February 16, 2018.Another rich week.Chopin, Rossini, Smetana, Vivaldi – way too much for one week.Fortunately, last year we wrote about the first three, so we’ll just play a bit of Chopin’s music.Just two days ago we came across a live video of a Chopin recital given by the Georgian pianist Eliso Virsaladze.Ms. Virsaladze, who is 75 years old, started with the Polonaise-fantaisie op. 61, then played the massive Piano sonata no. 3.In the second half it was several nocturnes, valses and one Etude, no. 3, op. 10. She even played an encore, a Mazurka, Op. 30, no. 4. It was a long program even for a young pianist and the performance, if maybe not technical perfect (she clearly got tired by the end), was very satisfying.Eliso’s first teacher was her grandmother, Anastasia Virsaladze, a pupil of the famous Anna Yesipova (Yesipova, a very influential teacher at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, also taught Sergei Prokofiev and Maria Yudina; she was the second wife of Theodor Leschetizky, who helped Anton Rubinstein in founding the St. Petersburg Conservatory).In 1966 Eliso moved to Moscow to study with Heinrich Neuhaus and Yakov Zak.Eliso took the third prize in the Second Tchaikovsky competition (1962) and won the Schumann competition in Zwickau four years later.Schumann was one of her favorite composers; at the time, Sviatoslav Richter said that she was the best contemporary interpreter of Schumann’s music.She also played a lot of Chopin.Here are 12 Etudes op. 10 in a studio recording made in 1974.We first wanted to select one etude but decided that playing all of them together is so much better – and it’s just 29 minutes of great music.
Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4th of 1678, so this week marks his 340th birthday anniversary.He’s famous for the hugely overplayed and overused Four Seasons, but, in addition to a lot of second-rate pieces (he wrote an enormous number of concertos, more than 500 of them, mostly for string instruments, and 46 operas) he also wrote some wonderful but rarely performed music.His operas, for example, are just being “discovered,” many of them thanks to the wonderful Cecilia Bartoli.Clearly, Bach thought very highly of Vivaldi, as he took 10 of his violin concertos and transcribed them to either the harpsichord or the organ. Vivaldi seems to have created a unique musical genre he called Introduzioni, or introductory motets, which were intended to be performed before a larger choral composition, such as Gloria or Miserere.Vivaldi wrote eight such introduzioni.One of them is called Filiae Maestae Jerusalem (Mournful daughters of Jerusalem); it was intended to precede a Miserere, now lost. This particular introduzioni consists of three movements: a recitative (listening to it, one is reminded of recitatives in Bach’s Passions), a beautiful Aria, followed by another, shorter recitative.Here it is, performed by the French countertenor Gérard Lesne and the ensemble he founded, Il Seminario musicale.
Chopin, Vivaldi 2018
February 16, 2018. Another rich week. Chopin, Rossini, Smetana, Vivaldi – way too much for one week. Fortunately, last year we wrote about the first three, so we’ll just play a bit of Chopin’s music. Just two days ago we came across a live video of a Chopin recital given by the Georgian pianist Eliso Virsaladze. Ms. Virsaladze, who is 75 years old,
started with the Polonaise-fantaisie op. 61, then played the massive Piano sonata no. 3. In the second half it was several nocturnes, valses and one Etude, no. 3, op. 10. She even played an encore, a Mazurka, Op. 30, no. 4. It was a long program even for a young pianist and the performance, if maybe not technical perfect (she clearly got tired by the end), was very satisfying. Eliso’s first teacher was her grandmother, Anastasia Virsaladze, a pupil of the famous Anna Yesipova (Yesipova, a very influential teacher at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, also taught Sergei Prokofiev and Maria Yudina; she was the second wife of Theodor Leschetizky, who helped Anton Rubinstein in founding the St. Petersburg Conservatory). In 1966 Eliso moved to Moscow to study with Heinrich Neuhaus and Yakov Zak. Eliso took the third prize in the Second Tchaikovsky competition (1962) and won the Schumann competition in Zwickau four years later. Schumann was one of her favorite composers; at the time, Sviatoslav Richter said that she was the best contemporary interpreter of Schumann’s music. She also played a lot of Chopin. Here are 12 Etudes op. 10 in a studio recording made in 1974. We first wanted to select one etude but decided that playing all of them together is so much better – and it’s just 29 minutes of great music.
Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4th of 1678, so this week marks his 340th birthday anniversary. He’s famous for the hugely overplayed and overused Four Seasons, but, in addition to a lot of second-rate pieces (he wrote an enormous number of concertos, more than 500 of them, mostly for string instruments, and 46 operas) he also wrote some wonderful but rarely performed music. His operas, for example, are just being “discovered,” many of them thanks to the wonderful Cecilia Bartoli. Clearly, Bach thought very highly of Vivaldi, as he took 10 of his violin concertos and transcribed them to either the harpsichord or the organ. Vivaldi seems to have created a unique musical genre he called Introduzioni, or introductory motets, which were intended to be performed before a larger choral composition, such as Gloria or Miserere. Vivaldi wrote eight such introduzioni. One of them is called Filiae Maestae Jerusalem (Mournful daughters of Jerusalem); it was intended to precede a Miserere, now lost. This particular introduzioni consists of three movements: a recitative (listening to it, one is reminded of recitatives in Bach’s Passions), a beautiful Aria, followed by another, shorter recitative. Here it is, performed by the French countertenor Gérard Lesne and the ensemble he founded, Il Seminario musicale.