Liszt - Paganini, "La Campanella"

Notable must have been her surprise when Carolyne de Saint-Cricq, a fourteen-year-old aristocrat girl, saw her piano teacher, Franz Liszt, enter the music room, barely a year older than her. The preteen, famous pianist, was returning from a tour of England, France and Switzerland. He had just lost his father, which forced him to become the provider of the short family – he and his mother – giving lessons to aristocratic girls and upper bourgeoisie ladies, in Paris in 1826.

As expected, Carolyne, the daughter of a minister of Carlos X, fell in love quickly with his young teacher, and the young teacher with her. It was love "at first lesson" but with no successful outcome. Anticipating fatal consequences, the minister ended the lessons and the music. Franz fell into depression but then managed to get away from his first – and perhaps unique – love setback. Soon, he was able to continue his successful tours throughout Europe, reaping applause everywhere. Carolyne got married, meanwhile.

Listening to Paganini
Shortly before finding true love in the person of Marie d'Agoult, the young teacher had the opportunity to attend in 1832 a concert presented by the Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini at the Paris Opera. For Franz, the experience was a first-rate one, and he decided to work intensely on his instrument with resolute determination to achieve the amazing excellence shown by the Italian devil with the violin.

Listening to Chopin
Fortunately, within a few months, Liszt went to the Pleyel Hall to listen to a colleague, another young man who was only one year older than him, a Polish, Frédérik Chopin. There he realized that the mere display of the mastery of an instrument was not enough, and that it was also possible to invent an intimate world on the keyboard of a piano. And he understood that if Paganini composed for his violin, he should aim to write for the piano.

Six Études
In the "Six Grandes Études de Paganini", from 1838, Franz Liszt fully fulfilled that purpose. In the Étude No. 3, nicknamed La Campanella, based on a theme from Paganini's Second Violin Concerto, Liszt dared to respond to the diabolic writing of the Italian with a work that, beyond mere virtuosity, constitutes an overwhelming achievement for the intrinsic value of the resulting music.

The rendition is by the Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa.

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Chopin, Grande Vals Brillante, op 18

Frédérik Chopin composed his first waltz when he was 19 years old. In total, between 1829 and 1847 he composed fourteen waltzes, six of which were published only after his death.
Naturally, or so it seems now, these pieces are not made to be danced, but that was not so clear in the first half of the nineteenth century. And Chopin had to make it explicit, demanding that "they were not danced, because they are not intended for it," he notes in a letter to one of his editors.

Nor did he like they were considered "lounge music." And with good reason, since it is useless to look in  Chopin's waltzes for the charm of the Viennese waltzes. During his stay in Vienna, he said in a letter to a friend "I don't have anything it takes to imitate Strauss or Lanner."

However, the pianist, director and great Franco-Swiss pedagogue Alfred Cortot (1877 - 1962) manages to distinguish three styles in this long series of waltzes that get through almost all of Frédérik's musical existence.
There are the "allusive" waltzes in which the musical form languishes before the poetry they contain; the waltzes that oh, surprise! Cortot himself calls "lounge waltzes" with Chopin's forgiveness, destined to the listeners' reverie; and, last but not least, the "bright" waltzes that, following Cortot, open the way to the evocation of dance halls where couples spin, vehemently, despite Frédérik's wishes.

Grande Vals Brillante, Opus 18
The Grande Vals Brillante in E-flat (designation of the editor) of Opus 18, is the first to be edited but was composed at least after another five, in Paris, in 1834. It is probably one of the best known and most popular, for the public, and a small jewel suitable for displaying a comfortable show, for pianists. A biographer of Chopin aptly describes it as "piafante" and "tufted". Its conclusion, high brilliant, peaks an accelerando that would leave breathless those who, bold and naive, would think of dancing.

The rendition is by the Russian pianist Valentina Lisitsa.

Camille Saint-Saëns, Introduction and Rondo capriccioso

The French romantic composer Camille Saint-Saens, born in Paris in 1835, as well as a child prodigy, was a lucky being. Although he was predicted to endure meager health, he managed to live up to 86 years, an unusual occurrence for the time.
Camille had learned to read at age three. As a true child prodigy, he made his first public presentation at age five and at ten he gave his first piano recital. This, in the field of music, of course. But Camille was a multifaceted guy. In adolescence, he became interested in botany and archeology. Then he became a mathematical expert. Later, as an adult, he became interested in numerous subjects: acoustics, occult sciences, Roman theater and ancient instruments.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 - 1921)

A philosopher, a poet, and an astronomer
He also wrote a philosophical work, where he argued that art and science would replace religion. He was a poet, too. As if all this were not enough, he was a member of the Astronomical Society of France, where he gave some lectures on astronomical mirrors. Then he made for himself a telescope according to its own specifications. His passion for astronomy may have taken him a little far because as a grown-up he used to plan his concerts according to astronomical events, such as the next solar eclipses.

A prolific musician
All these occupations did not prevent him from becoming the author of more than three hundred musical works, including operas, orchestral music, chamber music, concertos for various instruments and orchestra, piano transcriptions from various authors, plus sacred and choral music. Among the music for violin and orchestra, stand out his two Concertos, Havanaise and the Rondó capriccioso.

Introduction and Rondo capriccioso
In 1859, when he was just fifteen years old, another child prodigy, a prodigy of violin, Pablo de Sarasate, had asked Saint-Saëns for the composition of a concerto for that instrument, a request that Camille complied with the publication of his Concerto No. 1 in A minor. Quite pleased with Camille's work, four years later Pablo tried again and asked for another piece for violin and orchestra, if possible in a style evoking the spirit of Spanish dance, a very fashionable trend among French romantics of the time (Edouard Lalo, Georges Bizet, to name but a few). Saint-Saens fully complied with the request and the result is the beautiful piece Introduction and Rondó capriccioso in A minor, premiered by Sarasate in Paris in 1867.

The rendition is by the impetuous Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic, led by Estonian conductor Neeme Jarvi. Surprisingly, the piece begins with the Introduction; in the minute 1:35 it starts to take off to give way to the agile rondo.

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Verdi, Rigoletto, Aria "Caro Nome"

Quite a few difficulties had Giuseppe Verdi to overcome before the premiere of his opera Rigoletto at Teatro La Fenice, in Venice, in 1851. The play on which it is inspired belongs to Victor Hugo. With the title Le Roi s'amuse, the play staged a cynical and immoral seductive king. For that reason, it had been banned in France for twenty years and would continue for another thirty. Although it was the very Teatro La Fenice that had asked Verdi for a new play, it seemed difficult to perform it in Venice, due to Austrian censorship.

With great caution, Verdi and his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, moved to Busetto, Verdi's hometown, to work out of sight and ears of the censors. It didn't help much because three months before the premiere, censorship got there in letter format:

"The military Governor of Venice, il Signore Gorzowsky, deplores that the poet Piave and the famous musician Verdi have failed to choose another field to make their talents emerge than that of the disgusting immorality and obscene triviality of the libretto entitled La maledizione [its working title]. His excellence has thus arranged absolutely veto the representation ... and be advised to refrain from any further insistence on this."

Joining wisdom with goodwill, Giuseppe and his librettist decided to make some changes to the libretto. Starting with the title, which was changed to Rigoletto (from French rigoler - laugh), then the king of France became a duke who governs Mantua (a duchy that no longer exists), and, going beyond, the Duke became part of the Gonzaga family, a family no one remembered because had been extinguished in Italy many years ago. The censor approved the representation.

Caro nome
The aria belongs to scene II of Act I. The deceived girl (there is always one), named Gilda, daughter of court jester Rigoletto, has just met a formal, circumspect and respectful young man in the church, whom she falls in love with and who has identified himself as a student, a poor student, to be precise. Actually, he is the cynical and evil duke. Gilda sings recalling the false name he has told her: Gualtier Maldé. Caro nome (dear name), she says, to top it off.
The Russian soprano Ekaterina Bakanova sings, in a performance in Austria for the Opera Festival of St. Margarethen, where, it is seen, no expenses were spared.

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George Gershwin, Three Preludes

When George Gershwin was born in America, in 1898, the great northern country was beginning to emerge as a powerful and expansionist power. It had just taken Spain's last possessions in the Caribbean and the Philippines and was on its way to becoming the great imperialist power of the twentieth century. The country was settling territorially, and at the same time, thousands of emigrants were approaching North America due to the shock wave of the Industrial Revolution in the European continent.

Coming from St. Petersburg, the Gershovitz family arrived in the promised land in the second half of the 19th century, and soon after, in an understandable desire for integration, they Americanized their last name by changing it to Gershwin. His children will be George and Ira, the first one would be a musician and pianist, and the later, lyricist of his younger brother's songs.

Three Preludes

George Gershwin (1898 - 1937)

The three short pieces known as Preludes – which should be understood as a unique work – were released in 1926, a year after the premiere of the Piano Concerto. They immediately became an indisputable success, because they perfectly fit with the "simultaneistic" atmosphere that proclaimed the integration of jazz with serious music, a task that, in the opinion of his contemporaries, George Gershwin was the one in a position to carry out. This had been outright illustrated with his 1924 Rhapsody in blue.

The rendition is by Krystian Zimerman. Each of these three preludes does not last more than two minutes. In the video, the rest are applause between prelude and prelude. The second prelude, a slow and melancholic melody, allows a blues to act as an adage in this little masterpiece of which, incidentally, transcriptions have been made for orchestra, one of them, emerged from Arnold Schönberg's invention.

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