording with Zubin Mehta conducting the RAI Orchestra.

This Week in Classical Music: May 16, 2022.  Wagner, Berganza and Nilssen.  Richard Wagner was born this week, on May 22^nd of 1813, but we’d like to start with the passing of the wonderful Spanish mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza three days ago at the age of 89.  Berganza was born in Madrid on March 16^th of 1933.  She made her operatic debut as Dorabella (it would become one of her signature roles) in Mozart's Così fan tutte in 1957 at the Aix-en-Provence and that same year made a La Scala debut.  Early in her career her voice was lighter, perfectly suited for Rossini’s bel canto operas: her Cenetrentola was unsurpassed.  Rosina in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia was another famous role of hers.  Later in her career her voice darkened and Berganza took on the role of Carmen, in which she also excelled.  Berganza sang at all major opera houses around the world and was one of the most beloved singers of the second half of the 20^th century.  Here’s the final scene (about 6 minutes) from La Cenerentola in the live 1967 recording from Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.  We had to cut the unending ovation; the agility of Berganza’s voice in this recording is remarkable.

Berganza never sung in Wagner’s operas – her voice was not suited for his roles, even though Wagner wrote several of them for mezzo, for example, Waltraute, a Valkyrie and Brünnhilde’s sister in Götterdämmerung, or the goddess Frika, Wotan’s wife in Die Walküre.  On the other hand, the great Swedish Birgit Nilsson was one of the best interpreters of Wagner roles in the 20^th century.  Nilsson was born in a tiny village of Västra Karup on May 17^th of 1918.  Her operatic career started in Stockholm in 1946; early in her career she sung many roles in the Italian repertoire (Aida, Tosca), operas of Mozart, Richard Strauss and Tchaikovsky.  She first appeared in a Wagner role in the Stockholm Opera’s 1954-55 season and then sung Brünnhilde in the complete Ring cycle.  In 1957 she performed at Bayreuth for the first time; that was the beginning of a long association with the festival which lasted till 1970.  In 1959 she made her Metropolitan debut as Isolde and went on to sing in 200 performances and 16 roles.  Let us quote from Grove Music: “Nilsson was generally considered the finest Wagnerian soprano of her day. Her voice was even throughout its range, pure in sound and perfect in intonation with a free ringing top; its size was phenomenal.”

Here’s the incredible Immolation Scene, from 1965 and remastered in 2012.  Birgit Nilsson is Brünnhilde, Wiener Philharmoniker is conducted by Georg Solti.  You can hear that the quote from Grove is not an exaggeration but a literal description of every aspect of Nisson’s voice.  We also think that in this recording both the orchestra playing and conducting are excellent.

This Week in Classical Music: May 9, 2022.  Monteverdi.  Claudio Monteverdi was born 455 years ago; he was baptized in Cremona on May 15^th of 1567.    Monteverdi is one of the most important composers in the history of European music: a “father of the opera,” his music also spanned two different eras, the late Renaissance and early Baroque; he created masterpieces in both styles.  We’ve written about him on many occasions (for example, here and here), so today we’ll present two madrigals from Monteverdi’s very first Book of Madrigals, which were composed in 1582-3, while Monteverdi was still a teenager, and published in Venice in 1584.  Here are his Ch’ami la vita mia nel tuo bel nome (Madrigal 1) and A che tormi il ben mio (Madrigal 3), performed by the ensemble Le Nuove Musiche under the direction of Koetsveld Krijn.  Not bad for a 15-year-old, wouldn’t you say?

We’ve mentioned Milton Babbitt’s name several times in the past but have never written about him directly and never presented his music.  The reason is that Babbitt’s music is rather difficult, even when the harmonies are translucent, as there’s no tonal base to much of his music: it’s written in a 12-tone, serial style.  Babbitt was born into a Jewish family on May 10^th of 1916 in Philadelphia and brought up in Jackson, Mississippi.  His first instrument was the violin, later he studied the clarinet and saxophone.  At the age of 15 he entered the University of Pennsylvania intending to become a mathematician but soon transferred to New York University to study music.  In New York, Babbitt got interested in philosophy and the music of modern composers, the Americans Varèse and Stravinsky and then composers of the Second Viennese school.  After graduating from NYU Babbitt studied with Roger Sessions and then enrolled in the post-graduate studies in Princeton, where he not only studied music but became a member of the Department of Mathematics.  Mathematics came in handy when Babbitt decided to write a PhD thesis in musicology, analyzing Schoenberg’s compositional methods (the name of the paper, The Function of Set Structure in the Twelve-Tone System, was as technical as its substance).  Nobody at Princeton’s music department could understand it and the thesis was rejected.  It was resubmitted on Babbitt’s behalf twenty years later and accepted.  The Dean of the Graduate School of Music explained that Babbitt’s “dissertation was so far ahead of its time it couldn’t be properly evaluated...”   There were other controversies in Babbitt’s life: in 1958 he wrote an article suggesting that serious music requires an educated audience. The magazine, High Fidelity, published it under the provocative title “Who Cares if You Listen,” given to it by the editor, not Babbitt, which was not at all what the composer had in mind.  As he said later, “I care very deeply if you listen. From a purely practical point of view, if nobody listens and nobody cares, you’re not going to be writing music for very long. But I care how you listen.”

Here are Three Compositions for the piano, composed in 1947-48.  It’s the earliest mature piano pieces by Babbitt.  They are performed by the American pianist Robert Taub and, according to the notes, were recorded at the Church of The Holy Trinity, New York, April of 1985 in the presence of the composer.

This Week in Classical Music: May 2, 2022.  Tchaikovsky (and War in Ukraine).  Pyotr Tchaikovskywas born on May 7^th of 1840.  He’s acknowledged as the greatest Russian composer of all time (or, realistically, of the last two centuries that classical music has existed in Russia in its present form), but on March 9^th of 2022 the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra cancelled its all-Tchaikovsky concert as “inappropriate at this time” (due to war in Ukraine) and replaced it with the music of Dvořák, John Williams, and Elgar.  Many things come to mind. To make it absolutely clear, we’d like to state (again) that we believe the Russian aggression against Ukraine to be criminal and inhumane and hope that Russian President Putin will end up in the Hague.  But to cancel a Tchaikovsky concert?  First of all, the idea of “canceling” is clearly of our time, when people and speech are routinely cancelled by our media, networks and social institutions.  Secondly, what does Tchaikovsky has to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?  Was he anti-Ukrainian, as Wagner was anti-Semitic?  No.  Was he xenophobic, an ardent Russian nationalist?  Absolutely not.  Just the opposite, Tchaikovsky was one of the most progressive, Westernized composers of his era.  He traveled broadly, spending years in Italy and other countries, premiered his music in Europe, conducted the New York Music Society's orchestra.  He was also gay, an anathema in modern-day’s Russia.  Why would anybody associate him with the evil of Mr. Putin’s Russia?  One can like Tchaikovsky’s music more or, as the late NY Time music critic Harold Schonberg, you could like it less, but to cancel him is absurd.  Interestingly, the offending piece in the original program, according to the Cardiff Phil, was the “nationalistic” 1812 Overture.  This is absurd on many levels: this music was “culturally appropriated” in the United States as practically the official anthem of the 4^th of July, and it was written to celebrate the victory against the aggressor, not an aggression!

What adds insult to injury is the replacement of Tchaikovsky’s music with that of John Williams, his Cowboy Overture in particular.  For those who are unfamiliar with this “masterpiece,” we recommend sampling it on YouTube (we’d rather not reproduce it here).  It’s movie-music at its most mediocre.  Not all of Tchaikovsky’s music is great, he really wrote some crummy pieces, but any one of them is on a different, and much higher, plane than this.

To celebrate Tchaikovsky’s birthday, here’s his Violin Concertо, performed by the German violinist Julia Fischer, accompanied by the Russian National Orchestra under the direction of Russian-Jewish-American conductor Yakov Kreizberg.  A side note: the Russian National Orchestra was created by the pianist and conductor Mikhail Pletnev in 1990.  Less than a month ago, Svetlana Rips, the director of the orchestra was fired by the Russian Ministry of Culture and replaced by a Putin loyalist.  It’s rumored that Pletnev may lose his position as well.

This Week in Classical Music: April 25, 2022.  Catching up (and War in Ukraine).  The previous two weeks we’ve ignored many anniversaries while talking about two Italians, the conductor Victor de Sabata and the amazing Renaissance composer and theoretician Nicola Vicentino.  We missed the birthday of the great Russian-Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev, who was born on April 23^rd of 1891 in a small village of Sontsivka.  Sontsivka is located in the Donetsk oblast’, Ukraine – yes, the Russian Prokofiev was born in Ukraine, which then, like many other countries, was part of the Russian Empire.  And this is where the war is raging today: the village is about 10 miles from the front line.  Russia invaded Ukraine, unprovoked, on February 24^th of this year and is waging a barbaric war against its neighbor, killing thousands of civilians, and committing unspeakable crimes.  There is a Prokofiev Museum in Sontsivka, and if the Russian force advance, there is a good chance it will be gone, as Russian forces annihilate everything on their path.  Yesterday the people of Russia and Ukraine celebrated the Orthodox Easter.  We don’t know how the Russians could stand to go to their churches, as their spiritual leader, Patriarch Kirill, fully supports Putin’s war, has prayed for the Russian Arm Forces, and called them “heroes” while these “heroes” are using artillery against Ukrainian churches and the civilians who hide there.  

Sarcasm may not be the most appropriate reaction to what is happening in Ukraine, but Prokofiev was generally a very optimistic person, and there is not much in his music that would relate to the horrors we are witnessing today; his short piano Sarcasms may be the closest in spirit.  Daniil Trifonov plays the third movement, Allegro precipitato (here).   If not, then maybe Suggestion diabolique (Prokofiev was 17 when he wrote it).  The pianist is Andrei Gavrilov (here).

Another name we failed to mention last week: John Eliot Gardiner.  This British conductor was born on April 20^th of 1943.  He’s one of the most renowned interpreters of the music of Bach; his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage was a tremendous undertaking: he performed all Bach’s sacred cantatas (there are 198 extant) during a one-year period, traveling from one city to another in Europe and America.  Good Friday was just 10 days ago.  Here are the last 12 minutes of Bach’s St. John Passion, which was first performed on Good Friday of 1724 in the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig.  We’ll start with the Chorale O hilf, Christe, Gottes Sohn (Oh help us, Christ, God’s Son).  The Evangelist’s Recitative Then Joseph of Arimathia follows, and then the final Chorus Ruht wohl, ihr heiligen Gebeine, (Rest in peace, your sacred limbs) and Chorale Ach Herr, lass dein lieb Engelein (Ah Lord, let your dear angels).  TheEnglish Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir are led by Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

This Week in Classical Music: April 18, 2022.  Microtonal Renaissance: Nicola Vicentino.  Sometime ago we presented an entry about Easley Blackwood, an American composer who wrote microtonal music, music for electronic instruments tuned to more than 12 half-tones to an octave – 13, for example, or 14.  Blackwood actually tried 12 more tunings, dividing the octave up to 24 equal intervals.  The results were interesting and the attempt pretty courageous, as not that many composers have tried to work in this field.  Well, it turns out that Blackwood had a predecessor.  Four centuries earlier there lived an audacious composer who also attempted to go beyond the usual 12 half-tone octave we are so used to hearing.  His name is Nicola Vicentino.  Vicentino was born, as his name suggests, in the city of Vicenza in 1511.  He probably studied with Adrian Willaert in nearby Venice.  Sometime between 1530 and 1540 he went to Ferrara, Italy’s major musical center.  Clearly, he made a career there, as he became the music tutor to the family of the Duke Ercole II and some of his music was performed at the court.  In 1546 a book of his madrigals was published in Venice.  Sometime later he followed Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, the second son of Duke Alfonso I d'Este, Ercole’s brother, and the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, to Rome.  There, in 1551, a famous debate took place between Vicentino and the Portuguese musician Vicente Lusitano.  The debate centered on different interpretations of historical tuning systems with references to the ancient Greek music.  It’s too esoteric for us to follow but the idea that such a musical debate could generate interest comparable to that of a Grammy pop-album winner of today is remarkable in itself.  Vicentino lost the debate, which was formally judged by several professional musicians, but that didn’t stop him from writing an influential musical treatise and practically experimenting with his ideas.  One thing he did was to invent a new musical instrument he called arcicembalo.  It was based on a standard harpsichord with two manual keyboards. All black keys were divided in two and there were additional black keys between B and C and between E and F.  The arcicembalo could be tuned differently; one way would divide the octave into 31 equal intervals.  Vicentino wrote music for his new instrument, and for a similarly tuned arciorgano.  He also wrote vocal music using quarter-tones (you can listen to some samples below).  Following Ippolito II, Vicentino returned to Ferrara; in 1563 he left the service of the cardinal and assumed the post of maestro di cappella in his hometown at the Vicenza Cathedral.  His later life isn’t clear: it seems that he spent some time in Milan, applied for a position in Bavaria but didn’t receive it and died during a plague in Milan in 1576.  One of Vicentino’s arcicembalos with 31 notes to the octave is extant, it’s now on display in the Bologna International music museum.

Ensemble Exaudi is one of the few ensembles that attempts to interpret the music of Vicentino.  It’s easier, at least in theory, to sing Vicentino’s quarter-tones and one-fifth-tones as you don’t have to have a very special keyboard instrument, but in practice you have to be a virtuoso performer with an excellent ear to follow composer’s directions.  Here is Vicentino’s Musica prisca caput.  Listen carefully!  And here is his Madonna, il poco dolce, another remarkable piece.  And finally, another madrigal, Dolce mio ben.  It’s invigorating to find new music that is really interesting while so much mediocrity is being promoted by our musical establishment.  We look forward to the (hopefully near) future when talented pieces take their deserved place, the place earned by the quality of compositions, not political expediency.

This Week in Classical Music: April 11, 2022.  Conductors, continued.  Last week we started with five famous conductors that were born that week: the Frenchman Pierre Monteux, the German Herbert von Karajan, the British Adrian Boult, the Hungarian-American Antal Doráti, and the Italian Victor de Sabata.  We spent much time with de Sabata, following his career till the end of WWII, and we did so because this wonderful conductor isn’t that well known in the US.  So, here’s a bit more on Sabata.  His previous association with Mussolini didn’t affect Sabata’s international standing, even though in 1950 he was briefly detained in the US under the soon-to-be abolished McCarran Act (his concert at Carnegie Hall ran on schedule and to great acclaim – the recording of the excerpts from Tristan un Isolde which we presented the last week came from that concert).  Sabata’s base was La Scala, with which he made several great recordings, including the one from 1953 of Puccini's Tosca with Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi which many consider the best opera recording of all time.  Sabata toured all major European music centers and made recording with the London Philharmonic and the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, in addition to his own orchestra of La Scala.  In 1953 Sabata had a heart attack which forced him into semi-retirement.  He died of heart decease in 1967.

Victor de Sabata had a phenomenal ear and musical memory.  It’s also said that he could play every instrument in the orchestra.  The music magazine, International Record Review, now unfortunately defunct, wrote the following notes about him: “The story is that de Sabata, rehearsing in London around 1930, was asked why he never conducted any English music; because there's nothing worth doing, he answered. Did he know the Enigma Variations? No. So they gave him a score to take home and he went through the work from memory at the next morning's rehearsal, which Elgar himself and Malcolm Sargent attended. De Sabata was apparently correcting mistakes in the parts that neither the composer nor the man who fancied himself its principal interpreter had noticed.”  The British music critic Felix Aprahamian recalls the following story (as per Wikipedia): “In the rehearsal interval, he asked the flicorni [the saxhorn, one of the instruments invented by Adolphe Sax] for the final movement to play their brass fanfares. They did. 'What are you playing?' he asked. 'It is an octave higher.' 'Can't be done, Maestro.' ... The Maestro borrowed one of their instruments and blew the correct notes in the right octave.”  These is just two of many legendary stories. 

Among De Sabata’s recordings is the first ever of Debussy’s Jeux, made in 1947 in Rome with the orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia.  Here it is.

Antal Doráti deserves a separate entry (as do Monteux and Boult – we’ve written about Karajan more than once) and we’ll try to do it soon.  With Philharmonia Hungarica orchestra Doráti recorded all 104 Haydn symphonies.  Here’s no. 100, “Military.”

This Week in Classical Music: April 4, 2022.  Conductors.  Five famous conductors were born this week: the Frenchman Pierre Monteux on April 4^th of 1875, the German Herbert von Karajan, on April 5^th of 1908, the British Adrian Boult on April 8^th of 1889, the Hungarian-American Antal Doráti on April 9^th of 1906, and the Italian Victor de Sabata on April 10^th of 1892.  Before we delve into their careers, let us make a non-musical comment: conductors seem to live a long life!  Of this group, Boult lived the longest, almost 94 years, de Sabata – the shortest, 75 years.  On average, they lived 84 years.  Do you know what the life expectancy at birth was around the time when our conductors were born?  An astonishingly short 41 years!  One could reasonably respond that at that time the child mortality rate was very high, and once one made it past the childhood, he (all our conductors are male) could expect to live a fairly long life.  In addition, we have a rather specific selection – conductors – and one doesn’t become a conductor until later in their life, as they all start as pianists, violinists, etc.  This is very true, so let’s see what the life expectancy was for a 30-year-old (by that age all our conductors had already chosen their careers) at around 1920.  The easily accessed demographics tables tell us it was 37 years, which makes the lifespan of an average person who was born around 1894 and lived at least into his 30s about 67 years.  That’s much less than the 84 years that our conductors lived on average.  And of course, this group is not exceptional: we recently wrote about Herbert Blomstedt who performs, magnificently, at the age of 94.  One of our favorite conductors, Bernard Haitink, died at 92 and worked almost to the end and there are many more examples.  We have no idea why it is so, and unfortunately, it’s no help to the rest of us.

Of the group, Karajan clearly is the most famous (we wrote a two-part entry about him a couple year ago, here and here) and Victor de Sabata the least so.  So, here’s his story, in brief.  De Sabata was born in Triest, an important city in Austria-Hungary, now Trieste in Italy.  He started playing the piano at the age of four, at the age of eight his family moved to Milan and he entered the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory there.  He studied the piano, the violin (he excelled in both instruments) and composition and graduated cum laude.  After graduating, he concentrated on composing (his opera Il macigno was staged in La Scala in 1917) but then, being influenced by Arturo Toscanini, Sabata turned to conducting.  He was appointed the conductor of the Monte Carlo Opera in 1918, and while there, got engaged with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, playing the symphonic repertoire.  In 1930, Sabata succeeded Toscanini as the principal conductor of La Scala and stayed in that position for 20 years.  Toscanini and Sabata were friendly for years but then fell out, one of the reasons being that Sabata became rather close to Mussolini, even playing at Villa Torlonia, Mussolini’s residence.  Toscanini, on the other hand, was a vehement opponent of the dictator and emigrated from Italy in 1939.  That same year de Sabata conducted Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival.  He also conducted the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras, the premier orchestras of the Nazi regime, and befriended the young party member, Herbert von Karajan.  At the end of WWII, de Sabata helped Karajan move to Italy. 

We’ll continue with de Sabata and other conductors next week, in the meantime here’s Prelude to Act I and Isolde's Death from Tristan und Isolde, recorded live years later, in 1951.  Eileen Farrell is Isolde, Victor de Sabata conducts the New York Philharmonic.

This Week in Classical Music: March 21, 2022.  Catching Up: Haydn and more.  Last week  we celebrated Bach’s anniversary and didn’t have neither time nor space to even acknowledge several prominent composers and musicians; this week there are more, and the first one on our list is Franz Joseph Haydn, who was born on March 31^st of 1732 in Rohrau, Austria.  We love Haydn, have written about him on many occasions (here) and feel that he’s somewhat underappreciated these days.  Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, some of supreme quality, he is considered the father of the string quartet, and we’ll go on a limb and say that some of Haydn’s piano sonatas are better than any ever written by Mozart.  You can judge for yourself: here’s his sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:52, written in 1794, performed by Alfred Brendel.  And here is the same sonata but in Glenn Gould’s rather idiosyncratic interpretation.  It runs about 5 minutes faster than Brendel’s; you can also hear Gould singing.

Last week we missed anniversaries of Franz Schreker, who in the first quarter of the 20^th century was, together with Richard Strauss, the most popular opera composer in the German-speaking world (Schreker was born on March 23rd of 1878).  Another famous German-speaking opera composer, of a very different ear, Johann Adolph Hasse, was baptized on March 25^th of 1699 (we don’t know his exact birthday).  In the mid-18^th century, Hasse’s opera seria were widely admired not only by the public but also by composers like Handel.  The great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was born on March 25^th of 1881.  And let’s not forget Pierre Boulez – the French composer, theoreticians, teacher, and conductor was born on March 26^th of 1925.

This week, in addition to Haydn, we have: Sergei Rachmaninov, born on April 1^st of 1873, the Spanish composer of the Renaissance Antonio de Cabezón, born March 30^th of 1510 (here is his Pavana Italiana, performed by the organist Sebastiano Bernocchi); Ferruccio Busoni, born on April 1^st of 1866 and another Italian of a very different era, Alessandro Stradella, on April 3^rd of 1639.  (Stradella’s life story was incredible, you may read about it here).

Among the conductors born this week (Willem Mengelberg, Pierre Monteux) there’s one with a particular interest to us, Christian Thielemann, who will turn 73 on April 1^st.  The reason is that he is rumored to become the Music Director of the Chicago Symphony, as 2023 is when the contract of the current Music Director, Riccardo Muti, expires.  Despite Muti’s great popularity, we think replacing Miti with Thielemann would be an improvement, as the latter is superb in the core German-Austrian repertoire.  Many political considerations come into play with such an important and visible position, and Thielemann has made a number of controversial statements (here’s an article in the Guardian on the subject).  Of course, there are many other candidates in addition to Thielemann; we’ll see how it all plays out.  So let’s conclude with Thielemann conducting Haydn.  Here’s Thielemann with the Staatskapelle Dresden and the choir in the final section of Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, Singt dem Herren, alle Stimmen! (Sing the Lord ye voices all).

This Week in Classical Music: March 21, 2022.  Johann Sebastian Bach.  This is one birthday we cannot miss no matter what:Johann Sebastian Bach was born on this day in 1685.  Last year we played Bach’s Cantata BWV 1, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern(How beautifully the morning star shines), composed soon after Bach was made the Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723.  Number 1 is a quirk of the BWV (Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis) catalogue, which lists Bach’s works by the genre and not in a chronological order: Cantatas come first, with the numbers from 1 to 224, then Motets, which are assigned numbers from 225 to 231, and so on.  BWV 1, composed in 1725, was not Bach’s first cantata, it wasn’t even part of the first cycle of cantatas, which were composed in 1723-24.  Today we’ll turn to BWV 2, Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Oh God, look down from heaven), composed for the second Sunday after Trinity and first performed on June 18^th of 1724.  Even though it has the second BWV number, it was preceded by more than 60 cantatas.  Isn’t it time to create a more reasonable catalogue of Bach’s work?  Whatever the number, it’s a wonderful piece which is performed here by Concentus Musicus Wien under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt. 

We’ll stay with Bach in three more interpretations, all three by pianists who were also born this week.  First, Egon Petri, a German of Dutch descent, he was born on March 23^rd of 1881 in Hannover.  A wonderful musician, he was a student and friend of Ferruccio Busoni, and helped his teacher in editing the 25-volume version of all Bach’s clavier compositions.  And like Busoni, Egon Petri wrote several piano arrangements of Bach’s music.  Here is one of them, the arrangement of Bach’s chorale prelude Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit (I Step Before Thy Throne), BWV 668.  Petri recorded it in 1958.