An absolute contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi, the Venetian composer Alessandro Marcello (1673 - 1747) stood out in life, more than because of his music, because of his professional career and social activity as a member of the Venetian nobility. He and his brother Benedetto, both sons of a senator, were two great dilettantes of the time who, given their comfortable social position, were able to indulge in the study of the most diverse disciplines, with a lust for life.
Once finished his law studies, Alessandro also dabbled in poetry, philosophy, mathematics and music. Benedetto was also a musician and until the mid-twentieth century, much of their work was attributed only to him, perhaps because Alessandro came up with a bad idea, publishing his works with a pseudonym, with which he was known in the art circle where he would participate, the famous Pontificia Accademia degli Arcadi.
Oboe Concerto - Adagio
The complete work of Alessandro Marcello is reduced. Just over a dozen cantatas, sonatas for violin and concertos are counted. His best-known work is the Oboe Concerto for Oboe, Strings and continuo which, thanks to the transcription of JS Bach for keyboard, obtained acceptable dissemination for the time, although it later generated reasonable doubts about its authorship. The romantic love story addressed by the 1970 film Anonimo Veneziano finally brought it closer to our days, by incorporating the second movement of the concerto, the adagio, into its soundtrack.
German musician Félix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had it all in his short life. The son of banker parents, after some squeamishness his father accompanied him in the idea of becoming a professional musician. Félix accomplished his goal rapidly: at 17 he had already composed the overture for the Shakespearean drama Dream of a Summer Night and at 23 was known in all major European capitals as a concert pianist, conductor and composer. Later, he would happily marry (for only eleven years, sadly) the most beautiful, cultured, and pious girl in Frankfurt.
At Goethe's
So that in his early times everything was going great for Felix. His teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, a friend of the poet Goethe and somehow his assistant in the art of music, introduced him to the bard's house in 1821. Felix was twelve years old and Zelter was one having a long history vetoing musicians who used to send to the poet his poems musicalized requesting his permission and moral support.
But this was not the case with Mendelssohn. The bard was delighted with that bright and young guest. In November of that year, little Felix wrote to his parents: "I make more music here than at home. Every day after dinner, Goethe opens the piano and says to me: I still haven't heard you today, make a little noise for me".
Notwithstanding the age difference, Mendelssohn's relationship with Goethe will last until his death in 1832. Meanwhile, Félix is going to set several of his poems to music, something that neither Schubert, Beethoven nor Berlioz were able to do. In addition to relentless, the assistant Zelter did not have a good eye.
Rondo Capriccioso, opus 14
The Rondó Capriccio is a piano work composed around 1827 (that is, at eighteen). The work has been highly praised for its beautiful romantic pieces although it seems to be built on brilliance, for the performer's brilliance. The vigorous octaves at the end are proof of this and that is why today it is performed almost exclusively in piano competitions, to gauge the performer's virtuosity.
Therefore, it is quite a novelty to come upon this rendition by the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, very young, in a television or radio studio, probably in the United States. We have no further information on the recording. One can only imagine a few things: that Arrau will be about thirty-five years old; that the recording may have been damaged and some cuts were made. Still, it is absolutely worth it. It is shocking to see the serenity of Arrau at the end of the piece. Unlike some of his colleagues, there is no indication in him that his performance has involved a superhuman effort that transported him to an ethereal world from which he must painfully return to the physical world that we all share.
The year 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven was not going through a good time. At 32, his deafness was an undeniable fact, and he decided to confess it to his brothers in the famous Testament of Heiligenstadt, a few rough pages where he asks in pain why this has happened to him, a musician, somehow justifying also the acrimony of his character. It is the year of the composition of the Sonata opus 31 N° 2, also known as "The Tempest".
According to a contemporary biographer, the umpteenth time Beethoven was asked why the sonata bore that name, he replied annoyed: "you should read Shakespeare's Tempest". The strong likelihood is that Ludwig has answered anything, annoyed by the repeated question, for the fact is that the Sonata opus 31 No. 2 has little or nothing to do with the homonymous work of the renowned bard.
Sonata Opus 31 N° 2 "The Tempest", in D minor
The Sonata is in three movements: Largo - Allegro / Adagio / Allegretto.
The beginning of the sonata presents two novelties: 1. It does not begin in the tonic but in the dominant key. 2. Instead of the traditional Allegro, the first chords show, in less than a minute, three different tempi: largo, allegro and adagio.
9:32 Adagio
The second movement, adagio, is the longest of the three movements that make up the sonata. A standard execution lasts about eight minutes, although the score has only four pages (versus ten in the third movement). It is also one of the longest slow movements written by Beethoven for all his piano sonatas. [In the version we are presenting here, at 10:52, BANG! a lightbulb exploded, hence the video title].
16:20 Allegretto
The third movement is an allegretto, that is, a less rapid tempo than allegro (fast) so that the movement must be attacked at a speed that I would dare to define as "fast but not so much." Like the first movement, it is constructed in an obvious "sonata form": theme - sub-theme - development - re-exposure. But in opposition to the first and second movements, there are no introductory arpeggios. The work, written in 3/8 (a little waltz), begins, let's say so, at once. And ends in complete calm, which usually surprises the audience, if you don't know the piece.
The rendition is by the Ukranian pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who besides her outstanding performance was able to manage brilliantly the bulb explosion, at 10:52.
In the field of music, verismo is an Italian opera style that forged its beginnings in 1890 hand in hand with Cavalleria Rusticana by the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni, reaching its highest expression in the early twentieth century. This new style is going to abandon the historical or mythical themes of romanticism focusing on a realistic portrait of everyday life, especially that in which the poorest classes subsist – peasants and workers.
Composed on the occasion of a contest called by an Italian editor, Cavalleria Rusticana was the winning work out of 70 works submitted. Its premiere, in May 1890 in Rome, was a resounding success. That night, its young author, 27, had to go out more than forty times to receive the public's greeting. The following year it was released in London, and shortly thereafter its representations would follow in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York. At the death of Mascagni in 1945, the work had enjoyed a number close to fourteen thousand performances in Italy alone.
Pietro Mascagni (1863 - 1945)
A single act opera, Cavalleria Rusticana (something like "rustic chivalry", in free translation) is located in Sicily, during the Easter feast. His characters are villagers and peasants who deal with unrequited love and a non-sancta woman punished by a prude society.
The most popular fragment of the work is a prelude or Intermezzo, sung by the orchestra at the time when the characters have left the plaza where they were gathered to enter the church.
The Intermezzo, and of course, the complete work, are both still very popular today. Numerous film versions have been made of it and scenes of its representation were included in the movie The Godfather III, by Coppola. Likewise, in Raging Bull, by Martin Scorsese, an important part of the soundtrack is based on Intermezzo.
The video shows scenes of a terrace, desolate (like the plaza, in the play), on the seaside. This is the Terrazza Mascagni, located in Livorno, Italy, rebuilt after the Second World War and then renamed in tribute to Pietro Mascagni, a native of Livorno.
It is very likely that without the invaluable collaboration of Anna Magdalena Bach, we would not have known the Six Suites for cello solo by Johann Sebastian since the original manuscripts ended up lost. It had to be Anna Magdalena who, willingly, at night in the light of a candle, decided to make a copy of them, around 1722, shortly after Bach married her after being widowed of his first wife, Maria Barbara.
Bach in Köthen
Bach, 32, had arrived at the small court of Köthen in 1717, to serve as a chapel master at the service of Prince Leopold, a great music lover and musician himself. In a first era, Johann Sebastian made very good crumbs with Leopold. The Calvinist prince considered that religious services did not require especially elaborated music, and therefore, Bach's work of that period was oriented towards not religious instrumental music.
Suites and Partitas
The Orchestral Suites, the Six Partitas for violin and the Six Suites for cello solo date from those days. Its writing is the result of the French influence exerted by the most distinguished and exquisite courts of that time, for example, that of Versailles, on which, incidentally, the wrath of the Lord will fall seventy years later.
But first, the suites will delight the modest court of Köthen. Constructed as a succession of dances with a French name lasting no more than two or three minutes in duration (courante, gavotte, sarabande, minuet, polonaise, bourré, passepied, or giga), the first movement leads them, which is usually the most important: the overture or prelude.
Prelude for cello solo in the cinema
The Prelude to the first of the six suites for cello solo, is precisely one of Bach's pieces included in the 2007 film by Catalan director Pere Portabella, "The Silence before Bach", a kaleidoscope of attractive scenes with fragments of the life of Johann Sebastian masterfully linked to today's world. One of the most innovative moments is the one that takes place in the subway cars, where 20 or 30 cellists perform the Prelude of Suite No. 1 while the train leaves the tunnels entering an empty platform, then cross with another train, whose rattling is not muted, creating the feeling that a new prelude has emerged, one for 30 cellos and subway cars, on an original JS Bach motif.
