April 1, 2013.  Busoni and Rachmaninov.  Two composers born this week were also some of the most influential pianists of the 20^th century: Ferruccio Busoni and Sergei Rachmaninov.  Busoni was born on April 1, 1866 in Empoli, Tuscani.  A child prodigy, Busoni first performed publicly at the age of seven.  He studied mostly in Germany, and then taught in Helsinki, Moscow, and Berlin, where he eventually settled and lived for the rest of his life (but for an interruption during the Great War).  In addition to being a piano virtuoso, Busoni had many students who became famous pianists and had many students of their own.  For example, Busoni’s favorite pupil, the brilliant Egon Petri, was in turn a teacher of Earl Wild, John Ogden – and Victor Borge, among many others.  A very different kind of pianist, Alexander Brailowsky, who became famous for his interpretations of Chopin’s music, was also a pupil.  Elena Gnessin studied with Busoni for a year while he taught at the Moscow conservatory, and then went on to establish a music school, which eventually became the Gnessin Academy.  Busoni died in 1924, and most of the acoustic recordings that he made during his life are, unfortunately, of rather bad quality.  There are also a number of original piano rolls, but in the opinion of his students, they do not fairly represent his pianism.  Wikipedia quotes the pianist Gunnar Johansen, Egon Petri’s student, who heard Busoni play, stating that the only adequate piano roll recording is that of the Feux follets, the fifth of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes.   Here it is, courtesy of Youtube.

We are much luckier with Sergei Rachmaninov’s recordings.  Rachmaninov, who was born on the same day in 1873, is considered one of the greatest pianists of the modern era.  Just seven years older than Busoni, he lived in an era of much more advanced recording technology.  He made several recordings for Edison Records, and then, in 1920, signed a contract with Victor Talking Machine Company, the predecessor of RCA Victor.  While Busoni never recorded his own music, Rachmaninov played many of his own compositions for RCA: all four piano concertos, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and many piano pieces.  Here is Sergei Rachmaninov playing the first movement, Moderato - Allegro of his Concerto No. 2 in C Minor.  Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting.  This recording was made in April of 1929.

March 25, 2013.  Bartók and Haydn.  Béla Bartók was born on this day in 1881 in a small town in an Austro-Hungarian province of Banat.  The town, Nagyszentmiklós, was heavily Hungarian, but the region reverted to Romania after the First World War.  In 1899 he moved to Budapest to study at the Royal Academy of Music.  In his early years his composing style was influenced by Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy.   His first significant piece was Violin concerto no. 1, composed in 1907-08 but not published till 1959, fourteen years after Bartók’s death.  Three years later came his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle.  Now considered a masterpiece, it was rejected at the time as not fit for the stage.  During a very productive period, which lasted till the beginning of World War II, Bartók wrote two ballets, The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin (the music to the latter, usually performed as an orchestral suite, became one of his most popular pieces), four quartets, two violin sonatas, and such masterpiece as Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936).  By the end of the 1930s the conservative regime of the “regent” Miklós Horthy was siding with the Nazi Germany.  Bartók, strongly anti-Nazi in his political convictions, felt increasingly uncomfortable in Hungary, and in 1940 he left for the US.  He and his wife settled in New York, but the country never became their home (it’s interesting that his former pupil, Fritz Reiner by then was enjoying a flourishing career with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Georg Solti and the pianist Lili Kraus, both his former pupils, had also left Hungary).  The Bartóks were often short on money, and in 1942 Béla fell ill.  Two years later Bartók was diagnosed with leukemia. His friends Joseph Szigeti, a famous violinist, and Fritz Reiner tried to help with commissions.  One of such commissions, from Serge Koussevitzky's Boston Symphony, produced the famous Concerto for Orchestra.  Yehudi Menuhin commissioned a Sonata for Solo Violin.  Bartók died on September 26, 1945, leaving his Third Piano concerto and several other works unfinished.  Here is Concerto For Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti conducting (courtesy of YouTube).

Franz Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 in a village of Rohrau in western Austria.  In addition to string quartets and symphonies, he wrote more than 60 piano sonatas.  We are fortunate to have a large collections of those: Davide Polovineo of Istituto Europeo di Musica undertook a research project into all of Haydn’s piano sonatas and uploaded many of them to Classical Connect.  Here’s Sonata Hob XVI: 20 in C minor; it was composed in 1777 while Haydn was working for the Esterházys.  It’s performed, superbly, by Alfred Brendel.

March 18, 2013.  Mostly Bach.  Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, a town in Thuringia, Germany.  His great Mass in B minor BWV 232 was one of his the last compositions to be completed in 1749 (Bach died a year later).  Bach was a Lutheran, practically all of his sacred music was composed for Lutheran services, so it’s quite a mystery why Bach decided to compose a Mass, a setting for a Catholic liturgy.  The Mass was probably never performed in its entirety till the revival of Bach’s music in the mid-19^th century; it’s not even clear if Bach intended for it to be performed that way, as different parts are scored for different ensembles.  As was so often the case in his career, Bach, who regularly had to compose a predetermined number of pieces on a tight schedule, reused much of his material written earlier.  In this case, he picked Kyrie and Gloria, which he composed in 1733 as the Missa, and included them without a change as the first part of the complete Mass (he also used several sections of the same Missa to compose a cantata, Gloria in excelsis Deo, in 1745).  Some music in the second part, Credo or Symbolum Nicenum, was also written earlier, but some was composed for the complete Mass.  The third part, Sanctus, is a copy of a work written in 1724, and most of the music in Part IV, Osanna, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei was resued from earlier compositions.  Nonetheless, by virtue of Bach’s genius, the complete Mass stands as a unified whole, and one of the greatest achievements in the history of music.   Here’s Kyrie eleison, the very first section of the Mass, and here is Sanctus, Part III, which consists of only one section, and Osanna in excelsis Deo, the first section of part IV, titled Osanna, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei.  They are performed by the Münchener Bach Orchester & Chor, Karl Richter conducting.

Georg Philipp Telemann, Bach’s friend and the godfather of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, was born on March 14, 1681 in Magdeburg.  One of the most prolific composers (he penned around 3000 pieces) Telemann’s legacy presents a striking example of changing fortunes.  During his life he was considered a major composer, popular not just in Germany but abroad and favorably compared to J. S. Bach.  Then by the 19^th century his reputation sunk to such a degree that Bach’s biographers used Telemann’s name as an example of inferior composers of the time (turns out that some of the work attributed to Bach was actually written by Telemann).  Of course many of the 3000 pieces Telemann wrote were mediocre, but that’s not how talents are judged.  Here’s his superb cantata, Allein Gott in der Höh sei Her, which should put to rest all speculations about Telemann’s gifts.  Performers are: Maurice André, trumpet, Barry McDaniel, bass, Chorale Philippe Caillard, Chamber Orchestra of Saarland Radio, Karl Ristenpart conducting.

March 11, 2013.  Van Cliburn may have been more of a pianist than a musician, and a cultural phenomenon above all, but he affected the lives of millions of people, and that alone has secured him a unique place in the musical Pantheon.  His recordings of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Rachmaninov’s Third are among the very finest; and even though his name won’t be mentioned in the same breath as Rubinstein, Richter, Horowitz, Michelangeli or Brendel’s, his death on February 27, 2013 of bone cancer was an event that made the front pages of all the major newspapers and news channels around the world.

When Cliburn came to Moscow in the spring of 1958, he was an acknowledged talent with a sputtering career.  He studied with Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard, receiving a diploma in 1954.  That year he won the prestigious Leventritt competition, which earned him an appearance at the Carnegie Hall.  But the mid-1950s also witnessed the ascent of an extraordinary group of young American pianists: Leon Fleisher, Byron Janis, Daniel Pollack, John Browning, Gary Graffman.  And of course Arthur Rubinstein, though in his mid-60s, was still playing exceptionally well (Vladimir Horowitz was on one of his famous hiatus).  All in all, a difficult time to start a major career.  It was Rosina Lhévinne who suggested that her former pupil enter the first international Tchaikovsky competition.  Ms. Lhévinne graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with the Gold Medal, and so did her future husband Josef; both studied with Vasily Safonov.  They emigrated from Russia before the First World War and eventually settled in New York.  In America, Josef Lhévinne, who by all accounts possessed a prodigious technique, had a small career as a concert pianist, but preferred to teach at the Juilliard.  Rosina worked as his assistant, and took over his class after Josef‘s death.  It became one of the most celebrated in the history of Juilliard.

As Cliburn later said in one of his interviews, he thought his prospects going to the Tchaikovsky competition were not very good, as he expected a Soviet pianist to win.  So did the Soviet musical establishment.  In a country where classical music occupied a very special place, both socially and politically, and successful musicians were feted by the State, the first international competition was an event of great magnitude.   Its results were not to be taken lightly.  The country was represented by several established, first-rate pianists, Lev Vlasenko and Naum Shtarkman among them (Shtarkman was already 30, older than the maximum allowed age, but organizers let him participate nonetheless).  Cliburn played well during the first round and was admitted to the second; word about the talented American with Russian musical roots started spreading around Moscow. 

He played his second round program, which included Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49 and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no. 12, brilliantly.  Sviatoslav Richter, a member of the piano jury, gave Cliburn 25 points, the highest mark.  (The jury itself was spectacular: Emil Gilels was the Chairman, and among the members were Henrich Neuhaus, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Lev Oborin, and Carlo Zecchi).  By the third, and final round, Cliburn was the clear favorite not only of the jury but of the public as well.  To appreciate the excitement the Competition generated in Moscow, one has to remember the atmosphere of 1958.  It was just five years since Stalin’s death.  The Russian society, shut down behind the Curtain and traumatized by the terror of the previous 40 years, was opening up, just a bit, during Khrushchev’s “thaw.”  People were yearning for new things, and the gangly, 6-foot-4, smiling and irresistibly charming American, who for an average Muscovite looked like an alien, perfectly personified these desires.

The final round was a triumph.  The requisite Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov’s Third were spectacular.  When Cliburn finished, the public was on its feet, screaming “winner, winner.” In a highly unusual move, Gilels, the jury chairman, went backstage to congratulate him.  Richter called him a genius, adding that he does not use the term lightly.  Giving the first prize to an American required Khrushchev’s consent, but the premier, charmed as everybody else, approved.  The post-competition concerts in Leningrad and again in Moscow were immensely successful.  In the US the win also generated tremendous enthusiasm.  Just one year earlier, the US was stunned when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, thus undermining the idea of American technological superiority, and here was a young Texan, who beat the Russians in the cultural field, probably the only area in which the American psyche was still somewhat unsure of itself.  New York welcomed Cliburn with a ticker-tape parade, an event unimaginable these days.  Time magazine featured his photo with the caption: “The Texan who conquered Russia.”  He made a recording of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano concerto with Kirill Kondrashin for RCA, and it sold more than one million copies, eventually going triple-platinum (apparently, still a record for a recording of a concerto).  He went on tour of major American concert halls.  But as it turned out the years 1958 and ’59 were the peak of his career.  The public, and Sol Hurok, his impresario, wanted him to play the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov concertos over and over, and Cliburn had to oblige.  In his recitals, Cliburn attempted to expand the repertory but was met with criticism.  He went back to Moscow in 1960 and 1962; the general public still adored him, but some critics were less than satisfied.  The consensus was that while he played some pieces extremely well, (Prokofiev’s Third Piano concerto was one of them) other things worked less successfully, Beethoven in particular.  His concert schedule became less active, and by 1978 he dropped off the concert scene.

In the end, it doesn’t matter all that much.  Cliburn left us several wonderful recordings, conquered Russia and changed the history of two countries.  Here’s the historical 1958 recording of the Tachikovsky First piano concerto in B-flat minor.  Van Clibrun, Kirill Kondrashin, RCA Symphony orchestra.

March 4, 2013.  Vivaldi, Ravel, Gesualdo.  Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice on March 4, 1678.  One of the greatest and most influential of the  Baroque composers, these days he’s mostly known for the ubiquitous set of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons.  The prolific Vivaldi, who was also a virtuoso violinist, did write a large number of concertos (by some counts more than 500) for different instruments, most for violin, but also for cello, viola d’amore, and the winds, oboe, flute, recorder, and other.  But Vivaldi also wrote around 50 operas, which in his days were very popular.  In the 18^th century, Vivaldi’s influence spread all over Italy, France, and Germany (Bach transcribed many of his concertos) but soon after his death in 1741 his popularity started waning.  Many of his manuscripts were lost, and by the end of the 19^th century his music was rarely performed.  It’s interesting that Italian fascism was one of the reasons for the rediscovery of Vivaldi:  the search for “national roots” in the 1920s and ‘30s led the composer Alferdo Casella, and also Ezra Pound and his mistress Olga Rudge to his music.  In 1939 Casella organized a “Vivaldi Week,” which became a milestone; Vivaldi’s music has remained popular ever since.

For many years Vivaldi worked as an impresario, staging his own operas and also those by his fellow Venetians, for example Albinoni and Galuppi.  In the second half of the 20^th century Vivaldi’s operas also saw a revival, even if not to the same degree as his orchestral music.  Here’s an aria from Farnace, at one time one of his most popular operas, which was premiered in 1727 at the Teatro Sant'Angelo.  The young French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky is in the title role.  Ensemble Matheus is conducted by it’s founder Jean-Christophe Spinosi.  And here is the first aria from Vivaldi motet Nulla in mundo pax sincera.  The soprano is Magda Kalmár, with Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Sándor Frigyes conducting.

The ever-popular Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875.  Here’s La vallée des cloches ("The Valley of Bells") from his piano suite Miroirs (Reflections).  The suite was written between 1904 and 1905 and dedicated to Les Apaches, a group of French artists and musicians.  Ravel was one of them, as was the pianist who premiered Miroirs, Ravel’s good friend Ricardo Viñes.  You’ll hear it in the performance by the Israeli-born pianist Ruti Abramovitch.

Carlo Gesualdo, the prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was one of the most unusual composers in the history of music.  It’s hard to beat the description given to him by Wikipedia: “an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer.”  Gesualdo was born on March 8, 1566 in Venosa, in what is now the southern province of Basilicata, then part of the Kingdom on Naples.  In 1586 he married his first cousin, Maria d’Avalos, who was several years older than Carlo and already twice-widowed.  Two years later Maria began an affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria.  On October 16, 1590, at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples, Gesualdo caught his wife and the duke in flagrante and stabbed both of them to death.  That being a crime of passion, Gesualdo was not prosecuted, even though the story was widely reported.  The famous poet Torquato Tasso, Gesualdo’s friend until the murder, wrote several sonnets eulogizing the lovers.  This episode didn’t prevent Gesualdo from marrying Leonora d'Este, a niece of Duke of Ferrara, in 1596.  Gesualdo composed five books of madrigals, music for the Passion, and some instrumental pieces.  His music was highly unorthodox, expressive and chromatic to an unusual extent.  Even today its modulations prick up listeners’ ears.  You can hear it in his setting of O Vos Omnes, performed by the Cambridge Singers, John Rutter conducting (here) or in the madrigal Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (I die, alas, in my suffering) performed by the Deller consort (here).

We mourn the passing of Van Cliburn, who died on February 27 of bone cancer.  We’ll dedicate the next entry to this phenomenal pianist.

February 25, 2013.  Rossini, Chopin, Smetana.  Three composers were born this week, Gioachino Rossini, Frédéric Chopin and Bedřich Smetana, Rossini on February 29, 1792, Chopin on March 1, 1810 (there is some confusion regarding the date: the record in the parish register says February 22, but it was entered a couple months after Chopin’s birth, and the family always celebrated his birthday on March 1), and Smetana on March 2, 1824.  We’ve written about Rossini before, and Chopin doesn’t need any introductions: he remains one of the most popular composers both with performers (we have more than 300 recordings of his works) and listeners.  So in lieu of commemorations, here’s Rossini’s overture to the opera La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie).  According to Rossini himself, it was written on the day of the performance, on May 31, 1817 in Milan, with Rossini locked in a room, throwing pages of completed music through the window for the copyists.  If true, we have to acknowledge the professionalism of the musicians of La Scala orchestra, who were able to perform the Overture later that evening site unseen.  In this recording it is performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado conducting.  As for Chopin, here’s Bolero Op 19 from 1833, one of his less frequently performed pieces.  Lara Downes is at the piano.

Bedřich Smetana, the "father of Czech music," was born in a small picturesque town of Litomyšl not far from Prague, in Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  German was the official language of Bohemia, and Czech music, as such, practically didn’t exist (Josef Mysliveček, 1737 – 1781, was born in Prague but wrote Italian opera seria and classical symphonies and spent most of his productive years in Italy.  Anton Reicha, 1770 – 1836, was also born in Prague, but lived mostly in Vienna, eventually settling in Paris and becoming a French citizen).  At the age of 15, Bedřich was sent to Pague, to the Academic Grammar school.  He didn’t fit in there, disliked the school and skipped many classes; instead he attended concerts, operas and even joined an amateur string quartet for which he composed several pieces.  He heard Franz Liszt, then at the height of his pianist career, play recitals, and decided that he should become a professional musician (later he and Liszt became close).  When his father learned about Bedřich’s truancy, he removed him from the city and placed him in the care of his uncle.  Four years later, 19-year old Smetana won his father's approval of his career choice and once again departed for Prague.  He recognized the need for formal musical training and took theory and composition lessons with Josef Proksch, then the head of the Prague Music Institute.  In the meantime, he earned some money teaching music to the children of a local nobleman.   In 1848, the year revolutions swept over Europe, Smetana took part in the uprising aimed to end the rule of the Hapsburgs and afford more autonomy for the Czech lands.  The rebellion was put down, but luckily Smetana avoided imprisonment. 

While Smetana’s earliest compositions were written in 1840, his most accomplished music dates from the 1860s.  In 1861, the Habsburg administrations, in an attempt to address the rising nationalism, laid out plans for the Provisional Theater dedicated to Czech opera.  Smetana saw it as a chance to create a new genre, following the example of the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka.  For that he had to learn the Czech language: the first language of the majority of educated Czechs of the time, and Smetana’s, was German.  He composed the first opera, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, in 1862-63, and based the story in 13th century Prague.  It was premiered at the Provisional Theatre in 1866.  What then followed was Smetana’s most successful opera, The Bartered Bride.  It premiered also 1866, and also at the Provisional Theatre.  By then Smetana was appointed the principal conductor of the Theatre.  Smetana wrote seven more operas, a large number of piano compositions, some wonderful songs, and several orchestral pieces.  Of these Má vlast, a set of six symphonic poems, is the best known.  The cycle was written between 1874 and 1879.  Here is the second poem, Vltava, sometimes labeled by the German name of the river, Die Moldau, in the performance by the Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conducting (courtesy of YouTube.).  According to the composer, the music describes the flow of this beautiful river from its spring in the hills of northern Bohemia, through Prague and other towns, and to the point where it joins the Elbe. 

In his late years Smetana suffered from deafness (he losthis hearing completely in 1874) and generally poor health, which didn’t stop him from composing some of his best music.  At the end of his life, his mental health deteriorated as well.  Smetana died in Prague on May 12, 1884 in a lunatic asylum.  His funeral became a national event.