December 11, 2017.  Beethoven.  Whatever deity was distributing musical birthdays throughout the year did a very poor job.  There are meager weeks, and then there are periods like this one, in the middle of December: we’ve already missed the anniversaries of Jean Sibelius, Cesar Franck and Olivier Messiaen, all born during the last several days (and these are the foremost composers, there are more), while this week three more big ones are coming: that of Hector Berlioz, who was born on December 11^th of 1803, Elliott Carter, the American modernist, born on the same day in 1908, and the talented Hungarian composer ZóltanKodaly, whose birthday is December 16^th of 1882.  We’ll skip all of them until a later date.  All of it because December 16^th is the birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven and that we cannot miss.  Some years ago, we started a survey of Beethoven’s life through his music, pretty much arbitrarily picking his piano sonatas and symphonies, even though we may have as well followed the development of his genius though his quartets or piano trios – and we still might.  For the time being, though, we’ll return to his piano sonatas.  The last one we disucssed was the Sonata no. 7, op. 10, no. 3, written in 1798, when Beethoven was 27 years old.  The next sonata, the famous no. 8, op. 13, known as Pathétique, was written the same year (the title Pathétique was given by the publisher, not the composer himself, but Beethoven liked it and that’s what the sonata was called ever since).  Up to then, Beethoven was better known as a pianist rather than a composer (Václav Tomášek, a Czech composer and music teacher, who also heard Mozart, the supreme virtuoso of his time, play, considered Beethoven the greatest performer of all time). 

December 4, 2017.  Three opera composers.  The last couple of weeks we’ve dedicated our entries to single composers, first Penderecki and then Hindemith.  In doing so, we missed several notable anniversaries, so we’ll try to catch up with them this week.  Jean-Baptiste Lully, a miller’s son, was born on November 28^th of 1632 in Florence.  He was 14 when chevalier de Guise, who was visiting Italy at the time, noticed him there during Mardi Gras and brought him to France – not for his musical talents, but so that his niece, la Grande Mademoiselle, could talk to somebody in Italian.  From these unusual beginnings, Lully developed into one of the greatest French composers of all time and the founder of the French opera.  We’ve written about him extensively (for example, here or here), so we’ll just play some of his music.  Lully composed Persée on the libretto of his frequent collaborator, Philippe Quinault. in 1682.  Lully called Persée “tragédie lyrique” – opera genre he invented about 10 years earlier.  We’ll hear the short Ouverture here (Christophe Rousset conducts the ensemble Les Talens Lyriques) and an excerpt from Act II (here).  Cyril Auvity is Persée. Marie Lenormand – Andromède in an Opera Atelier production.

Lully wasn’t the only opera composer born around this time: two more Italians were, and they were “real” Italians, as Lully took French citizenship in 1661.  Gaetano Donizetti’s birthday is November 29^th of 1797.  Donizetti came from the city of Bergamo, its beautiful older section called Upper City, Città Alta, famous for its architecture and musical tradition.  Donizetti, together with Rossini and the younger Bellini, was one of the master composers of bel canto.  Donizetti, who lived just 50 years (he died insane of syphilis), wrote almost 70 operas, but only few of them belong to the standard repertory these days: his masterpiece, Lucia di Lammermoor, Anna Bolena,  L'elisir d'amore, Roberto Devereux, Maria Stuarta, and two comic operas, L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale.  Here’s the Judgement Scene, the finale of Act I from Anna Bolena.   Maria Callas, the tenor Gianni Raimoni and the bass Nicola Rossi-Lemeni in an exceptional live recording made exactly 60 years ago, in 1957 in La Scala.  Gianandrea Gavazzeni is conducting the La Scala orchestra.

November 27, 2017.  Esther Walker on Paul Hindemith.  A couple of weeks ago we missed Hindemith’s birthday: the German composer was born on November 16^th of 1895.  Most music lovers w can acknowledge his talent but many would also admit that Hindemith is not “their” composer, that he’s too distant, dry, cerebral.  That’s what the Swiss pianist Esther Walker thought of Hindemith earlier in her career.  As she got involved with several of Hindemith’s piano pieces, her attitude changed.  Esther put her thoughts on Hidemith’s piano works into a very personal and thought-provoking essay.  In it she discusses the rarely-performed Ludus tonalis (we may point to the recordings made by the two Soviet pianists and good friends, Sviatoslav Richter and Anatoly Vedernikov), the Suite “1922” and other pieces; examines the problem of conservative programming, firmly placing the blame on performers (and organizers), rather than composers or listeners; and gives us an insightful overview of Hindemith’s life.  Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the essay; you can read the complete piece on Esther’s site.  ♫

On Piano Music of Paul Hindemith.

Like many others before me, I too, in my youth and student days, grew into an unconsciously assumed, hardened and prejudiced (pre)conception of Hindemith. But the very few encounters which I had with this composer as a young pianist – whether it was through occasionally playing one of the Kammermusiks (op. 11) or hearing an orchestral work – forced me each time to cast doubt on this picture which I had of Hindemith. But some years ago, when it happened that I had to study four of Hindemith’s works (the Suite “1922”, the Kammermusik No. 1, The Four Temperaments and the Double Bass Sonata) in a relatively short period of time, I was forced to engage with this music in a much more intensive way than before and was really able to jettison my sometimes-unconscious prejudices. My active interest in Hindemith was aroused.

November 20, 2017.  Penderecki. Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the best known Polish composers of the 20^th century, was born on November 23^rd of 1933 in the small town of Dębica in southeastern Poland.  The town’s name in Yiddish was Dembitz, and before WWII the majority of the population was Jewish – later, Penderecki would use Jewish music in several compositions.  In addition to Polish, Penderecki’s family had Armenian and German roots.  The family wasn’t musical, but, as was customary in educated families of the time, Krzysztof took piano lessons.  Somebody presented Krzysztof’s father with a violin, and the boy took a liking to the instrument.  In 1951 Penderecki moved to Krakow, attending Jagiellonian University first, and then transferring to the Academy of Music.  There he studied the violin for one year, but then switched completely to composition.  He graduated in 1958 and one year later received three awards for three compositions he submitted to the young composers’ competition, organized by the Polish Composers’ Union.  His Strofy (‘Strophes’) received the first prize, and Emanacje (‘Emanations’) and Psalmy Dawida (‘Psalms of David’) shared the second.  All compositions were submitted anonymously, and the jury didn’t know that all winning entries were written by the same composer.  Since 1956, when Poland opened up after years of Stalinism, cultural life became less controlled.  While still a Communist state, culturally Poland was the freest country in the Soviet bloc.  New music could be performed, and music of young composers could be heard in the West.  One person who became familiar with Penderecki’s work was Heinrich Strobel, principal of the Music Department of the Südwestrundfunk (SWR) Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden, one of the leading new Music ensembles.  Strobel, a champion of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, became a promoter of the works of Krzysztof Penderecki.  In 1960, Penderecki’s popularity in the West lead to an interesting episode.  He had just completed a piece he initially called 8’37”, for the exact performing duration of the composition, which he later renamed Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. 

November 13, 2017.  Couperin and Cziffra.  During the two weeks that we’ve beenpreoccupied with one photograph, we missed several anniversaries that are clearly worth mentioning.  was born on November 10^th of 1668 (we’ve written about him a number of times, for example here and here).  One of the greatest French composers of the Baroque era, he was especially famous for his harpsichord music.  Since the advent of the modern piano, his works are as often performed on this instrument as on the “clavecin,” for which these works were originally written.   Here, for example, is Les Barricades Mystérieuses, the title as mysterious as are the barricades in question.  It’s the fifth piece in Couperin’s "Ordre 6ème de clavecin."  It’s performed by György Cziffra, whose birthday was last week.  Cziffra, a piano virtuoso with an unusual biography, was born on November 5^th of 1921 into a family of a poor gipsy cabaret performer.  His father, a cimbalom player, lived in Paris in the 1910s but was expelled from France as a citizen of an enemy state.  György started playing piano at a very early age, imitating his older sister.  At the age of five he was already earning money in bars and circuses, playing piano improvisations on melodies suggested by customers.  At the age of nine he entered the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, becoming their youngest student ever.  One of his teachers was the composer Ernst von Dohnányi. 

November 6, 2017.  Old picture, part II.  Last week we identified three people in the picture, below, wrote about two of them, Busya Goldshtein and Yakov Flier, and just touched upon Rosa Tamarkina, who stands next to Flier, slightly behind.  Tamarkina, who had just turned 20 when the picture was made, was already a laureate of several competitions.  She was born in Kiev in 1920, started her studies there but moved to Moscow when she was 11, after being accepted into a special group for talented kids organized by Alexander Goldenweiser.  At the age of 15 she won the first prize at the All-Union Performers’ competition.  One year later she conquered the hearts of both the jury and the public while playing at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.  She was awarded the second prize, behind only Yakov Zak, who was seven years her senior.  Heinrich Neuhaus, a jury member, talked about her as a mature, fully developed musician.  After the Chopin, still a student, she was engaged to play concerts across the country; practically all of them were sold out.  She was even awarded the order of the Barge of Honor and, at the age of 19, “elected” (“appointed” would be a better description) into the Moscow Soviet.  Rosa married Emil Gilels in 1940 but it was not a happy union and in 1943 they divorced.  In 1946 she fell ill; the diagnosis was terrible: Hodgkin's lymphoma.  She continued performing, often with a high fever; the public didn’t know about her condition.  Rosa Tamarkina died on August 5^th of 1950 at the age of 30.

Next to Tamarkina stands Elizabeth Gilels, Emil’s younger sister.  The family already had a pianist, so Elizabeth picked the violin as her instrument.  Like Busya Goldshtein, she was a student of Peter Stolyarky, who also taught David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein and many other talented violinists.  When they were young, Elisabeth and Emil often played together.  In 1935, just 16 years old, she took the Second prize, behind Oistrakh, at the 2^nd All-Union Performers’ competition.  In 1937, at the 1^st Ysaÿe competition (it was later renamed as the Queen Elisabeth Competition) she took the 3^rd prize.  Again, Oistrakh was first and the Soviet violinists took all but one prizes from the first to the sixth.  Four of the six were Stolyarsky’s students and the only non-Soviet violinist, Ricardo Odnoposoff, who took the 2^nd prize, was from an Argentinian Russian-Jewish family.  In 1949 Elizabeth married Leonid Kogan.  Superb soloists, they created a duo and together recorded Bach, Vivaldi, and other composers.  Elisabeth Gilels and Leonid Kogan had two children, Pavel and Nina.  Pavel, also a brilliant violinist, eventually turned to conducting.  Nina was a successful pianist and often played with her father.  Pavel’s son Dmitry, also a violinist, died unexpectedly two months ago at the age of 38.