Massenet: Meditation, from "Thäis"

The composer Jules Massenet, born near Saint-Etienne, France, in 1842, remains today a bit forgotten, but he was a highly prolific author, and as far as the early twentieth century, about 30 of his operas were widely represented in the most important stages worldwide. A precocious musician –from whom it was said he could play some Beethoven sonatas when he was four–, he entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was 9, after receiving the teachings of his mother.

At age 22 he was awarded the Rome Prize. In Rome, he met Franz Liszt, who during those years was enjoying a comforting honeymoon in the company of Marie d'Agoult. The great Hungarian maestro commissioned him to give lessons to one of his most distinguished disciples because he could not cope with his many students. The distinguished disciple was named Louise Constance de Gressy and was known as "Ninon" in her inner circle. Two years later, after going back and forth with music, teacher and student ended up marrying in 1866.

Jules Massenet (1842 - 1912)

Ninon and the prima-donnas
She was an open-minded and free woman, and unlike a critic of those days was in no way afflicted by the composer's marked tendency to engage women as the protagonists of his operas. Rumour had it that the musician composed his works with an eye on the prima-donnas selected to sing the arias. Ninon didn't move a muscle, but the critic did dare to write down that the composer couldn't write an opera without a woman as the protagonist. Massenet replied writing a work putting aside his natural inclination until the time came when a mezzo-soprano had to play the part of the tenor in a performance in New York. It was Jules' fate.

Thäis opera - Meditation
Since the mid-eighties of the last century, some operas by Massenet have enjoyed a renewed splendour. One of them is Thais, composed in 1894 and based on the novel of the same title by Anatole France. The opera's heroine is, certainly, Thais, a courtesan of Alexandria, devoted to the goddess Venus, who is in danger of being converted to Christianity by a Cenobite monk.
If the work enjoys public recognition today it is largely due to the intermezzo for violin and orchestra from the second act known as "Thais Meditation", which is usually performed separately as a concert piece.

When Massenet died, on August 13, 1912, the New York Times remarked that "the last one of the great creators of melodies" had left. It is true.

The rendition is by the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen.

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Beethoven and his patrons: "Pathétique" Sonata

In Vienna, and in the rest of the world, it was the year 1799 when Ludwig van Beethoven published the Sonata Op. 13, called Pathetique. In France, on the other hand, was the year VIII of the Republic. On the 18 Brumaire of that year, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d'état that ended with the Directory and established the Consulate, with him at its head.
Five years later, in 1804, the former dark Corsican officer named himself emperor under the title of Napoleon I. This fact led Beethoven to erase the Éroica Symphony's dedication offered to Bonaparte. We assume that Napoleon did not know. Neither, for sure, his brother Jérôme, who will be named King of Westphalia in 1807.

The year before the appointment of Jérôme Bonaparte, in 1806, Ludwig had tried to resume a career as an operas composer and offered his services to the imperial authorities but his request was denied. Fortunately, the new monarch of Westphalia, who despite being young and licentious, did like art, sent a letter to Beethoven in early 1808 inviting him to perform as a chapel master in his simple parochial court. The salary was not negligible, and Ludwig was just about to take on the challenge when the rumor was known and his friends learned that the maestro intended to leave Vienna.

Prince Lobkowitz (1772 - 1816)

And they hit the roof. Beethoven was leaving only to secure a fixed income. A singular contract was then offered to him. A small group of his aristocratic friends committed themselves to pay him 4,000 florins per year if he stayed in Vienna, allowed to go on tour whenever he wanted and give a concert every year at the Theater an der Wien in his exclusive benefit. Ludwig signed the contract. And Jérôme was left holding the bag.

Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, his friends and patrons could not fully comply with the agreement. Prince Lobkowitz (committed with 700 florins) was ruined shortly afterwards. Prince Kinski (1,800 florins) fell off a horse in 1812 and was killed (his family dismissed the contract). Only Archduke Rudolph, committed to 1,500 florins, was faithful to the agreement, paying his portion meticulously to Beethoven year after year.

Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 - Sonata Pathétique
Some authors point out that the Sonata was so named by Beethoven himself and would respond to the psychic condition in which he was at the time of its publication when the first signs of his deafness begin to appear. Others postulate that it was the publisher's idea, which seems more likely.
It is dedicated to another friend and patron, Prince Lichnowsky.

Movements
Although it is structured in a classic manner: fast - slow - fast movements, the first one starts with a rather mournful introduction (a novelty for the times) that will connect soon with the Allegro.
00:00  Grave – Allegro di molto e con brio
09:33  Adagio cantabile
14:57  Rondo, allegro

Daniel Barenboim, the year 2006. The 32 sonatas cycle, StaatsOper Berlin.

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Beethoven: "Emperor" Concerto

The brightest piano concerto of all time had its origin at a complex historic moment. In the spring of 1809, for the second time in less than four years, the Napoleonic troops were advancing on Vienna. This time they faced much more resistance than they had three and a half years ago, however, at the beginning of July, after bloody confrontations, the balance was tipped in favor of Napoleon. And as had happened in 1805, the nobility and the upper classes left the city, headed by Francis I of Austria, taking with him Archduke Rudolph, a friend, pupil, and patron of Beethoven.
The maestro remained in Vienna, amid the smoke and cannonballs. In a letter to his editor in Leipzig, he wrote:

"We have been suffering misery the most intensively, I only see chaos and destruction around me, and I only hear drums and cannons ... human misery in all its forms."

Certainly, in such a depressing environment it would appear difficult to write a work of such significance and transcendence. But Beethoven did, adding to it a couple of sonatas, one of them with a dedication for the archduke in flight, a sonata that sings to the abandonment, all this only explained by the time in which Beethoven lives, one in which wars are inherent to life.

Premières
Unlike the previous four releases, due to his hearing loss, Beethoven was not the soloist at the première of his last concert. The work, also dedicated to the archduke, had its first public audition in Leipzig on November 28, 1811. At the piano was Friedrich Schneider, of whom we only know his name.
The première in Vienna, an occupied city, took place the following year, on February 12, with Beethoven's pupil Karl Czerny at the piano, who, unlike the one mentioned above, is remembered as the author of some exhausting exercises that since those years take up the whole day of the future pianists.

"Emperor"
According to legend, in the Viennese première, an enthusiastic French officer would have risen from his seat and exclaimed loudly: "Ah ... it's the Emperor !!" It is one of the myths trying to explain the popular title of such a great concert. There are other hypotheses. But this one established a link, in one way or another, with Napoleon, badly for the maestro, who, in all fairness, would later remove his name from the Eroica Symphony, after the self-coronation of the Corsican.

It is undeniable, too, that there is no other adjective that best evokes the work's majesty and large scale. Its great dimensions, that certain martial character, its loftiness, together with the incomparable lyricism of its central movement, reserve the work a prominent place among the decisive works in Beethoven's heroic vein.

Piano Concerto No 5 in E flat major, "Emperor" - Movements:
00:00  Allegro
21:43  Adagio a little mosso
29:15  Rondo - Allegro ma non troppo

The rendition is by Krystian Zimerman, accompanied by Leonard Bernstein conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker.

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Maurice Ravel: "Boléro"

The orchestral work Boléro, by the French composer Maurice Ravel, is one of the few classical pieces having reached its very high level of popularity having not been conceived for the delight of a large audience on the occasion of a certain event. "Every moment Ravel's Boléro is being performed somewhere around the world", has stated the composer Lawrence Petitgirard. At the same time, the work is the masterpiece of the composer, in every sense of the word.

By the time Ravel wrote it, 1928, he was just over 50 years old and was at the height of his fame and worldwide recognition, with hundreds of pieces to his credit, which were heard throughout Europe and North America.

Just after returning from a tour of the Scandinavian countries, of England, of the United States and Canada, and while on holiday in Saint Jean de Luz (a town on the Atlantic coast), Ravel received a telegram from Ida Rubinstein. In it, the Russian dancer and businesswoman suggested the idea of a ballet for the Paris Opera, which ideally would not last more than 17 minutes.

Apparently, this somewhat rudimentary request (because of the time duration imposed) led him to conceive the simple idea of an "insistent" theme that was to be repeated twenty times without any development, just maintaining a constant reorchestration of the theme, a rather mad effort that could only be undertook by the undisputed master of the art of instrumentation that Maurice Ravel was.

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)

This idea of repetition and insistence transmuted into a sonorous and dynamic progression, always similar in its essence and at the same time different in its expression, that until now remains as the most persuasive "lesson of orchestration" that a musician has ever written.

Reduced to pure sound, Boléro seems like an orchestral plot without music, only a long and progressive crescendo but conceived with an unprecedented audacity: a simple motif divided into two parts, supported by an omnipresent and tirelessly repeated rhythm, with no changes, except for that one which Ravel did alternatively entrust to the snare drum (and then to the other instruments) following a simple instruction: where there were eighth notes now you make triplets, then return to the eighth notes and so on until the end of the piece.

Accelerating is not allowed. Never. The only change permitted is the sound intensity, from an almost inaudible pianissimo to the fortissimo final dissonant chord. The sound volume has to be grown in such a way that the audience does not realize that there has been a steady crescendo, all the while.

Boléro was first performed at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928, with a dance choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska.

Gustavo Dudamel conducts The Wiener Philharmoniker.

A brief listening guide:
After the opening rhythm on the snare drum (that continues unabated throughout the work), the piece proceeds as follows:
0:33 solo flute (in the instrument’s low range)
1:28 solo clarinet (also low in the range)
2:23 solo bassoon (high in its range)
3:18 solo E-flat clarinet (smaller and higher in pitch than the standard B-flat clarinet)
4:14 solo oboe d’amore
5:08 muted trumpet and flute (the flute floating like overtones parallel to the trumpet’s line)
6:03 solo tenor saxophone (an unusual inclusion in an orchestra, but Ravel liked jazz)
6:58 solo soprano saxophone (a small, straight, high-pitched saxophone)
8:15 French horn and celesta (the bell-like tones of the latter parallel to the horn’s line)
8:47 quartet composed of clarinet and three double-reeds (a combination organlike in timbre)
9:40 solo trombone (replete with sensuously sliding passages)
10:33 high woodwinds (growing more strident in tone)
11:24 The strings finally emerge from their background role to take the lead for the remaining variations. The crescendo continues to build; the drumbeat persists, becoming ever more prominent. Before long, trumpet accents are added, contributing to the intensity until, in the final moments, the full orchestra is tossed into the mix —trombones, cymbals, and all— bringing the piece to an exultant, if abrupt, conclusion.

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Claude Debussy: "Claire de Lune"

Nothing presaged that the child Achille-Claude Debussy, eventually an author of more than 800 works for orchestra, instrumental works and chamber music, was destined to music. His genealogy pointed to anything but art. Born in 1862 in a small town on the banks of the Seine, his great-grandfather had started a locksmith's workshop in Paris after marrying the daughter of a carpenter, and an uncle of him also handled the noble craftmanship of carpentry.

Claude's father, meanwhile, enrolled very young in the marine infantry and then tried his luck in a wide range of occupations. When the events of the Paris Commune unleashed in 1871, he also wanted to hold the sky in his hands and therefore joined the ranks of the rebels. The failed uprising ended with him being tried and sent to jail for a year. But it happened that the mother of another Communard prisoner became interested in the family of her son's fellow. A disciple of Chopin –according to herself–, she immediately noticed the musical disposition of little Claude.

Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918)

Madame Mauté de Fleurville (that was the name of the so-called disciple of Chopin), prepared Claude Debussy for free to enter the Paris Conservatoire, what Claude finally made in 1872.
Eight years later, a great Russian lady, Nadezhda von Meck, a friend and patroness of Tchaikovsky, asked the Conservatory to provide a young pianist to give lessons to her children. The chosen one was young Claude. The following year, Mrs. von Meck invited him to join her on a trip to Moscow. The following summer, Claude was invited again, so his self-confidence surely did experience a huge leap. And then, he made the mistake.
With surprising boldness, Claude dared to ask Mrs. von Meck for the hand of her daughter Sonia. Mrs. von Meck listened to his request as she watched the garden through the windows. Then she turned his head and asked Claude if he would not mind going back to Paris on the next train.

Claire de Lune, from the Suite Bergamasque
The famous Claire de Lune by Debussy is one of the four pieces that make up the Suite Bergamasque, although the initial project of 1890 did not include it. In a much later revision, in 1905, Debussy replaced two of the four original pieces. Claire de Lune is one of these replacements and is the piece that, ultimately, made the entire suite popular.

The rendition is by the American pianist Thomas Labé.

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