John C. Adams: "Short Ride in a Fast Machine", a fanfare

To give a name to a musical work, the title is unusual, no doubt: "Short ride on a fast machine". What exactly does it mean? The question has been asked before. When its author, the American composer John Adams, was asked about the reason for such an unusual title for this exultant fanfare full of rhythm, he did not dwell on it and simply answered with another question: do you know what happens when someone invites you to race in a magnificent sports car and then you regret it?
There is no better answer.

John Coolidge Adams (1947 -)

John Coolidge Adams, born in Massachusetts in 1947, is the author of the famous and controversial opera Nixon in China, from 1987, which brought contemporary history to the opera, thus opening a new genre. In the same line, in the postmodern musical drama, the author has ventured into content such as the life and work of the inventor of the atomic bomb or the terrorist attacks of the last twenty years.

Initially a minimalist composer, the composer has also tackled chamber, orchestral and concertante music. Today, still active, Adams is still in demand by the most important orchestral ensembles as a provider of symphonic material.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine is one of two fanfares for orchestra commissioned from the composer by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1986.
It is an exuberant work, brilliantly written for a large orchestra, with boundless polyrhythmic energy. Along with the traditional sections of strings, winds and woodwinds, the work includes the participation of synthesizers. And the inescapable timpani are joined by triangles, Chinese box, xylophone, cymbals, bells, snare drum, bass drum, tantan, and tambourine. In short, a festival of percussion. 
If nowadays, one wants to provocatively "open" a program of contemporary music, there is nothing better than to start the show with these four minutes of "fast riding".

The performance is by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the American conductor and violinist Marin Alsop.

Mozart Piano Concerto 26 - "Coronation" Aimi Kobayashi, aged 11

On the occasion of the coronation of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor, Mozart visited Frankfurt am Main in October 1790. More than a year before, he had completed a piano concerto that he had little opportunity to make known. Gone were the days when he composed six or seven concertos a year to present to an eagerly awaiting audience. His popularity had declined in a Vienna of swinging tastes. In the last five years of his life, he composed only two, the penultimate being the one he presented in Frankfurt on October 15, 1790, as part of the festivities that greeted Leopold's coronation. Thus Concerto No. 26 earned its nickname.

The concert is presumed to have been sketched out more than two years earlier, in the spring of 1787, after Mozart returned to Vienna having witnessed live the success of Le Nozze di Figaro in Prague. The new season had to be organized, with eyes set on the Lenten season. Opera, the music par excellence at that time, was forbidden in Vienna during Lent, so this was the time (which, as we know, lasted forty days) when his subscription concerts had to be presented in order to optimize the results.

In a letter to Michael Puchberg, his usual financial helper and fellow mason, Mozart assure him that he will soon pay off the last debt because he is working intensely on a new concerto (he also takes the opportunity to request a new loan). But he did not manage to finish the Concerto for Lent of that year. The concerto was completed in February of the following year, as can be seen in Mozart's private catalog, to which it was added on February 24, 1788.

Piano Concerto No. 26, in D major, K 537, "Coronation"

It is in three movements: a bright, festive allegro; a slow movement, more gentle than lyrical; and a drama-free, almost humorous allegretto. Its simple beauty has made it one of Mozart's most performed concertos on the world's stages.

Movements:

00:00  Allegro

14:30  Larghetto

20:32  Allegretto

The performance is by Japanese pianist Aimi Kobayashi, only eleven years old for the occasion: her orchestral debut, in Moscow, in December 2006. She is accompanied by The Moscow Virtuosi Orchestra conducted by the Russian maestro, violinist, and conductor, Vladimir Spivakov.

Liszt, Piano Concerto No 2, in A major / Khatia Buniatishvili

As with the First Concerto, the initial writing, the necessary revisions, and the final version of the Piano Concerto No. 2 took Liszt a long time. Almost twenty-five years. He started working on it in 1839 and finished a first version (let's say, a first draft that satisfied him) in 1857, that is, eighteen years later. After the necessary revisions, he considered it finally finished in 1861, but its publication would be delayed until 1863.

Franz Liszt, in 1866, at the age of 55
Engraving from a photography

The urgencies of the composers
If we talk about dynamism or fluency for the concertante composition, the distance from his predecessors, let's say the "classics", is wide. And if the comparison is made with Mozart, it is gigantic: let us remember that the genius of Salzburg in his Viennese years came to compose two concertos a month (in February and March 1785, no more and no less than Concertos Nos. 20 and 21). The circumstances of life, of course, are very different. Mozart composed with an eye to his subscription concertos, a vital income. Liszt, instead, would make ends meet, dying with laughter.

Liszt, the concert pianist

It was precisely in 1839 that Franz Liszt began a career as a piano virtuoso that has no parallel in the history of artistic performances in the 19th century. Between 1839 and 1847 his tours as a "concert pianist" ( let's remember that he is the inventor of the "recital", the first pianist to perform alone on stage) took him to - let's take a breath - Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Austria, England, Ireland, Romania, Turkey, and Russia.

Abandoning the stage

In 1849, however, his new companion, Carolyne de Sayn Wittgenstein, suggested his definitive abandonment of the stage and his exclusive dedication to composition. Thus, the concert he had given in Russia in September 1847 became his last paid concert. From then on, the 36-year-old maestro played the piano for charity, making known the compositions of his lesser-known colleagues. He also took time to work on the works he had envisioned ten years earlier.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2, in A major

The concerto is dedicated to Hans von Bronsart, Liszt's pupil, who premiered it in Weimar on January 7, 1857. Like the first concerto, the work is built on a single movement, made up of numerous sections, all of them derived from the same initial melody. So much so that one prominent musicologist felt free to rename the work "Life and Wanderings of a Melody".

A bit disrespectful perhaps, but not so far from reality because throughout the twenty-odd minutes that the piece lasts, the initial melody comes and goes, undergoing variations, transformations, and diverse twists and turns. Very wide glissandos covering the entire keyboard announce a grand finale of breathtaking characteristics.

Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili, accompanied by L'Orchestre de Paris, under the direction of Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko, perform this version.

W.A. Mozart, Flute and Harp Concerto

Mozart never had a particular fondness for the harp as a concert instrument. Still, when he visited Paris in 1778 in the company of his mother, Maria Anna, he decided to take as a music pupil a harpist girl, whose father, a duke who played the flute, commissioned Mozart to compose the only concerto for harp and flute that ever came out of the ingenuity of the Salzburg's genius. Mozart did not freak out about the commission but duly fulfilled it. Not so the flute-playing duke who did not pay Mozart for the concerto and settled only half of the girl's tuition.

A painful tour
It was one of the many misfortunes faced by Wolfgang and his mother during this unfortunate tour, the final shadow falling on them when Maria Anna, in July of that year, died in an inglorious room in Paris. Both mother and son had come from an extended stay in Mannheim where Mozart had been greeted as the genius he was, but whose longing for a position at court was, as usual, unfulfilled. Falsely hopeful, too, he took leave of Aloysia Weber, with whom he had fallen in love, but that is another story.

Concerto for harp and flute in C major, K 299
The combination of both instruments is not easy, but Mozart did it, and built with them a stylistically perfect work, hailed today by the widest audiences. Harpists and flutists all over the world are also grateful for it since opportunities to perform on stage as soloists, at least for the harp, are not plentiful. The work, intended for the salon, requires only a few woodwinds and the standard string ensemble.

Movements: 

Lasting approximately just under thirty minutes, the work is in the usual three movements for a concerto of the period, following the Vivaldian style, fast-slow-fast sections:

00:00  Allegro

10:12  Andantino

19:01  Rondeau. Allegro

The rendition is by the French artists Patrick Gallois (flute) and Fabrice Pierre (harp), accompanied by the Swiss orchestra based in Lugano, RTSI (Radio Televisione Svizzera Italiana), conducted by the British conductor Sir Neville Marriner, now deceased and illustrious founder of the celebrated London orchestral ensemble Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields.

Borodin, String Quartet No 2 - "Nocturne"

Unlike the long time Alexander Borodin invested in most of his major works, his String Quartet No. 2 in D major was composed during a short summer vacation in August 1881. Borodin, a doctor of chemistry and cellist, had met the pianist Ekaterina Protopopova twenty years earlier, during an internship in Heidelberg as a scientist. Married in 1883, he wanted to pay tribute to the discovery of his love of two decades with the quartet that was to become the most important of the only two he composed for the genre.

The "secondary" vocation
Brief is the chamber music that Borodin wrote. The complete list of his corpus is also short. The illegitimate son of a Russian prince, the author of the popular Polovtsian Dances had access
to a privileged education that allowed him to spend most of his life as a chemistry professor at the medical academies in St. Petersburg. So music was always his secondary vocation, which did not prevent him from being part of the famous group known as The Five, Russian nationalist musicians who, by the way, did not look favorably on chamber music.

A. Borodin (1833 - 1887)

String Quartet No. 2 - Nocturne
The complete work lasts about half an hour. Structured in the traditional manner for the typical string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello), its four movements (scherzo and andante embraced by two agile outer sections) brim with warmth and bliss, reflecting the fact
that this is the work of a man in love who lacks nothing, and where, apparently, the cello sings for Alexander and the first violin for Ekaterina.

The third movement, andante, and entitled Nocturne, is the one
that has made the quartet popular and captivated a wide audience. Numerous versions proliferate in the most diverse art circles; in 2006, a Disney Studios animated short film made full use of the famous andante.

The rendition is by musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

Prokofiev, "Classical" Symphony - ...mocking the critics?

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Sergei Prokofiev was already recognized as a prominent figure of the Russian avant-garde music of the time. However, for the composition of his First Symphony, he chose to adhere to classical molds. Moreover, it was the composer himself and not some shrewd editor who subtitled the work with the nickname "Classical". Some say that with this the author was humorously announcing that the work would one day become no more and no less than a "classic". Others say that with the subtitle Prokofiev only wanted to mock the critics of the time, as he was sure to keep them intrigued for a long time.

USA, and the return
The time of its composition, 1916-17, finds Prokofiev, in his early twenties, in pre-Soviet Russia, although he will leave St. Petersburg soon, six months after the Bolshevik revolution, for the United States. His compatriot Sergei Rachmaninoff had already left in the same direction and everything seemed to indicate that things were going wonderfully there. Life behaved wonderfully, and something more, with Rachmaninoff, but not with Prokofiev. The author returned to Europe in 1922, and eleven years later he dared to make the leap to Stalinist Russia, in the company of his wife Lina and children. He managed to get by (Lina not so much, but that is another story), and there he died, in Moscow, as an artist of the Revolution, in 1953, the same day as Stalin.

Symphony No 1 opus 25, in D major, "Classical"
Whatever Prokofiev's purpose may have been, the moniker "classical" does not suit it badly, though this is not to be understood in the "neoclassical" vein adopted at the time by Stravinsky and other contemporary composers. Rather, with its simple elegance the work unabashedly evokes the spirit of the purest Viennese classicism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, although it is not lacking in surprising tonal leaps and the occasional unexpected dissonance.

Movements:
All in all, from a formal point of view, nothing is more classical than its structure in the usual four movements: rapids in the first and last, a slow second movement, and a Mozartian gavotte in the third.

00:00  Allegro con brio

04:55  Larghetto

09:05  Gavotta - non troppo allegro

10:51  Finale - molto vivace

The performance is by the symphonic ensemble hr-Sinfonieorchester - Frankfurt Radio Symphony, conducted by François Leleux.

Schumann, Romanza No 2, Opus 28

The Three Romances of Robert Schumann's opus 28 were written in 1839, intended as a work to be performed as a set. But yesterday and today, there was one piece that won the public's favor, No. 2, which pianists are used to presenting today as a stand-alone piece.
The Opus was dedicated to a certain Graf Heinrich II Reuss-Köstritz, a complete unknown today. Not so much for Clara Wieck (future Clara Schumann) because, enchanted with the lyricism of the second piece, she was not happy that it was dedicated to the now-unknown nobleman Graf Heinrich and not to her. And so she let Schumann know:

"...I being your bride, you must necessarily dedicate something else to me, though I know nothing more tender than these three romanzas, particularly the middle one, a beautiful love duet."

Indeed, Robert did not dedicate them to Clara but instead sent them to her as a Christmas present, in 1839, and that is how Clara knew them. We know that Clara was already an extraordinary pianist who spent half the year on tour in Europe. Robert understood that the three pieces were not worthy of an artist of such stature.

Perhaps the Three Romances were not up to Clara's standards, but that did not prevent Robert from holding them in high esteem. As time passed, "the middle one" Romanza became one of his most famous short works. Needless to say, Clara contributed significantly to this, making the Three Romances known to audiences in most of Europe. They thus earned a secure place in the piano repertoire, alongside Schumann's earlier works of greater scope, say Carnaval (1835) or Kreisleriana (1838).

Romanza No 2 from Opus 28

It is a relatively short piece. With its 34 measures, repetitions included, it does not exceed four minutes in the standard versions. Its 6/8 ternary meter (six eighth notes per measure) gives it the flavor of a barcarolle whose beautiful lyricism fades at the end in dying syncopations, piano and pianissimo.

Swiss pianist Luisa Splett gives us a superb rendition.

Mozart, Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457

In a sudden burst of composure and balance, in early 1784 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began a meticulous recording of his works. Thanks to this, we know today that Sonata No. 14 in C minor was completed on October 14 of that year. At least, it entered his private catalog with that date. Six months later, Mozart added to this record a new piano work, the Fantasia in C minor. Both pieces were sent in 1785 to his publisher in Vienna, the Artaria publishing house, to be published together as Opus 11, with the title "Fantasie et Sonate pour le Forte-Piano", and the opus dedicated to Therese von Trattner.

The Mozart family moves

For reasons that have never been fully elucidated, the Mozart family moved several times while living in Vienna. The years 1784-85 find them renting a house owned by Johann von Trattner, a Viennese bookseller and publisher who had built a small empire within the other empire thanks to a privilege granted by Maria Theresa that gave him the exclusive right to print all the textbooks required by the schools in and around Austria.

Therese von Trattner, dedicatée

Von Trattner was thus an impetuous and wealthy businessman, a prominent member of the rising bourgeoisie who could acquire with no hesitation a modern forte-piano for the enjoyment and solace of his family... An expensive Stein, for example, Mozart's favorite piano, which, however, he could never access. Unless the Trattner family piano had been precisely a Stein. Yes, because as befitted their interests and social status, Therese, Trattner's wife, became Mozart's pupil. And it is to her that the Sonata is dedicated, along with the Fantasia, of course, to give more soar to the offering.

The Sonata in C minor is the last of the five sonatas grouped in a "sonatistic" period that goes from 1782 (Mozart just settled in Vienna) to 1784. This production had no other purpose than to compose for his own satisfaction or for the practice of his students. Mozart was aware that the sonata form was the most complete of the "home" musical forms, the type of pieces intended for the enjoyment and solace of families, on an intimate level. Therese von Trattner, we suppose, would not have been out of place.

Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457

Ludwig von Köchel himself, the compiler of Mozart's work in the mid-nineteenth century, catalogued the work as the most important of the twenty-two piano sonatas composed by the genius of Salzburg for solo piano. Lasting around fifteen minutes in length, it exhibits a passion and intensity unusual for Mozart (we are talking about his sonatas), foreshadowing what the genre would later become in the hands of the subsequent genius, Beethoven. Moreover, in the noble and suffering adagio cantabile it is not difficult to hear "anticipations" of the adagio from the Pathetique Sonata, which would be released fifteen years later.

Movements

Like all Mozart's piano concertos, it is in three movements following the classical scheme: fast-slow-fast.

00:00  Allegro

08:26  Adagio cantabile

17:35  Allegro assai

The rendition is by the remarkable Austrian pianist and poet Alfred Brendel.

J.C.F. Bach, "the Bach of Bückeburg". Piano concerto in E major

As all we know, Johann Sebastian Bach was married twice. First with Maria Barbara, in 1707, and after her death, with Anna Magdalena, in 1721. Less said, or forgotten, is that Johann Sebastian was not only the father of harmony but also the father of no less than twenty children. Seven were born to Maria Barbara, and thirteen to Anna Magdalena. Of the twenty, only ten reached adulthood. Of these, four became great musicians. Each mother contributed an equal number of composers, two: Maria Barbara, with Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel; Anna Magdalena with Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian.

"The Bach of Bückeburg"

Of these four great composers, Johann Christoph Friedrich turns out today to be the least mentioned of Bach's musical sons. However, his long sojourn at the court of the small town of Bückeburg earned him a similar appellation to that of his two more famous brothers (Johann Christian, "the Bach of London", and Carl Philipp Emanuel, "the Bach of Hamburg"). Born in Leipzig when his father served as Kantor of the Thomaskirche in that city, at the age of eighteen he entered the service of a count established in Bückeburg. And there he remained all his life, to be remembered today as "the Bach of Bückeburg".

JCF Bach (1732 - 1795)

The end of the line

In 1755, Johann Christoph Friedrich married. He fathered a musician and composer son, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach, who married twice, like his grandfather, but had only one son, who died in infancy. Thus, this early death ended forever the Bach lineage, the most important and extensive family of German musicians of the 17th and 18th centuries.

A fruitful author  

Unlike the paths chosen by his three musical brothers, Johann Christoph Friedrich was the one who remained closest to his father's style. He is the most classical, the most restrained, and perhaps the most conservative of the musical sons of the "old Bach". He wrote twenty symphonies, a good number of oratorios, liturgical pieces, motets, concertos, and sonatas for the keyboard, although much of it disappeared with the bombing of Berlin during the Second World War.

Of his keyboard concertos, the Concerto for piano and strings in E major stands out in the preference of performers and audiences alike.

These are his movements:

00:00  Allegro

08:45  Adagio

14:01  Allegro moderato

The performance is by the French-Cypriot pianist and composer Cyprien Katsaris, accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra of the Echternach Festival, conducted by the South Korean conductor Yoon K. Lee.

Clementi's Sonata in B flat / Clementi and Mozart: A Pianistic Duel

Muzio Clementi (1752 - 1832)

In the first days of January 1781, the court of Vienna was dressed up (more than usual) to receive the most renowned Austrian pianist facing the most renowned non-Austrian pianist of those years.
At the invitation of the music-loving Emperor Joseph II, the Salzburg-born Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Italian Muzio Clementi met in his salons to delight the noble audience with their improvisations and display of virtuoso technique, in order to define once and for all what kept such an exquisite audience in suspense: which of the two was the best pianist in that small world.

Muzio Clementi, pianist, composer, future publisher, and piano maker had long been established in England, where he was a celebrity. But he had yet to be heard on the continent. Four years older than Mozart, he would take the opportunity to show his skills before the court of the most glamorous empire of the time.

A draw

According to tradition, the competition was declared a draw. Though in his innermost self, Joseph II favored the grace and touché of his fellow countryman, as he would later tell a famed composer. Both musicians performed pieces of their own, then improvised on themes proposed by the audience, and sight-read scores on which they were asked to elaborate variations. At the end, Clementi accompanied Mozart on a second piano and vice versa.

Mozart gets ready

This information would be enough to satisfy us, but there was an eyewitness who allows us to go further. Giuseppe Antonio Bridi, Mozart's friend, left a chronicle of the evening. From him we know that Clementi was the first to jump into the ring, improvising a prelude. He then played a sonata, a sonata in B flat major that enchanted Mozart, to such an extent that ten years later he would use its opening theme in the overture to The Magic Flute. Clementi, who was delighted to meet Mozart that night, never forgave him for the trick.

Sonata in B flat major, opus 24 No 2 (erroneously catalogued as opus 47 in some editions).
As might be expected, the dates of composition and publication can only be estimated. However, due to Mozart's misappropriation of it in 1791 – a common misappropriation at the time – Clementi was obliged, each time he republished the sonata, to add a note that it had been written "ten years earlier" than The Magic Flute, i.e. in 1781, or a little earlier. And regarding the publication, recent studies also date it to that year, and in Vienna, which seems most wise given that the piece had been made "public" at the court of Joseph II, only a couple of months before.

Movements
Structured in the traditional Vivaldian fast-slow-fast style, the exquisite piece is part of the most correct and careful classical piano, a jewel.

00:00  Allegro con brio

04:18  Andante - quasi allegretto

08:35  Rondo - allegro assai

The superb version is by pianist Zenan Kwan, born in Hong Kong. It is an extraordinary experience to listen to it remembering that Mozart attended the same experience, more than two hundred years ago, although "live", coming from the hands of Clementi himself.

Chopin, Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor / Kate Liu - audition guide

It is often said that Chopin was essentially a composer of miniatures. And this is true if the label is used to describe pieces for solo piano that do not exceed ten minutes. However, he was also capable of handling the sonata form with remarkable competence, as attested by the three sonatas he composed during his lifetime, or at least, the last two (the first, a youthful work... of course, Chopin was eighteen years old). No. 2 is the famous Funeral Sonata, from 1837, which incorporates as its third movement the even more famous Funeral March.

Seven years had to go by for the third venture into the form. The Sonata in B minor was begun in the quiet and peacefulness of Nohant, during the summer of 1844, and finished the same year in Paris.

The death of the father

One might think that Nohant's calmness was excessive because the production of that year only includes two pieces, the sonata No. 3 and the Berceuse op 57, the latter the only lullaby written by Chopin. It so happened that in April of that year, the Polish master received very bad news. In Warsaw, one thousand five hundred kilometers away, his seventy-three-year-old father had died. It was a hard blow for the musician, who had seen his parents for the last time almost ten years ago.

A visit from Luisa

She had not seen either her sister Louise in fourteen years. Mrs. Sand, wise and compassionate, invited Louise and her husband to visit them in Nohant. Becoming a singular master of the house, Chopin entertained his sister with gardens, fountains and groves for three weeks. They strolled in the evenings. Chopin composed in the mornings, and some music was made in the evenings, as a family. Perhaps Luisa caught a glimpse of some sketches of the sonata.

Sonata No 3 in B minor, op 58

Considered one of his most difficult pieces, harmonically and rhythmically, it lasts about 25 minutes or more. Chopin replicated in it the structure of the previous sonata: four movements, although the "funeral march" has been replaced by the largo as the third movement. Published in Leipzig the same year of its creation, 1844, and not long after in London and Paris, it is dedicated to the Countess of Perthuis, one of many noble ladies in whose salons Chopin more than once delighted a reduced audience, the one that best suited him.

Movements:
00:00 Allegro maestoso - An impetuous first theme will be followed by a lyrical second theme (sostenuto e molto espressivo, minute 1:33) that brings to mind the composer's unmistakable nocturnes. The recapitulation rests mostly on this second theme (6:43). Two vigorous chords close the movement.

09:42 Scherzo. Molto vivace - Very brief but agile and energetic, with a restful middle section (the trio: 10:18).

12:22 Largo - The core of the sonata. After a succinct introduction, the main theme is introduced at 12:55. The movement progresses to an articulated section in quiet eighth notes at 15:32. The initial theme returns at 20:08 with an accompanying left hand that murmurs rather than presses keys.

22:40 Finale. Presto non tanto - A rondo, of great tension. After a couple of dense bars, the main theme emerges, vehement and passionate (22:51). The contrasting element is a section in a major key that demands abysmal finger agility from the performer (beginning in bursts at 23:35 and continuing for more than twenty measures at 23:55). At 25:46, a grand coda initiates the magnificent denouement.

The rendition is by Singapore-born pianist Kate Liu during her participation in the 2015 Warsaw International Chopin Competition. She got there the third prize (bronze medal), stingy, in our opinion.

Henri Dutilleux, his only Piano Sonata (with a listening guide)

 

The French composer Henri Dutilleux did not have enough time to create an extensive and numerous body of work, despite living a long life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century.
His catalog includes no more than thirty compositions. Nevertheless, a significant portion of them is still regarded as a bouquet of masterpieces of Western musical literature, moral heirs to the French tradition represented by Debussy and Ravel.
The author's unrelenting preference for quality over quantity and high level of self-demand led to the publication of such a small corpus. The beginning of World War II also played a role.

He returned to Paris shortly before France entered the war, having to serve his country as a stretcher-bearer until the Armistice of 1940. In the following years, he lived poorly in the occupied city. However, he had access to some positions in the Paris Opera and Radio France, continuing his training almost on his own, reading composition treatises and learning about the avant-garde by hearsay.

Henri Dutilleux (1916 - 2013)

Piano Sonata, opus 1
In 1941 he met Genevieve Joy, a fellow student at the Conservatoire, which in occupied France was still functioning as much as possible. They married at the end of the war. From then on and for a long time, Genevieve became the interpreter and disseminator of his piano works, especially his only Sonata, composed between 1948-49 and dedicated to Genevieve, as you may have guessed.

True to his overwhelming claim to his own work, the composer labeled the piece as Opus 1, thus relegating to a ghost plane the earlier, shorter works that had emerged over a ten-year period, because he considered the Sonata to be the first work up to his mature standards. 

Movements:
A work of enormous technical demands (Genevieve must have excelled at, for sure), it combines two great concerns of the mature Dutilleux: formal rigor and harmonic research. Hence the traditional three-movement structure on the one hand, and the sustained tonal ambiguity (more: sometimes tonal, sometimes atonal) on the other.

00:00  Allegro con moto: Beginning openly in 2/2 rhythm, soon there will be changes in the rhythmic structure (the "accent pattern"). The harmonic ambiguity already mentioned is also present here from the first bars, leaving the listener perplexed by the immediate change from a minor key to a major key and vice versa, giving the impression that the performer has not started where he should have, or that this particular video is badly edited. There is no such thing. The piece begins like this.

08:13  Lied: The shortest of the three movements, written in ternary form (theme A, theme B, return to theme A). Here also there are signs of tonal ambiguity, although a basic tonality is in principle discernible (D-flat major).

13:57  Choral et variations: An imposing chorale (in four voices according to scholars, though I struggle to hear three) is followed by four variations: Vivace 16:16 - Un poco più vivo 17:39 - Calmo 19:56 - Prestissimo 22:05. The work ends with a recapitulation of the opening chorale, with variations.

Some scholars have described the work as "brilliant, multi-layered with echoes of Bartók and Prokofiev". Others claim it could have been written by Debussy: a "sensual yet classical" sonata.

The rendition is by the Franco-German pianist Emil Reinert. Live recording during the European International Piano Competition, the year 2021.

Schumann Carnaval Op. 9 / Tiffany Poon

"No disapproval will be able to depress me and no praise will make me lose my head." So ended the letter with which twenty-year-old Robert Schumann asked Friedrich Wieck, the most sought-after piano teacher in Leipzig, for tutoring in 1830. 

The following year he was living with Wieck, who had a daughter, Clara, who played the piano beautifully at the tender age of twelve. On the other hand. Ernestine, also a pupil of Wieck, was already around sixteen. And by the time Robert and Ernestine von Fricken, a native of Asch, looked each other in the eyes at length, she was eighteen. The enthusiasm did not last long, but it prompted the creation of one of the most important works in the history of the romantic piano.

Ernestine von Fricken
(1816 - 1844)

Four letters

More precisely, it was the four letters of Ernestine's hometown in German musical notation (A, S, C, H) that stimulated Schumann's imagination. Such notes (A, E flat, C, B), in that order and in one or another convenient rearrangement, are featured at the beginning of most of the 21 miniatures that make up the first of his great works written for the piano, Carnaval, opus 9, from 1834-35, subtitled by the composer, in French, Scènes mignones sur quatre notes.

A romantic mystery

The motif of the four notes had already been used before (in Papillon, around 1830), so the author, in this opportunity, repeats or, as some scholars point out, relies on the laboriousness lavished in a previous experiment. What has never been clear to many is that in the midst of Romanticism, a composer evokes the beloved through the name of the town where she was born. Mysteries of the artistic sensibility of the 19th century.

Clara Wieck (1819 - 1896)

The Characters 

As a whole, the goal of the piece is to make a musical representation of a creative and elaborate masquerade ball held before Lent during carnival season. It features a wide range of real-life and fictitious characters whose names are used in the titles of the miniatures. Naturally, these are the typical and unmistakable elements of the Italian commedia dell'arte popular theater: Pierrot, Arlequin, Pantaleon, and Colombina Additionally, Schumann himself, who was represented by his two alter egos: Eusebio, the dreamer, and Florestan, the realist. A tribute to Paganini and another to Chopin are also included. Moreover, Ernestina (Estrella) could not be absent. Neither could Clara Wieck (the future Clara Schumann), represented with rapture, in "Chiarina".

David's Brotherhood 

The last section, the longest, symbolically portrays the members of the Davidsbünd (David's Brotherhood), a fantasy group Schumann created for the music magazine he founded around the same time. Florestan, Eusebio, Estrella, Chiarina, Chopin, and Paganini are all part of the group, according to Schumann's imagination. They play the lead role in this musical battle against the "philistines" of their time, conservatives in the arts and music. Technically, it is the most difficult section of the entire work, giving it a spectacular ending.

Dedicated to the Polish musician Karol Lipinski, its high technical and imaginative demand made it not easy to be regularly presented in public at the time. Today, on the contrary, this brilliant set of variations on a reduced core of four notes is the most performed piece by Schumann on stages throughout the world.

The excellent rendition is by the noted Hong Kong-born pianist Tiffany Poon.

[Below the video, its sections]

The 21 miniatures
The following is a list of the 21 movements, pieces, sections, or whatever you want to call them. This enumeration, however, is out of the ordinary because it is necessary to point out that Schumann included a section in the score called Sphinxes between Replique and Papillons. In this section, scholars believe that the author reveals the mystery of the three or four notes on which the entire work was organized through three groups of "notes silent." They are rarely played, neither in public nor on a recording, although more than one has dared. Miss Poon doesn't.

00:00  Préambule – quasi maestoso

02:54  Pierrot – moderato

04:09  Arlequin – vivo

05:22  Valse noble – un poco maestoso

06:46  Eusebius – adagio

08:35  Florestan – passionato

09:38  Coquette – vivo

11:19  Réplique – l'intesso tempo

Sphinxes

Breitkopf & Härtel Edition, Leipzig, 1879, p. 11

12:21  Papillons – prestissimo

13:04  Lettres dansantes (A.S.C.H. - S.C.H.A.) – presto

13:51  Chiarina – passionato

14:48  Chopin – agitato

15:58  Estrella – con affetto

16:24  Reconnaissance – animato

18:07  Pantalon et Colombine – presto

19:08  Valse allemande – molto vivace

20:08  Paganini – Intermezzo - presto (a repetition of valse allemande)

21:26  Aveu – passionato

22:40  Promenade – con moto

25:06  Pause – vivo, precipitandosi (yes, rushing into the Marche)

25:23  Marche des "Davidsbundler" contre les Philistins – non allegro

Debussy, "Reverie" for piano

A work Debussy didn´t appreciate

Claude Debussy, the French composer and creator of dreamy atmospheres on the piano, did not hesitate to express his regret when a Parisian editor decided to publish an old manuscript he had found scattered about among the composer's other works. And he sent him a note: "I am very sorry for your decision to publish it... I wrote it long ago, in a hurry, for exclusively commercial purposes." Irritated, he added: "It is an unimportant work and, frankly, I don't think it has any value."

But the author was wrong. Along with the famous Claire de Lune, the short piano piece he titled "Reverie" is today one of his most recognized works, by all audiences.

As the straggling manuscript was forever delayed, the only irrefutable certainty, in terms of dates, is that of its publication, by the intrepid editor, in 1890. But it is supposed to have been composed between 1880 and 1884, that is, when the author was in his early twenties. Reverie must therefore be considered a milestone. It would represent the first known stage in which Debussy makes use of an "impressionistic" musical language. (His also famous Deux Arabesques – which could compete for the label – are dated between 1888-91). Thus, the language that over the years would become the author's personal stamp is present, for the first time, in Reverie.

Reverie, for piano, L. 68

The composer never assigned opus numbers to his works. In 1977, the French musicologist François Lesure created the first catalog of Debussy's works (modified in 2001). Hence, the identifying "L".

The piece begins with an arpeggiated accompaniment that relies on the weak beats of the bar. The melodic singing, on the other hand, is heard, diligently, in the strong beats, thus generating a sensation of instability that will be maintained for several measures, as if the piece could not settle down. The left hand travels widely across the keyboard creating harmonies rich in "retards" (seconds, sevenths, ninths), thus increasing the dreamy atmosphere.

The arrangements
The piece has been transposed to various instruments, arranged in a thousand ways, and used ad nauseam in advertising of all kinds. Debussy was right when he said he composed it for commercial purposes. What he did not know was that the enchantment would last more than a hundred years.

The performance is by a brilliant German pianist who uploads her own recordings to Youtube, identifying herself only as "Strawberrypianist".

Thanks, Strawberry...

Tiffany Poon plays Chopin Variations Brillantes, Op. 12

As far as we know, Chopin never considered writing an opera. However, he was a huge fan of it. He spent many evenings at the Opéra in his early years in Paris. He listened to Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Ferdinand Hérold. The latter was a lesser-known composer but had an impact on the Polish composer. His ardent adoration for the "fioritura" and "thrills" of the era's sopranos, mezzos, tenors, and basses reached a point where, in a statement about his solace at the Parisian opera, he wrote: "...In a word, only here one may know what singing is!".

"Ludovico"
In May 1833, he attended the Opéra Comique for a performance of "Ludovico", the last of numerous comic operas written by Hérold mentioned above. The piece never received widespread praise, then or now. However, one of its arias—the cavatina that starts with the line Je vend des scapulaires—did become famous for a while ("I sell scapulars"). Chopin was drawn to the melody despite being as straightforward and uncomplicated as a few others.
That same year the Polish genius published the Concerto in E minor, finished the three Nocturnes of Opus 9, and completed and released the twelve Etudes of Opus 10. Why bother to work out a little tune for the piano taken from a minor work?

The ebb and flow of fashion

Let's remember that by those years the middle classes had decided that they also wanted to listen to music. Parisian tastes were varied, and public concerts must have reflected them: to the traditional performance of a couple of symphonies or concertos (or part of them, rather) and the appearance of one or more singers amid allegros and scherzos, pianist-composers were added. In between arias and cavatinas, they would embellish the performance with their variations or fantasies on popular operatic pieces. This is what a Liszt, a Thalberg, or Kalkbrenner did. Chopin, a newcomer, had to get into fashion.
Thus, the Polish musician saved Ferdinand Hérold's name from total oblivion. Chopin's Brilliant Variations op. 12, whose original title is somewhat longer, was inspired by the cavatina.

Brilliant Variations on "Vendo escapularios" from the opera "Ludovico" by LJF Hérold, opus 12
The Variations, in B flat major, exhibit the usual form: introduction, theme, and variations, four in this instance. Their qualification as brilliant obeys, once again, the Parisian taste, the fondness for a "brilliant" style (and the Variations certainly are). The work was published a little later, in 1837, perhaps with the cavatina already forgotten and Chopin, unwittingly, in charge of its rescue.

Very short, with an approximate length of 8 to 9 minutes, are its sections (without pause):

00:00 Introduction: Allegro maestoso

01:30 Theme - Allegro moderato

03:19 Scherzo

04:11 Lento

06:09 Scherzo vivace

The rendition is by Hong-Kong born pianist, Tiffany Poon.