Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto No 1

One of the few romantic musicians born in a golden cradle, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy received from his banker father in 1829 a gift that any artist of the 19th century – and of any other century – would have eagerly envied. The twenty-year-old had already shown enough signs of talent so his father thought it appropriate for him to fulfill the dream of every artist of the time, to travel to Italy. And since the family's financial well-being could afford a little more, Mendelssohn Sr. financed Felix's travels all over Europe, back and forth, for three years.

On the way

The first visit was to England, where he conducted his own works, gaining the total admiration of the English. Then, it was Scotland, where he will take inspiration for his Scottish Symphony. In 1830, after spending a few months in different cities of Austria, he arrived in Venice on October 9. After a brief but intense visit to Florence, he jumped to Rome, where he settled for several months, meeting Hector Berlioz who was there enjoying his Grand Prix de Rome scholarship. They did not become close friends, but Mendelssohn would later invite Berlioz to conduct the Symphonie Fantastique in Leipzig.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
(1809 - 1847)

On his return

After a short visit to Naples and Pompeii in the company of friends, he will be on his way back in 1831. On his way to Switzerland, he crossed Italy again, visiting Florence, Genoa, and Milan.

Mendelssohn had been working on his first piano concerto since the previous year. So, besides exercising on the way his extraordinary gifts for painting, he took the opportunity to premiere the concerto, with him at the piano, during a short stay in Munich.

In the middle of December, he was settled in Paris. There he met Chopin and Liszt. With the first one he will become a great friend. As for the second, he will be pleasantly surprised when he witnesses the reading at first sight that the Hungarian master will make of his First Piano Concerto. 

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 in G minor

With very short dimensions, less than 20 minutes, the concerto was premiered in Munich in a benefit concert on October 17, 1831, with great success. However, it was Liszt who later, in Paris, made it truly famous. 

It is organized in the traditional manner, fast-slow-fast movements, which follow one after the other without pause.

Movements: 

00 Molto allegro con fuoco. A very fast and fierce movement. A fanfare (small brass section) at 6:35 precedes the andante, without pause.

6:50 Andante. In total contrast to the first movement, its tenderness becomes almost melancholy. With the four simple chords that end the movement, Yuja Wang takes the opportunity to show off his poise by brilliantly and astonishingly naturally achieving the piano's diminution in volume from piano to pianissimo.

12:18 Presto - Molto allegro vivace. It is also introduced by a fanfare, clearly reminiscent of the famous motif of the Fifth Symphony, three short notes and a long one. It is an exuberant, enthusiastic and lively rondo.

Yuja Wang is accompanied by the Verbier Festival Orchestra conducted by the German maestro Kurt Mazur.

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No 4

At the same time that the Viennese public held him in the highest esteem as the most prestigious composer of the capital of the Empire, Ludwig van Beethoven was becoming hopelessly deaf, when the nineteenth century had not yet completed its first decade. The year 1808 marks his last public performance as a soloist, conducting from the piano an improvised orchestra for the premiere of the Concerto No. 4 in G major.

Napoleonic forces had invaded Vienna in 1805 and would do so again in 1809. Perhaps intuitively, Viennese people were enjoying an intermezzo of relative peace when the marathon session of December 22, 1808, was scheduled for the new but unbelievably chilly Theater an der Wien, run by the impresario and former Mozart librettist Emanuel Schikaneder.

On the same day, a concert was scheduled at the Burgtheater in aid of a foundation of musicians' widows. Therefore, Beethoven had to struggle to put together an orchestra to accompany him in a concert for his own benefit (as well as that of Schikaneder and the musicians), with a program that only included works of his own authorship.

Bust of Beethoven
made from a life mask

A marathon evening

But the evening did take place, and Beethoven premiered there the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the Choral Fantasy, the Mass in C major, and the Piano Concerto No. 4. As usual, the program also included an Italian Scena for female voice. The Viennese audience, perhaps aware of the historical hiatus, endured the relentless cold with nobility during the evening's four long hours.

Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 4 in G major

Composed in 1806-07, the concerto had a private performance well before its public premiere, in March 1807, at the home of Prince von Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven's noble friends. It is dedicated to his pupil, also a friend and patron, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, whom the composer favored with numerous dedications, among others, the Emperor Concerto, the Triple Concerto, and several sonatas.

The oblivion

Although at the time critics regarded it as the most admirable, personal, and complex concerto Beethoven had ever composed, the work was long forgotten until a year before his death when Felix Mendelssohn performed it on his last visit to London in 1846. Today, it is an essential part of the standard repertoire of piano concerto literature.

The rendition is by the Chilean maestro Claudio Arrau, accompanied by the Bavarian Broadcast Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, in Munich, 1976. It must have been impressive to have witnessed the effusive mutual recognition between the two great masters, what we can see at the end of the video.

Movements:

00 Allegro moderato  -  Unusually, the theme is introduced by the piano, a theme rhythmically close to the famous motif of the Fifth Symphony.

21:22 Andante con moto  -   Soloist and orchestra dialogue in this simple and straightforward movement, yet full of contrasts.

27:01 Rondo. Vivace   -   Joyful and optimistic, it is taken without pause after the Andante.

Corelli, "Christmas Concerto"

The baroque violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli, born and died in the Papal States, today Italy, was a fortunate man from the cradle to the grave. Born into a wealthy family, he studied violin with the best teachers, and at the age of 17, he entered the Philharmonic Academy in the city of Bologna, where he had moved from his native Fustignano. He then traveled to Rome where he emerged as one of the most outstanding violinists, joining the service of Queen Christina of Sweden, who had settled there after abdicating the throne, to Corelli's good fortune.

The patrons
After the queen's death, one patron after another succeeded the other, with no compromise on salaries or the kindness of the lodging. His last patron was the young Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, recipient of the office by the grace of his uncle Pope Alexander VIII. Ottoboni and Corelli became great friends. An admirer of his music, Ottoboni favored him with even more generous stipends, which was entirely fair because Corelli was already a great celebrity, enjoying fame throughout Europe. Not many musicians in history have enjoyed such a lucrative and profitable relationship with their patrons. Permanently housed in their palaces, at the end of his life, Corelli became rich. So, at his death, he earned a place in the Pantheon in Rome.

Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713)

The concerto grosso and the publishing industry
Creator of the concerto grosso, according to some, and a wise precursor according to others, Arcangelo Corelli was able to add to his talent and good star the historical circumstance that while he was composing, the music publishing industry was emerging and flourishing in Europe, mainly in Venice, and later in Holland and Germany. This explains why in the course of his life Corelli saw a large part of his work published and disseminated internationally. It was not very extensive but enough so that after his death his scores were available to musicians and composers for a long period, thus encouraging the subsequent transformations in the field of concerto grosso by Vivaldi, Haendel or Bach.

Corelli's concerto grosso
Corelli's contribution to the development of the form was rather cautious, without delving into the exploration of its possibilities. In his concerti grossi, the two blocks into which the ensemble of instruments had begun to split, concertino and ripieno, are very well balanced. The concertino, of course, acts as a unit carrying the melody, usually very brief; then the rest of the orchestra (the ripieno) enters to reaffirm the material presented by the small group, but the latter never adopts the character of a cohesive group opposed to the rest of the orchestra as a collective protagonist, as it will happen later, in the work of later baroque composers.

Concerti grossi Opus 6, No 8 - Christmas Concert
The twelve concerti of opus 6 were published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1714. The most popular, to this day, bears the number 8. Commissioned by Cardinal Ottoboni, it has become known as the Christmas Concerto – it bears the entry "fatto per la notte di Natale". It is written for a concertino of two violins and cello, in dialogue with a larger group of strings and basso continuo, the ripieno.

The traditional fast-slow-fast-slow sequence of movements is here turned upside down by Corelli. Thus, for example, the third movement, adagio (4:17), incorporates a lively allegro passage.

The best-known section, Pastorale, is the last (10:38), and, unusual for the time, it is approached without a pause.

The rendition is by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, conducted by Dutch maestro Ton Kupman.

Schubert / Liszt, "Ave Maria"

 
Of the total number of lieder composed by Franz Peter Schubert during his short life of 31 years, those written for a single voice amount to an impressive 634, composed over a period of 13 years, between 1814 (at the age of 17) and 1827 (a year before his death). Schubert was not the inventor of the musical form, of course, but he was the one who took it to its highest peaks. This was greatly influenced by the composer's connection with the literary personalities with whom he shared a certain space and an era, the Vienna of the first quarter of the 19th century.

The poets
Some of them were his friends. Others, although far from his environment, were also a source of inspiration for his songs. This is the case of Schiller, or Heine, or Goethe, the latter a poet who, needless to say, did not bother to listen to the music that Schubert had created inspired by his texts.
But there was plenty to choose from, and the little master did not hesitate to draw inspiration from the great figures of world literature. Sir Walter Scott was one of them.

The Lady of the Lake
In 1810, the Scottish poet and novelist author of Ivanhoe and inventor of the romantic historical novel had published a narrative poem entitled "The Lady of the Lake," made up of three stories taken from folk tradition.
The last cantos narrate a war between the Lowland Scots led by King James V and the Highland clans following one of the heroes, Roderick Dhu, who also fights for the love of Ellen Douglas, the female character, the Lady of the Lake.

Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832)

Ellens Dritter Gesang
Translated into German, Schubert set three of Ellen Douglas's cantos to music. The last of these became the most successful and popular to this day, the lied "Ellens Dritter Gesang" (Third Song of Ellen). It is the prayer with which the protagonist cries for help for her and her father, victims of the conflict. Roderick was supposed to help her, but in the middle of the mountains, he does not listen to her. Ellen reinforces her prayer by invoking the Virgin Mary.

"Ave Maria"
The lied was composed in 1825 and published the following year. The piece was thus incorporated into the seven songs that make up the cycle of lieder "The Lady of the Lake" on the epic poem by Walter Scott. Some time later, taking advantage of the fact that Ellen's third song begins with the words "Ave Maria", Sir Walter Scott's text was changed to the traditional Catholic prayer in Latin that begins with the same invocation.

Piano transcription
By the middle of the 19th century, Franz Liszt had already invented the piano recital. He achieved this by greatly increasing the piano repertoire through transcriptions of orchestral works, opera arias, and, incidentally, lieder. Such was his musical inventiveness that he was able to make more than one transcription per work. For the lied "Ellens Dritter Gesang", the Hungarian master made three transcriptions. Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa presents here one of them.

Tchaikovsky, "Souvenir de Florence"

Shortly after the beginning of the relationship that would keep them in close epistolary contact for thirteen years, Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck sent Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky the first of many notes offering the composer her mansion at the Villa Oppenheimer, in Florence, so that he could enjoy its splendid comforts and compose at his leisure:

"My villa is surrounded by terraces and gardens with antique statues. The archangel Saint Michael stands guard over a fountain that discreetly breaks the silence... Beyond, stretches a beautiful olive grove and a little forest that autumn has dressed in silver, through which the bell towers of Florence peek out... On the horizon the Apennines are silhouetted... Come here, my dear friend, and you will have adequate shelter..."

Nadezhda von Meck (1831 - 1894)

The dazzling prospect kindled the composer's enthusiasm, and from then on Tchaikovsky visited Florence many times to spend a season at Oppenheimer, whose servants, butlers, and cooks were zealously instructed on how to behave and attend to the maestro, especially if the latter appeared there in a despondent mood, after confiding to Nadezhda, for example, that he could not get rid of "the melancholy that torments me".

P.I. Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)
One of his last portraits

But in the summer of 1890, having long since become a European celebrity, the composer chose to spend a few days of rest in his own country house. There he began to write a sextet full of memories of Florence, which he titled Souvenir de Florence. Unaware of what was coming, he sent a note to Nadezhda Filaretovna telling her about his plans:

"Knowing your great love for chamber music, I rejoice to think that you will undoubtedly hear my Sextet. It will not be necessary for you to attend any concerts, for it will be easy to prepare a good performance at home."

It will be one of the last notes they will exchange. In September of that year, Pyotr Ilyich will receive the last and final one. Nadezhda has decided to end the epistolary relationship and, in passing, also the annual pension. She claims that her financial position is very bad, and adds she is sick and tired.

Tchaikovsky never fully learned the reason for the abandonment.

Sextet for Strings in D minor, Souvenir de Florence
Written for two violins, two violas, and two cellos, it was not premiered until the end of 1892, a few months before the death of its composer. Happy conjunction of Russian and Italian airs, it is a very beautiful work, stylized and elegant; it seems to be the fruit of happy days in Pyotr Ilyich's life.

The rendition is by Janine Jansen and Friends ensemble, led, of course, by the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen.

It lasts about 35 minutes, and its movements are:

00        Allegro con spirito  

10:50  Adagio cantabile e con moto 

21:12  Allegretto moderato 

27:47  Allegro con brio e vivace