Shostakovich: Three Preludes, Op. 34

On April 17, 1917, the young eleven-year-old Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich was among the thousands of people who came to the St. Petersburg station to welcome back to Russia Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, named Lenin. From that shocking experience, Dmitri began to consider himself a son of the revolution –two years later he would compose a funeral march in memory of the fallen.

Dmitri was born in Saint Peterburg on October 25, 1906, the son of a chemical engineer and Sophie, a young pianist who at that time was finishing his studies at the Conservatory. When Dmitri turned seven, he began to attend the piano lessons that his mother gave to his older sister, Maria, as a listener. During these practices, little Dmitri remained silent, huddled in a small chair, listening, absorbed.

Shostakovich, as a child

After two years of witnessing such a scene, Sophie realized that the boy might have some interest in music and decided to provide him with some rudiments. For fun, she put the piano transcript of an Andante from a Haydn symphony on the lectern and invited Dmitri to sit down. Stupefied, Sophie witnessed how little Dmitri, slowly but surely, played the entire piece, for which he had invented a fingering adapted to his little hands.

At the end of 1919, Dmitri entered the Petrograd Conservatory. He finished his studies six years later, when he presented his composition professor with a symphony later released by the State Symphony, which unleashed the joy of his compatriots. Soon the work was already known in Europe and America, thus making Dmitri the first great author of the new Russia, a composer formed entirely under the Revolution, and by the Revolution. Thereafter, Dmitri had carte blanche for creation, though it lasted a pittance –until Lenin's death. Difficulties were to arise when Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, named Stalin, took over the destinies of the country. But that is another story.

24 Piano Preludes, Op 34
The 24 piano preludes of Opus 34 were composed between the years 1932-33, by a 26-year-old Shostakovich. It is a cycle of 24 miniatures that take up the experimentation of Bach in the 18th century, Chopin and Scriabin in the 19th, and Debussy in the 20th century. Shostakovich's contribution has a special place in the history of this instrumental genre and constitutes a key to understanding the development and subsequent stylistic maturation of the composer.

There is a lot of children online, recorded by their parents, joking around with the piano.
Sarah Tuan is something else. The little pianist is capable of properly interpreting 20th-century music. Here she pays – perhaps unintentionally – a full tribute to that other boy who used to listen to classes for his sister a hundred years ago.

Three splendid Preludes from Opus 34 are what little Sarah gives us on the occasion of the concert offered by the winners, in their category, of the International Russian Music Piano Competition, in June 2011.

Mozart, Clarinet Concerto in A major

Mozart, in a bankrupt

"Oh, God! The situation I am in, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. [...] Oh, God! Instead of thanking you, I come to you with new requests! —Instead of paying off my debts, I come asking for more. [...] It´s now up to you, my one and only friend, whether you will or can lend me another 500 gulden? ... "

The author of this plea is Mozart, and the recipient, his freemason friend Michael Puchberg, who must have been a kind soul, for Mozart turned to him for long years during his stay in Vienna, with the same invariable purpose, and Michael the goodman was always there, solid as a rock, to support Wolfgang Amadeus.

After a trip to Leipzig, in 1789, invited by his friend Prince Karl Lichnowsky, and where Mozart gave a public concert that was a success but that did not report anything financially, Wolfgang returned to Vienna, where he found Constance very ill and pregnant with another child. In the meantime, he was commissioned an opera −Cossi fan tutte. With that goal in mind, another letter was sent to the devoted Michael, since Constance had to travel to Baden again and had to pay for travel, doctors and cures.

In July 1791, while working on the libretto suggested by his friend Schikaneder and which was to be his last opera, The Magic Flute, Constance had another son, a boy. This time, the boy survived.
In those same days, the Mozart home was visited by a stranger who delivered a letter in which an unknown person requested the writing of a Requiem. Wolfgang continued to work on Schikaneder's script, but with a bad feeling stemming from that strange visit. However, The Magic Flute was hugely successful in its premiere on September 30.

Life was looking good again. He thought of traveling to England the following year. In October he was strong enough to give his clarinet player friend Anton Stadler the only Clarinet Concerto he composed. Then he wrote the Masonic Cantata, and resumed the writing of the Requiem. He did not manage to finish it. Wolfgang Amadeus died, surrounded by friends, in the early morning of December 5, 1791. He was 35 years old.

Clarinet Concerto in A major, K 622
Mozart is one of the few composers who kept a record of his works while he was alive, although he only started it in 1784. This catalog presents the Clarinet Concerto and a Masonic cantata as the last two entries.
Stadler played the concerto at its premiere in Prague on October 16, 1791, and his performance was favorably received.
Composed just two months before his death, the concerto is structured as usual, in three movements in the sequence fast, slow, fast.

Today, Mozart's most popular clarinet concerto movement is the Adagio, its second movement. Its inclusion in the soundtrack of the enjoyable 1985 Sydney Pollack film, Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, contributed to its popularity.

Movements:
00:00  Allegro
12:58  Adagio
20:07  Rondo - Allegro.

The rendition is by Arngunnur Árnadóttir, clarinet, and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Cornelius Meister.

Jean Sibelius, Violin Concerto

"A statue has never been erected to a critic"

Like many of his colleagues, the future Finnish composer Jean Sibelius left his hometown as a boy to study law in the capital, on family recommendation, despite the fact that within the same family, the little boy had generously displayed his musical talent, led by the hand of his aunt Julia who, unlike what happened with a famous novelist, only taught him to play the piano.

Sibelius, the violinist
But one year after entering the University of Helsinki, in 1885, Sibelius abandoned his studies and enrolled in the Music School of the city. There he studied violin and composition. His goal was to become a violin virtuoso, but, unfortunately, Jean seems to have had no fingers for the violin, despite the fact that he was part of the string quartet that the School boasted about and did quite well with the Mendelssohn Concerto. A trembling of the hand originated in a youth accident and the nervousness that dominated him on stage worked against him. Resilient Jean Sibelius decided to moderate his soloist aspirations and progressively target his efforts towards composition.

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)

Sibelius, the composer
By the early years of the nascent twentieth-century, Sibelius had already composed several choral symphonies and was beginning to reap success and national recognition with his first two orchestral symphonies – out of a total of seven composed over the course of his life. International recognition would come with his most famous work to this day, the tone poem Finlandia, a work that revealed to the world the poetic mastery of the composer, and that became the starting point of a rapt nationalist sentiment, of which Jean Sibelius will be an exalted protagonist.

The Violin Concerto
Nonetheless, the musician had not forgotten the violin forever, and the violin, for his part, waited for him solicitously. His Violin Concerto, premiered in 1905 in Berlin under the baton of Richard Strauss, became a small masterpiece that brought him immense popularity. Although, he had to face the fight for the stages fore the rising enthusiasm that avant-garde music of the time was arousing, before which Sibelius had to stand shielded in the virtuosity and depth without outbursts of his music.

For this reason, it has been said that Sibelius' style is conservative and his restricted harmonic language and his music are not very complex, compared to that of his contemporaries. The German theorist and also musician Theodor Adorno (author of nine short pieces) went so far as to call him an amateur and outdated composer. On the other hand, Béla Bártok, who was a musician and not a theoretician, did not hesitate to place Sibelius among the great composers of his time. But all this didn't matter at all to Sibelius, who used to point out: "Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected to a critic."

Movements:
00:00  Allegro moderato
16:31  Adagio di molto
25:34  Allegro ma non tanto

The rendition is by Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Chopin, Nocturne Op 55 No 2

Chopin in Great Britain, trying to make ends meet

Karl Marx's essay entitled "The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850", addresses the political and economic process that took place in France during those years. The process exploded on February 23, 1848, in Paris, causing the fall of king Luis Felipe and the flight of the imperial family to England fraternally accompanied by the Parisian aristocracy and nobility. But the essay does not say a word that, as a result of those same events, a Polish musician living in the City Light was left without students.

Indeed, with Paris engulfed in flames and bristling with barricades, Frédérik Chopin's students chose to "freeze" the lessons and start off towards their summer houses in the countryside or, openly, cross the English Channel. In addition to the barricades, the city was rocked by a phenomenal decline in all cultural and artistic activities, including music. A few days before the uprising, on February 16, Chopin managed to give one last concert, but by the end of March he was in an unprecedented situation: he simply had no way to earn a living.

Jane Stirling
Fortunately, Chopin had had an enviable student from Scotland for several years. The lady, quietly in love with Frédérik, was 44 years old and named Jane Stirling. She lived in Paris for half the year, to take lessons, along with her sister, who did not take piano lessons but it is credible that she was engaged in some other cultural activity. The pair of sisters advised Chopin to travel to England, where, they assured him, London's high society would compete for the favour of the pianist and the teacher since his name and prestige were well recognized there.

10 Bentinck Street, London. With some goodwill,
the reminder plaque in the center can be distinguished.

Travel to England
Despite his poor health (he would die the following year) Chopin agreed to the proposal and, drawing on the income obtained at the February concert, on April 21 he was already in London, with some letters of introduction under his arm.

He was received and welcomed by Jane's friends who installed him comfortably at No. 10 Bentinck Street, in Cavendish Square, from where he had to rush off a few days later as it was a little expensive, settling in later at 48 Dover Street, in Piccadilly, more affordable.

The Stirling sisters were not wrong. Before long, Frédérik had given many paid concerts that brought him a good amount of money. He also gained access to the best of London society, which allowed him to meet Carlyle and Dickens. In addition, it had a good number of students. The only problem was that these were forgetful when it came to paying:

"I am badly in need of money. People are mischievous here. If they want to avoid something, they just go to the fields. One of my students left without paying me nine lessons."

Scotland

In June, the London aristocracy left the city as well, but to enjoy the summer. Frédérik was left alone again, but affectionate Jane came to his aid again. She invited him to Scotland to his relatives' house. After a twelve-hour train ride, Chopin arrived in Edinburgh on August 5. A Polish doctor was waiting for him there, whom Jane Stirling had strongly entrusted to take care of Frédéric's health. After a few days in a hotel, Chopin moved into Jane's brother-in-law's house.

Nocturne N ° 2 Opus 55
Miss Stirling was not only a good friend of Frédérik. She also seems to have been a very outstanding student, since we know that the two nocturnes of Opus 55, composed in 1843, were dedicated to her.

We are listening to Nocturne No 2 in the rendition by the Hungarian pianist Ivett Gyöngyösi. International Chopin Competition, 2015.

Beethoven: Symphony No 7 - Allegreto

Ludwig Spohr, a musician and Beethoven's contemporary who came to enjoy the composer's friendship, tells in his autobiography that in the rehearsal prior to the premiere of his Seventh Symphony, the 43-year-old maestro was so deaf that he could not hear the quiet passages of his own work. During the allegro – Spohr tell us –, a couple of these passages confused Beethoven and for a long time the orchestra walked on one side and him on the other. So, when the time came when, according to his own account, an orchestral forte had to be played, Beethoven bent down and spread his arms to underline it ... but nothing happened. The poor deaf maestro came out of his confusion ten or twelve bars later, when the orchestra played the forte and then he was able to hear it.

The premiere of the Seventh Symphony took place in Vienna on December 8, 1813, to great success. It had been five years since Beethoven had offered a new symphony to the Viennese public. Therefore, it was received with great enthusiasm. A few days later it was performed again, and just like in the premiere, the famous Allegretto, the second of its four movements (Poco Sostenuto - vivace / Allegretto / Presto / Allegro con brio), had to be repeated at the request of the public.

The work had been devised around 1811, although sketches dating back to 1806 have been found for the Allegretto. The popularity of the second movement is largely due to its simplicity: a simple rhythmic idea, a series of quarter notes and two eighth notes, repeatedly heard (an ostinato), give way to a Schubertian melody.

Vienna Philarmonic Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti.

Beethoven's opinion ... and others
Beethoven regarded Symphony No. 7 as one of his best works. Subsequently, great composers, including Richard Wagner, spared no praise for the work. However, the maestro did have to deal with rude criticism from some of his contemporaries. Perhaps one of the greatest invectives was that of Professor Friedrich Wieck, the father of Clara Schumann, who did insinuate that Beethoven would have composed the work while being a little intoxicated.

But the resounded applause was for an English critic, who in 1826 pointed out:

"... it is impossible to discover in the work any scheme, nor to notice any connection between its parts. It seems to have been conceived as an enigma, but rather we dare to think that it is a mockery, a deception, a scam."

It's not easy to please everybody.