This Week in Classical Music: December 15, 2025.  Beethoven.  Tomorrow, December 16^th, is Ludwig van Beethoven’s anniversary, or at least that’s usually assumed, as all we know he was baptized on December 17^th of 1770; at that time in Germany, newborns were customarily baptized within a day.  Till this week, in our library, we had 29 out of 32 published piano sonatas that Beethoven composed during his life (at the age of 12-13, he wrote several piano sonatas, but later in life, he never intended to publish them).  The piano sonata no. 1, op. 2, no. 1, was composed in 1790-92, the last one, no.32, op. 111, thirty years later, in 1821-22.  We think that all of Beethoven’s numbered sonatas are great, even those composed for his students and friends (that’s not to say that we believe everything Beethoven wrote to be great: as all composers, with the possible exception of Mozart, he had his slips).  One of the three sonatas we were missing but now have is the no. 15, op. 28, Pastoral, composed in Vienna in 1801 and dedicated to Joseph von Sonnenfels, an enlightened writer and jurist, and a friend of Mozart’s.  1801 was a difficult time in Beethoven’s life: his deafness was progressing, and he was depressed.  On the other hand, around that time, he fell in love with at least two women: the beautiful Giulietta Guicciardi, his 17-year-old piano student (Beethoven dedicated his “Moonlight” sonata to her; the relationship was platonic), and his nascent relationship with the then still-married Josephine Brunsvik, to whom the “immortal beloved” letter was addressed (or at least that’s a popular assumption).

As for the sonata no. 15, it turns out that it was not a coincidence that we didn’t have this one in the library until now: even though we think it’s one of Beethoven’s best, it is rarely played in concert.  The wonderful Czech pianist Ivan Moravec is superb in it, here.  The vinyl was issued in the US in 1970 by the Connoisseur Society, but we suspect that the recording was made earlier.

As we had some technical issues with the site, we’re late with this entry, and shall make it brief.  Zoltán Kodály, the Hungarian composer, who created a unique method of music education, was born on December 16^th of 1882.  The Soviet composer Rodion Shchedrin, the husband of Maya Plisetskaya, was born in Moscow on December 16^th of 1932.  And finally, Domenico Cimarosa, the Neapolitan composer of numerous operas, of which l matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage) is still quite popular, was born on December 17^th of 1749.

This Week in Classical Music: December 8, 2025.  Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.  Tomorrow, December 9^th, is the 110^th anniversary of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, one of the greatest German sopranos of the 20^th century.  She was born in 1915 and died at age 90 in 2006.  We recently came across her name in Machael Kater’s book, The Twisted Muse.  Its subtitle is Musicians and their music in the Third Reich, and that’s what this book explores: how the Nazis, in their totalitarian state, managed the very vigorous classical music scene, and how the non-Jewish German musicians reacted to it (of the numerous Jewish musicians, most lost their jobs almost immediately, some emigrated, some were later arrested and executed). It’s a wonderful book, and we strongly recommend it.  Besides being a well-documented historical narrative about Germany, its leaders, cultural institutions, and many famous composers, conductors, and instrumentalists, it raises questions about the role of music in society.  According to Kater, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, together with Herbert von Karajan, falls into the category of the young Nazi careerists.  The 17-year-old Schwarzkopf started her music studies at the Hochschule für Musik in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power.  It became apparent very quickly that she was a very gifted singer.  In 1938, she made her debut in Goebbels’ Deutsches Opernhaus (the more prestigious Berlin’s Preussische Staatsoper, now the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, was in the domain of Hermann Göring, the leader, or Ministerpräsident, of Prussia, of which Berlin was the capital).  Wilhelm Rode, one of Hitler’s favorite singers and then the General Director of the Deutsches Opernhaus, took Elisabeth under his wing.  While in school, Schwarzkopf joined the Nazi Student League and became, according to Kater, a section leader of the women’s wing, an influential position.  In 1940, Schwarzkopf joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP), something she would deny after the war (she came clean, if that’s the word, only after persistent questioning by a New York Times journalist in 1983).  In 1942, Schwarzkopf tried to join the more famous Vienna State Opera, where the highly compromised Karl Böhm had recently been made the music director, but Goebbels refused to let her go. It was only in 1944 that Schwarzkopf made several appearances in Vienna.  In 1943-44, she performed for the SS-organized events in occupied Poland.  Schwarzkopf had important patrons within the Nazi music establishment, among them secretaries of the Reich Culture Chamber and Reich Theater Chamber.  Hugo Jury, an SS general and the Gauleiter of Lower Austria, a fervent Nazi who committed suicide on May 8^th of 1945, was her lover. 

After the war, Schwarzkopf was granted Austrian citizenship, joined the Vienna State Opera, befriended (and later married) Walter Legge, a record producer and the founder of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and continued an extremely successful career.  For many years, she lied about her past; the questions about her involvement with the Nazis came much later.  She didn’t go through the interrogation and de-Nazification process, something that happened to many prominent German musicians who were active at that time.  (Compare that to the life of Wilhelm Furtwängler, who was the leading conductor of Nazi Germany, performed for Hitler and at the Nazi events, but never joined the party, never conducted the Nazi anthem, Horst-Wessel-Lied, and helped many Jewish musicians escape the country.  His career was still pretty much derailed.) 

And yet Schwarzkopf, this morally compromised person, became one of the most beloved and celebrated musicians of her generation.  Clearly, she was a supremely talented singer, one of the greatest interpreters of the German Lied, who shone in the operas of Mozart and Richard Strauss, and was one of the best Wagnerian sopranos, but...  Or maybe there are no “buts”?  Either way, on this anniversary, the Schwarzkopf story makes us look at classical music and its place in our world from a different angle. 

This Week in Classical Music: December 1, 2025.  Post-Thanksgiving blues.  This is the holiday season (we hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving), and classical music is not the first thing on people’s minds (but is it ever, now?).  Thankfully, this week is rather scarce of major talent, which allows us to be brief.  Padre Antionio Soler was born on December 3^rd of 1729, in Olot, Catalonia, Spain.  As a boy, he studied music at the Escolanía school of the Monastery of Montserrat.  He was so successful at school that at the age of 17, he was appointed music director at Lleida.  At the age of 23, he moved to the Royal monastery of El Escorial.  Domenico Scarlatti was, by then, the music master to the Queen of Spain (he had lived in Spain for 25 years) and traveled to El Escorial with the royal family.  Soler later called himself Scarlatti’s pupil.  Some years later, Soler became the tutor to Prince Gabriel, a son of King Carlos III of Spain. 

Like Scarlatti, Soler is known mostly for his keyboard sonatas, though we don’t think they’re on par with those of the Italian master.  Nonetheless, some of them are nice.  Here, for example, is one, the keyboard Sonata No. 47 in C Minor.  It’s played on the piano by Mateusz Borowiak. 

Francesco Geminiani, an Italian composer of the late Baroque, was born on December 5^th of 1687, in Lucca.  He was very famous in his lifetime, but was forgotten for centuries, till resurrected, with the rest of the Italian Baroque, in the middle of the 20^th.  Like so many Italians (and Handel), he spent many years in London.  Here’s Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso in E Minor op. 3, no. 3 (it doesn’t sound in E, we think).  Europa Galante is conducted by Fabio Biondi. 

Bernardo Pasquini, another Italian of the Baroque era, lived exactly half a century earlier: he was born on December 7^th of 1637.  If Geminiani was a virtuoso violinist and wrote much of his music for the strings, Pasquini was a harpsichordist and organist, and one of the most important keyboard composers of the era between Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti.  Pasquini moved to Rome in 1650 and was employed as an organist in some of the most important churches of the city, such as San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria in Aracoeli, where he had the title of “organist of the Senate and Roman people.”  He played for Queen Christina, performed with Corelli, and joined the Arcadian Academy together with Alessandro Scarlatti.  Here’s Paquini’s charming Toccata Con Lo Scherzo Del Cucco Per Lo Scozzese.  Roberto Loreggian is playing the organ. 

Also this week: one of the most popular composers of classical music, the Poland’s Henryk Gorecki (born December 6^th of 1933), and Pietro Mascagni of the Cavalleria rusticana fame (born December 7^th of 1863). 

This Week in Classical Music: November 24, 2025.  Lully and Music Criticism.  The holidays are approaching, so we’ll try be brief.  One of the composers born this week is Virgil Thomson.  He had a very colorful life, especially during his Paris years (you can read more here, in our earlier post), and, while a relatively minor composer, he was very important as a music writer.  For 15 years, from 1940 to 1954, his criticism had been published in the New York Herald Tribune; he also wrote several books.  Thomson’s writings were influential and widely read; he supported American composers, and his criticism influenced musical programming in New York, resulting in more frequent performances of works by American and contemporary composers.  This anniversary (Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on November 25^th of 1896) reminded us of a recent article by Matthew Aucoin in the New York Review of Books.  Aucoin is also a composer, young (thirty-five) and talented, and he has a wonderful way with words.  What prompted him to write was the recent changes at the NY Times, which, for the time being, doesn’t have a music critic.  It’s an interesting reversal of roles when a composer writes about music critics.  Aucoin is not as pessimistic about the status of classical music as we are, but maybe it’s the optimism of the age.  The article is worth reading, here (unfortunately, it’s behind a paywall).  

Several important composers were born this week.  Tarquinio Merula, an Italian composer of the early Baroque, was born in Busseto, near Cremona, on November 24^th of 1595.  Merula spent much of his life in Cremona, by then already a center of violin-making (surprisingly, he didn’t write much music for the violin).  In many ways, Merula followed the lead of two great composers: Claudio Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli.  He wrote an opera, numerous madrigals and motets, and keyboard pieces.  Here’s Merula’s “Madrigaletto” Mentre In Sogno, performed by the ensemble Suonare E Cantare.  (And here you can read more about Merula). 

Probably the most important composer born this week is Jean-Baptiste Lully, an Italian who became a founder of the French Baroque.  Lully was born on November 28^th (or 29^th) of 1632 in Florence and brought to France as a boy by a French noble, mostly so that his niece could practice her Italian.  We’ve written about Lully many times; here’s a detailed entry. 

Two Russians were born this week, two Sergeis: Taneyev and Lyapunov, the former in Vladimir, on November 25^th of 1856, the latter – four years later, in Yaroslavl, on November 30^th of 1859.  Taneyev was part of Russia’s cultural elite of the late 19^th – early 20^th centuries, an intellectual and cosmopolitan; he was also very close to Tchaikovsky.  Tchaikovsky trusted Taneyev’s taste in and understanding of music more than any other critic’s but also often feared Taneyev’s pronouncement, as Taneyev was blunt and unsparing.  Still, their friendship survived those moments; they were close till Tchaikovsky’s death.  Taneyev wrote several symphonies, ten quartets, and an opera.  His music is often performed in Russia.  

Lyapunov studied with Taneyev in the Moscow Conservatory but turned to more “national” material.  An excellent pianist, Lyapunov wrote many pieces for the piano, some of them exceptionally difficult.  After the 1917 Revolution, Lyapunov emigrated to France and died in Paris in 1924.  One suspects that had Taneyev lived long enough, he would have done the same (he died in 1915). 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

This Week in Classical Music: November 17, 2025.  Catching up on the Pianists.  While we were traveling, we missed a lot of composers’ anniversaries, and last week we caught up with most of them.  In the meantime, the pianists went unattended, among whom were several outstanding masters.  We’ll try to give them their dues this week. 

György Cziffra, one of the greatest virtuosos of the 20^th century, was born into a poor Romani (Gipsy) family in Budapest on November 5^th of 1921.  He learned the piano by watching his sister play; later, as a boy, he earned money in bars by improvising on the tunes customers suggested.  He entered the Franz Liszt Academy at the age of nine, becoming the youngest student in the Academy’s history.  Ernst von (Ernő) Dohnányi was one of his teachers.  Starting in 1937, he played concerts in Hungary and other European countries.  During WWII, Cziffra was conscripted and sent to the Eastern Front.  There, he was captured by the Soviet partisans and held in captivity till 1947.  Upon returning to Hungary, he earned his living playing jazz. 

In 1950, he attempted to escape from Communist Hungary but was captured and imprisoned in a hard labor camp.  The harsh treatment he experienced in the camp damaged his hands; it took him a long time to recover.  Still, he went on to win the 1955 Ferenc Liszt Competition.  In 1956, during the uprising against the Hungarian Stalinist regime, which would eventually be toppled by the invading Soviet army, Cziffra, his wife and son managed to escape to Austria.  He gave a series of very successful concerts in Vienna, and soon after was invited to Paris.  There, he was greeted by fellow musicians, among them the pianist Marguerite Long and composers Marcel Dupré and Arthur Honegger.  Charles de Gaulle invited him to the Élysée Palace. 

Cziffra had a very successful career in France, but in 1981, his son, György Cziffra Jr., a successful conductor, died in an apartment fire. Cziffra was severely affected by his son’s death; his concerts became infrequent (after the event, he never played with an orchestra) and he stopped recording.   György Cziffra died on January 15^th of 1994, in Paris.  Here, in a live recording from 1959, is Cziffra’s performance of Liszt’s 1863 Concert Etude Gnomenreigen, from the opus S. 145. 

A wonderful French pianist Marguerite Long, whom we mentioned above, was born on November 13^th of 1874 Nîmes, in the south of France.  During her long life, she was friends with many of her contemporary French composers, including Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Milhaud and others, who highly valued her interpretations of their music.  For a while, Long worked as Debussy’s assistant.  In 1943, Long and her friend, the violinist Jacques Thibaud, established the Concours Marguerite Long - Jacques Thibaud, which became one of the most important classical music competitions.  Here, Marguerite Long plays Fauré's Nocturne no. 4.  It was recorded in 1937. 

Even though we don’t have the time to write about other pianists, here’s a short list.  Walter Gieseking, the German pianist who had an exceptional affinity for French music, was born in France on November 15^th of 1895.  Ivan Moravec, a great Czech pianist and one of the best interpreters of the music of Chopin, was born in Prague on November 9^th of 1930.  Daniel Barenboim, a pianist, conductor, and overall musical leader, was born in Buenos Aires on November 15^th of 1942.  Jorge Bolet, a Cuban-American pianist who, like Cziffra, was a major virtuoso and an exceptional interpreter of the music of Liszt, was born in Havana on November 15^th of 1914.  Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a Polish pianist, composer, and statesman, was born in a small village of Kurilovka, then part of the Russian Empire, on November 18^th of 1860.  And finally, Yakov Zak was also born in the Russian Empire, in Odessa, now Odesa, Ukraine, on November 20^th of 1913.  He won the 1937 Chopin piano competition. Zak was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory for almost 30 years, becoming the Dean of the Piano Department in 1965. 

This Week in Classical Music: November 10, 2025.  Andalusia and catching up.  So, who and what did we miss while traveling in Andalusia?  It seems that the previous two weeks were rather lean.  Niccolo Paganini, considered the greatest violinist of the 19^th century, was born on October 27^th of 1782, but he wasn’t a great composer (though some of his tunes were wonderful).   Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, born in Vienna on November 2^nd of 1739, composed in the Classical style, was friends with all the greats of the era, Gluck first, then Haydn and Mozart, and was an excellent violinist (he wrote 18 violin concertos and premiered them all).  He also composed several comic operas, Der Apotheker und der Doktor being the most popular.  Even though he wrote 120 symphonies, very few are performed these days: his music is mostly forgotten, and, we think, for a good reason: it’s pretty dull.  You can try one of his recorded symphonies here.  It’s nice, but the best thing about it is the title, Les paysans changés en grenouilles: The peasants turned into frogs (it’s one of Dittersdorf’s so-called Ovid Symphonies).  The Prague Chamber Orchestra is conducted by Bohumil Gregor.

Samuel Scheidt was born on November 3^rd of 1587.  Together with his friends, Heinrich Schütz and Johann Hermann Schein, he was one of the most important German composers of the early 16^th century.  You can read more about him here.  And finally, Vincenzo Bellini; he was born on November 3^rd of 1801.  We mentioned him recently when we wrote about the great soprano Giuditta Pasta.

This week is more substantial, with François Couperin le Grand, Alexander Borodin, Aaron Copland, and Paul Hindemith.  We’d like to present an excerpt from Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis, composed in 1942.  Ludus Tonalis (Tonal game in Latin) is a set of twelve fugues, interspersed by eleven Interludes; the set starts with a Praeludium and ends with a Postludium, which is a retrograde inversion of the Praeludium.  “Retrograde” means playing a set from the end to the beginning, but in “Retrograde inversion,” the original set is “inverted” first, meaning that each interval is turned upside down: the second up becomes the second down, the fifth down becomes the fifth up.  Somehow, in the music of Schoenberg or, in this case, Hindemith, it works.  While clearly, Hindemith had Bach in mind, there are only 12 fugues, not 24: in Hindemith’s approach to atonality, there’s no major or minor.  The excerpt we’ll hear is from the live recording made by Sviatoslav Richter in France, during the Fêtes musicales de Touraine festival in 1985.  The festival takes place every year in a wonderful 13th-century fortified barn called La Grange de Meslay just outside of the city of Tours.  The excerpt starts with the 3rd Interludium followed by Fugue 4, and then another three pairs of Interludium and Fugue, here.

But what about classical music in Andalusia?  Unfortunately, we cannot report anything exciting; there’s a dearth of it. Seville is the capital and the largest city of Andalusia, and that’s where you can hear some classical music in concert.  Teatro de la Maestranza is where it takes place; the theater also presents opera, ballet, musicals, and even old movies, such as Ernst Lubitsch’s Carmen with Pola Negri in the title role, with the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla playing the recorded soundtrack.  The orchestra, resident at the theater, was founded in 1990.  Some events are interesting, such as the staging of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen by Les Arts Florissants or Cecilia Bartoli in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.  Martha Argerich may come…

What we did like a lot, and found gripping and fascinating, was Flamenco, but that’s a different story.