Verdi: Nabucco - "Va, pensiero..."

In order to accompany the children who in the years to come would delight the world with their music, Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi came into this world in Roncalli, Italy, on October 10, 1813. Among his future colleagues were Mendelssohn, four years old; Chopin and Schumann, both three years old; and Franz Liszt, barely a two-year-old child.
But Giuseppe was not going to be a pianist but an opera composer.

From the humble village of Roncale, where his parents ran a small inn and a grocery store, he arrived in Milan in 1832 for further studies by means of a scholarship obtained through a wholesale trader who supplied the modest business of the family. However, the future composer was rejected at the Conservatory and had to take private lessons. Even so, the stay in Milan would be a significant experience in his life because it was there where he discovered the world of theatre and, thus, his true vocation.

The wholesaler Antonio Barezzi had been one of the first to notice the artistic talent of the little Giuseppe because, in addition to being a merchant, he held the position of director of the Philharmonic Society in the nearby town of Busseto.
Antonio had four daughters. The elder, named Margherita, soon caught Giuseppe's attention and in 1836 she accepted the proposal, after the composer got the positions of organist and teacher of Busseto's music school, on his return from Milan.

Giuseppe Verdi, c. 1840
(1813 - 1901)

But their life together turned out to be a single and great misfortune. In a very short time they suffered the death of their first son, and soon, the second one. Finally, in 1840, it was Margherita who passed away, at her twenty-six years.

For this reason, perhaps, the first great masterpiece of Verdi could only emerge two years later, in 1842, when the opera Nabucco –based on a biblical story that depicts the episode of the slavery of the Jews in Babylon–, was premiered at La Scala in Milan.

The work reveals in the third act a unique moment in the history of the opera. The choir sings the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, or Va, Pensiero sull'alli dorate (Fly, thought, on golden wings), a song of freedom that in its day encountered an unprecedented identification between audience and music, given the circumstances that the peoples of future Italy were going through under the Austrian domination.

Today, all peoples everywhere give a salute to ceremonies which commemorate great events by singing the chorus "Va, Pensiero". So has happened recently, and precisely, in Italy, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the nation's creation. In presence of Berlusconi, in 2011, conductor Riccardo Muti made a short speech protesting cuts in Italy's arts budget, then asked the audience to sing again "Va, Pensiero" in support of culture. Likewise, modestly, Chilean people celebrated in 1990 the end of the dictatorship, at the National Stadium in Santiago de Chile.

The rendition, by the Choir and Orchestra of Teatro alla Scala, Milan, conducted by Riccardo Muti, includes the encore, that already has almost become a tradition. It is a remarkable experience to pay attention to the last few bars when the orchestra becomes silent and the voices continue to sing a cappella, dying down in a diminuendo that makes imperceptible the precise moment the sound gave way to silence.

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Chopin: Scherzo No 2, Op 31

Besides being a famous piano maker, Camile Pleyel was a remarkable pianist to the point that Chopin came to say of him: "Today there is only one man who knows how to play Mozart and this is Pleyel!". They met around 1832 in Paris and their friendship lasted for a lifetime.
Aware of Chopin's genius, once Pleyel knew him provided Frédérik with not one but two pianos: a large concert piano which dominated the small salon of Frédérik's apartment in Paris, and a black piano intended for his lessons. On two occasions Camile replaced the piano with a new one. First, in 1840 and then in 1848, when Frédérik was already very ill, on the verge of death. The devotee friend went so far as to send a piano to Mallorca while Chopin spent there a short time with George Sand.

So, it is not surprising that the piano Chopin selected for miss Maria Wodzinska, back in 1835, has been from the Pleyel company.
Every day of her life Maria would play on this piano, which remained always at her side, never abandoned. She even took it to Florence, where she went to live after marrying the administrator of her lands after she failed at his first marriage. She had earlier married a certain count Joseph Skarbeck, a neighbour from the countryside who, according to the words of a Chopin biographer, turned out to be a "degenerate" and from whom Maria divorced for "non-consummation of marriage".

Scherzo No 2, Op 31, in B flat minor
Composed and published in 1837, the year one after the dissolution of the love affair with Maria, is the most popular of his four scherzi (plural of scherzo). Chopin's idea of this musical form is utterly new. It is usually alleged to be a movement from a longer piece, say, a sonata, aimed at separating, for instance, the Allegro from the Adagio, or one of these from the end of the piece.

In Italian the word means joke, and therefore, the word is also used in indications of tempo or mood with which a piece should be played. Thus, scherzando indicates that a passage should be executed rather playfully.
Chopin's scherzo is different. First of all, it is a musical piece in its own right and has little playful. If they are jokes, they are terrifying ones. Written in ternary form (theme, 2nd theme, back to the first theme), its rhythmic structure is 3/4 and its speed is presto (very fast).

Zimerman's performance is outstanding. That's why we chose it, despite the abrupt end of the video. In truth, after the last high note we hear, there is no more music. That's all. The only thing missing is the subsequent silence, the loyal and inseparable ally in the experience of listening to music.

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Chopin: Ballade No 1 in G minor

Frédéric Chopin was certainly a person in frail health. So, because of the sort of agreement she had with him, mom Wodzinsky decided to learn a little more about Frédéric before giving her girl Maria away for marriage. What she discovered was not to her liking, or her husband's, dad Wodzinsky. Even though his everlasting good temper and cheerful mood, Frédéric suffered from an incurable disease: he was a "consumptive".

So, it was necessary to cancel the plan. But nobody spoke a clear word about it. The Wodzinskys just let things die down. Maria's letters became scarce. Those of mom Wodzinska became trivial, bearing a distant tone, to which Frédéric responded, unwillingly, "send my respects to Miss Maria". The longed-for invitation of the Wodzinskys to have Frédéric with them during the holidays, for the summer of 1837, never came to his hands.

And Chopin did not ask for explanations either. Neither Maria nor anyone else. He capitulated silently. His one and only complaint was not to respond to the last letter Maria sent him:

"I can only write these few words to thank you for the pretty cahier you sent me. I shall not say with what joy I received it. Words would not suffice. Please accept the assurance both of my sincere gratitude for it and of the lifelong attachment felt for you by all our family and particularly by your least gifted pupil and childhood friend. Adieu. Mamma sends you a tender kiss... Do not forget us.

Maria

And that was that! The last letter Chopin was to receive from Maria Wodzinska. When he realised that his hopes had come to nothing he took all the letters he had received from his fiancée and the other Wodzinskis and tied them together with a ribbon to form a bundle on which he wrote two words: Moja bieda ... My misfortune.

Ballade No. 1 in G minor
Chopin composed the first of his four ballades between the years 1835 and 1836, precisely the years in which his relationship with Maria Wodzinska went wonderfully. It was Chopin's favorite and so he told Schumann when he played it for him, after Schumann praised the performance and the work.

A piece of extreme hardship, it is, however, frequently performed in concerts for its lacerating lyricism and possibilities of brilliance for the virtuoso. More than once, some fragments of the work have become part of a movie soundtrack. The most recent occasion was in 2002 when we could listen to a curious three-minute "arrangement" in Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist. In the scene, a German officer asks the protagonist to play something on the piano in an abandoned house used as barracks by German soldiers.
In our modest opinion, the physical and emotional conditions in which the pianist actor finds himself, in the midst of war, without feeding for months, barely would have allowed him to play a traditional nursery rhyme.
The rendition is by the American pianist Krystian Zimerman. It's an irreproachable performance if we agree that some reason will he have had to take all the time he wanted before attacking the chords at the minutes 4:39 and 7:40.

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Chopin on vacation, 1835 – Nocturne 27-2

In the company of I Puritani's author, Vincenzo Bellini, who became his personal friend and whom he deeply admired, Frédéric Chopin travelled in July 1835 to the town of Enghien, in northern France, to "take the baths", an obligation that the disease imposed on all who suffered from tuberculosis, or anyone who was in the process of getting the condition.

A few days later he received a letter from his parents, announcing his forthcoming arrival in Karlsbad, about three days' journey away. Chopin had not seen Nicholas and his mother since he had left Warsaw for Vienna five years earlier. And it had been precisely his parents who had suggested to him not to return to Poland, after Warsaw capitulated before the advance of the Russian troops, on September 8, 1831.

The Chopin family in Karlsbad

A few hours apart, Frederic and his parents arrive in Karlsbad on the same day, August 16, 1835. It was to be three weeks of overflowing joy and emotional exaltation. Chopin Sr. scribbles a couple of notes to his daughters, who have remained in Warsaw, telling them of the joy. Frederic decides to add a postscript for his sisters:

"Our joy is inexpressible, we hug and we keep hugging each other ... We walk, we take your mother by the arm, we talk about you, we drink, we eat together, we joke, I feel full of joy..."

The stay came to an end, and his parents had to return to Warsaw. Neither they nor Frédéric knows it, but this is the final goodbye. They will not see each other again.

Shortly after the farewell, Frédéric set off to Paris. On the way, he stopped in Dresden to spend a few days with the Wodzinsky family. There, he found his childhood friends, the Wodzinsky children, and among them, the young Maria.

He spends a week with them and everything goes wonderfully. The three male siblings don't take a dim view of the fact that their former playmate, now a talented pianist and refined artist, may marry their sister Maria in the not too distant future.

It was the year of affection. In mid-October, Frédéric is back in Paris, blissful.

Nocturne Op. 27 N° 2, in D flat major
The two Nocturnes of Opus 27 were composed in 1835, in Paris, around the time of the trip to Karlsbad. The second of them is the most known and appreciated by the audiences.
In our modest opinion, this nocturne is probably the only one that can get started and maintain its simple beauty without harmonic change for four bars and then some. In the first 25 seconds, the left hand arpeggios do not leave the D-flat major chord.

The rendition, remarkable, is by the Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva.

Bellini: "I Puritani", famous arias

After having been on the verge of death in the spring of 1830 and after overcoming several crises, Vincenzo Bellini moved in 1831 to the beautiful town of Moltrasio to cope with his convalescence and enjoy an idyllic peace in the company of Giuditta Cantu. There, she gave him the love and care the other two Giuditta could not offer him for being in the backstage of Vincenzo's emotional scenario.

Having been brought back to life, he addressed the composition of La Sonnambula upon his return to Paris. The same year he premiered Norma, as well.
Four years later, in January 1835, what was to be his last opera, I Puritani (The Puritans) was premiered at the Teatro Italiano in Paris, the same theatre Rossini had been in charge of until the Revolution of 1830.

I Puritani's composition had begun in the summer of the previous year and passed parallel to a series of relapses in Bellini's disease. Seven months after the premiere, on September 23, 1835, Bellini's life was extinguished in a Parisian suburb, on the farm of a friend and assisted only by serfdom. He died at the age of 33 years.

I Puritani
A love melodrama in three acts, it takes place in a castle in Plymouth, England, in the midst of the struggle between the supporters of Oliver Cromwell –the Puritans–, and the royalist supporters of the House of Stuart. It all occurs in the year 1650.

Full of beautiful melodies with exquisite purity, it is at the same time a work extremely difficult for the singers. The aria Credeasi misera from act III demands the tenor –albeit optional– to sing a high note that moves away four notes beyond the upper note of his vocal range. And in A te o cara, also from the last act, the tenor is required to intone –now, imperatively– a C♯, two tones above his range.

In the following version of A te o cara, Luciano Pavarotti reaches a flawless C♯ at minute 2:50. The recording is from the year 1973. The soprano is Joan Sutherland.

Pavarotti, anew, in Credeasi misera, reaching the natural F (4:51). It seems as if a soprano had replaced him.

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Bellini's three Giuditta – "Casta Diva"

The first Giuditta was married and was called Cantú. She deeply loved bel canto and to a lesser extent her husband, who she had married at the age of 16, in 1819.
Simple background information. Nevertheless, it sheds light on the fact that nine years later, for the opening of the Carlo Felice Theater, in Genoa, she fell at the feet of the young author of the work, Vincenzo Bellini, born in Catania in 1801, child prodigy at age 7 and destined to be the last representative of romantic bel canto of the nineteenth century.

Besides being clandestine, the relationship with Giuditta was certainly inspiring as well as long, passionate and stormy. Vincenzo, whose passionate ardor cannot be hinted at the delicacy of his face, had experienced at the age of 20 the greatest love affair of his life. She was Maddalena Fumaroli, a young student who aroused in him a volcanic passion. Unfortunately, as legend has it, Maddalena's enthusiasm subsided and after a while, it completely went out.

Vincenzo Bellini (1801 - 1835)

This early disenchantment would lead the composer, already mature, to choose for more than an option in love affairs. And Giuditta would have no alternative but to share.

For a few good years, Vincenzo had lived a long series of love affairs, in Milan and in Genoa. As a result of these idylls, for the premiere in 1831 of his great masterpiece, Norma, at La Scala in Milan, two other Giuditta were invited onto the stage, two old passions that Bellini had kept in a discreet background while Giuditta the first was at his side. They were the soprano Giuditta Pasta and the contralto Giuditta Grisi: a lucky coincidence which –when he fell ill in 1830– prevented him, delirious by fever, from confusing their names.

Norma - Casta Diva
In the first third of the 19th century, works set in La Galia or pre-Roman peoples became fashionable in Europe. Norma, opera set in the first century BC, is a good example. The protagonist of the same name is a druid priestess, fatally in love with a Roman consul. His Prayer to the Moon –Casta Diva– would become the most famous aria of Bellini's bel canto. Highly difficult and demanding, only a few singers in the 20th century have been able to deliver a performance at the height of the lyric spirit that the sovereign beauty of their melody entails. Notable exceptions were at the time, Maria Callas and Monserrat Caballé.

The American soprano Renée Fleming in a concert version, at the Palace of the Tsars, in St. Petersburg.

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Rossini: Cinderella - Sextet

Passionately endeavoured to compose hilarious works, Gioacchino Rossini had the misfortune to find love in a singer who sang serious operas, the mezzo Isabel Colbrand whom he married in 1822, after a long love affair. Colbrand, disqualified for the succession of frills in the style of Gioacchino, will give her very best for the composer to try a new path, this time oriented towards melancholy and expression of sentiments.

Thus, La Cenerentola (Cinderella) became the last opera buffa by the Italian author, with the exception of a comic opera "in the French style" composed during his stay in Paris.
Fortunately, before he became serious he had been showing off his extravagant humor for a long time.

The first occasion came in 1813 with the farce Il Signor Bruschino, in which a character —a secondary one, sure enough— has to sing a single important sentence in the whole work: "Padre mio, son pentito, tito, tito, tito, tito". (My father, I am sorry). Previously, in the overture, the second violins are required by the score to tap their bows, rhythmically, 32 times, on their lecterns.

After the opera seria Tancredi (because there were some, prior to Colbrand) maestro Gioacchino composed L'italiana in Algeri, an opera with a "Muslim" subject in the style of The Abduction from the Seraglio, by Mozart. At the end of the first act, the singers must "sing" onomatopoeias as bum-bum, din-din, tac-tac and others in combination with a devilish rhythm of orchestra and chorus. An aria for bass demands the singer to imitate with trills and chirps the flourishes of a soprano.

"Questo è un nodo avviluppato" - Sextet

La Cenerentola (Cinderella), surely the most famous opera of Rossini after The Barber of Seville, presents the story of Perrault somewhat modified, in an adult version and with a prince of flesh and blood instead of the fairy, and with a somewhat cloying Cinderella for her unlimited righteousness.
Organized, as usual, in two acts, maestro Gioacchino does not forget absurd situations here. For Act II he wrote a sextet in which all the characters must sing, syllable by syllable, the phrases "Questo è un nodo avviluppato, questo è un grupo rintraciatto" (This is a complicated knot, this is a very close mess), at the moment when the comedy of entanglements is at its climax.

Film version of 1981. Cenerentola: Frederica von Stade. Orchestra Teatro Alla Scala. Conductor: Claudio Abbado.

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Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto

When Brahms was fifteen years old his teacher Marxsen concluded his piano training, and the young musician had to start walking in the world by himself. But this did not mean Johannes to abandone his interest in composition and musical arrangements, while he continued to play in the Hamburg breweries —also occasionally in some house of the aristocracy— and to visit the Baumgartner piano house as often as possible in the absence of one of his own where to practice.

He would also go on concert tours, making up a violin and piano duo with one or the other of the two most renowned violinists of the time, Reményi and Joseph Joachim. With the latter he forged over the years a close friendship that, except for some ups and downs, did last a lifetime. A friendship that was likely built on the healthy obstinacy of Joachim so that Brahms would decide to pay a visit to the Schumans in Düsseldorf, that is, the composer Robert Schumann and his beautiful wife and famous pianist, Clara Schumann.

Brahms, c. 1872
(1833 - 1897)

Determined to take a step that could provide great encouragement to his artistic aspirations, after a few days of travel through the Rhine Valley, the young Johannes, aged 20, arrived in Düsseldorf and knocked on the Schumann's door one day in September 1853, a few months before Robert tried to commit suicide throwing himself, precisely, into the waters of the Rhine.

Preceded by several letters from Joachim, the welcome could not have been more friendly and warm, more simple and cordial. That night, Clara and Robert Schumann invited Johannes to dinner, thus beginning one of the most moving and disrupting relationships that has ever been seen between two artists.
But after the suicide attempt, on February 1854, Robert was admitted to a mental asylum, at his own request. Clara, aged 34, stayed alone, in charge of her eight children. She became the only breadwinner for them, through giving concerts and teaching.

Brahms, Clara's consolation
Aware of the attempted suicide and subsequent confinement, Brahms went to Clara to comfort her without asking anything in return. Initially. But the tavern artist, spoiled in his childhood by a ring of fallen women, stumbled here with a feminine soul and figure about which he was completely unaware. Before the kindness and sweetness of Clara, he was able to respond only in stammering tones, with singular signs of affection that until today we could not say if they were or not reciprocated.
For a while, being Robert in the mental institution, Johannes remained with Clara, almost in the role of a homeowner. But the unconfessed idyll would never be resolved, although it lasted more than forty years.

Concerto for violin and orchestra, in D major
Dedicated to his friend, the violinist Joachim, it was composed in the summer of 1878, probably in the Austrian Alps, in the village of Pörschach, where according to Brahms himself "melodies are everywhere and care must be taken not to step on them when walking". It premiered in Leipzig on January 1, 1879, with Brahms conducting and Joachim as the soloist.

Movements
The concerto follows the standard concerto form, with three movements in the pattern quick–slow–quick (the Allegro giocoso being the most popular):

00:00  Allegro non troppo
24:09  Adagio
32:14  Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace — Poco più presto

The rendition is by Hilary Hahn, with Paavo Järvi conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

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Brahms: Hungarian Dance No 5

Brahms, early childhood
Fruit of the union of Hersika, a seamstress, and Johann, an extroverted musician who earned his living playing in small orchestras that encouraged provincial life, Johannes Brahms had to leave school two years after he begun conventional studies. His parents had seen in the little boy, at the age of seven, a child prodigy whose musical skills, properly exploited, could take them out of the humble condition in which they lived, in the slums of Hamburg, in the late 1840s.

Brahms, aged 20 (1833 - 1897)

And fortune was on his side. A remarkable piano teacher named Cossel, whom Johann knew purely by chance, offered to teach Hannes — as he was called as a family —  without receiving anything in return. The child Brahms responded to this token of generosity by devoting himself to learning seriously, with tenacity and a large quota of personal sacrifice. Since there was no piano in Brahms' home, he had to contrive to get a kind bourgeois to lend him one. The piano maker Baumgartner, looking to the future, did his utmost to support the child.

Faced with the remarkable progress of the child, Professor Cossel decided Johannes continue his training with whom had been his own teacher, a renowned musical director that far exceeded the artistic stature of Cossel himself.
But this time the guidance had to be paid.

Brahms in the taverns
The increase in family income became an inescapable necessity. Fortunately, the solution was at hand. Johann, an expert in these matters, obtained for Hannes a job in a tavern in the port neighbourhoods of Hamburg.

There, sitting at the piano, little ten-year-old Johannes had the mission of delighting with light melodies the ears of drunken sailors and tender prostitutes. If his audience burned with enthusiasm, he should also play the violin, the violoncello and the horn, instruments that, luckily, he also handled with dexterity.

This pitiful story — which the composer himself undertook to divulge — did not prevent, however, that adult Brahms could later compose melodies full of joy, prominent among them the highly celebrated Hungarian Dances, twenty-one pieces of much liveliness and brilliance, originally written for piano four hands and composed during a period that goes from 1852 to 1869.

Hungarian Dance No. 5, in F sharp minor
The dances were the most profitable for Brahms, and later were arranged for many instruments and ensembles. He also arranged the first ten dances for solo piano, the dance No 5 becoming the most popular. It is based on some czardas written by another composer, which Brahms mistakenly thought they were folk songs.

A version for solo piano, by American pianist Caroline Clipsham.

Below, Bill Edwards, former champion of the USA Old-Time Piano Playing Championship, trying to revalidate the title with a novel version halfway between ragtime and charleston.

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Abbess Liszt: Piano Concerto No 1

Prince Nikolaus was a head-to-toe selfish man. Divorced and remarried, he was not willing for his former wife to do the same. As soon as he learned of Franz Liszt's purpose to marry Carolyne de Sayn-Wittgenstein, he devoted himself full-time to lobby every Holy See's authorities to prevent it. The visit of the Pope's emissary to Carolyne announcing that the marriage authorization was to be revised was the fruit of all his intrigues.

But such amount lobbying efforts had an impact on his state of health. In 1864, the prince left this world. It was the ideal occasion for Liszt and Carolyne to unite in holy matrimony, without any obstacle. But at the same time the love relationship was fading away —Franz, believing that he was not up to that sort of things; Carolyne, just about to be convinced that such an accumulation of difficulties was but a warning of future failure.

This being the case, Liszt made the decision of his life, surprising everyone, friends, colleagues and the audiences. In the year 1865, at 54 years old, the famous pianist and composer was given the "minor religious orders", thus becoming the respected Abbess Liszt. Nonetheless, this did not prevent him from continuing with his career, in his well-known areas of pianist, composer ... and lover, since legend says that he had more than one affair after being given religious orders.

But Franz never stopped maintaining contact with Princess Carolyne. For several years they would exchange thousands of letters, until the day Liszt passed away, on July 31, 1886. Six months later, without fuss, Carolyne went after him.

Piano Concerto N ° 1 in E flat major
In the course of his long life, Liszt wrote two concerts for piano and orchestra. The most celebrated and the one that has most attracted the attention of the public and performers is the first of them. It took about 26 years for Liszt to compose it. The first sketches date back to 1830 when Franz was only 19 years old. In the course of the composer's long and lively life, the concert No. 1 would undergo a series of modifications, culminating, apparently, in 1853 with the latest changes. Two years later the concerto premiered in Weimar with the composer at the piano and his friend Hector Berlioz conducting. With a couple of further modifications, it was published in 1856.

The concerto lasts about 20 minutes and consists in four movements played with no interruption.

The outstanding Argentine pianist Martha Argerich is accompanied by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

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