February 1, 2015.Missed birthdays.Last week we celebrated Mozart’s 260th birthday and missed several important dates.Franz Schubert was born on January 31st of 1797.Composer of immense talent and a tragically short life, he left an extraordinarily rich body of work: piano sonatas, last three of which have very few peers in all of the piano repertoire; nine symphonies; wonderful chamber music (one has to mention his “Death and the Maiden” quartet (no. 14), his “Trout” Quintet or the great String Quintet in C Major), sacred works, stage work (“Rosamunde,” for example) and much more.But one area where his genius shone the brightest was the Lied.Schubert’s songs pack a great amount of musical material and the broadest range of emotions into little gems that sometimes last less than two minutes.His song cycles Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, and Schwanengesang are, of course, incomparable, and so are some individual songs.Here are two, An Die Musik, D. 547, sung by the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with the great, but in this recording technically imprecise Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer (here), and Gretchen Am Spinnrade, with the flawless Kiri Te Kanawa and Richard Amner (here).Schubert was 17 when he composed Gretchen Am Spinnrade.
The Italian composer Luigi Nono was born on January 29th of 1924 in Venice.Nono studied at the Liceo Musicale with the noted composer Gian Francesco Malipiero and then with one of the first avant-garde Italians, Bruno Maderna.Several early works by Nono were presented in Darmstadt.Soon after he became an active participant and, together with Boulez and Stockhausen, one of the leaders of the movement.In 1955 he married Nuria Schoenberg, daughter of Arnold Schoenberg.Nono was a leftist, as were many of his fellow composers.A principled anti-fascist, he went much further left than that.For example, his opera Al gran sole carico d'amore, (the libretto for which he co-wrote with Yuri Lyubimov, the director of the original production and also the director of the famous Moscow Taganka theater), while based on the plays by Bertolt Brecht, also contained excerpts of speeches by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Lenin.Some of the music composed during the 60s was extremely political and dogmatic.For example, his Non Consumiamo Marx consists of sounds recorded during the 1968 student uprising in Paris and a voice reading the messages left on the walls during that period.A much more interesting piece is his Prometeo, composed during several years in the early 1980s.It’s called “opera,” although the word should be taken in its original Italians sense, “work” – Prometeo is a composition for five singers, two speakers, a chorus and small orchestra.The sounds are supposed to be electronically manipulated.Here’s a suite from Prometeo, performed live in Lucerne on August 20th of 2005.Claudio Abbado is conducting.
One great composer was born this week: Felix Mendelssohn, on February 3rd of 1809.Even though we’ve written about him many times, we’ll dedicate an entry to him at a later date.
Missed birthdays, January 2016
February 1, 2015. Missed birthdays. Last week we celebrated Mozart’s 260th birthday and missed several important dates. Franz Schubert was born on January 31st of 1797. Composer of immense talent and a tragically short life, he left an
extraordinarily rich body of work: piano sonatas, last three of which have very few peers in all of the piano repertoire; nine symphonies; wonderful chamber music (one has to mention his “Death and the Maiden” quartet (no. 14), his “Trout” Quintet or the great String Quintet in C Major), sacred works, stage work (“Rosamunde,” for example) and much more. But one area where his genius shone the brightest was the Lied. Schubert’s songs pack a great amount of musical material and the broadest range of emotions into little gems that sometimes last less than two minutes. His song cycles Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, and Schwanengesang are, of course, incomparable, and so are some individual songs. Here are two, An Die Musik, D. 547, sung by the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with the great, but in this recording technically imprecise Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer (here), and Gretchen Am Spinnrade, with the flawless Kiri Te Kanawa and Richard Amner (here). Schubert was 17 when he composed Gretchen Am Spinnrade.
The Italian composer Luigi Nono was born on January 29th of 1924 in Venice. Nono studied at the Liceo Musicale with the noted composer Gian Francesco Malipiero and then with one of the first avant-garde Italians, Bruno Maderna. Several early works by Nono were presented in Darmstadt. Soon after he became an active participant and, together with Boulez and Stockhausen, one of the leaders of the movement. In 1955 he married Nuria Schoenberg, daughter of Arnold Schoenberg. Nono was a leftist, as were many of his fellow composers. A principled anti-fascist, he went much further left than that. For example, his opera Al gran sole carico d'amore, (the libretto for which he co-wrote with Yuri Lyubimov, the director of the original production and also the director of the famous Moscow Taganka theater), while based on the plays by Bertolt Brecht, also contained excerpts of speeches by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Lenin. Some of the music composed during the 60s was extremely political and dogmatic. For example, his Non Consumiamo Marx consists of sounds recorded during the 1968 student uprising in Paris and a voice reading the messages left on the walls during that period. A much more interesting piece is his Prometeo, composed during several years in the early 1980s. It’s called “opera,” although the word should be taken in its original Italians sense, “work” – Prometeo is a composition for five singers, two speakers, a chorus and small orchestra. The sounds are supposed to be electronically manipulated. Here’s a suite from Prometeo, performed live in Lucerne on August 20th of 2005. Claudio Abbado is conducting.
One great composer was born this week: Felix Mendelssohn, on February 3rd of 1809. Even though we’ve written about him many times, we’ll dedicate an entry to him at a later date.