Little Franz Peter Schubert was never able to recover from the low glamour disease (as opposed to tuberculosis) he contracted around 1823: syphilis, a somewhat shameful disease and with no cure at the time. By 1827 he had already suffered several relapses; one of them, shortly after visiting Beethoven that year in his dying bed, whom he revered with all his soul and heart but barely knew.
For more than twenty years, both musicians lived in the same city, Vienna, Schubert's hometown, and the one Beethoven adopted. But they never became close because they would frequent very different social circles.
Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)
Beethoven's death was a serious blow to Franz and it accentuated the depression that would accompany him the last years of his life. The courageous, jovial and sociable Franz in his twenties became sullen and withdrawn at thirty (almost the crossing of Ludwig due to deafness). However, this did not prevent him from working hard at the end of 1827, perhaps in an attempt to fight the depression. The Trios for piano and string, the Musical Moments and the Impromptus are from that time.
The name "impromptu" is a suggestion of his editor. Schubert was not the first to use it, although it can be said that he owes the boom it acquired in the romantic period. Impromptus are short pieces, formally close to Chopin's nocturnes, with a deep musicality along with a certain drama despite belonging to a musical language full of grace and charm.
Schubert's Impromptus are a series of eight pieces, divided into two groups of four, Opus 90 and Opus 142 (also named D. 899 and D. 935, respectively; the D recognizes the work of Otto Erich Deutsch, who managed to summarize all of Schubert's work in 1950).
Impromptu No. 1, from Opus 90, in C minor, is presented here in the rendition of Chinese-American pianist Eric Lu.
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Ordained a priest in 1703, "the red priest" Antonio Vivaldi, 25 years old, began that same year his fruitful relations with the Ospedale della Pietà, in Venice, an institution to which he would remain connected, with greater or lesser intensity, during almost 36 years. Appointed at the beginning as "maestro di violino", a couple of years later he assumes the position of "maestro di concerto", which gives him virtually the direction of the Conservatory.
By those years, Venice had four conservatories for women. The most important was the Ospedale della Pietá. A contemporary scholar, Charles de Brosses, writes in his Lettres d'Italie:"The best places to listen to music in this city are the Ospedali, there are four nowadays, all of them for orphaned girls or illegitimate daughters, or indigents, they are brought here at the State's expense and educated exclusively in music..."
So, with a total of almost a thousand girls staying, Vivaldi could choose at will to provide, at the beginning of the 18th century, an orchestra of 70 or 100 members, which according to De Brosses, apart from singing as angels "touch the violin, flute, cello or organ ... with unparalleled grace and precision."
The Four Seasons - Summer
In his series of concertos published in 1724 with the title Il cimento dell armonia e dell'invenzione, (The Contest between Harmony and Invention) maestro Vivaldi would use for the first time in the whole of his work, the imitation of nature, leitmotif of the Illuminist culture. Undeniable proof of this are the first four concerts of Il Cimento..., universally known as The Four Seasons.
Following, the Concerto No. 2, in G minor, subtitled "Summer", in the Trondheim Soloist rendition. On the solo violin, the Norwegian artist Mari Silje Samuelsen.
Movements: 00:00 Allegro non molto 06:06 Adagio 08:12 Presto.
130 kilometers north of Prague, the town known as Karlsbad was already famous in the 19th century for its numerous hot springs. Today it is part of the Czech Republic. Its original name is Karlovy Vary and it has turned into a spa town that every summer receives the visit of many celebrities.
It was there where, for three weeks in August and September 1835, Chopin was with his parents for the last time. Frédéric traveled from Paris and his parents from Warsaw, to meet again after a separation of five years.
A recent biographer of Frédéric tells us that they arrived almost simultaneously in mid-August, staying at the hotel The Golden Rose, where they were received by some old friends, Polish exiles living in the area, with whom they will spend time until September 6 when they traveled to Teplitz for a few days to then visit the counts Thun-Hohenstein in his castle, from where finally Nicholas Chopin and Justina will leave for Warsaw on the 14th of that month. Frédéric will stay one more week with the Thun-Hohenstein, before returning to Paris, where he had been living since 1831.
The biographer points out that in those three weeks Frédéric composed a mazurka, the waltz opus 34 N° 1 and the Polonaise N° 1 from Opus 26. (We heard the latter in the rendition by the Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa).
Our biographer also points out that during those three weeks, in addition to composing, Frédéric livened up the evenings by playing the piano for his parents and friends. At this point, Dorie, a great friend of this blog has raised a disturbing question: on what piano did Chopin compose and play during that stay?
It is natural to assume that the works may have been created in the house of the Polish friends, perhaps in Teplitz, in the Hohenstein castle, who knows. It may be, says my friend, skeptical. I want to believe, she continues, that if today many hotels admit a piano in the lobby it is because an old tradition so dictates. The hotel The Golden Rose was a pioneer, she says: the upright piano, somewhat out of tune, was in a small and rustic dining room adjoining the reception room. On that piano, Frédéric improvised in the mornings, and in the evenings he played for those who were present there.
Fortunate circumstance – my friend finished off –, that of those guests who happened to meet Chopin in those days and who, during the dinner, could hear pieces of virgin music emerged from the hands of a pale and thin youth, who after playing, smiled at them as if he had not done anything to write home about.
In 1735, the year of publication of his Italian Concerto, Johann Sebastián Bach was fifty years old and had been living in full happiness for fourteen years with his second wife, Anna Magdalena, who at the time was 34. The large family (that year was born Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son of Bach, and who will be a composer of the first order) was settled since 1723 in Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian was working as the Kantor (a position of lower category than that of maestro di capella) of the Saint Thomas church.
The tasks he had to fulfil there were: teaching music, Latin, and Luther's catechism to the students of the Tomasschulle, besides composing music and conducting it in Saint Thomas and Saint Nicholas churches. The family would live with ease because –like the rest of the teachers– they had free accommodation in the Tomasschulle and, as will be usual in his professional life, Bach was very well paid.
The Italian Concerto is the first part of his second keyboard exercise book, Klavierübung II. The notebook is entitled: "Second part of the practice of the harpsichord, consisting of a concert according to Italian taste and an overture according to the French way, for a harpsichord of two manual keyboards, prepared to recreate the spirit of the fans, by JS Bach...". The "Italian way" of the concert refers, according to scholars, to the alternation of playing piano and forte on the two keyboards.
The concerto is in three brief movements. We are listening to the first one, in the rendering by the pianist Umi Garret, who at the time of this performance was seven years old. The video ends inviting us to listen to the second movement, where Umi needs just two or three bars to show great musicality. Thanks to Umi and a long series of pianists under the age of eight, the parents who, once proud, were harassing us with the story that their six-year-old son "learned to play 'Jingle Bells' on his keyboard for Christmas", have been eradicated forever from the face of the earth.
The recently deceased pianist Jacques Loussier, a French musician who knew how to combine jazz with baroque music, gives us the following jazz version of the Italian Concerto of JS Bach, in a performance from the year 1988. Loussier, in his last recordings with his jazz group Play Bach Trio, brought in music from Debussy, Satie, Ravel, Chopin and even Mozart.
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Although before the formal premiere Beethoven had made known the Concerto No. 1 in C major in Vienna before small audiences formed by his noble friends, the truth is that its world premiere took place in Prague in 1798.
The Concerto No 1 is not the first composed by Beethoven. It was preceded by Concerto No 2 and a sketch of another in E flat, which has nothing to do with the Emperor Concerto. Composed in 1797 – Beethoven has been established in Vienna for four years –, the first official performance of the concerto before the Viennese audience occurred only in April 1800, on a Friday afternoon, with a young Ludwig thirty-year-old as soloist and conductor. The program included the First Symphony (on premiere) and the Septimino, as well as a Mozart symphony and selections from the oratorio The Creation, by Haydn.
The Concerto is in three parts, in the common classic style:
–Allegro con brío
–Largo
–Allegro scherzando
First movement - Allegro con brio
The first movement begins with a long introduction of the orchestra presenting two themes, agile and spirited the first, which at minute 1:30 gives way to a second one, a more lyrical theme.
The cadenza, that is, that section destined for the soloist to show his virtuosity or abilities for improvisation, seems to be, in this case, what Beethoven himself wrote.
The rendition is by Krystian Zimerman, at the piano and conducting.
Second movement - Largo Largo is the tempo indication that Beethoven pointed out for the second movement. Largo literally means "broad" and indicates that the piece should be played very slowly.
The tempo indications in music, whose purpose is to indicate the speed at which the piece should be played, began to be used extensively from the seventeenth century on, a period during which a significant number of great composers were coming from regions that in the 19th century are going to constitute the Italian nation, for that reason the words used for such purpose are written in the language of that nation, Italian.
Obviously, the same reasons apply to the origin of dynamic indications: forte, piano; or for the so-called "agogics": accelerando, diminuendo (alterations of, precisely, the tempo) and, in general, for all kinds of indications in the score.
But as a single word can have hundreds of meanings and resonances for different individuals, already before 1800 it had become necessary the invention of a mechanical device with whose help the speed at which a piece should be executed could be established unambiguously. After several attempts with varying degrees of success or failure, the metronome saw its definitive concretion – until today – in the device patented by J. Nepomuk Mälzel in 1815. And the first composer in incorporating metronomic indications to his scores was the very same Ludwig van Beethoven.
As romantic as it could be, the maestro was not able to resist the temptation to try this new conquest of human ingenuity. The man had reached the metronome, and Ludwig was not indifferent to it.
However, the device did not replace by far the tempo indications written by the composer in his own handwriting. (Nor was that his goal). The metronome is limited to indicating a number of quarter notes or eighths per minute, mathematically. Words, on the other hand, add to the indicated speed an atmosphere, a certain spirit or even a state of mind with which the work must be approached. That conjunction of speed and atmosphere is what we believe constitutes the tempo of the work.
The rendition is by the Italian maestro Pietro Papagna accompanied by the Citta di Fondi Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ertug Korkmaz.
By that time, the Viennese had already warned that the maestro Beethoven was much more than a professional and prominent pianist. However, it is not easy to say that his contemporaries saw in Beethoven the genius known to us. To the Viennese people of 1800, the music of Beethoven may have even seemed a bit snobby: his music was too unique. "The spectators come to my concerts to mourn like the readers of a saga," he said. Neither were absent less encouraging reviews. In 1796, during a tour of several countries, a Prague music critic wrote: "it struck our ears but not our hearts". In Berlin, during the same tour, even though the monarch Frederick William II of Prussia entertained him with a box full of gleaming "louises", nor did he find the ideal audience there. "I played the best I could," he declared bitterly years later, "and I expected great success. But it did not sound like a round of applause! The audience had moved to mourn, soaking their handkerchiefs to show their gratitude. I remained completely indifferent, I understood that it was a corny auditorium, but not fond of art ".
And on the occasion of the April 1800 concert, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung magazine said that the concert had been "the most interesting one heard in a long time" but at the same time observed that "the musicians of the orchestra did not bother to pay much attention to the soloist". The soloist was, of course, Beethoven.
Rondo - Allegro scherzando
The third movement of the concerto is a rondo, a musical form based on the repetition of the main theme that alternates with other secondary ones. Its tempo indication is Allegro scherzando, something like fast but playful. The solo piano introduces the first theme, then the orchestra will follow.
The pianist ends his task without fuss, at 8:49, when at the end of a sweet section he must play a D and then a C, pianissimo. Precisely this last one failed once Martha Argerich, the key did not make a sound and she just looked at the conductor with an expression on her face that was telling "ok, so be it". After that, whether or not it sounds, the orchestra intervenes with a short and placid phrase, to then attack with bravery the closing of the work.
The rendition is by Vladimir Ashkenazy accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink.
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