This Week in Classical Music: March 7, 2022.  War in Ukraine.  We find it very difficult to write about music amidst the barbaric aggression of Russia against Ukraine.  Putin’s unprovoked war against a country of 40 million is a watershed moment in European history: there hasn’t been  a war of this scale since the fall of the Nazis.  Putin clearly is a war criminal: his forces bombard civilian areas, schools, kindergartens, and we hope that, like Slobodan Milošević of Serbia, he will end up at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.  The war is a humanitarian catastrophe, and Western response was swift and unified, with sanctions against Russia and aide to Ukraine.  Music administrators around the world also got into the game, firing Valery Gergiev, Anna Netrebko and Denis Matsuyev from main stages and theaters of Europe and America after they refused to sign letters condemning Putin’s invasion.  While we find these artists’ support of Putin and his regime reprehensible, we are somewhat ambivalent about what seems like a mob action against them.  On the one hand we’re glad to see Gergiev gone (we also happen to think that he is overrated as conductor).  But Gergiev has been close to Putin for decades.  Why didn’t we see any action when Putin illegally annexed Ukrainian Crimea, with Gergiev’s full-throated support?  Putin has committed war crimes before: he was the main enabler of Syria’s dictator Assad, and it was his, Putin’s, warplanes that bombed hospitals in Aleppo.  Why wasn’t Gergiev fired back then?  Is it because Syrian lives matter less than Ukrainian?  As for Netrebko, she did support Putin’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, but it seems that her main fault is that Putin likes her a lot.  Netrebko was not the only one who supported Putin back in 2014: more than five hundred (!) Russian cultural luminaries signed a letter in support of the annexation of Crimea, the famous violist Yuri Bashmet and violinist Vladimir Spivakov among them.  Since the current war had started, Spivakov and several other signed a meek letter against it, but not Bashmet.  Will all “unrepented” musicians be banned from playing in the West?  As we noted above, we don’t have a strong opinion about actions against Putin’s artists but find several things troubling.  Is it OK to require political loyalty (or, in this case, disloyalty) statements from artists?  Why do we treat artist differently, and in a seemingly arbitrary way?  Of course, these questions have been asked before, when ardent Hitler’s supporters and Nazi party members Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm were quickly denazified and then accepted in the West while clearly not as culpable Wilhelm Furtwängler was not.  All this pales compared to the war catastrophe and Putin’s evil, but the question of artists, politics and ethics are important and we’ll have to deal with them in years to come.

Several great composers were born this week, among them Maurice Ravel, Arthur Honegger and Hugo Wolf.  We’ll get back to them at a later date.

This Week in Classical Music: February 28, 2022.  Chopin and Vivaldi.  The great Polish composer Frédéric Chopin was born this week, on March 1^st of 1810.  His works form the core of the classical piano repertoire and have been performed continuously from the moment they were premiered, often by Chopin himself.  Musical tastes change in waves, one composer comes to the fore and then recedes only to come back decades later.  These days it feels like the music of Chopin with all its full-blooded romanticism is, if not in nadir, then clearly in descent: the time of Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz or the young Maurizio Pollini has passed.  But as it has never left the concert stage (and never will), it still has its champions.  One of them is a 26-year-old Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki.  He is of the Polish descent and that may have influenced his musical tastes, as in addition to playing a lot of Chopin he promotes the music of Paderewski.  Lisiecki clearly feels an affinity with the country of his ancestors, he performs there often and had his first CD issued by the Polish Fryderyk Chopin Institute.  He’s one of the very few pianists these days who can build a whole program around the music of Chopin.  Recently, he brought one such program to Chicago.  It was quite unusual: he played all twelve Etudes, op. 10, but not straight, as they are usually performed, but mixing them with eleven Nocturnes, six Etudes and six Nocturnes in the first half, and six Etudes and five Nocturnes after the intermission.  It was an excellent concert: even if one may quibble with some interpretations, Lisiecki clearly has a vision of how this music should be played, he has great technique, wonderful touch and singing tone.  Orchestra Hall, the venue where he performed, was full, an unusual occurrence in these Covid days, and, what’s important is that there were many young people in the audience.  Lisiecki seems to have a following, and that he’s tall, slim and good looking, reminding one of the young Van Cliburn, clearly doesn’t hurt.  There was another matter about this concert worth mentioning: it hasn’t been reviewed by either one of Chicago’s main newspapers.  These days it’s not surprising: Chicago Tribune, the home to Claudia Cassidy, and the newspaper that published John von Rhein’s reviews for 40 years, doesn’t even have a music critic on its staff that could credibly write about classical concerts.  Kyle MacMillan, whose reviews the Chicago Tribune publishes from time to time, is a free-lance writer.  Chicago Sun Times is no different.  This attests to the current sorry state of classical music in our society.

Antonio Vivaldi was born March 4^th of 1678 in Venice.  We are on a quest to find great pieces by Vivaldi that are not the Four Seasons.  Here’s one of our discoveries, the Intorduzioni, the motets for solo voice, choir and orchestra.  There are eight of them altogether, and Canta in Prato, RV 636 is one of them.  It consists of three parts, about six minutes of music in total.  The English soprano Margaret Marshall is the solo.  English Chamber Orchestra and John Alldis Choir are conducted by Vittorio Negri (here).

This Week in Classical Music: February 21, 2022.  Handel and more.  George Frideric Handel, one of the greatest composers of the Baroque era, was born on February 23^rd of 1685.  Interestingly, till about the second half of the 20^th century, he was known mostly for his several orchestral works and oratorios, Messiah being the most famous.  In reality, Handel was the greatest opera composer of the era and had written music in all genres of the time, including instrumental, chamber and vocal.  His reputation is still lower outside of the English-speaking world, where it is on par with Bach’s.   We’ve written about Handel many times, here, for example two years ago, with his opera Rodelinda being the focus, and here, about his early years in London.  Handel was a fascinating figure, worldly and sophisticated; he was also a virtuoso performer on the keyboard and the violin and wrote for both instruments.  Here, for example, is the keyboard Suite in D minor HWV436, it comes from the mid-1720s.  It’s performed by the German pianist Ragna Schirmer.

Five pianists have anniversaries this week, four of them were Russian-born but none spent their life in Russia:  Benno Moiseiwitsch, a British pianist, was born in Odessa, then in the Russian Empire into a Jewish family, on February 22^nd of 1890; then three day later is the anniversary of another Brit, this time a “real” one but also Jewish, Dame Myra Hess.  Nikita Magaloff, of Russian-Georgian descent who spent much of his life in Switzerland, was born in Saint-Petersburg on February 21^st of 1912.  Lazar Berman, another Russian (also Jewish), was born on the 26th the month in 1930 in Leningrad (now St.-Petersburg) and, finally, yet another Russian-born pianist, Arcadi Volodos (no, this one is not Jewish) was born on February 24^th of 1972, also in Leningrad; these days Volodos lives in Spain.  None of these pianists were  very interested in the music of Handel, the only example we could find of one of them playing his music is an old, scratchy but interesting recording made in 1937 by the famous Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti who was accompanied by Nikita Magaloff.  It is Handel’s Violin Sonata in D Major, HWV371, composed later in Handel’s life in 1750 (here).

We also celebrate another Soviet-born musician, a violinist.  Gidon Kremer will turn 75 on the 27^th, he was born on that day in 1947 in Riga, Latvia.  Latvia, now independent, was then part of the Soviet Union; Kremer studied at the Moscow Conservatory with David Oistrakh, became a laureate of several major competitions, and then won the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1970.  In 1980 Kremer emigrated from the Soviet Union and settled in Germany.  In 1997 Kremer founded a chamber orchestra called Kremerata Baltica.  Even though Kramer’s repertoire is very broad (he’s a big promoter of contemporary music), as far as we know he hasn’t recorded a single violin sonata of Handel.  So instead we’ll hear Kremer playing a violin sonata by Handel’s contemporary, Johann Sebastian Bach.  Here’s Bach Violin Sonata No.3 in C major BWV 1005, written in 1720.  The recording was made in 1981.

This Week in Classical Music: February 14, 2022.  Kurtág and more.  This week brings a bevy of musical talents from several centuries,  from Michael Praetoriuswho was born in 1571, probably on February 15^th (although some musicologist think he might have been born on September 28^th of that year) toFrancesco Cavalli, who was born on this day in 1602, to Arcangelo Corelli, born half a century later, on February 17^th of 1653, and then, skipping several well-known names, to the Hungarian composer .  It was Kurtág’s name that caught our eye: in five days he will turn 96!  But of course it’s not the longevity that makes him special (after all, Elliott Carter lived much longer, to the age of 103): Kurtág is one of the most interesting composers of the 20^th century.  Here’s an interesting question to ponder: in 100 years, assuming that classical music survives that long as a genre, who would be more popular, Corelli or Kurtág?  We think that Kurtág is a much more original composer, but will music lovers internalize and accept the complexities of his music (obviously this is not the case yet).  As long as we ventured into the shaky grounds of comparisons, we might as well say that we think that Cavalli was more interesting than Corelli, except for the genre of the early Baroque opera in which he had worked and which is rarely presented these days.

György Kurtág (his first name is pronounced closer to Dyerd rather than George) was born on February 19^th of 1926 in Lugoj, Banat.  These days most of the historical Banat lies in Romania, but prior to 1918 Banat was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; many inhabitants were Hungarian speakers.  It also had a large Jewish population; Kurtág is half-Jewish.  He spoke Hungarian at home and Romanian at school.  As a child, he studied the piano on and off, first with his mother, then with professional teachers.  After WWII, in 1946, the 20-year old Kurtág moved to Budapest and continued taking piano lessons, eventually entering the Franz Liszt Music Academy.  There he met György Ligeti and they became friends for life.  After the Hungarian revolution of 1956, Kurtág moved to Paris.  There he studied with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud.  He returned to Hungary in 1959 and stayed there for the duration of the Communist regime – the only Hungarian composer of international renown to do so (Ligeti, for example, fled to Vienna right after the failed revolution and stayed in the West for the rest of his life). At that time Kurtág became influential as a teacher.  Surprisingly, he didn’t teach composition but rather interpretation: the pianists Zoltán Kocsis and András Schiff, and the first Takács String Quartet were among his pupils.  Kurtág resumed traveling only after the fall of communism in 1989, moving first to Berlin (he was the composer in residence for the Berlin Philharmonic in the mid-90s), then Vienna, the Netherlands and Paris, where he worked with Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain.  In 2002, the Kurtágs settled in Bordeaux but in 2015 he and his wife live returned to Budapest (Kurtág’s wife Márta, a pianist, died in 2019).

In addition to Kurtág’s music already in our library, we have two more pieces to illustrate Kurtág’s art.  First, a very simple and short piano piece titled ... feuilles mortes ...  It’s performed by the Armenian pianist Hayk Melikyan (here).  And here is a much more complex …concertante… for violin, viola and orchestra, written in 2003.  It’s performed by Hiromi Kikuchi, violin, Ken Hakii, viola and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

This Week in Classical Music: February 7, 2022.  Renata Tebaldi.  Last week we missed a very important anniversary: Renata Tebaldi was born 100 years ago!  Tebaldi had one of the most beautiful voices of the century, which Toscanini called “the voice of an angel.”  She was a rival of Maria Callas, who was a year younger than Tebaldi – it’s hard to imagine that two sopranos of such talent were singing contemporaneously, although Callas’s career was much shorter.  It’s difficult to argue that Tebaldi’s voice was more “classical” and in many ways better, although Callas’s had an amazing emotional quality which Tebadli’s interpretations sometimes lacked.  Their voices also had somewhat different timbre and range: Callas was a dramatic soprano capable of singing coloratura parties, she was especially good in the bel canto repertoire, while Tebaldi was a lyric soprano at her best in the verismo operas. They shared some roles, Tosca being one of them.  Opera lovers will be forever divided between those two divas while adoring them both. 

Tebaldi was born in Pesaro on February 1^st of 1922.  In 1946 she took part in the opening concert at the war damaged La Scala.  The conductor that evening was Arturo Toscanini, and both he and the public loved Tebaldi’s voice.  She became a regular at La Scala in the post-war era.  In 1950 she sang for the first time at the Covent Garden; the same year she made her debut at the San Francisco opera and then in Chicago.  In 1955 she came to New York; she would appear at the Met for the following 20 years.  Tebaldi performed till 1976.

As so often is the case with great artists, it’s difficult to select a recording to illustrate their art.  Mimi in La Bohème was one of Tebadli’s great roles.  Here she is in Si. Mi chiamano Mimi, from the 1959 recording.  The Orchestra of Santa Cecilia is conducted by Tullio Serafin.  And here is a scene from another opera in which Tebaldi excelled: Pace, pace mio Dio, from Verdi’s La Forza del Destino.  This recording was made in 1958 in concert; Leonard Bernstein conducts The New York Philharmonic.

This week and the previous one were rich on singers’ anniversaries: last week we could’ve also celebrated Jussi Björling’s birthday, who was born on February 5^th of 1911; this week there are two greats: the soprano Hildegard Behrens who excelled in the German repertoire, from Mozart to Wagner and Berg, and the incomparable Leontyne Price. Behrens was born on February 9^th of 1937 and Price – on February 10^th of 1927, so she will be celebrating her 95^th birthday.  Price deserves a full entry, which will be forthcoming.  In the meantime, you may be interested to compare Pace, mio dio sung by Tebaldi, above, with Price’s 1984 recording, here.

This Week in Classical Music: January 31, 2022.  Schubert and more.  Franz Schubert, one of the greatest composers of the 19^th century, was born on this day in 1797.  We love Schubert and have written about him and his work on many occasions, and here’s a bit more.  Schubert’s last three piano sonatas are some of his greatest works.  They were composed in 1828, practically in the last half a year of Schubert’s life, as he was dying of syphilis.  Inevitably they are compared to Beethoven’s last five: pianos sonatas number 28, op. 101 through 32, op. 111.  There clearly are parallels: the scope, the depth, the variety of musical material and just pure beauty.  We should remember that Beethoven’s sonatas, as coherent as they are in their dramatic effect, were written during a period of five years, not in a feverish six months, as Schubert’s.  Schubert’s last sonatas, although profound, are somewhat loosely structured.  That was one of the reasons they were considered somewhat inferior after they were published in1838, ten years after Schubert’s death.  This lack of internal structure (and, in some cases, excessive length) make these sonatas difficult to play.  There are some pianists who excel in them, Alfred Brendel, Sviatoslav Richter, Claudio Arrau, Maurizio Pollini being one of the best (of course there were many more who’ve played them wonderfully).  This is also the reason why some famous pianists don’t do as well: we remember Lang Lang’s performance in Chicago in 2008, which we thought was quite disastrous: our impression was that Lang Lang doesn’t quite understand what he was playing.   Of course back then Lang Lang was a media darling and many classical music critics went along with it, so the reviews of the concert were mostly positive.  Things have changed since then…  Here is Sviatoslav Richter playing Pianos Sonata D. 958 in C minor; the recording was made in 1972.  And Here is’ Alfred Brendel in the Sonata D. 959 in A major, from a 1988 recording.

Felix Mendelssohn was also born this week, on February 3^rd of 1809.  By the time of Schubert’s death, when Mendelssohn was 19, he has already written several dozen compositions, including quartets, a symphony, and the famous Midsummer Night's Dream Overture.  And two great violinists, Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz were born on the same day this week, February 2^nd, Kreisler in 1875 and Heifetz in 1901.

Also, the conductor Erich Leinsdorf, who was born Erich Landauer into a Jewish family in Vienna on February 4^th of 1912, 110 years ago.  He became Bruno Walter’s assistant at Salzburg in 1934 at the age of 22.  Leinsdorf left Austria several weeks before the Anschluss, Nazi Germany’s capture of Austria, to assume the position of assistant conductor at the Metropolitan opera and stayed in the US for the rest of his life, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1942.  He became the Music director of the famed Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 31 but served briefly as he was conscripted to the Army.  Leinsdorf had a distinguished career: he was named the Music director of the Boston Symphony orchestra in 1962, conducted many operas and the Met and guest-conducted many major orchestras.  He also made a number of highly acclaimed recordings, both symphonic and operatic.  Of the latter, Un ballo in maschera, Tristan und Isolde, Die Walküre and Turandot are considered most interesting.