Richard Strauss, "Burlesque", in D major

Although he was affable and even simple in his dealings with friends, the German composer Richard Strauss did have a reputation for arrogance and pride. Life had favored him generously, from his birth in a wealthy and musically rich family environment where he never lacked for anything to the long existence he enjoyed without major setbacks. So, it is not surprising that he saw himself as an artist of privileged and exclusive talents, which, of course, he was quick to show early on.

At the age of 16, his First Symphony was premiered; at twenty his name reached North America with the premiere in New York of the Second Symphony. Five years later, the tone poem Don Juan opened the doors of the world's stages, and at the age of forty the opera Salome made him the most famous composer of his time... Richard Strauss, mature, had something to be proud of.

von Büllow's assistant

In 1884, after hearing Strauss conduct a work without prior rehearsal, the prestigious pianist and conductor Hans von Büllow recommended the 20-year-old as chorus master and his assistant conductor in the celebrated Meiningen Orchestra, which von Büllow was in charge of. In return, Richard Strauss wrote a scherzo for piano and orchestra for his benefactor.

Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949)

A difficult work
The benefactor, however, refused to study it. He claimed that the piano part was untouchable, especially for small hands, as was his case. Strauss agreed and put the piece aside for some time until in 1889 he met a Liszt pupil, the pianist Eugen d'Albert, who suggested some changes that Strauss gladly took up. The piece, dedicated this time to d'Albert, and renamed Burlesque, was premiered in Eisenach, Bach's birthplace, on June 21, 1890.

Burlesque for piano and orchestra 
With a novel orchestration, the work gives an important participation to the timpani. Its title refers to its parody character, in the style of mid-century burlesques intended to mock some other work, usually an opera.

The rendition is by the Berlin Philharmonic, with Martha Argerich at the piano and Rainer Seegers on timpani, conducted by the late Italian maestro Claudio Abbado.

Haydn, Piano Concerto No 11

 

If an enthusiastic music lover of Joseph Haydn's work wanted to listen to all his music continuously, he would have to allocate two weeks with their days and nights because the prolific author of the oratorio The Creation produced approximately 340 hours of music throughout his life, more than Bach or Handel, or Mozart or Beethoven.

Music for the Court
True enough, the Austrian master did not live a short life. He died at the age of 77 (more than twice Mozart's life), but such a huge production might not have been possible without his stay for nearly thirty years in the service of the princes of Esterházy, in the role of a liveried servant in charge of producing music for the court.

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

Before the liveries

But it was not always like this. As a teenager, Haydn had to earn an income in a variety of ways. He was even a street musician, participating as a singer in serenades offered to unattainable ladies, before becoming the most prominent beneficiary of the patronage system initiated in the Renaissance.

Last years

But so prodigal patronage came to an end in 1790, when a deaf prince acceded to the court and disengaged himself from Haydn. The master, widely known throughout Europe and regarded as the most important living musician, continued to compose, mainly oratorios and masses, until 1803, when he had to give up his work due to age-related decline. He secluded himself in his house in Vienna, responding to the numerous invitations with an epigraph taken from a composition of 1796: "All my strength is gone. I am old and tired."

Piano Concerto in D major

Twelve keyboard concertos Haydn wrote, four of them published during the composer's lifetime. The second of these is the most popular, the Concerto in D major Hob. XVIII / 11, published in Vienna in 1784. ("Hob", sometimes just "H", comes from Anthony von Hoboken, creator of the catalog).

Movements:

00:37   Vivace  - Two themes, introduced first by the orchestra and then by the soloist. The development section is primarily concerned with the first theme; the recapitulation briefly quotes the second.

08:45   Un poco adagio -  A long-breathed melody, followed by a repeated note theme.

17:44   Rondo all'Ungarese  - This is constructed from an authentic Bosnian folk dance, called Siri Kolo, which the composer introduces in the opening theme, then takes up again in the climax.

Ivan Fisher conducts the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

At the piano, the outstanding Russian maestro Mikhail Pletnev.

Anton Arensky, piano trio

 
Anton Arensky, Russian composer, conductor, and pianist born in Novgorod, Russia, in 1861, was the son of amateur musicians. Perhaps they saw in him the realization of the professional future that had been denied to them because as soon as the child Anton showed some musical aptitudes, the family moved to St. Petersburg so that the offspring could continue his studies in the Conservatory of the city. They were not wrong, because after graduating with a gold medal in 1882, Anton Arensky was hired by the Moscow State Conservatory, joining the teaching staff as its youngest member.

A miniaturist
Despite this promising start, Arensky never managed to enter the major leagues of Russian musical writing as a composer, as his pupils Scriabin and Rachmaninoff would. His style, miniaturist, unfolded better on the small scale, because in the larger-scale compositions he was indebted, first, to Rimski-Korsakov, and then to Tchaikovsky, although without reaching their genius. In his early forties, he opted for the performer's variant and toured Russia as a successful pianist and conductor on extensive, hectic, and vital tours. His somewhat dissipated lifestyle led him to die of tuberculosis at the age of 44.

Anton Arensky (1861 - 1906)

The oblivion of eighty years
As Rimsky-Korsakov indelicately predicted at his funeral, Anton Arensky was soon to be forgotten. Indeed he was, for a long time. It is only since the eighties of the twentieth century that there has been a renewed interest in his work. Much of it has been recorded, and today it is not uncommon to attend the performance of some of his pieces on the stages of the world. Author of a piano concerto, a violin concerto, and two symphonies along with other minor works, his Piano Trio in D minor is today part of the standard chamber music repertoire.

Piano Trio in D minor, opus 32

Composed for piano, violin, and cello, the distinctly post-Romantic work was written in 1894 in memory of cellist Karl Davidov, a friend of the composer and director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory while Arensky was his pupil.

Movements:

00:00  Allegro moderato

12:30  Scherzo: Allegro molto

17:56  Elegia: Adagio

24:30  Finale: Allegro molto

The rendition is by the artists Gil Shaham (violin), Arnon Erez (piano), and Rafael Wallfisch (cello).

Beethoven, "Leonora" Overture

 
One of the rare occasions in which the concert halls around the world have been crowded with active military personnel took place in Vienna in 1805 on the occasion of the premiere of Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera. With the city occupied by Napoleonic troops, most of the audience was made up of officers and non-commissioned officers of the French army. Unperturbed, they attended the performance of the first version of the opera in the Theater an der Wien. By the way, the reception was pitiful.

Fidelio - a second version
Beethoven revised the work the following year. After rearranging some sections and reducing the original three acts to only two, it was performed again in March 1806 at the same theater, this time successfully. But the composer had begun to suspect that he was not receiving the full economic benefits that were due to him, and soon after decided to withdraw the work from the stage.

Third version
A new performance only took place in 1814, when, after the revision of some texts, it was featured at the Kärntnertor theater with the title "Fidelio" together with an overture of the same name. The work, initially inspired by the play "Leonora, ossia l'amore coniugale", by Jean N. Bouilli, tells the story of Leonora who, in her endeavor to rescue her husband – a political prisoner – from a 17th-century Spanish prison, goes to work there disguised as a man, as a certain Fidelio.

Leonore Overture No. 3 in C major, Op. 72
Each of these three versions featured a different overture. The last one, as already mentioned, featured the Fidelio overture. The first included what is known today as Leonora No. 2 (composed No. 1 for a performance in Prague that never took place). It was the second version – that of 1806 – the one performed with the overture that has come down to us as Leonora No. 3, opus 72, and which has finally proved to be the favorite of audiences and conductors, with the exception of the French who, it is said, still prefer No. 2 as it would be the one Napoleon heard.

Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Jean Sibelius, "Valse Triste"

Born on December 8, 1865, in the provincial town of Hämeenlinna, the most important Finnish composer of all time was christened Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, but at the age of 21, he decided to Frenchify his name. He had recently abandoned his law studies against his family's advice and decided to follow the impulse of his early musical vocation. Betting on the future internationalization of his career, he henceforth went by the name Jean.

Jean Sibelius was quite right. In 1892, his symphonic poem Kullervo gave him a prominent place in the musical scene of his country while warning the world that a new voice was emerging from northern Europe.

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)

Success did not dazzle him, but it gave him enough confidence to decide to start a home. That same year he married Aino, sister of the composer and conductor Armas Järnefelt, who had introduced Sibelius into the family, which also had a son, Arvid, a writer.

Valse Triste, opus 44 n° 1
In 1903, Arvid asked his brother-in-law Jean to compose the incidental music for a play called "Death" (Kuolema). The work, which had a deep psychological resonance (as was to be expected), was premiered in December of that year, together with the six orchestral pieces that Sibelius wrote for it.

The first piece was entitled Tempo de valse lente - Poco risoluto. The following year, Sibelius revised it and premiered it as a brief concert piece under the name Valse Triste. It was an immediate success, to this day.

Nothing better than the opening bars of this piece to confirm the assertion that Sibelius is capable of establishing in a few seconds a sound world entirely his own. After a more lively middle section, a somber ending will close the piece with three mournful chords. It lasts about 

The rendition is by the Estonian Festival Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Järvi.

Franz Schubert, "Trout" Quintet

In mid-1818, life seemed to have started smiling for little Franz. That summer he was hired by Count Johann Esterházy, cousin of Haydn's protector, as music tutor to his daughters. The 21-year-old musician moved to the family's country residence in the Hungarian village of Szeliz, an idyllic place where he spent four months teaching singing and piano to thirteen-year-old Caroline and fifteen-year-old Maria. The salary was not bad, and the workload was light. Franz took the opportunity to compose.

The good times
The following year was better, it's perhaps the best year of the composer's life. He gave up teaching at the school run by his father and went to live with friends in Vienna. He had time to compose, read, talk, and enjoy meetings well stocked with beer and wine with his friends. Among them was the famous baritone Josef Vogl, in Schubert's opinion the first singer who had understood him and knew how to interpret him. In the summer of 1819 they both set off for a trip to the town of Steyr, 125 km from Vienna.

The cellist Paumgartner
The small town was bustling with abundant musical activity. Franz and Vogl's performances there – especially of the lied "The Trout" composed in 1817 – attracted the attention of the wealthy businessman and amateur cellist Sylvester Paumgartner, who asked Schubert to compose a major work based on the lied. The result was the Quintet in A major, one of Schubert's most popular works. Completed in Vienna in the autumn of that year, it is dedicated, as expected, to the cellist-entrepreneur.

Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, "The Trout"
Written for the unusual ensemble of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass, it comprises five movements: allegro vivace, andante, scherzo, andantino allegreto and allegro giusto. The work uses in its fourth movement the theme of the lied of the same name.

Listening Guide

00:27  Allegro vivace  –  Written in "allegro de sonata" form, after an introduction the main theme is brilliantly presented at 1:13. Development section: 4: 42. Recapitulation: 6:40, initiated by the violin.

10:09 Andante  – Beautifully lyrical, in a minor key. Contains three motives, one of them is given to the solo piano at 12:20; the strings in the role of accompaniment.

18:01  Scherzo: Presto – With an aggressive beginning, and whose momentum does not stop for a moment, it includes several Austrian folk melodies.

22:57  Andantino - Allegretto – The movement that gives its name to the piece: Theme and variations on the lied "The Trout". The variations are six: Var I: 24:00. Var II: 24:56. Var III: 25:57. Var IV: 26:52. Var V: 27:46. Var VI: 29:11.

30:34  Allegro giusto – Simple and light. Like the third movement, it seems to contain smaller units in the style of a set of dances.

The rendition is by Natalia Lomeyko (violin), Yuri Zhislin (viola), Juan Cadenas (cello), Andrei Feigin (double bass) and Damián Hernández (piano).

Béla Bártok, Romanian Folk Dances

As his pianist mother once said, the child Béla Bartók could distinguish and repeat the rhythms of the dances she played on the piano when he could no to pronounce a complete phrase. By the time he released the first one, the boy already had in his repertoire a few songs to which he added as many as he continued to grow. Before he was five, his mother understood that the boy should pursue formal piano studies. She was not mistaken, because at the age of eleven Béla Bartók was warmly acclaimed in the Hungarian city of Pozsony where he gave his first recital which included the first work of his own, incidentally.

The composer finished his studies in 1901 at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, where he had as a companion his compatriot and future composer Zoltan Kodaly, with whom he began a lifelong friendship.

The song of a nanny
In 1902, while on vacation, Bartók had overheard an eight-year-old girl singing folk songs to entertain the children in her care. Captivated by this music, six years later the composer would travel through Hungary and neighboring countries in the company of Kodaly collecting thousands of old folk songs, in search of the genuine ones that the eight-year-old nanny had unknowingly made known to him.

Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945)

The composer's enchantment with this music lasted for decades. It was difficult to escape from its various intricacies that allowed him alternating between quiet plaintive singing and the most fiercely aggressive rhythms. The complexity and perfection he found in Eastern European folk music would exert a powerful influence on Bártok's musical language in the years to come, just as it had done in the previous century with his compatriot Franz Liszt.

Romanian Folk Dances
Composed in 1915, these are arrangements for seven instrumental melodies that Bartók collected between 1910 and 1912 in Romanian localities. The author choose those that best served his intentions because of their timbral diversity and variety. The melodies are practically those of the original source, which Bartók elaborated scarcely because his intention was none other than their transformation into small miniatures whose duration did not exceed one minute. For it, Bartók took care to indicate in the score the exact duration that each one should have.

The original version is for solo piano, but arrangements for other instruments or ensemble of instruments are numerous. Here it is presented in a version for piano and violin by Hungarian musicians Katika Illenyi and Tamas Bolba. (The miniatures are six in all because the last one contains two themes).

Piazzolla, Le Grand Tango

The 1935 film starring Carlos Gardel, "El día que me quieras" ("The day you will love me"), includes a scene in which a boy shows up selling newspapers. The twelve-year-old boy was not an actor. He was a musician. For three years he had been practicing the bandoneon given by his father when he was nine. He did not imagine then that he would become one of the greatest musical figures in South America and an important composer among those who emerged throughout the world in the twentieth century. His name is Astor Piazzolla, born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 1921.

The tour it was not
The Piazzolla family had moved from Buenos Aires to New York in 1924 in search of better opportunities. There, Astor's father, also a musician, met Carlos Gardel and made some recordings with him. After the film was finished, Gardel decided to start an ambitious tour of South America and invited the young Piazzolla to accompany him. Fortunately, the boy declined the invitation, and thus saved his life from the accident that took Gardel's life.

Return to the homeland

Astor Piazzolla (1921 - 1990)

In 1936 the family returned to Mar del Plata. From then
until around 1950, Astor Piazzolla joined tango orchestras playing the bandoneon but without abandoning his piano and composition studies.
He began to establish links between tango as a popular dance and his approach to classical music, which his teacher Alberto Ginastera reinforced by making him study Ravel, Bartok, and Stravinski, as well as American jazz.
As a result of all this, his work "Buenos Aires", from 1953,
is to cause a small stir in the musical circles of Buenos Aires due to the use of bandoneon in the symphony orchestra.

Le Grand Tango
The following year, the author of Adiós Nonino won a scholarship to study in Paris with the influential pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. It was she who encouraged Piazzolla to revitalize tango on the basis of the classical and jazz training he had acquired. One of the best examples of the course his music took is the 1982 piece, "Le Grand Tango", premiered by the cellist to whom it was addressed eight years after its composition. Yes, because before that date, Mstislav Rostropovich had never heard of Astor Piazzolla, who, as a bandoneon player in Buenos Aires, had, a little earlier, become the creator of a new genre, the symphonic tango.

The rendition is by Chinese cellist Adam Liu and American pianist David A. Wehr.

Dukas, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

 
Within the group of so-called minor composers, who have always flourished – just saying – in all styles and at all times, the French composer Paul Dukas is the one who took the cake. Today, he is remembered for only one work that is better known than he himself is. In this withdrawal from the public's favor, it must be said, the composer played an outstanding role: driven by a severe sense of self-criticism, he destroyed a large part of his work, which in his opinion was not worth publishing.

In 1888, at the age of 23, he left the Paris Conservatory – which he had entered six years earlier – after considering it useless to continue trying to win the famous Prix de Rome, which was becoming more and more elusive. However, he was not so far from it because he once won the Second Prize with one of his early works. But around the same time, he had to undergo military service, another reason to leave the Conservatory, compulsory this time.

Paul Dukas (1865 - 1935)

Recognition
After serving his country he returned to civilian life as a composer and critic. A few years later, he was to compose his two best-known orchestral works: the Symphony in C major of 1896 and the symphonic poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice of 1897, gaining with it the recognition of his peers. The latter is a scherzo for orchestra based on a Goethe poem of the same name published a hundred years earlier. Although the work was immediately included in the repertoire of the conductors of the time, its recognition by the ordinary public was greatly favored by its inclusion in the soundtrack of the film Fantasia, shot in 1940, five years after the composer's death.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice
A genuine embodiment of programmatic music, the play faithfully describes each scene of Goethe's original work, where a young apprentice, wishing to imitate his master, an old magician, enchants a broom to perform for him the assigned tasks, among them, carrying water, a situation that gets out of hand when he realizes that he does not know how to stop the enchantment. Only the return of his master will save him from disaster.

The rendition is by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. After a brief introduction, Dukas uses the bassoon to bring the enchanted broom to life.

Mozart, Sonata for violin and piano No 18

 
The second time Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart left his post in Salzburg to try his luck at higher European courts, he did so in the company of his mother, Anna-Maria, even though he was already 21 years old. His father, Leopold, was unable to accompany him on this occasion and, knowing Wolfgang's playful and carefree spirit, thought it advisable that he should not go it alone. What Leopold did not imagine was that the trip would last more than a year and that within that period of time Anna-Maria would fall ill and die in Paris.

The tour
It began on December 27, 1777, and included visits to Munich, Augsburg, Mannheim, and Paris. In Munich, after several successful concerts, he met in a hallway with the Elector just to learn that there were no vacancies. In Augsburg, everyone was amazed at his talent but he was not offered a position. Things appeared to change in Mannheim after making acquaintance with members of the best orchestra in Europe at that time. Some expectations arose but, in the end, it all came to nothing. Only love was fruitful: Wolfgang fell head over heels for Aloysia Weber. He made plans for a future with her, which Leopold instantly thwarted.

Paris
Bowing to his father's authority, Wolfgang left Mannheim for Paris with his mother in March 1778. Not very enthusiastic, they endured Paris and its "sophistication" for four months, until the ungrateful accommodations in cold rooms and the terrible food finally undermined Anna-Maria's health, ending her life on July 3, 1778.

Nannerl, Wolfgang, Anna-Maria
(on the wall) and Leopold, c. 1780

"Palatine" Sonatas
On his return, Wolfgang stopped for a long time at Weber's home in Mannheim, in a second attempt to get a place, again unsuccessful. There he finished composing the sonatas for violin and piano called "palatine" (K. 301 to 306), dedicated to Maria Elisabeth, consort of the Elector of Mannheim, whose territory and dominions were known as the "Electorate of the Palatinate".

Sonata for violin and piano K. 301/293 (N° 18)
The sonata belongs properly to the genre of music of its time intended for domestic enjoyment. With a "gallant" character, it has only two movements:

00   Allegro con spirito   The theme is first introduced by the violin, while the piano accompanies with broken chords. Then, the roles are reversed (0:26). Throughout the movement, the two instruments are in dialogue following this pattern.

8:37   Allegro   Now it is the piano that introduces the theme, which the violin will take up next at 8:47. In its middle section (11:00) it will adopt the minor mode. 12:41: The theme is taken up again in the major mode. The piece concludes with undisguised elegance.

The rendition is by American violinist Hilary Hahn and Beijing-born American pianist Natalie Zhu.

Chopin, Nocturne opus 15 No 2

 
When Chopin arrived in Paris in September 1831, the city had just under a million inhabitants and its size was a far cry from that of modern Paris. It was a year and a little more since the "three glorious days" of July 1830, which led to Charles X's abdication and the ascension to the throne of the last king of France, Louis-Philippe, putting an end to republican aspirations.
In the autumn of the same year, Henri Délacroix – Chopin's friend in the years to come – painted his famous composition, La Liberté Guidant le Peuple, commemorating the toppling of Charles X –not the French Revolution, as is often believed.

A year later, the atmosphere in the city was still rarefied, and Chopin must have noticed for his first impressions were sweet and sour.

"...Here one finds, all at the same time, the greatest luxury and the worst filth, the highest virtue and the greatest vice..."

At the same time he is pleasantly surprised at the way Parisians behave in the streets:

"What a curious city! All the French prance and chatter, even if they don't have a penny...".

The Parisian salons

That was the open-air atmosphere. In the salons of the decadent aristocracy, of the rising bourgeoisie, also in those salons where Republicans and Saint-simonists (of which George Sand was one of its champions) met, the "romantic" evenings multiplied. Poets, painters, musicians, writers, and singers united their talents in the evenings, to exchange visions of society and the world. It was there that the "poet of the piano" would make his profit, with his veiled touch of preludes and nocturnes.

Nocturne Opus 15 N° 2

Between 1829 and 1846 Chopin wrote 21 nocturnes, 18 of them published during his lifetime and spread over several opuses. Published in 1831, the two nocturnes of opus 15 were dedicated to Ferdinand Hiller, a German pianist contemporary of Frédérick.

The nocturne No. 2 of opus 15 fully represents the structure with which Chopin, from the original proposal of the Irishman John Field – inventor of the genre –, endowed his nocturnes: a ternary structure whose second section must establish a clear contrast with the first:

Thus, obeying the Doppio movimento mark, which tells the performer to double the speed, the piece acquires in its second section (2:00) another "inner" rhythm (five beats against four) with an expressiveness radically different from the first. The third section (2:45) is little more than a re-exposition of the first, slightly modified for the purpose of closing the piece.

The rendition is by the great Cuban-American pianist Jorge Bolet, who died in 1990.

JS Bach, Fugue, from Sonata II (guitar version)

When the set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin by J.S. Bach was published in Bonn in 1802, its author had been dead for 52 years. Even after its publication, the work was largely ignored until the middle of the 19th century when the famous violinist Joseph Joachim made them known, joining his name to Felix Mendelssohn's as a judicious rediscoverer of the baroque master and his work.

Sonatas for solo violin

Begun around 1703 while Bach was in Weimar, the Sei solo-a-violino senza basso acompagnato – as Bach titled them – were finished in 1720 when the maestro was serving as Kapellmeister at the court of Köthen. It is not known if they were performed during the maestro's lifetime, but Bach himself likely made them known, as his son Carl Philipp Emanuel tells us "from his youth until well into his old age, he played the violin limpidly and passionately".

Sonata No. 2 BWV 1003

Since its rescue by the violinist Joachim, the work has been widely disseminated, being the object of arrangements for the most diverse instruments, among them, for solo cello, harp, organ, piano, trombone, trumpet, viola, string trio, and guitar.

Likewise, of the group of six sonatas and partitas, the one that has received the greatest favor from the public and performers is the sonata No. 2.
Its movements are the typical four movements of the sonata da chiesa: slow-fast-slow-fast. In this case: Grave - Fugue - Andante - Allegro.

The charming artist Tatyana Ryzhkova, born in Minsk, capital of Belarus, in 1986, offers us her no less charming rendition of the second movement, Fugue, in an arrangement for solo guitar.

Edward Elgar, "Enigma" Variations

One day in the summer of 1898, Sir Edward Elgar, the foremost British composer since the days of Handel and Purcell, was improvising at the piano in his home, absorbed and distracted, when suddenly a theme attracted the attention of his wife who, respectful and restrained, asked him to repeat it. Edward gladly agreed. Encouraged by the interest of his spouse, Edward not only repeated the theme but also made variations on it for a long while. When finishing, he thought that the material could be used to make a series of musical portraits of his friends, who would have to guess the variation that portrayed them. Sir Edward, among his many hobbies, was also a lover of riddles.

Enigma Variations
Thus was born one of the masterpieces of Edward William Elgar, born in 1857 in Broadhead, England, knighted in 1904, and died in Worcester in 1934.

Popularly known as the Enigma Variations, the Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra Opus 36 consists of fourteen variations on a theme that remains hidden – in Elgar's words, "is never played". Of all of them, the ninth variation is the jewel of the group.

Sir Edward Elgar (1857 - 1934)

Elgar titled it "Nimrod", in reference to an Old Testament patriarch described as "a brave hunter in the presence of the Lord". The variation IX is supposed to portray Augustus J. Jaeger, a close friend of Elgar's whose surname in German means "hunter", and who was a permanent critic and spiritual support of the author in difficult times, which he certainly had.

The welcome to the work
Despite the fascination of the refined orchestration, the critics received the Variations... with some astonishment, but at the same time, they were perplexed by the programmatic content, which was considered not very serious – just musical portraits of the composer's friends. Nevertheless, a few years later the work was successfully performed in St. Petersburg, garnering the admiration of Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1910 it had its premiere in New York under the baton of Gustav Mahler.

"Nimrod" and the Pathetique Sonata

Legend has it that while in a state of depression, Elgar was visited by his friend Jaeger who, upon seeing him in that condition, reminded him of all the torments Beethoven had gone through, ending his harangue with an inflamed intonation of the Adagio from the Pathetique Sonata.

Elgar would thank the gesture by "quoting" in his composition the opening bars of the adagio in variation IX, "Nimrod."

The rendition is by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by maestro Leonard Bernstein.

Haydn, piano Sonata No 23

The contract signed by Joseph Haydn upon entering the service of Prince Paul Esterházy in 1761, stipulated in its article 5 that the musician had to "appear twice a day in the antechamber to find out whether His Highness is willing to audition for music or not." A great attentiveness, for the prince, of course. Unfortunately, His Highness could not enjoy it for long as he passed away after a year, leaving no offspring. He was succeeded by his brother Nikolaus, nicknamed "the Magnificent".

The Esterháza Palace
And as magnificent as he was, Nikolaus found that the family residence – the palace of Eisenstadt – was going to be insufficient for his work and purposes, so he decided to build a large castle on marshy land bordering a lake.

The palace was called Esterháza and was completed in 1784, when the waterfall in front of the central building was inaugurated, an ornament in addition to the opera house, the puppet theater, the library, the picture gallery, and the 126 rooms.

1768, Haydn in Esterháza
But long before the construction was considered completed, Haydn and his musicians had already settled there in 1768, for Prince Nikolaus, patron of the arts like his brother, kept the composer in his post, without changing a comma in the contract. Until Nikolaus' death in 1790, Haydn remained in the service of his prince and patron, whom he served for twenty-eight years.

Nikolas Esterhazy (? - 1790)

Six sonatas for the prince
During his last years in Esterháza, Haydn hardly wrote any works for the court of Nikolaus because, already famous, his output was in demand by an increasing number of publishers, from Paris, Vienna, and London. But earlier, in a single year, 1773, he wrote six sonatas for the prince, which, following the Hoboken catalog, are numbered from 21 to 26. Unlike those produced in the 1880s – strictly for fortepiano – these were written to be performed indistinctly at the harpsichord or at the piano.

Sonata No. 23 in F major
In a rendition by the pianist Sara Daneshpour, we present here Sonata No. 23, structured in the usual three movements: fast - slow - fast. It is a work of great conceptual maturity, and demands from the performer a certain virtuosity, if not in the extended and beautiful adagio, certainly in the fast movements that surround it.

Movements:

00       Allegro
03:27  Adagio
07:08  Presto

P.I. Tchaikovsky, Serenade for Strings

 
The large and generous inheritance that Nadezhda von Meck received after the death of her husband, allowed her to maintain, or acquire, a series of estates and palaces scattered throughout Europe, which she enjoyed very much. Among the most opulent was the one in Florence, the Villa Oppenheimer, today a hotel called Villa Cora.

The villa, located on the Paseo dei Colli, was a sumptuous dwelling, with princely rooms, surrounded by a vast garden populated by statues corroded by the sun and rain, where Nadezhda – Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's epistolary lover, and patroness – moved every summer with her family, accompanied by a butler, a couple of Russian waitresses, three Italian servants, and a detachment of cooks, footmen, and coachmen.

By Nadezhda's villa

In the late autumn of 1878, Nadezhda's last letter to Pyotr Ilyich mentioned the villa and contained an invitation for the composer to visit Florence. Thus they could both get away from the Russian winter. Piotr telegraphed his acceptance, and Nadezhda set about looking for lodgings, as the invitation was not to the village itself but to the surrounding area. Nadezhda found two lodgings.

After receiving the details of both, Piotr opted for the one on the outskirts, half a kilometer from the Oppenheimer villa, where the composer arrived on December 2. 

A grand piano dominated one of the rooms, which Nadezhda had furnished as only she could.

Tchaikovsky, in 1878

The proximity then gave rise to a strange ritual: each passing day after day in front of the other's house, on foot or by car, giving each other advance notice of their itinerary; they attended the same shows without crossing paths; and, carried by a servant, they sent letters to each other daily. At the end of December, Nadezhda left Florence. Piotr took off for Paris soon after.

Serenade for strings in C major

In September 1880, Pyotr Ilyich added a brief note to his profuse correspondence with Nadezhda: "... I have ready the sketches for a symphony or a string quartet... I do not yet know which one...". A few weeks later, Nadezhda received another note, this time more specific: "The serenade... arose from an innate impulse, that is, it was born of the sole freedom to think [but] it is not devoid of true value."

Of course, Piotr had not composed his masterpiece, but within its genre, the Serenade for strings opus 48 is a perfect piece and a worthy successor of the typical eighteenth-century serenades, of which Mozart was the great master. It consists of four movements bearing a title, and lasts about thirty minutes.

The rendition is by the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin, conducted by the young German maestro Mateusz Moleda.

Movements:

1. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo - Allegro moderato: Written in homage to the great genius of Salzburg.

2. Valse (11:00): Moderato - Tempo di valse: One of Tchaikovsky's most popular pieces, for its grace, inspiration and elegance.

3. Élégie (15:20): Larghetto elegiaco: The necessary contrast that, despite its heartfelt melancholy, never goes beyond the framework of a serenade.

4. Finale (24:21): Andante - Allegro con spirito: It is built on Russian folk themes full of energy and vitality.

Offenbach, Tales of Hoffmann - Barcarolle

 
In the archives of the Paris Conservatory of 1834, opposite the name of Jacques Offenbach, we read: "Deleted from the registers on December 2, 1834, at his own request".

The year before, the fourteen-year-old cellist Jakob, together with his eighteen-year-old violinist brother Julius, had gained admission to the Conservatoire after their director, Luigi Cherubini – who several years earlier had rejected Franz Liszt because he was twelve years old and Hungarian – had celebrated their abilities and turned a blind eye to their age and German origin. In return, Julius was renamed Jules, and from then on Jakob was called Jacques.

The young Jacques Offenbach, a cellist
Jules graduated and became an accomplished violin teacher and conductor. Jacques became bored within a year, as noted above. But he felt free, to compose, although one unsophisticated biographer notes that "he also felt free to starve". Fortunately, the situation never reached such extremes. Between 1835 and 1855 Jacques Offenbach made his living as a cellist, even achieving some international fame, also as a conductor.

Jacques Offenbach (1819 - 1880)

The Tales of Hoffmann

But his focus was the composition of operettas, and in 1855 he opened his own theater to stage the works that poured out of his mind. Offenbach wrote nearly one hundred operettas in his lifetime. The last one, with which he intended to cross the boundary between operetta and opera, kept him busy for two years but he never saw it performed. The three-act opera The Tales of Hoffmann premiered on February 10, 1881, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Offenbach had died in October of the previous year.

The Barcarolle

The work continues to be a standard in the world operatic repertoire, even in the 21st century, but the aria that managed to go beyond the traditional stages is by far the Barcarolle, for soprano and mezzo, which is performed in Act III.

The piece has made inroads in the movies: Titanic and Life is Beautiful does incorporate it in their soundtracks. But the pioneer was Elvis Presley, who used the melody to sing Tonight is so right for love in the 1960 film, G.I. Blues.

The rendition is by Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and Latvian mezzo Elina Garança, accompanied by orchestra and choirs.

José Pablo Moncayo, Huapango for orchestra

As with Ravel, whose masterpiece and most popular work is known as "Ravel's Bolero" and not simply by its original title, Bolero, the symphonic piece Huapango for orchestra, by Mexican composer José Pablo Moncayo, is identified by all who know it as "Huapango de Moncayo". Since its premiere in August 1941 in Mexico City with composer Carlos Chávez as conductor, the work has become so popular that it has sometimes been referred to as "the second Mexican national anthem".

José Pablo Moncayo
(1912 - 1958)

Popular sources
The author of such a feat was born in Guadalajara, Veracruz, in 1912. At the age of seventeen, he entered the National Conservatory of Music. He had to pay for his studies by playing the piano in cafes and accompanying amateur singers on radio stations.

In 1941, Carlos Chávez sent him an invitation to be part of a concert that would celebrate the most promising national authors. Chávez suggested he take inspiration from the popular music of the Mexican southeast, for which he had to go to the sources.

Moncayo tells of his experience:

"... We went [...] to Alvarado, one of the places where folk music is preserved in its purest form. We spent some time collecting melodies, rhythms and instruments. When transcribing them we had great difficulty with the huapangos because [the natives] never sang the same melody twice. When I returned to Mexico I showed [a colleague] the material and he advised me: 'lay out the material as you heard it and develop it according to your own style'. So I did and I was satisfied..."

Huapango for orchestra
A must in the symphonic repertoire of Mexico's orchestras, "Huapango de Moncayo" is a celebration and reinterpretation of the typical traditional rhythms of Veracruz, the huapango among them – the result of the fusion of the musical traditions of the indigenous people with European instrumentation. The work is made up of three sones from Veracruz: Siqui sirí, Balajú, and El Gavilancillo, which by Moncayo's grace became a felicitous arrangement for symphonic orchestra.

The rendition is by the Simón Bolívar Youth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, for the BBC Proms 2007.