September 30, 2013.  Paul Dukas and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.  The French composer Paul Dukas is know mostly for his orchestral poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but it’s such a lovely piece that it alone places Dukas’ name alongside the best French composers of the late 19^th century.  Paul Dukas was born in Paris on October 1, 1865 into a well to do Jewish family; his father was a banker.  Apparently Dukas didn’t show any special musical talents till the age of 14, when, while recovering from an illness, he started composing.  Two years later he entered the Paris Conservatory, where he met Claude Debussy; the two became close friends.  In 1888, Dukas failed to win the prestigious Prix du Rome (Debussy had won it four years earlier) and disappointed, left the Conservatory.  After a stint in the army he started his second career as a music critic.  As a composer, Dukas was very self-conscious and, if dissatisfied, would destroy his own music: the list of pieces he rejected is almost as long as those that he published.  His first big composition, Symphony in C Major, was premiered in1896 to mixed reviews.  Then, a year later, he wrote The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a symphonic piece inspired by Goethe’s poem by the same name.  The poem describes an apprentice of an old sorcerer, who, when left alone, performs small magic, making a broom fetch water for him.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to break the spell and almost drowns, but the old sorcerer arrives just in time to restore order.  The work is programmatic and almost literally descriptive in the way it follows the development of Goethe’s poem (in this it reminds one of Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, with it’s Till’s theme and the representation of people and events).  The music immediately became very popular, eclipsing everything else Dukas wrote either before or after.  In 1899 he composed a rather successful opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue.  He continued writing music till 1912, after which he turned to teaching.  Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen, Manuel Ponce, Joaquín Rodrigo were among his students.  Dukas died in 1935 aged 69.  You can hear The Sorcerer's Apprentice in the recording by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Jesús López-Cobos conducting.

We’ll stay in France for a little longer to salute another composer who lived two centuries earlier: Marc-Antoine Charpentier (who should not be confused with another Charpentier, Gustave, a contemporary of Dukas and the author of the opera Louise).  We don’t know his date of birth, except that it was in 1643.  Marc-Antoine was probably born in Paris, got a good education and spent some time in Rome, studying with the then-famous Roman composer Giacomo Carissimi.  Upon returning to Paris he found employment at the court of Mademoiselle Guise, the daughter of Charles, Duke of Guise and a cousin of King Louis XIV.  Charpentier lived and worked in Hôtel de Guise for the next 17 years.  He wrote music to the plays of Molière and Corneille and had his operas staged, even though Jean Baptiste Lully had a virtual monopoly over theatrical music.  In 1679 Charpentier became the court composer for Grand Dauphin, the eldest son of the King and in 1698 he was appointed maître de musique for the Royal choir of Sainte-Chapelle.   Charpentier died on February 24, 1704 in Sainte-Chapelle and was buried in the cemetery behind the choir.  Here is one of the most famous of Charpentier’s compositions, the motet Te Deum.  Charpentier wrote several settings, all between 1688 and 1698.  This performance is by the Orchestra and the chorus of Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia, Myung-Whun Chung conducting.

September 23, 2013.  Jean-Philippe Rameau and Dmitry Shostakovich.  Two composers, both major figures during their lifetime, were born this week.  One dominated the music scene during the reign of French King Louis XV, another was considered, officially (if not always), the greatest composer of the Soviet Union.  That’s where the parallel ends however; it’s not just that two and a half centuries separate them: Rameau lived during the most brilliant period of French history; Shostakovich’s time was one of the most oppressive in all of the history of Russia.  Jean-Philippe Rameau was born on September 25, 1683, when Louis XIV the Sun King ruled France, but he didn’t come to age as a composer till the 1720s; by then Louis XIV’s son was  king.  Rameau was approaching 50 when he wrote his first opera, but once he started, he wouldn’t write anything else.  He wrote more than 30, and in toto they represent a major development in music history of the 18^th century.  His very first opera Hippolyte et Aricie, written in 1733, was premiered at the Palais-Royal, his second, Samson, had none other than Voltaire as the librettist.  (Unfortunately, it was never performed, even though it went into rehearsals, and its score has been lost).  The third opera, Les Indes galantes, was a big success.  A curious historical anecdote relates to this opera.  In 1725 the French settlers convinced several Indian chiefs, Agapit Chicagou among them, to go to Paris.  Many Indian chiefs decided to travel to France, but as they were about to board the ship, it sunk; after the accident, most of the chiefs returned home.  Apparently the ones who went had a good time in Paris and eventually were brought to Fontainebleau, were they met with the King.  The chiefs pledged allegiance to the French crown, and later performed ritual dances at the Theatre Italien.  Rameau was inspired by this event; the fourth act (entrées) of Les Indes galantes is called Les Sauvages and tells the story of a daughter of an Indian chief being pursued by a Spaniard and a Frenchmen.

Rameau wrote his 13th opera, Zaïs, in 1748.  The highly imaginative Overture to the opera depicts the emergence of the four elements,Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, out of chaos.  You can hear it in the performance by Les Musiciens Du Louvre under the direction of Marc Minkowski.

Dmitry Shostakovich, who was also born on September 25, 1906 in St.-Petersburg, Russia, is known mostly as a symphonist.  This reputation is totally deserved: Shostakovich wrote 15 symphonies, many of them are among the most important music of the 20^th century.  He also wrote 15 string quartets, and often these were much more personal, less affected by the events of the day.  In 1936 his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which initially was hailed by the Soviet propaganda machine as a “result of the correct policy of the Party,” fell out of favor.  The opera was denounced in Pravda.  The same year, in a frightening episode, Shostakovich went to the Bolshoi Theater for a performance of Lady Macbeth only to find Stalin and members of the Politburo in the main box.  To his horror they cringed as the music got loud and laughed during the love scenes.  Shostakovich was “white as a sheet” when he took bows at the end of the opera.   The Great Terror was gaining speed; many of Shostakovich’s friends, including his major patron, Marshal Tukhachevsky, were arrested and shot.  His Fourth symphony was banned (officially, Shostakovich withdrew it voluntarily).  Scared for his life, he wrote the Fifth Symphony in a much more conservative manner, and it was a great success, both with the public and the officials.  This restored Shostakovich’s reputation: the official line was that he learned from his mistakes.  That was when Shostakovich composed his first string quartet: the more chamber setting allowed him to experiment with the musical ideas he would not dare to expose in a symphony.  You can hear the Quartet no. 1 in C Major op. 49 in the performance by the Borodin Quartet, a great ensemble with which Shostakovich collaborated for many years.  This recording was made in 1978.

September 16, 2013.  Catching up: recent anniversaries. We’ve missed several significant musical anniversaries during the past two weeks and we’re rectifying the omissions, however briefly, this week.  Antonin Dvořák was born on September 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves, a village near Prague, then part of the Austrian Empire.  Dvořák studied at the organ school in Prague and later, starting in 1862, played the viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra (in 1866 Bedřich Smetana became the orchestra’s chief conductor).  Around that time Dvořák started seriously composing – his first two quartets were written in 1861 and ’62.  In 1874, Dvořák submitted 15 works, including two symphonies, to the jury of the Austrian State Stipendium.  Johannes Brahms and Eduard Hanslick were on the board (we mentioned Hanslick’s name recently when we wrote about Anton Bruckner – he was Brahms’s friend and a major Bruckner detractor).  The influential Brahms was very impressed with the talent of the young Czech composer and Dvořák received the stipend.  After that, Brahms became a supporter, and introduced Dvořák to Fritz Simrock, the owner of one of the largest publishing houses in Europe.  In 1877 Simrock commissioned a piece, Symphonic Variations, which eventually became one of Dvořák’s most popular compositions (the 1877 Prague premier was not very well received, but Hanslick wrote to Dvořák that Brahms was very enthusiastic.  Ten years later Hans Fisher conducted it in Vienna to a great success).  You can hear it in the performance by the London Symphony Orchestra, the late Sir Colin Davis conducting.

In 1880s Dvořák became known internationally, with Hans Richter conducting his work in London and Vienna.  In 1892 Dvořák was invited to New York to head The National Conservatory of Music of America.  He stayed there three years, during which he wrote such things as  Symphony No.9, "From the New World", and the American quartet in F Major.  He also wrote a piano cycle of eight short pieces called Humoresques.  The seventh piece, in G flat Major, became extremely popular.  Here it is, from one of our recent uploads, in the performance by the Czech pianist Martin Kasik.

Darius Milhaud was born on September 4, 1892 in Marseille.  He went to study at the Paris Conservatory, where he met Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre.  From 1917 to 1919 Milhaud lived in Brazil, serving as the secretary to Paul Claudel, the famous poet and playwright, who at the time was the French ambassador to Brazil.  While there, Milhaud became influenced by Brazilian folk music.  One of the tunes he liked, an old tango, was called The Ox on the Roof.  Milhaud used it (and many other folk tunes) in his ballet, which he named after the tango, Le boeuf sur le toit, (The Ox on the Roof in French).  It was premiered in February of 1920 to great success.  By then Milhaud, Honegger and Tailleferre linked with Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric and Louis Durey, and became known as Les Six (The Six).  Jean Cocteau, the poet, playwrite and filmmaker, joined the group, and all of them started frquenting a bar called La gaya. The music to Le boeuf sur le toit became very popular, and Milhaud, with Georges Auric, and Arthur Rubinstein often played a six-handed version of it on the piano in the bar.   In 1920 the bar moved to a larger space and the owner gave it the name Le boeuf sur le toit.  It became one of the most famous gathering places in all of Paris: its patrons included the veritable who-is-who of the French cultural avant-garde (it still exist, but as a posh restaurant and with no Bohemians in attendance).  Here’s the complete Le boeuf sur le toit in the performance by Orchestre de l’Opera de Lyon, Kent Nagano conducting.

September 9, 2013.  Embarrassment of the riches: Purcell, Schoenberg, Frescobaldi, Dvořák, Milhaud, Cherubini, Pärt.  Last week we wrote about Anton Bruckner, but several other wonderful composers were born the same week: Antonin Dvořák and Darius Milhaud, and also Anton Diabelli, Johann Christian Bach, and Amy Beach.  And this week continues with several more first-rate talents: from Girolamo Frescobaldi, who worked in the beginning of the 17^th century to Henry Purcell at the end of it; to another Englishman, William Boyce, probably the most important English composer of the 18^th century; to Clara Schumann, Robert’s wife and Brahms’s friend, a great pianist and important figure on the German music scene; to the revolutionary Arnold Schoenberg in the first half of the 20^th century and finally to the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt at the end of it.  We’ve written about most of these composers in the past and will commemorate them later in the year, but today we’ll mark Henry Purcell’s birthday, which is commonly presumed to fall on September 10, 1659.  Purcell was born in Westminster, London.  His father, Henry Purcell Sr., was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where singers and musicians were trained to entertain the royal family.  Several other members of the Purcell family were musicians, including Henry’s uncle and his younger brother, who also became a composer.  Purcell’s father died when Henry was five, and his uncle became his guardian.  He helped Henry to enter Chapel Royal as a chorister.  When his voice broke, he found employment as an assistant to the Keeper of King’s instruments.  Later, he tuned the organ of the Westminster Abbey.  Purcell started composing at the age of nine.  When he was 18, he succeeded Matthew Locke, a composer and music theorist, as the Composer of Charles II’s string orchestra.  Two years later he was appointed the organist of the Westminster Abbey, after the composer and Purcell’s teacher John Blow resigned in favor of his pupil.  Purcell’s life was short but it coincided with the turbulent period in England’s history at the end of the 17^th century: as a youth he started serving King Charles II, then, after Charles’s death in 1685, he continued with King James II.  He lived (and kept his positions) through the Glorious Revolution, and then worked for William III and his wife, Queen Mary II.  Purcell died in 1695 at the age of 36 at the height of his career. 

Purcell was a prolific composer: he wrote sacred music, songs, theater music, operas and the so-called semi-operas, in which music was mixed with dance and spoken word (English opera had to wait for Handel for its full development).  Among his most famous compositions are the opera Dido and Aeneas (1688), and semi-operas The Fairy-Queen (1692) and The Indian Queen (1695).  Here’s the famous aria When I Am Laid In Earth from Dido and Aeneas.  It’s sung by the incomparable Jessye Norman.  Purcell also wrote a number of instrumental compositions, many of them in the form of sonatas for two violin, bass viol (viola da gamba) and organ or harpsichord.  On December 28th of 1694 Queen Mary died.  The winter was very cold, and her embalmed body lay in state in Whitehall till March 5, when she was buried at Westminster Abbey.  Purcell wrote Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, one of his most popular pieces.  Stanley Kubrick used part of it to great effect in his movie Clockwork Orange (the theme starts at the 11^th minute of the recording).  Eight months later Purcell was dead.  The same Music was played on his funeral.  He was also buried in Westminster Abbey, next to the organ.  You can listen to the complete Music for the Funeral in the performance by The Sixteen, Harry Christophers conducting.

September 2, 2013.  Anton Bruckner.  This week we celebrate one of the most important composers of the 19^th century, Anton Bruckner, who was born on September 4, 1824.  Last year we attempted to give a broad overview of his life; this year we’ll focus on one of his symphonies, no. 5.  Bruckner started working on the symphony in 1875 (he was 51 by then – he wrote his first symphony when he was already 41) and completed it the following year.  Bruckner, who was born not far from Linz, had been living in Vienna and teaching music theory at the Vienna Conservatory.  In 1875 he accepted a similar position at the Vienna University.  In the preceding 10 years he already wrote five symphonies, most of them poorly received (Bruckner was so disheartened by the reception of the Symphony in D minor, which he wrote in 1869, that he refused to give it a number.  It is now known as Symphony no. 0).  Back in the 1860s and ‘70s the musical establishment in Vienna was divided between the devotees of Wagner and followers of Brahms.  Bruckner worshiped Wagner’s music, and for that reason he became an enemy of a very influential critic and Brahms’s supporter Eduard Hanslick.  Bruckner did have his own followers, one of them the young but very talented conductor Arthur Nikisch, who later premiered Bruckner’s Symphony no. 7.  That support came not without considerable drawbacks: some conductors, such as Bruckner’s former pupil Franz Schalk, in an attempt to make his music more accessible to the Viennese public, performed it with numerous cuts and alterations to the scores.  Sometime these changes were made without the composer’s knowledge, other times with the assent of the ever-insecure Bruckner.

 As all Bruckner’s symphonies, no. 5 consists of four movements.  It starts with the pianissimo pizzicato of the slow Introduction, which evolves majestically into several major themes (Symphony no 5 is the only one by Bruckner that begins with a slow movement).  Introduction is formally written in B-flat major, but tonality shifts almost continuously.  Like the first movement, the second one also starts with a pizzicato (and so does the forth movement; for that reason one of the Symphony’s monikers is Pizzicato.  The other common name is Tragic).  The second movement, Adagio, is marked Sehr langsam or "very slow."  The music moves from one thematic material to another, but the general tone of this movement is more lyrical than the mood of the first movement.  The third movement, Scherzo Molto Vivace (very lively) is in D minor.  The tempo of the last movement, Finale is marked as Adagio, the same as of the first movement, and indeed, it has a similarly leisurely opening.  It reuses the theme first heard in the opening movement, but soon evolves into the new material.  The amazing sonic structure that Bruckner builds in the Finale contains some of most interesting music he ever wrote.

The first performance of the symphony was conducted by Franz Schalk in 1894.  Schalk made many cuts and changed some instrumentation, probably without Bruckner’s approval (Bruckner himself was ill and couldn’t attend the performance).  We’ll hear the complete authentic 1878 version (it runs for one hour and 17 minutes) in the performance by Staatskapelle Dresden under the direction of Giuseppe Sinopoli.  Sinopoli, who died of a heart attack in 2001at the age 54, was one a major Brucknerians of the late 20^th century.  You can also listen to the individual movements (just click on their titles).

August 26, 2013.  Arthur Rubinstein plays Chopin’s Polonaise in F-sharp minor.  Shortly after Arthur Rubinstein’s death in December of 1982, WFMT, the classical music radio station in Chicago,  ran a series of programs in which they played recordings made by Rubinstein on different stages of his phenomenal career.  This was one of the most fascinating programming features ever produced by WFMT.  While Rubinstein’s repertoire was broad, many of the recordings were of Chopin; after all, Rubinstein was, without a doubt, the greatest interpreter of Chopin in the 20^th century, and recorded many of his works multiple times, from the late 1920s till well into the 1970s.  Recently, on the same WFMT, we caught a recording of Rubinstein playing Chopin’s Polonaise in F-sharp minor, op. 44.  Rubinstein "owned" this Polonaise, even though it was part of the repertoire of practically every major pianist of the last century (Vladimir Horowitz was another famous interpreter).  We thought that it would be interesting to present recordings of the piece made by Arthur Rubinstein through the years, as it would help us to understand both his mastery and the piece itself.  Thanks to YouTube we found three of these: one from the 30s, another made in the 50s, and the last one – in the 1960s.

The first recording was made in 1935 (hence the relative low quality).  Rubinstein was 48 at the time (he was born in the Polish city of Łódź, which back then belonged to the Russian Empire, on January 28, 1887).  Just three years earlier, in 1932, Rubinstein, a complete natural who never practiced a lot, decided that he needed to work on his technique and withdrew from the concert scene for several month.  He practiced many hours a day, something he had not done either before or after that time..  In this recording he still misses notes but somehow it doesn’t matter (what an innocent time it was: today sound engineers would’ve spliced and diced several takes and made it technically perfect).  At 9 minutes and 25 seconds this is the fastest of the three, and for all its brilliance, nuance, and lyricism of the middle part, probably the least impressive of them.

The second recording was made in 1951.  Rubinstein, at 64, was in his prime.  This recording is much darker than the one he made 16 years earlier and also slower (it runs 10 minutes and 37 seconds).  This Polonaise is known as “Tragic” and that’s how Rubinstein plays it; the repeating figure at the end of the first section sounds practically brutal.  The central section, a mazurka, also sounds more wistful than in the earlier recording.  One of the miraculous qualities of Rubinstein’s playing was the rhythm, very free but absolutely natural, breathing with the development of the piece.  The way he moves the final section forward, stately, almost imperiously, is truly a wonder.  The quality of this recording is, unfortunately, rather poor.  We think that it still is very much worth listening to: piano playing rarely get any better than this.

The third recording was made in 1964 and the quality of the recording is the best of the three.  Rubinstein was 77 but still extremely active.  One can hear some very minor technical problems but as is so often with Rubinstein, they make no difference (one may recall Hans von Bulow’s complaints that the public ignores Liszt’s “fistfuls of wrong notes” while noticing every single one of his).  This is the slowest recording (11 minutes and 15 seconds) but not because of the technical difficulties preventing Rubinstein from playing faster: he needed time to develop a “story.”  This time the story is softer than in ’51, but still terrible, poignant and at times heartbreaking.  This is probably the deepest interpretation, although many listeners may disagree and “vote” for the ’51 recording.

Rubinstein continued to perform and record for another 12 years, giving his last concert in London in May of 1976.  He died on December 20, 1982, aged 95.