Bruckner, Milhaud 2017

September 4, 2017. Bruckner, Milhaud and more. Today is Labor Day, so we’ll be very brief. Anton Bruckner was born on this day in 1824. Nine years older than Brahms, another great symphonist, today his music sounds more daring. Bruckner had many supporters and several powerful detractors, the most influential being Eduard Hanslick, the Viennese music critic who wrote devastating reviews. Here’s one quote from his article about Bruckner’s Third Symphony: "Neither were his [Bruckner's] poetic intentions clear to us – perhaps a vision of how Beethoven's Ninth made friends with Wagner's Valkyries and ended up under horse’s hooves – nor could we grasp the purely musical coherence." These reviews were especially painful to Bruickner as he was an unusually insecure composer. All of Bruckner’s symphonies are large in scale, and so are the three masses (Bruckner was a deeply religious person and church music played a very important part in his compositional output). His motets, though, are much smaller and are a better fit for this post. Here’s one, Os Justi Meditabitur (The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom). The Monteverdi Choir is conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.

Darius Milhaud, a member of Les Six, was also born on this day, in 1892 in Aix-en-Provence into a Jewish family. He traveled extensively, absorbing influences from other cultures. In 1917, he went to Brazil and found inspiration in the local folk music and traditions of the Carnaval. In 1922, he traveled to the United States where for the first time he encountered authentic jazz, which made a huge impression on him. In 1940, after the Germans occupied part of France, Milhaud fled to the US. There he found a position at Mills College in Oakland, CA. One of his favorite students was Dave Brubeck. Here is Milhaud’s whimsical Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, op.61. Vlastimil Lejsek is on the Piano. Brno Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Jiří Waldhans.

Johann Christian Bach, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Amy Beach and John Cage were all born this week. We’ll be less perfunctory the next time.

Pachelbel and Locatelli, 2017

August 28, 2017. Pachelbel and Locatelli. Before we turn to our birthday boys, two composers born in the 17^th century, we’d like to mention a much younger musician. Yoo Jin Jang was born in 1990 in South Korea. After studying in her native country, she moved to the US. At the New England Conservatory, she studied with Miriam Fried and is currently pursuing her Doctorate at that school. Ms. Jang has won a number of competitions, among them the 2013 Munetsugu Violin Competition in Japan, for which she was loaned the 1697 “Rainville” Stradivari violin. In 2012 Ms. Jang founded the Kallaci String Quartet. She recently played a Dame Myra Hess concert in Chicago, and here’s her performance of a rarely-played Violin Sonata by Felix Mendelssohn. The sonata was never published during Mendelssohn’s time, then got lost and was discovered by Yehudi Menuhin only in 1953! Renana Gutman is on the piano. And as a little encore of sorts, here’s a Tango-Étude No. 3 for Solo Violin, again performed by Yoo Jin Jang.

Pietro Locatelli was also a violinist, and a pretty good one: he toured across Europe and his compositions, which we assume he could play well, present technical challenges even to modern violinists. Locatelli was born on September 3^rd of 1695 in Bergamo. At the age of 14 he became a member of the cappella musicale at the local church of Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1711, he went to Rome where he studied with students of Arcangelo Corelli and maybe even with the master himself. He came under the patronage of Camillo Cybo, a major-domo of the Pope Clement XI (Cybo, a great grandnephew of Pope Innocent X, was later elevated to Cardinal). Locatelli dedicated his Opus one, Twelve Concerti Grossi, to Cybo. He also became one of the favorite musicians of that famous patron of arts, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. Locatelli left Rome in 1723 and during the following five years traveled across Italy and Germany. He performed at major courts – in Berlin for the Prussian court, in Dresden for Augustus II of Saxony. Most of Locatelli’s compositions also come from this period. In 1727 Locatelli moved to Amsterdam, where he was to live for the rest of his life (he died on March 30^th of 1764). There he played mostly for the rich music lovers and traded in violin strings. He composed very little. Here’s one violinist who wouldn't be stymied by Locatelli’s technical challenges: Leonid Kogan. He’s playing the Violin Sonata in F minor, op. 6 No. 7 "At the tomb." Andrej Mytnik is at the piano.

As we wrote in 2014, while celebrating Johann Pachelbel’s birthday, had he been alive, he would probably have been very upset with the enormous popularity of his Cannon in D. During his lifetime, Pachelbel, who was born on September 1^st of 1653 in Nuremberg, Bavaria, was famous as composer and organist. He worked in Vienna as an organist at the St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in Eisenach as a court organist to the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach, and then in Erfurt, where he became close with many of the family of Bachs. Eventually he settled in Nuremberg, where in 1699 he composed one of his most important pieces,Hexachordum Apollinis. Here’s Aria Tertia from this collection. John Butt is on the organ.