Gershwin: Porgy and Bess - Summertime

The same year George Gershwin published the version for two pianos of his Rhapsody in Blue, the novel Porgy, by the writer DuBose Heyward, became the bestseller of that year, 1926. Gershwin was fascinated with the work, which addressed the painful life of black people of the south in the United States, and thought about writing an opera based on it, for which he initiated contacts with the author to obtain the copyright and his permission.

But other projects distracted him and it was not until eight years later, in 1934, when he began to work intensely on the music for the libretto that Heyward and George's brother lyricist, Ira Gershwin, had written on the basis of the same name play, written in duet by Heyward and his wife. At the beginning of 1935, the opera was finished and Porgy and Bess was released in September of that year. The name of the co-star was added to the original title of the novel and the play, so as to compare, favourably, with Tristan and Isolde, to give an example.

The play tells the story of Porgy, a black beggar, and a handicapped person, to make things worse, who tries to rescue Bess, young black woman, from the clutches of a possessive and violent lover.
Originally four hours long, the work is divided into three acts. In the first one, a young mother sings a lullaby, Summertime, to her little son. (In the third act, Bess will sing it). And contrary to the common opinion, his verses are not Ira Gershwin's but Heyward's.

Countless versions have been made of the theme, a large part of them for jazz groups and performed by the most famous African-American music singers, among them, to name a few, Janis Joplin, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and many others.
The original song is offered here, in a concert version, with the American soprano Kathleen Battle, accompanied by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Unlike other singers, Kathleen sings in the tonality, very demanding, that Gershwin set out.

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Max Bruch: Violin Concerto in G major

The German composer Max Bruch, born in Cologne, Kingdom of Prussia, in 1838, is part of the group of minor post-romantic musicians, from the second half of the European nineteenth century. It is a time when composers live a kind of forced transition in which they are forced to prolong romantic forms and aesthetics, to please an increasingly vast public formed by an enriched bourgeoisie that does not advocate sophistication.

Bruch's Violin Concerto in G minor, from 1868, is in a certain way part of that aesthetic because in the work we can still appreciate that exacerbation of pyrotechnics and virtuosity that will be later abandoned by the authors to come, putting a definite end to the great romantic century.
Max Bruch composed three violin concertos but the only one that remains to this day as part of the violinists' standard repertoire is Concert N° 1 in G minor. Composed at age 30, it enjoyed enormous acceptance for a long time, to the extent that the author seriously thought about forbidding its performing because it impeded the interpretation of the others. Apparently, the audience today and yesterday were right.

Max Bruch (1838 - 1920)

The concert score also has a story. At the end of World War I, due to the chaotic economic situation, Bruch's editor was not in the position to pay the copyright to this and other works of the composer. Bruch did not like it at all and sent the autograph score to a couple of sisters who were a famous piano duet for whom he had already composed a concerto for piano, in order that they sold the concerto in the United States. Rose and Ottilie Sutro, two pioneering girls in the country of opportunities, sold it on their own and Bruch never got a penny for the transaction. The composer died in Berlin in 1920, not knowing what happened with his popular concerto on his tour through the new world.

Violin Concerto in G major - Finale (allegro energico)
The concerto is in three movements. We offer here the last of them – the one that made the work famous – in the rendition of the extraordinary American violinist Sarah Chang, of whom Yehudi Menuhin pointed out she was "the most wonderful, the most perfect, the most ideal violinist I've heard". Sarah is the daughter of Korean parents but was born in the USA in 1980. At the age of nine, she made her debut in New York accompanied by the New York Philharmonic.

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Chopin: Revolutionary Étude

After leaving Warsaw for Paris in 1830, Chopin stopped for a short time in Breslau, Dresden, Vienna, Munich, and then Stuttgart, where he arrived in 1831. There he learned of the Warsaw occupation by the tsarist troops and, according to some biographers, this news would have led him to compose, enraged, several piano pieces, among which the Étude N° 12, Opus 10, consequently called "Revolutionary Étude", stands out as one of the most energetic.

Before Chopin (and before Liszt, as well) the musical form Étude was linked to the practice of the instrument so that the student could approach other works at a later stage. Expressiveness was not relevant to them, much less the enjoyment of the sounds. On the other hand, if Chopin's Études have acquired their own personality in the history of music, it is not only due to their technical challenges (the pedagogical contribution) but also because Chopin took them as a pretext to create masterpieces, precisely because the inventiveness needed to its construction was going hand in hand with a marvellous musical inspiration.

Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849)

Chopin's Études, for the twelve major and minor scales, are contained in two collections of 12 études each, to which are added three others, posthumous. The first of these collections is the Opus 10 and was dedicated to Franz Liszt. The second is Opus 25 and, as the gentleman he was, Frédérick dedicated them to Liszt's mistress in those years, Countess Marie d'Agoult. Composed in Warsaw, probably Vienna, Stuttgart, and then Paris, were finally published in this latter city, between 1832 and 1837.


Étude Opus 10 N° 12, "Revolutionary"
The main technical difficulty demanded by the étude N ° 12 of Opus 10, "Revolutionary", is the handling of fast scales and very large arpeggios entrusted to the left hand, destined to sweep practically the entire keyboard, providing the entire piece with a character that we could call "resounding", condition surprisingly valid also for the diminuendo passages, in which case the challenge is even greater.

However, it should also be noted that, despite the enormous demand, the hand, an indispensable tool in this occupation, remains "comfortable" for a large part of the piece – and large hands will be more comfortable than small hands – that is, the hand (the left hand) is almost always very close to its natural disposition, thus diminishing the possibilities of fatigue and stiffness because the hand repeats structures that suit it, even when it must work at great speed.

In the early Twentieth Century, Polish pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky (1870 - 1938) surprised the musical world with some Études on Chopin's Études, composed perhaps from a somewhat daring consideration that the original demands were not many. In this work, Godowsky addresses the Chopin études and asks the left hand to do what is written for the right and vice versa, or creates versions of them for one hand, or put together two or three études in one.

The video shows the Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky playing the Revolutionary Étude in the traditional way to continue undeterred with the amazing version of Godowsky for the left hand alone. (A nice comment on Youtube about the video points out: "If I was Boris, I would be sipping some tea on my right hand while I play this. That would be Epic.")

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Schubert: String Quintet in C major

The last Schubertiad attended by Franz Schubert took place on the eve of his birthday, January 30, 1828. He was 31 years old and was to live for less than ten months.
Just three years ago, he had sent to Göethe, for the second time, a small collection of his poems set to music and dedicated to the poet. The German bard, also for the second time, turned a deaf ear.
Those were years in which the Viennese society was captivated by the entertaining and joyful operas of the talented Rossini, making the comprehension and understanding of this more complex composer, uphill. Those were the circumstances in Vienna, the composer's hometown, so, little could be expected from the German poet, who apparently was not only deaf but also discourteous.

But not all aspects were negative in those years. Some publishers thought that the 28-year-old composer's works could contain an unsuspected treasure. Little by little, they began to publish their compositions, although without stopping exploiting him, because they paid misery for them. But he was becoming known, and by 1827 he was already a musician who was quoted in foreign newspapers and magazines. There were no economic benefits but "honorary": that same year he was appointed a member of the Vienna Philharmonic Society. And in March of 1828, it was possible to organize a whole evening entirely programmed with music by Schubert, the first one and the last. The concert was a success popularly and financially and allowed Franz to pay off a large part of his debts.

Schubert and a couple of friends

What if Göethe had lent a little hand? The recognition, yes, could, or should have, arrived earlier. On Schubert death, his possessions were some clothes and an amazing number of scores, whose total value was estimated at 63 florins. The funeral and the doctor's bill cost around 250. The short, plump and nearsighted Franz Schubert, apart from being unfortunate in love, departed from this world indebted.

String Quintet in C major - Adagio
One of the greatest works of chamber music of all time was completed only weeks before his death. The work was premiered twenty-two years later, in 1850. And publication occurred  ... three years after the premiere.
The work is written for two violins, one viola and unusually, two cellos (the usual thing was to double the violas, not the cellos). It is in four movements, and the complete work lasts approximately one hour.
We present here the second movement, the Adagio. It is in ternary form (A-B-A). A melody developed in the simplest mode imaginable but of extraordinary beauty starts the movement. The central section is intensely turbulent: it breaks suddenly into the tranquility in the distant key of F minor. Towards the end, the initial idea is picked up again, ending in a climate of even more intense lyricism. The work as a whole serves as a tantalizing reminder of what might have been, had Schubert been granted more time to create and innovate.

The rendition is by the chamber group conducted by the Japanese-born German violinist Susanna Yoko Henkel.

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Grieg: Peer Gynt - Anitra's Dance

Before fully entering into the criticism of the society of his time –existing in the works An enemy of the people and the thousand and one times enacted A Doll's House–, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen devised in 1867 a work in verse that nonetheless its fantastic character already contained misgivings about the character and psychology of his fellow countrymen. The work commented, Peer Gynt, was originally intended to be read and not enacted but the success of its publication prompted the author to turn it into a play in five acts.

This turnaround made it essential include musical passages to fill the idle times between scene changes: preludes, dances, songs and some choral numbers, as well as "musical backgrounds" to accompany certain scenes or for creating atmospheres. For accomplish this, he resorted to the help of a countryman, the composer Edvard Grieg, an ascending figure in Norway and also in Europe after the overwhelming success of his Piano Concerto.

Edvard Grieg, en 1888
(1843 - 1907)

At the request of Ibsen, Grieg composed around twenty pieces of music. The work was released in February of 1876. The audience found the music that attractive that it did not take long for the score to take on a life of its own. Discarding some of the original pieces or fusing them with one another, Grieg ended up erecting two orchestral suites made up of four pieces each.

Due to its simple beauty, Anitra's Dance, from the Suite N° 1, is an inevitable part of the student orchestras repertoire. The little work depicts an episode in which the protagonist, Peer Gynt, is seduced by the beautiful Anitra by means of a somewhat risqué dance in order to relieve him of his riches, ill-gotten, for sure, but that is another story.

The rendition is by the Antonio Vivaldi Chamber Orchestra, in a concert on the occasion of Valentine's Day, in 2010.

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Gershwin: "Rhapsody in blue"

In the mid-1960s, long before reggaeton, in Santiago de Chile the piano sheet music was purchased at La Casa Amarilla (The Yellow House), a music publishing house and musical instruments salesroom. If you were struck by a piece that you did not know, you had only to hand the score to the house's pianist and he would turn it into music instantly, so making easy your decision. La Casa Amarilla still exists but the pianist no longer.

Quite further north of Santiago, in New York, and several years before, in 1914, the pianist and composer George Gershwin, at the age of sixteen, would play that same role in one of the many music establishments in a New York neighbourhood specialized in light music. But since New York is not Santiago, Gershwin was also in charge of giving small private recitals of fashionable music in the establishment halls.

A son of Russian immigrants and self-taught until he was twelve, George soon understood that he was also able to compose and in 1916 he published his first song. In 1923, the future composer of the opera Porgy and Bess and the symphonic work An American in Paris, offered a "hybrid" concert: classical music and jazz, following a tendency from those years searching for a somewhat diffuse concept: the symphonic jazz. The concert was attended by a famous band director of the time who, firmly believing that the young Gershwin could become the creator of American music of the "future", a combination of African-American colour and the reputable classical music, encouraged him to compose a Concerto.

George Gershwin (1898 - 1937)

George accepted, but aware of his limitations in terms of musical forms, chose for the free form of a rhapsody. In February of the following year, at the end of a concert that included music by Elgar and Schönberg, he ventured to perform the solo part of his Rhapsody in blue for piano and jazz band. It was a huge success, although there were criticisms of some serious critics who considered it naive and superficial. Others, less serious, found it funny, spontaneous, melodious and sensual.
Various transcriptions have been made of this music, for solo piano, for two pianos, and for piano and symphony orchestra.

We are offering here a version for piano and orchestra, by the New York Philharmonic with Leonard Berstein conducting from the piano, in a 1976 recording. From minute 10:41 the slow and suggestive melody is heard – " Tchaikovskian ", according to some –, that has made the work famous and the closest thing to the blues of the whole piece. The glissando in charge of the clarinet that initiates the piece arose as a joke in a rehearsal. Gershwin incorporated it later in the score.

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E. Lecuona: "La comparsa", for piano

Apparently, prodigy children are everywhere. People who in 1909 attended the Testar cinema in Havana could see that the musician accompanying the silent movies of the time was a 14-year-old boy. The boy, who was missing only four years to obtain his diploma as a piano performer at the National Conservatory of Havana, including a gold medal, was called Ernesto Lecuona.

A son of a Canarian journalist and Cuban mother, to alleviate the household economy after the untimely death of his father, the future composer was forced to work in the cinema at an early age. In 1907, at age 12, he had already participated with a musical group in the intermissions, between a film and another, as was the custom.

Lecuona, an author of songs, seems to be the obligatory review. Perhaps due to the overwhelming success of the song Siempre en mi corazón (Always in my heart), the main tune of the same name movie, from 1942, an epoch of profuse Lecuona involvement as a composer for the Hollywood cinema. And, certainly, there are also Siboney, Maria la O, Malagueña and many others.

Ernesto Lecuona (1895 - 1963)

But its musical production, of approximately 600 pieces, includes diverse suites for piano, five ballets, music for theater and cinema, pieces for children, and even an opera. And as if that were not enough, as a performer he showed an exceptional talent for playing the music of the European classics and romantics.

Later, Lecuona will gradually move away from this universe and end up paying homage to Afro-Cuban music. That music was almost completely marginalised in Cuban society at the beginning of the twentieth century but finally, it managed to gain access to the concert halls thanks in large part to the sustained effort of the maestro Lecuona.

La Comparsa is one of his most popular compositions and still valid. His first public performance was given in 1912 so it can be assumed that it was composed before the age of 17. Though originally just a song, countless versions of it have been made, starting with Lecuona own version for solo piano.

In this opportunity, we listen to it in a very tasty rendition, as well as free, for piano and orchestra. At the piano, the Cuban maestro Frank Fernández accompanied by the Youth Symphony Orchestra, in Caracas, Venezuela.

Ernesto Lecuona died in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1963.

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Chopin: Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante

When he was just twenty years old, Fryderyk Chopin understood that making a living in Warsaw was an impossible task. His vocation was urging him to look for other scenarios where his talent would be more appreciated and bear at the same time better results. But there was an issue, unresolved, the question of choosing the destination, the place to go.
But Chopin did not really want to do it either. Premonitory, he writes:

"I do not feel strong enough to set the day of my departure, if I leave, I will not see the house again... and I think I will die far ..."

On the other hand, the political scene was not the best. Under the tsarist occupation since 1813, the harassment of the Poles is routine in 1830: University of Vilna professors are persecuted and the poet Adam Mickiewicz is deported to Russia. With Duke Constantino leading the way the arrests proliferate, while several of Chopin's friends spread libels and rabble-rousing pamphlets. These circumstances lead Nicholas Chopin to hasten Fryderyk's departure. To the legitimate Nicholas' motivation to make known the talent of his son abroad, must be added the information he had –as a result of his contacts with Freemasonry–  about the imminent Polish insurrection.

Chopin leaves Warsaw
Fryderyk spent the summer at Zelazowa Wola in the company of childhood friends. At the end of August, he was in Warsaw working on "a polonaise with orchestra". He will leave on November 2, to Vienna. The day before, together with his classmates and friends, they imbibed, sang and played the piano. At the end of the day, he was given a silver cup with a handful of Polish land.
Four weeks after his departure, on the night of November 29, the insurrection broke out in Warsaw, with the assault on the Duke residence, led by students of the Polish officers' school. Chopin learned about this in a foreign land. He will have to face the uninviting fact that the Viennese bourgeoisie does not welcome the Polish uprising, whose outcome will be the total defeat by the immensely superior Russian army the following year.

Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, opus 22
The polonaise for orchestra in which Chopin was working three months before the insurrection is the Grande Polonaise Brillante for piano and orchestra. Later, in 1834, he will add to it an introduction for solo piano whose title is, curiously, a tempo indication instead of a description. Chopin called it Andante Spianato. If we dip into the opera language, we learn that it means a song without frills, canto spianato, which goes directly, bluntly, to the note you want to reach.
In an intimate manner, the andante precedes moderately the enormous brilliance and solemnity of the polonaise, which some have even called "presumptuous", and well, its author is twenty years old.
Later, Fryderyk will make an arrangement for solo piano of the Grande Polonaise.

The final scene of the film The Pianist –which tells the true story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman during another occupation of Warsaw a hundred years later– gives us the version for orchestra. I can not omit here that the whole piano music in the film is performed by the Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak.

Following, the version for solo piano, performed by the Chinese pianist Yundi Li, on the stage of Opera Narodowa, Warsaw, 2010.

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Wagner: Tannhäuser - Pilgrims Chorus

Richard Wagner, musician, dramatist, linguist, philosopher and politician, born in Leipzig in 1813, is part of the bunch of great composers who came to the world around 1810 (Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Verdi, the latter in 1813).
Founder of the German opera "for the Germans", Wagner did not have special skills as an instrumentalist and for many years he worked as conductor of choirs and orchestras in German theatres. In the century of liberalism, class struggle and progress, he claimed for himself and for his profession the sacred condition of Art. Consistent with this, he wanted to live and succeed as a professional composer. It was not easy.

In the year 1834, he met the singer Minna Planer in a spa where the orchestral group in charge of Wagner in Dresden was spending the summer. After two years of loving courtship, they got married. The marriage, that had to face huge and diverse financial hardship, was always marked by a cluster of misunderstandings, separations and marital infidelities on both sides, although eventually, one or the other, returned home, with the tail between the legs and their heads down. It was the time of reconciliation.

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1893)

Precisely in a lovely moment, and fleeing the debtors, they tried fortune for a few years in Paris, but the expedition ended in a complete failure. They returned to Dresden in 1842 and a few months later the premiere of Rienzi, the Wagner's opera now almost forgotten, was produced. This time the success was by their side. The public waved to his young countryman rejected in Paris.

Life began to smile at them. Shortly after, Wagner is appointed the chapel master of the court of Saxony for life, and with a remarkable compensation. By the year 1848, Wagner has already composed Lohengrin and Tannhäuser and is also a much sought-after conductor. But life is going to get complicated again.

Wagner, the anarchist
The year 1848 is the year Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, written in conjunction with his friend Friedrich Engels. And it is also the year in which the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin arrives in Dresden from Prague, to stay at the house of Wagner's assistant, who professed the same faith as Bakunin. Wagner and Bakunin became fond of each other, and mutual admiration, respect and friendship did emerge between them, endorsed each evening on long walks through the dark streets of Dresden, unaware Wagner that years later Bakunin will end up expelled from the First Communist International, by an indication of Karl Marx himself.

And 1848 is also the year of the "May Uprising", a series of popular demonstrations that resulted in the constitution of the first German parliament, which drafted a new constitution for Germany. But the King of Saxony rejected that constitution the following year and in response to the rejection broke out the May 1849 uprising that filled the streets of Dresden with barricades.

Richard Wagner actively participated in the revolt: he distributed propaganda and liaised with the "provisional government", of which Bakunin was a member. But the uprising failed and Wagner's anarchist friend was arrested and sentenced to death although later the Saxon authorities handed him over to the Russians, who did not hesitate to imprison him.

As for Richard, he had an arrest warrant for him that forced him to leave Dresden and with it, his lifetime employment. A few days later, Richard and Minna reached Weimar where they were welcomed by the eternally generous Franz Liszt. Eleven years of total exile from Germany will follow.

Tannhäuser
"Tannhäuser and the Minnesingers' Contest at Wartburg" (the full title) is one of Wagner's most popular works. Its Overture and the famous Pilgrims Chorus (end of Act 2) belong to the "classical" repertoire of European musical literature. With a bad reception at its premiere in Dresden, in 1845, is an opera in three acts, with music and texts in German written by Wagner himself, based on old German legends, related to the struggle between sacred love and profane love:

The Pilgrims Chorus
When in the castle of Wartburg the knight Tannhäuser confesses that he has lived on the mountain of Venus in mortal sin, the other knights threaten him with death. Elisabeth, his earthly love, saves him from it, but he is expelled from the castle and ordered to join the pilgrims who are on their way to Rome to receive absolution and whose song comes from the valley.

The rendition is by the Ponte Singers and the Ponte Orchestra, from Hong Kong, conducted by Stephen Lam Lik Hin. The beginning, pianissimo, compels listening to it with hearing aids.

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Isaac Albéniz: "Asturias", Leyenda

The Catalan child prodigy Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz was born in 1860 in a city in the province of Gerona, Spain. When he was only four took place his first public presentation at the piano, performing a very difficult program that earned him a resounding success, to the extent that the organizers were suspected of deception and even rumours were circulating that behind the scenes there was a pianist who doubled the child's interpretation.

But no, it was the child who actually played the piano. As one critic pointed out, it was "the new Mozart returned to earth". It was not an opinion so far from reality because this new Mozart also had an ambitious father who did not give up trying to exploit the child's extraordinary skills for music, urging him to "compose" as soon as possible, with the happy result of a military March, whose printed score the father requested to be added: "composed by eight-year-old Isaac Albéniz".

Isaac Albéniz (1860 - 1909), around 1872

Isaac entered the conservatory in Madrid at age eight but at ten decided to take a getaway. So, he took the first train to El Escorial, where he offered several recitals at the town's casino. Then, he left. He returned to Madrid but before arriving, he decided to get off at any station and took a train in the opposite direction, thus initiating his first great artistic tour through several cities in Spain.

He returned to the Conservatory but soon after went to Andalusia, where he increased his triumphant series of performances. But shortly after he reached Cadiz, decided to embark as a stowaway on a ship that was leaving for Puerto Rico. He had no ticket but there was a piano on board. Thanks to it, he was able to pay for his ticket and reach American lands. The piano's child prodigy and also of the adventures was then twelve years old.

Asturias, Leyenda
It is one of the pieces that make up the suite for solo piano Spanish Suite, composed around 1886. The suite originally consisted of four parts. An editor added another four after the composer's death (1909), including a prelude corresponding to another suite and called it Asturias, Leyenda (legend).

This piece must be one of the few works that transcribed for another instrument acquire another dimension and are more beautiful than the original version. So much so that Asturias is most frequently performed in his transcription for guitar than in the original for piano, which is always a little rough, due, needless to say, to the difficulties presented by the huge jumps in the keyboard.
In contrast, the virtuous Croatian guitarist Ana Vidovic in this recital in New York plays the piece without batting an eyelid.

Tárrega: "Recuerdos de La Alhambra"

The "Spanish guitar", as we know it today, added its sixth string only at the end of the 18th century. Before, it had five strings and also four, and the instrument was called differently. It remained an "amateur" instrument from the 17th century until the beginning of the 19th century, although during that period it enjoyed many virtuosos, among them Gaspar Sanz (around 1674) and later Fernando Sor (1778-1839).

Only in the mid-nineteenth century would the sustained development of the instrument and the technique of the "classical guitar" emerge, thanks to the contributions of the Spanish romantic composer Francisco Tárrega, born in Villarreal in 1852 and died in Barcelona in 1909. His transcriptions of works from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and other composers underlie the concert repertoire for classical guitar of our times.

Francisco Tárrega (1852 - 1909)

And he also made a contribution, of course. One of its most popular pieces is known as Recuerdos de La Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra), a beautiful and simple melody inspired by the palace and fortress complex built on a rocky hill in Granada, Spain, dating from the mid-fourteenth century. In 1492, with the conquest of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs, it became the royal palace.

Memories of the Alhambra demands from the performer proper handling of the "tremolo" technique, wherein a single melody note is plucked consecutively by the ring, middle and index fingers in such rapid succession, with the support of the thumb that pulsates a lower string doing its part in the harmonic framework. Proficient performance of a tremolo will tend to make the repeated string resemble a long sustained note, as may a violin, for example.
The rendition, brilliant, is by the Croatian guitarist Ana Vidovic, who, curiously, plays the tremolo with only two fingers.

Beethoven and the Viennese - Sonata No 7

Many years after the death of Beethoven (1827), the municipal authorities of Vienna decided to demolish an old theater where the maestro had played the piano. It is said that at the end of the last performance, the Viennese remained standing for a while, crying, excited.
Vienna had declared him an adopted son in 1815, but around 1880, his music was somewhat extreme, or too unique for the taste of the Viennese of the time. Beethoven, on the other hand, did not have a positive impression of the Viennese, at least that was the case during the first years after having settled in the capital of the empire, in 1793. Thus, he even wrote, for example:

"These Viennese are worthless, from the emperor to the last shoeshine boy, how can one become part of this country, the Viennese are people without heart, there is not a single man honoured in the general decline of Austria, only particular circumstances hold me here, where everything is dirty and ruined, they are all thieves, from the highest to the lowest of the social scale ... "

Vienna and the Viennese
On another occasion, he expressed his disappointment with the liberal groups that greeted with great enthusiasm the French Revolution at a time when the European courts watch in horror the development of events in revolutionary France:

"these people only think about laughing, drinking and dancing ... while they have beer and sausages, there will be no revolution ..."

In apparent contradiction to this thought, in addition to the group of his students highly well chosen from among the most select and well-to-do of Viennese society, Beethoven had a small but conspicuous circle of high-line friendships. Between the years 1797-1803, among them was a senior officer of the Russian Imperial Service in Vienna, to whose wife, Anne Margaret von Browne, the maestro dedicated the three sonatas of Opus 10, composed around 1798.

Sonata No. 7, Op. 10 No. 3 Is the most extensive of the trio. It lasts around 24 minutes and is the only one written in four movements:
00:00  Presto
05:20  Largo e mesto (maybe one of Beethoven's most beautiful slow movements)
15:29  Menuetto: Allegro
18:04  Rondo: Allegro

The rendition is by the American pianist Eric Zuber.

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A. Ginastera: "Danza de la Moza Donosa"

As any respectable dictatorship would do, that of General Onganía in Argentina in the sixties did not beat about the bush to apply censorship to a wide range of cultural manifestations. In the field of music, a ballet by Béla Bártok and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky were censored. And as a fair law is not a strict law, was also banned the performance of Bomarzo opera, a work from a compatriot, a fellow, the composer Alberto Ginastera, prohibited by decree due to his "excessive reference to sex, violence and hallucination."

Ginastera (1916 - 1983), one of the most outstanding Latin American composers of the 20th century was at that time an international celebrity. He had studied with Aaron Copland (among those who had studied with him were Astor Piazzolla and Waldo de Los Ríos). But the most important Argentine composer of all time never maintained good relations with the political authorities, whether dictatorships or not.
In the year 1945, he was exonerated from his position as professor of the Military Lyceum. After a series of skirmishes with Peronism, a Guggenheim scholarship allowed him to leave the country.

Upon his return, two years later, he founded the Conservatorio de La Plata, which he was its director. The authorities forced him to give the conservatory the name of Eva Perón, which Ginastera opposed. Evita had justly promoted the female vote, but from the point of view of art she was a good reciter and very popular actress of radio drama series but nothing linked her to music. Ginastera was again exonerated in 1952, for being "anti-Peronist".

Danzas Argentinas, opus 2
An author of an extensive work of chamber music, two concertos for piano, two for cello, one for violin, three operas and many others, Alberto Ginastera became a leading figure of Argentine musical nationalism. His composition for piano, Danzas Argentinas, 1937, led to the identification of his music throughout the world as the "music of the pampas", the "gaucho" music. The Danzas... comes from an early period he called 'objective nationalism', in which he often used folk themes.
So, the three dances that make up the piece carry a title of great evocative power: "Danza del viejo boyero" (roughly translated as Dance of the old Oxen-Keeper), "Danza de la Moza Donosa" (Dance of the graceful maiden) and "Danza del gaucho matrero" (Dance of the Bandit Gaucho).
Danzas Argentinas enjoyed great popularity since its premiere and today they are part of the traditional repertoire of pianists, at least of Latin Americans.

Danza de la moza donosa
In a brilliant rendition, the first-rate Argentinean pianist, Martha Argerich, plays the second dance, "Danza de la moza donosa". A live performance in Amsterdam, when Marthita was a maiden, and also a "donosa" maiden.

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Scott Joplin, the King of Ragtime

In New York, 1913, there were plenty of wealthy black people who moved to Harlem and bought a house there. Oddly enough, among them, there was a musician: the pianist Scott Joplin, composer of ragtimes and author of two operas. He was born in 1867, a good time to be born if you were black because two years before Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed the emancipation of all slaves. That was the good news because one year after the executive order, the Ku-Klux-Klan was born.

Turned into a pianist thanks to his formidable talent and the free lessons from a German teacher, Joplin decided to follow in the footsteps of Johannes Brahms and Isaac Albéniz, and at age 20 he began to make a living playing the piano in bars and taverns, as a travelling pianist through Mississippi Valley, visiting cities that usually maintained an enviable inter-racial co-existence, to the point that there is no public record of lynchings, at least in the 1890s.

Soon Joplin began to compose his own pieces, brief, syncopated, with a "ragged" rhythm (a ragged time), in the style of the popular ragtime, which although already predominating in black music, was Joplin who took it to a higher stage. His more successful composition, Maple Leaf Rag, of 1897, got to sell hundreds of thousands of copies in the USA. According to some, Joplin received a percentage that allowed him later to buy a beautiful house in St. Louis. According to others, the money earned did not exceed 600 dollars per year, for a short period.

The Sting
Perhaps today we would not remember Scott Joplin were it not for the movie The Sting, 1973, which included as part of its soundtrack the piano piece The Entertainer, composed in 1901. The film gave rise to a renewed interest in his music; in 1974, a New York Times columnist claimed: "Hey musicologists, it's time to pay attention to Joplin" ... Nothing would have made Joplin happier than an invocation like that because from the beginning he claimed for ragtime a status similar to that of the "serious" music coming from Europe. Joplin was right. A musicologist from our days clearly maintains that ragtime is "the exact equivalent, in terms of local style, of Mozart's minuets, Chopin's mazurkas or Strauss waltzes".

Maple Leaf Rag
Scott Joplin died in New York, in 1917, closer to poverty than to abundance, notwithstanding the house in Harlem.
The rendition, allegedly, is from Joplin himself: a piano roll found by chance.

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