Ravel, Piano Concerto in G major

By the mid-1930s, well past the age of fifty, Maurice Ravel was one of the great internationally recognized musicians.
In 1927 he created his most popular work, Bolero, which, it is said, could be heard in those days whistled and hummed in the streets. In 1928 he toured Canada and the United States on an acclaimed tour, receiving composition commissions and meeting American musicians, among them Gershwin, who asked him to give him lessons. Ravel replied that there was no need. On the contrary, it was Ravel who was captivated by the jazz twists in the music of the author of Rhapsody in Blue.

Oxford
That same year he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford. According to Ravel himself, the dazzling initial theme of the Piano Concerto emerged while he was traveling by train from Oxford to London, we don't know if it was on the occasion of the doctorate or some other.
By the following year, he had the concerto well underway. He thought of premiering it during a tour planned for that year, but the tour never took place. The composer was already 54 years old and his health had begun to decline.

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)

Piano Concerto in G major
The concerto was completed only in November 1931 and was not premiered by Ravel but by the famous French pianist and pedagogue Marguerite Long (to whom it is dedicated), during a legendary concert held on January 14, 1932, with Ravel conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra. The premiere was a great success and a few weeks later Ravel and Long toured nearly twenty European cities, to the applause of all audiences.

Jazzy harmonies and language – which the composer had experienced firsthand on his American tour –, are abundant in the first and third movements, but maintain a strictly "Ravelian" character, in the sense that they do not come across as music brought from elsewhere.

Movements:
The work is in three sections, in the traditional fast - slow - fast scheme:
00       Allegramente
09:30  Adagio assai (at its conclusion, it requires the performer to maintain an interminable trill for more than half a minute)
18:46  Presto

The performance is by the incomparable Argentine pianist Martha Argerich, accompanied by the Orchestre National de France conducted by Emmanuel Krivine.
The video includes two encores, Kreisler and Scarlatti.

JS Bach, Keyboard Concerto in F minor

When Johann Sebastian Bach left his position as Kapellmeister at the court of Köthen to assume the position of Kantor at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in May 1723, he clearly descended in rank. We say this in a figurative sense, of course, but the fact is that he went from holding the highest rank in the musical organization of the Germany of his time – in a minor court – to that of church Kantor but in a large city. In this last position, apart from composing music and leading performances in the two most important churches of the city, the maestro had to teach Latin, catechism – that of Luther –, and music, to the pupils of the Thomasschule, the public school that depended on the St. Thomas Church.

The Collegium Musicum

Four years later, the situation had become more difficult due, on the one hand, to the bureaucracy of the authorities of the Leipzig City Council and, on the other, to Bach's impetuous and somewhat stubborn character. And the disagreements increased.

Fortunately, in April 1729, he was entrusted with the leadership of one of the many secular musical societies that flourished in Germany during the first half of the 18th century, the Collegium Musicum of Leipzig.

There he had at his disposal a remarkable instrumental ensemble, which was capable of giving one or two concerts every week. For that ensemble, Bach revised and adapted the instrumental music he had composed while in Köthen.

Arrangements for keyboard

With the sole exception of the Flute Concerto in A minor, all the "arrangements" were made for harpsichord and orchestra. They exist for one, two, three, and even four harpsichords, as they were also intended to be performed at home, in the company of his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, both of whom had become skilled "keyboard players", by the time the arrangements are dated, 1730.

Concerto No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1056

Seven are the adaptations for solo harpsichord. Presented here is the Concerto No. 5 in F minor, structured in the usual three movements: fast - slow - fast. Originally for harpsichord, violins I and II, viola, and continuo, it is offered here in a version for piano and string orchestra by Sven Brajkovic accompanied by the Samobor Strings chamber ensemble.

Movements

00       Allegro moderato    Like the third movement, it probably comes from a piece for violin, in G minor.

3:39   Largo (Arioso)    The more popular of the movements. From an oboe concerto. It was also used by Bach in a cantata. Its first measures are quite similar to the Andante from Telemann's G major flute concerto, with some certainty earlier. As was the custom, perhaps Bach wanted to pay homage to his friend Telemann in this way.

6:25   Presto    Taken from a violin work, as noted above.

The video includes (10:43) the Sarabande from Bach's French suite no. 6 in E- major.

Mussorgsky / Ravel, "Pictures at an Exhibition"

The famous group of Russian nationalist musicians known as The Five, born in the 60s of the 19th century, had creators among its members who were not always exclusively dedicated to music, nor did they turn it into the profession with which they earned their livelihood. Borodin, an expert in aldehydes, never abandoned his profession as a chemist. Rimski-Korsakov was an officer in the Russian Navy, and César Cui was a military engineer. Balakirev combined music studies with engineering, and Mussorgsky, a military man when young, spent most of his life as a ministry official.

On the verge of oblivion

Now, if we make the exercise of bringing to mind the most relevant musicians of the famous group, Rimsky-Korsakov comes to mind, of course, and secondly, Modest Mussorgsky, although the latter was recognized in his time as an interesting author of songs and operas that will not stand the test of time, with the remarkable exception of his masterpiece in the genre, Boris Godunov. Precious hours will have been taken away from Mussorgsky's musical creation by his work as an obscure clerk, for had it not been for the orchestrations of his works made by colleagues after his death, we would perhaps remember him less than César Cui.

Without going any further, his most popular work, A Night on Bald Mountain, from 1867, was orchestrated by his friend Rimsky-Korsakov in 1886, five years after the author's death, gaining only then the popular favor (and it is even said to be an original work by Rimsky based on pages by Mussorgsky that did not reach completion).

The right guess of Ravel
And the case of the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, from 1874, is no different (its genesis and description, here). Also published five years after his death, although edited by Rimsky-Korsakov again, it had to wait until 1931 to be published keeping fidelity to the composer's manuscripts. And in spite of being Musorgsky's most finished piano composition and one of the most original creations of Russian romanticism, it only became known to the general public through the orchestral version that Maurice Ravel made of it in 1922. There were many previous attempts, but in the face of the fullness of Ravel's success, these have proved to be "unnecessary", in the opinion of scholars.

Modest Mussorgsky, in 1874
(1839- 1881)

Art and solitude

Modest Mussorgsky did not enjoy a good life. Constantly afflicted by nervous depression and some episodes of epilepsy, he had to face sentimental loneliness, economic hardship, and, at times, the incomprehension of his work by his peers. At the age of forty, Musorgsky was a human being in sorrowful decadence, given in some degree to drink, but even in those conditions, he had the courage to abandon definitively his position as a civil servant and become a modest pianist accompanist in singing schools. From there, sometimes an event would arise, regrettably paid, to accompany at the piano some aspiring diva who was trying to gain an audience.

Posthumous celebrity

Mussorgsky died in a military hospital on March 28, 1881, without ever having known anything close to prestige, or fame. Forty years later, the most formidable orchestrator on record, Maurice Ravel, will provide it, copiously, to keep his name high to this day.

This is the RTVE Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Miguel Ángel Gómez Martínez.

Mozart, Violin Concerto No 5

Excluding the long hiatus of almost a year and a half during which he traveled through central Europe with his mother in search of better airs, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had to put up with his rude patron, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, for nine years, from August 1772 to May 1781, when the final break occurred after a harsh debate.
From the beginning relations were strained, and from then on they only worsened to the point that the prince-archbishop, during an interview granted to Leopold Mozart in 1777, went so far as to point out to Leopold that his son "knew nothing and what he should do was to go to Naples to learn music at a conservatory".

The six violin concertos
Nevertheless, stifled and mistreated by an ungracious patron in the provincial environment of Salzburg, Mozart produced many of his best works there, some of them composed at an astonishing speed. This is the case of the only six violin concertos indebted to Mozart. Today as true masterpieces, No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5 were written in just four months, between September and December 1775, while the vassal Mozart was composing without pause music for religious services and various special occasions.

Concerto for violin and orchestra No. 5, in A major, K. 219
With Concerto No. 5, somewhat crudely called the "Turkish Concerto" (because of the rondo), Mozart managed to create something very much in the line of what the 19th century would come to know as the concerto for solo instrument and orchestra. Although openly framed in the tradition of the "classical" chamber concerto, its long extension  -around 25 minutes- and its great technical demand reveal that a new role has been assigned to the violin as a solo instrument. Not a few concertos of similar stature were written at the same time, but none managed to survive the test of time with the gallantry that Mozart's No. 5 has done.

Movements:
00        Allegro aperto - Adagio - Allegro aperto  -  The only instance in Mozart's concerto repertoire in which the soloist makes his first entrance with a brief adagio independent of the orchestral exposition (Allegro aperto: somewhat more majestic than an ordinary allegro).

10:56   Adagio   -  One of Mozart's longest slow movements, with a beautiful passage in the middle section.

21:54   Rondo - Tempo di Minuetto   -  The best-known movement of the work, with an alla turca section, in the prevailing fashion of the time and which Mozart would replicate three years later by introducing a rondo alla turca, the famous "Turkish March", in the piano sonata in A major.

Belarusian violinist Artiom Shishkov is accompanied by the Belgian ensemble Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, conducted by the German maestro Michael Hofstetter.

Aram Khachaturian, "Sabre Dance"

On the web, and in discography, it is customary to illustrate the Sabre Dance with the image of an Arab girl dancing with a sabre on her head, but, actually, there is no oriental dance in which the dancer must practice such choreography. Nonetheless, the image became popular during the 19th century in line with a fashion imposed by French orientalist painters.

La danse pyrrhique

One of these painters was Jean-Léon Gerome, but we have chosen a different painting from him, La danse pyrrhique, to illustrate in a somewhat more genuine way what really happens during the scene The Sabre Dance, from the ballet Gayane, by the Russian composer of Armenian origin Aram Khachaturian. The composer included a suite of dances from Central Asian folklore during the second act. In the middle of two dances of Kurdish origin, the sabre dance evokes a dance of Armenian dancers showing off their skill with the sabre.

A. Khachaturian (1903 - 1978)

The Soviet Homeland... and Armenia
Premiered in December 1942, in the midst of the Second World War, the ballet tells the story of a young Armenian woman whose patriotic convictions conflict with her deepest feelings when she discovers that her husband has betrayed the Soviet homeland. Notwithstanding the thematics akin to the revolutionary process, the composer later had to face the customary sequence of confession and rehabilitation, typical of the Stalinist period.

But Khachaturian came out of it unscathed.

Later he devoted himself to composing works for the theater and cinema. He also became the author of the Armenian National Anthem.

Sabre Dance

The famous dance, of great vitality, includes in its middle section a traditional Armenian theme, more lyrical. Its short duration has facilitated its adaptation for cinema, TV, video games, and advertising, through multiple and varied arrangements. The irresistible and immediate attraction that it exerts on the audiences has also transformed it into one of the most recurrent "workhorses" of the great orchestral ensembles, taking advantage of the bunch of orchestral suites that the author extracted at the time from the ballet.

The performance is by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by the English maestro Sir Simon Rattle.

Chopin, mazurka in A minor, op 17 No 4

It has already been said that Chopin was not fond of crowds. He was uncomfortable with those unknown people who curiously watched him from their seats, and so he told on more than one occasion to his fellow friends, Liszt among them. However, during his first years in Paris, the composer appeared in public much more frequently than he would later become accustomed to. Perhaps, it was an imposition of life. Of course, the self-exiled Pole had a pressing need to make himself known in a strange land.

The collaborative concerts
In 1833, when he was 23 years old and had only been in Paris for a little more than two years, he performed at least three times before a large audience. It had all begun shortly before, when in December of the previous year he appeared for the first time in the company of Liszt to perform, together with the pianist and composer Ferdinand Hiller, the allegro from Bach's Concerto for three keyboards. On April 2, 1833, in collaboration with Liszt again, he performed several pieces at a large benefit concert, and the following day, he took part in another concert for four pianos, together with Liszt and two other pianists.

The intimate evenings
For sure, Chopin felt most comfortable in the salons of the nascent Parisian bourgeoisie, or at the soirées offered by the Polish nobles, exiled like him. There he could improvise, or deliver the most refined or personal, presenting before a small audience the first audition of a short work that he would have finished, perhaps that very evening. The Polish nobility, of course, would have greeted with effusion the longing for the land that flowed from Chopin's hands if the composer made them listen to a mazurka, for example, fresh from his most personal and intimate world.

Chopin (1810 - 1849)

1833, a fruitful year
Among several other works, that year he finished the Etudes of opus 10, published the Concerto in E minor and the three Nocturnes of opus 9. He also finished a new series of mazurkas, those of opus 17, which he published the following year in Paris, adding four more pieces to the collection that, at the end of his life, will have 47 published mazurkas. Posthumously, another ten will be added, those the author did not consider worthy of being published.

Mazurka opus 17 N° 4
Originally from the Mazurian region, the mazurka (mazur in Polish) is a dance in 3/4 rhythm. It is danced, and sung. It also can be sung while dancing. But from their national and popular character, Chopin took merely the rhythm, whose cadence requires a more or less prolonged support of the second or third beat of each measure. With a brief duration, their singing is pure Chopinian invention, thus refining the dance, "ennobling its melodies," in Liszt's words. They are generally enveloped by a harmonic mist, and the last piece of opus 17 goes a bit further, to the point that at the beginning it is difficult to recognize the key in which it is written. It would seem that Chopin is improvising, in a salon, for his Parisian admirers. But he is not. Everything is prodigiously controlled.

The rendition is by the American pianist and composer Michael Glenn Williams.

Beethoven, "Eroica" Symphony

More than 200 years after its publication, Beethoven's Third Symphony called "Eroica" is still linked to the legend that it was composed in homage to Napoleon, whose dedication Beethoven erased when he learned that the obscure Corsican officer of a few years earlier had crowned himself emperor with the title Napoleon I.

But the legend is not lacking in substance, for although Beethoven eventually dedicated the work to his patron Prince Lobkowitz, the 1806 publication retained the subtitle "composta per festeggiare il sovvenire d'un gran Uomo", which Beethoven might have removed had his discomfort with the Corsican taken on the magnitude that his pupil Ferdinand Ries reports in his memoirs.

Ries's account
In May 1804, being the work finished but unpublished, Ries came to Beethoven's house with the news of Napoleon's coronation. According to Ries, Beethoven would have screamed his head off, rushing to the table where the manuscript lay to tear it into a thousand pieces, exclaiming that Bonaparte had finally shown himself for what he simply was: an ordinary human being.

It is this story, with no other witness than both of them, that originated the legend, treated as such by scholars, who, given the existence of the aforementioned subtitle, have had no choice but to assign the "celebration and memory of a great man" (in capital letters) to a grandiose addressee, such as Humanity, for example.

Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz
(1772 - 1816)

Another "great man"
Beethoven admired Napoleon in his time, as did hundreds of artists and thinkers of the time. That the self-coronation of his hero made him doubt is also possible. But it is not superfluous to add here a matter of concrete life.

Prince Lobkowitz is one of the patrons who, four years after the premiere of the "Eroica", became a member of the so-called "pact of the three princes", by which Beethoven received an annual income of about four thousand florins for staying in Vienna, composing, and attending the evenings of his patrons, where, by the way, the master premiered his works.

Indeed, Symphony N°3, "Eroica", will have its premiere, in private, at Lobkowitz's house. If the hero had already fallen from his pedestal, there was a prince at hand with whom to ingratiate himself with concrete results.

Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"
The public performance will take place the following year, on April 7, 1805, at the Theatre an der Wien, Vienna, with Beethoven conducting. The work, magnificent, is the first in which the master departs from the pattern followed by Haydn, adopting a more personal language, which would be characteristic of later Beethoven. Its long duration (about an hour if all the indicated repetitions are performed) and its expressive intensity, both unusual features for the parameters of the early nineteenth century, bring the composition closer to the nascent Romantic postulates, despite the fact that it reflects the heritage, transformed, of Mozart, and also of Bach, through the former.

Movements:

00:23   Allegro con brio

16:25   Marcia funebre. Adagio assai

33:05   Scherzo. Allegro vivace - Trio

38:55   Finale. Allegro molto

The rendition is by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, from the Royal Albert Hall of London (BBC Proms, 2012).

Albinoni, Oboe Concerto Op 9 No 2

Fictitious author of the most famous musical composition of a supposedly baroque era – the Adagio associated with his name –, Tomaso Albinoni was a highly prolific composer although today he is mainly remembered for his instrumental music and, of course, for the Adagio that made his name known to the general public, even though he was not the composer. His musical corpus includes no less than 80 operas, 40 cantatas, 79 sonatas, 50 concertos, and 8 symphonies.

Concerti a cinque
With his instrumental music, he took a step beyond the concerto grosso, initiating a form, the concerti a cinque, which emphasizes a soloist performer facing a reduced orchestral formation. This meant a profound change in the way music was made throughout Europe, since the individual work of the most skilled musician in a small orchestral ensemble, capable of mastering and overcoming all kinds of technical and interpretative difficulties, began to be valued. Thus the foundations were laid for the future virtuosity that would characterize the performer of concertos for solo instrument and orchestra as we know them today.

Concertos for oboe

Among his concerti a cinque, those composed for oboe stand out – at least eight, known – where the instrument is treated in a lyrical and melodic way as it had not been done until then, accompanied by a small string ensemble, consisting of two violins, viola, cello, and basso continuo.

Tomaso Albinoni (1671 - 1751)

Today it is customary to double the orchestral formation because, we imagine, the halls are larger and a greater sonority is required, and also because this way it is realized that we are facing the first concertos for soloist and orchestra, those dating from the first half of the eighteenth century, and whose authorship, now it is, we owe unequivocally to Tomaso Albinoni.

The most celebrated of his oboe concertos is Opus 9, No. 2, in D minor, from his first series of twelve concerti a cinque, printed in Amsterdam in 1722. The entire series is dedicated to Elector Massimilian II Emanuele of Bavaria.

Its movements are the usual three, following the scheme advocated by Vivaldi: fast-slow-fast.

01:30  Allegro e non presto

05:29  Adagio

09:32  Allegro

The rendition is by the ten-year-old oboist, Pijus Paškevičius, at a performance in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in May 2013.

Debussy, Piano Suite "Children's corner"

Emma Bardac was smart and educated. In addition, she sang, and very well (Gabriel Fauré had composed a song for her). In 1903, one of the things she wanted most in the world was to meet the famous composer Claude Debussy, who at the age of forty was enjoying the height of his fame in the company of his wife Lily, whom he had married four years earlier. Emma, on the other hand, had married a banker, was rich, and had her life figured out.

There was nothing that could suggest it, but the year 1903 would bring a commotion that would shake the peaceful lives of Claude and the wealthy Emma.

Claude and Emma
The occasion to meet arose through the lessons Debussy began to give to a son of the well-to-do couple. At first, the composer tried to resist Emma's charms, but her fluent conversation and worldly air eventually seduced him. Deeply in love, the following year they both got a divorce, after overcoming some incidents such as Lily's suicide attempt that caused the momentary estrangement of some of the musician's friends. They married in 1908, when the only child of the couple was already three years old, little Claude-Emma, as she was called.

Debussy and his child, in 1916

Suite for little Chouchou
That same year, as an offering to his little daughter, Debussy composed a short suite for piano that the composer entitled Children's Corner, in English, as well as its parts, in support of the child's efforts to learn the language from her English governess. In the dedication, Debussy will immortalize the nickname by which the girl was familiarly called: "To my very dear little Chouchou, with her father's most tender apologies for what follows".

Claude Debussy will only live ten more years, and Emma Bardac will accompany him until his death. Little Chochou also, but a victim of diphtheria, will outlive her father by only one year.

Suite for piano Children's corner - Movements

The suite is composed by six miniatures evocative of the nature and essence of childhood, although they were not conceived to be performed by inexperienced pianists. Premiered in December 1908, the work was orchestrated by a friend of Debussy's three years later.

Its parts are:

00       Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum - Slightly ironic piece about tedious piano lessons.

02:28  Jimbo's Lullaby - Lullaby for the elephant Jumbo (pronounced Jimbo by the French).

05:56  Serenade for the Doll - About the mysterious and fun life that toys would have.

08:44  The Snow is Dancing - Snow falling in the garden, seen from a cozy room.

11:41  The Little Shepherd  - About a little shepherd and his flute.

14:13  Golliwogg's Cakewalk - The dancing (cakewalk, reminiscent of jazz) of a black doll (golliwogg).

The rendition is by Italian pianist Bruno Canino.

Mahler, Symphony No. 1 - Funeral March

 
By the mid-1880s, Gustav Mahler's prestige as a conductor was on the rise, and as a composer, he could showcase an early work, considered his first masterpiece, a cantata, completed in his early twenties. So he could present himself to the world as a composer of genius who by now was earning his living as a conductor of various orchestral ensembles in much of Europe. At the same time, his extreme severity, uprightness, and capacity for work began to become famous, as well as the usual endless rehearsal sessions.

Leipzig
After two successful seasons as conductor of the German Theater in Prague between 1884 and 1886, Mahler felt that the city had become too small for him and that it was time to look for new paths. His next destination was Leipzig, where a stroke of "luck" - the sudden illness of the elderly chief conductor - put him in a privileged position. The performances of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung under his baton were a colossal success. From then on, his reputation in Leipzig was assured.

Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911)

Marion
Soon after, he became acquainted with a grandson of Carl Maria von Weber, a personage who attracted Mahler's interest to work on the sketches of a comic opera that his grandfather had left unfinished. The task was enormous, so the work sessions multiplied, many of them at the grandson's house, whose wife was a beautiful woman named Marion. The 27-year-old Gustav soon fell in love with her.

Le au revoir
It is widely believed that the relationship was not reciprocated, but some testimonies assure that Marion also fell under the spell of the acclaimed director. At the end of the day, good sense prevailed and according to Alma Mahler in her memoirs, for Gustav "it was a relief that the train left without the woman who was going to flee in his company". However, the affair had a virtue: Mahler returned to composition and his First Symphony resulted.

Symphony No. 1 in D major ("Titan") - Third movement: Funeral march
Interestingly, the work is still named "Titan" in concert programs even though Mahler himself very early on discarded its original title. Composed of four movements, it was completed in 1888 and premiered in Budapest the following year.

Its third movement, deeply ironic according to connoisseurs, contains a funeral march based on the popular children's song Frére Jacques, which Mahler worked on in a minor key by entrusting its presentation to a solo double bass. The central trio, meanwhile, evokes slightly corny cabaret music from Vienna at the time.

The performance is by the Orquesta Juvenil Universitaria Eduardo Mata, from Mexico.

 

C.M. von Weber, Piano Concerto No 1

Like many the figures of German romanticism, Carl Maria von Weber was not only a renowned composer but also a conductor, piano virtuoso, novelist, and essayist. Born in a small town in northern Germany, his father initiated him early in music, hoping that he could emulate the then-famous musician and relative-in-law who, as a child, had become famous. Indeed, although more than twenty years younger, Carl Maria was a cousin of Constanze Weber, Mozart's wife.

First steps
But the father's longing for his own child prodigy was frustrated from the start. Although very talented, the little boy suffered from a congenital hip ailment that would never have withstood the strain of the extensive touring that Leopold Mozart had subjected Wolfgang and his sister to more than 30 years earlier. Nevertheless, little Carl Maria loved music and devoted himself to it with childlike passion. At the age of four, he was already singing and playing the piano with ease, even if walking was a little tricky for him.

C.M. von Weber (1786 - 1826)

The opera
By the age of 27, however, Carl Maria von Weber had become the director of the Prague Opera, where he remained for three years. He then traveled to Dresden where he composed his masterpiece, the one he is chiefly remembered for today, the opera Der Freischütz (The Marksman, or The Freeshooter), which premiered to great acclaim in Berlin in 1821.

This served as a stimulus to his determined efforts to reform German opera away from the dreadful Italian influence of the time. However, his second great success would be an English-language opera, after receiving an invitation to work in London. The result was Oberon, based on Shakespearean texts, well received by English audiences although only its overture is performed today.

The Piano Concertos
Of course, von Weber also ventured into symphonic music and composition for various instruments and orchestra. Especially well known are his concerto for clarinet and orchestra and his two piano concertos, the latter written before his stay in Prague, in 1810 and 1812. Both of them are highly dependent – according to scholars – on Beethoven's concertos Nos. 1 and 5 (including the tonalities), but the beautiful themes and their melodic development are more overtly romantic, and naturally, genuinely Weberian.

Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major
In a performance by the chamber ensemble of young musicians New York Metamorphoses Orchestra, conducted by the Russian-born Eugene Sirokine, we present here the Concerto No. 1 in C major, premiered in Mannheim in 1810 with its composer at the piano.

Movements:

00:00  Allegro

09:40  Adagio

13:40  Finale. Presto

Gershwin: "An American in Paris"

Before he was 25 years old, George Gershwin had obtained a resounding success with the orchestral piece Rhapsody in blue, which premiered in February 1923 with the author as soloist. This was followed by four years of great success in his theatrical career, devoted to writing music for Broadway revues. On the "serious" side, he added the Piano Concerto of 1925, with similar success to the Rhapsody, and the Preludes for piano, the following year, equally applauded.

In Paris, 1928
The succession of achievements never seemed to end, but in 1927 he had to endure the small misstep of a satirical political comedy that turned out to be a failure. This perhaps reminded him of his friends and some critics who advised him to dedicate himself a little more to "serious music" and a little less to show business. Be that as it may, the following year Gershwin undertook a trip to Europe. Settling in Paris, he tried to persuade Ravel, Milhaud, and Prokofiev to give him lessons. Although pleasantly surprised, the masters refused. If Mr. Gershwin was concerned that his knowledge was purely intuitive, the masters felt that all that was enough.

A little trip to Vienna
Half confused, half flattered, Gershwin undertook a trip to Vienna. There he met Alban Berg. He did not ask him for lessons, as Berg, as soon as he met him, did everything he could to encourage him to continue on his own original path. Back in the French capital, Gershwin began to write his first and only programmatic work, the symphonic piece An American in Paris, released in December of 1928 with the New York Philharmonic, and which was received with thoughtless delight, a few months before the onset of the Great Depression.

George Gershwin (1898 - 1937)

An American in Paris, symphonic poem for orchestra

A light work, its music tries to suggest the Parisian journey of an American tourist, describing his impressions and moods: first, a walk accompanied by honking horns, then moments of self-absorption, a dialogue with someone (commissioned to violin and viola, 7:48), some homesickness (the blues, 8:42), a new dialogue perhaps with a countryman (the Charleston, 13:45). After the majestic recapitulation of the blues (15:50), the theme of the initial promenade resurfaces and others are repeated. The work concludes after a powerful coda.

The performance is by The Moscow City Symphony Orchestra, conducted by American maestro Hobart Earle.

Mozart, Piano Concerto No 12

By the end of 1782, twenty-six-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had set foot firmly in Vienna, ready to make a name for himself as an independent musician, after leaving the Salzburg court and his hated patron Colloredo in the middle of the previous year.

Disregarding the advice of his father Leopold, he had also married Constanze Weber, a somewhat sickly girl, six years his junior, who would bear him six children only two of whom would reach adulthood.

The production of piano concertos
So he was faced with the challenge of conquering Vienna, and at the same time supporting a family, ensuring his health and well-being. The solution to such a challenge came through a fruitful production of piano concertos, for which Mozart was the performer, conductor, and producer of the event in which he unveiled them.

Between the autumn of 1782 and 1786, he composed the non-negligible sum of fifteen piano concertos, an enormous production that began with concertos Nos. 11, 12, and 13, at the end of 1782, intended to be premiered in the 1783 "season".

In a letter to his father dated December 28, 1782, Mozart describes the character of these pieces thus:

"...they are a fair medium between the too easy and the too difficult; they are quite brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and of natural unfolding, without becoming trivial. From time to time, passages appear that only connoisseurs can appreciate, but these passages are written in such a way that even the less demanding can be satisfied, even if they do not know why."

Concerto No. 12, in A major, K 414
The second concerto of the above series, No. 12, is a light work in the sense that it is written for a small orchestra. Consequently, it could also be performed at a family evening by a keyboard and string quartet, thus extending Mozart's potential demand after its publication and thereby increasing his income. Constanze welcomed the idea.

Movements
Structured in the traditional way, fast-slow-fast movements, its parts are:

00       Allegro
11:03  Andante (The main theme is taken from an overture by Johann Christian Bach, Mozart's childhood friend and teacher).
19:35  Allegretto

The performance is by Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, in the role of soloist and conductor.

 

Paganini, Violin Concerto No 4

None of Niccolo Paganini's six violin concertos was published during his lifetime. The famous violinist and composer from Verona used to take care of the orchestral parts zealously, to the point of providing the scores to the orchestra on the same day of the rehearsal. At the end of the session, he would carefully remove them, one by one, to deliver them again on the performance's day, when he would repeat the maneuver, and then take them with him. This attitude did not help much in the diffusion of his work, of course, but it happens that in a world with author's rights in its infancy, it was necessary to take care of the material that allowed him to live.

Living a good life
Paganini, actually, made a good living from his work. At a very young age, he left his father's home to launch out on his own as a virtuoso violinist. Soon his fame and talent allowed him to travel all over Europe, with public appearances that were eagerly awaited and attended with delirious enthusiasm, worthy of any rock star of our times. Besides the myth of the pact with the devil, it was also said that inside his instrument he had hidden the spirit of some trapped maidens who would sing for him.

Niccolo Paganini (1782 - 1840)

Violin Concertos 
According to today's scholars, it was a virtuosity lacking in content. That is why few of his works are performed today. And of his six violin concertos, it has been said that it is only one with some variations. A bit overstated, but there is some truth in it, for it was impossible for the master with a busy schedule to come up with something completely new every time. Besides, "his audience" enthusiastically attended his concerts to hear the great virtuoso of the time working wonders with the instrument, not necessarily to hear works at first hearing.

Violin Concerto No. 4
And of course, for those familiar with Violin Concerto No. 1, the similarities that Violin Concerto No. 4 has with it are obvious (and also with No. 2). But as has already been said, Paganini lived off his audience. He knew what they liked, and he acted accordingly.

The work was composed during a tour of Germany between 1829 and 1830 after the triumphant debut he had achieved in Vienna in 1828 with the three previous concertos.

Movements

00        Allegro maestoso  -  The orchestra exposes the main themes, as usual. At minute 3:32 the solo violin makes its appearance.

17:23  Adagio flebile con sentiment  - Lyrical and light (flebile), with an overtly Italian character.

24:13  Rondo galante - Andantino gaio   -  At 32:06, the rondo gives way to a joyful andantino (gaio). Brilliant ending.

The version (audio only) is by Italian maestro Salvatore Accardo and The London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit.

Édouard Lalo, Spanish Symphony

Deeply satisfied with Pablo de Sarasate's performance of his 1873 Violin Concerto, the French composer of Spanish descent Édouard Lalo decided to dedicate to him a piece that would pay homage to "the Spanish spirit" and, incidentally, to his friend's compatriots and his own ancestors. Thus, he added an objective element to the widespread and firm vocation of those years to make music with some degree of "exoticism", which drew mostly on Spanish airs. The result was the work for violin and orchestra that Lalo entitled Sinfonía Española, premiered with Sarasate as soloist in February 1875, a month before the opera Carmen, by Bizet, was to be staged.

The author
Born in Lille, in the north of France, in 1823, Édouard Lalo left his father's home at the age of sixteen with the clear determination of becoming a musician, avoiding the military career for which his father had been preparing him.

Settling in Paris in 1839, he studied violin at the Paris Conservatory, and composition, privately. For many years, as a composer, his work was of secondary importance, although he actively participated in the impulse that some circles were trying to give to French chamber music, a genre for which he felt especially prepared, and for which he created a work that was well received in his time.

Edouard Lalo (1823 - 1892)

The recognition

But it was not until the 1870s that Lalo gained massive recognition after Camille Saint-Saëns in 1871 promoted the foundation of the Societé Musicale de Paris, an association aimed at promoting contemporary composers by providing them with a space for the premiere of their works. Saint Saëns' idea brought benefits to authors such as César Franck, Massenet, Fauré, and of course, Lalo. Thanks to the Societé Musicale, Lalo was able to venture with greater dedication and confidence into orchestral music, giving as a result, only in the 1870s, the aforementioned Violin Concerto, the Cello Concerto and the Spanish Symphony.

Spanish Symphony for violin and orchestra - Movements
Rather than a symphony, the work is today considered a concerto, or rather a suite, for violin and orchestra. Its parts are as follows, although the intermezzo is sometimes omitted:

00        Allegro non troppo
08:05  Scherzando - Allegro molto 
12:44  Intermezzo - Allegro non troppo
19:10  Andante
25:44  Finale - rondo

The performance is by L'Orchestre National de France conducted by Cristian Macelar, with Augustin Hadelich on violin.

Puccini, Turandot - aria "Nessun dorma"

Although without surpassing the popular appeal of Brindisi from La Traviata or La donna è mobile from Rigoletto, the aria Nessun Dorma from the opera Turandot by Puccini has lately become the workhorse of aspiring celebrities in every America's got talent contest held anywhere in the Western world.

The modern popularity of the piece is mainly due to the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti who, despite rarely performing it on stage, from a 1972 recording accompanying the coverage of the 1990 World Cup soccer championship in Italy, turned it into the famous aria with which non-professional singers try to win the main prize and, subsequently, be launched to fortuitous stardom.

Turandot
The aria belongs to the third and last act of Turandot, the last work that Giacomo Puccini approached and left unfinished because he died while working precisely in the third act. For its posthumous premiere, in April 1926, the conductor Arturo Toscanini stopped the work at the last bar written by Puccini and, addressing the audience, murmured "here the maestro died".

The work was completed by the composer Franco Alfano. Still, Puccini had already written the famous aria, entrusted to the co-star, Calaf, the prince whose name is unknown to Turandot, the protagonist.

Giacomo Puccini (1858 - 1924)

The aria
The play is set in Peking, a millenary China. Princess Turandot, as beautiful as cold and distant, has decided to behead any suitor who cannot answer to three riddles of her invention. Calaf successfully overcomes the test, but the princess backs out. Calaf proposes to Turandot that she guess his name. If she succeeds she can roll his head, if not, she must marry him.
Turandot orders that no one sleeps in Peking until she finds out the name of the daring suitor. Calaf assures that no one will be able to find out, that only Turandot will know it when he "says it over his mouth", at dawn, victorious: All'alba vinceró.

The concert version is by Luciano Pavarotti, in Los Angeles, 1994.

Aaron Copland, "Salón México"

After spending three years in Paris, from 1921 to 1924, studying with the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and immersing himself in European musical culture, the American composer of Russian descent Aaron Copland returned to the United States with the idea of playing a central role in American music, in the triple facet of composer, music promoter and audience educator. He fulfilled it at length. As a composer of popular scope, his Fanfare for the Common Man, from 1942, attests to this. As a promoter and educator, he is the author of the short volume How to Listen to Music, a gem of popularization published in 1939, which had been reprinted five times by 1975.

In 1932 he traveled to Mexico and among many other activities he visited a dance hall. The salon had opened its doors in April 1920 and included a hall of mirrors and three dance floors classified according to the social class dancing there: "Mantequilla" for the upper class, "Manteca" for the middle class, and "Sebo" for the poor, who also like to dance, of course. Curiously – despite the current political situation or, perhaps, because of it – they all gathered in the same place, dancing, let's say, together but not scrambled.

Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)

The work

"It was not the music I heard but the spirit I perceived there that attracted me," he would later say when he finished the work based on popular Mexican themes that he decided to write after his experience in the ballroom. Completed in 1936, he titled it with the name of the venue, El Salón México, a symphonic work in one movement incorporating fragments of recently published Mexican music, such as the popular tunes El Palo Verde, La Jesusita, El Mosco, and El Malacate.

The rhythm

Rhythmically, the piece makes extensive use of the "huapango", a Mexican rhythm consisting of a 6/8 time followed by a slightly more accentuated 3/4 time.

The rendition is by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the Mexican maestro Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Chopin, Rondo a la mazur, opus 5

 
Some scholars speculate that Chopin was especially fond of the number four since he composed four ballades, four scherzos, four impromptus, and four rondos. But we must attribute it to pure chance because next to this undeniable count are the twenty nocturnes, the twenty-seven etudes, the fourteen waltzes, the twenty-six preludes, the fifty-seven mazurkas and a very long etcetera that has nothing to do with the aforementioned number.

Paris, 1832: nocturnes instead rondos
But it is also true that, as far as the production of rondos is concerned, Chopin wrote the fourth and last of them in 1832, when he was only 22 years old. Having just settled in Paris, it is likely that his audience, that of the salons of the rising bourgeoisie and fading aristocracy, rather than typically "classical" musical forms, would have celebrated with greater enthusiasm his more melodious and novel nocturnes or preludes, with which Chopin was establishing his most genuine musical personality in the composition of pieces with an intimate character.

Rondo a la mazur op 5 in F major
The rondo a la mazur (that is, in the style of a mazurka, a typically Polish dance) is the second rondo written by Chopin. At the time, 1826, the author was sixteen years old, was living with his parents and sisters in Warsaw and was about to take his maturitas – Latin exam to become a bachelor – which would open the doors to the university, or to the Conservatory. Chopin would prefer the latter. At the recently opened Warsaw Conservatory he would have lessons in harmony, counterpoint and composition, because his piano teacher, the violinist and harpsichordist Wojcieh Zwyny, had no more to teach him by the time Chopin turned twelve.

Published in 1827, the work is dedicated to his pupil Countess Alexandrine de Moriolles. (Indeed, Chopin had pupils at the age of sixteen.) Quite demanding, it presents two contrasting themes, lively and graceful the first over a mazurka rhythm, quiet and cantabile the second (1:35). The piece closes with a brilliant finale.

The performance is by Bulgarian pianist Evgeny Bozhanov, while participating in the International Chopin Competition, in Warsaw, 2010.