Chopin at Place d'Orleans, Ballade No 4

 
While living in Paris, Frédéric Chopin had nine different addresses. In 1842, upon returning from a brief stay in Nohant – the summer residence of his partner, George Sand – he and the novelist decided to leave Rue Pigalle, where they had lived since the previous year, and move to Place d'Orléans No. 9, where, in their style, they would live in different apartments or pavilions.

Little Athens
The decision was purely due to the desire for a change of scenery. Rue Pigalle had already bored them and they were seduced by the idea of living in a sort of "Fourierist" community (after the utopian socialist Fourier), where writers and artists could meet night after night.
Place d'Orléans meets these requirements. And indeed, the singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Alexandre Dumas, among others, populate this "little Athens".

In Sand's words, in little Athens:

"...we had only one large courtyard.... always clean, which we crossed to meet... sometimes at [a friend's] house, sometimes at mine, sometimes at Chopin's, when he was ready to play for us. We had decided to make a common pot and eat all together... Chopin rejoiced to have [there] a secluded salon where he could go to compose or dream. But he liked people and only took advantage of his sanctuary to give his lessons."

1838. A young George Sand,
pen name of Aurore Dupin 
(1804 - 1876)

Chopin certainly does not live there for free. The apartment costs him 625 francs, but he charges 20 francs an hour for lessons, giving up to five lessons a day. So he "gets by" without major difficulties.

1842, a productive year
And indeed, the composer only composes in Nohant. In that short summer of 1842 he wrote the Scherzo No. 4, the Ballade No. 4, the Polonaise in A-flat, the third Impromptu, and four mazurkas.
For a year, Chopin lives one of his most productive periods, which will last until 1847, when the relationship with his "partner" George Sand enters a regrettable misunderstanding that will lead to the definitive break.

Ballade No. 4 in F minor, op. 52
Before Chopin, the term "ballade" was applied exclusively to vocal pieces. So, the four ballades that Chopin wrote are the first instrumental ballades.
According to a contemporary scholar, anyone who tries to find the romantic or melodious or sweet Chopin in ballade No. 4 will look in vain. And he is right: the "intimacy" of the piece has made it difficult to access and less popular than the others. However, it turns out to be at the same time one of the most beautiful ballads, if we agree that we are not in the presence of a dreamy nocturne.

Composed in Nohant that summer and published in Paris the following year, it is dedicated to the Baroness de Rothschild, to whose daughter Chopin used to give lessons.

The rendition is by Kate Liu, a talented pianist born in Singapore.

Satie, Trois morceaux en forme de poire

The French composer Erik Satie, creator of an openly satirical if somewhat modest art according to some, left the Paris conservatory in 1886 after seven years of study without winning any awards. Indeed, a professor described him as a "talented but indolent student". However, two years later he composed his famous Gymnopedies, and the following year, the equally celebrated Gnossiennes. They are short piano pieces evoking a singular atmosphere through stylistic resources of surprising simplicity, although with an original harmonic treatment that caught the attention of his friend Debussy, whom he had met in a Parisian cabaret.

Pianist at the Le Chat Noir
Yes, because after leaving the conservatory, the young Satie decided to make a living as a cabaret pianist. At the age of 21, he started working at the Le Chat Noir cabaret, playing popular melodies and accompanying the singing of enthusiastic patrons, some of them famous or on their way to becoming so, such as Maupassant or Verlaine. But his temper worked against him and soon after he had to leave Le Chat Noir in an inelegant way. 

Erik Satie, in 1898
(1866 - 1925)

Pianist at L'auberge du clou
But he soon got a job in another cabaret, L'auberge du clou. There he stayed for several years and had the good fortune to meet Claude Debussy, four years his senior and already a musician of some renown. Debussy applauded the harmonies of this irreverent young man (and learned from them, so the story goes) but a few years later he will complain about Satie's carelessness in his treatment of musical forms.

"Trois morceaux en forme de poir"
Erik did not forget the suggestion and in 1903 he compiled pieces composed from 1890 until that year, to which he added a couple of recently created pages to form a suite for four-hand piano that he entitled Trois morceaux en forme de poir (Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear). Very much in line with his irreverence, the pieces are not three nor are they pear-shaped. It was one of his first delusional titles. Dissected embryos, from 1913, Things seen to the right and left (without glasses) from 1914, and Bureaucratic Sonatina, from 1917, to name a few, will come.

The rendition (audio only) is by the French pianist Robert Casadesus and his wife, Gaby. The paintings are by Paul Cezanne.

The work (which I recommend listening to with headphones) is made up of the following seven pieces:

00:00  Manière de commencement
03:07  Prolongement du même
03:59  Morceaux I  Lentement
05:20  Morceaux II  Enlève
07:49  Morceaux III  Brutal
10:28  En plus
12:22  Redite

Mozart, Divertimento in D major, K 136

 
In December 1771, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was back in Salzburg after his second four-month trip to Italy in the company of his father Leopold. The reception and the music commissioned were a success, but the main effort, aimed at securing a place for Amadeus at a respectable court, had not born fruit.

The last attempt had been nearly embarrassing, although the Mozart family never knew the details. Maria Theresa of Austria, mother of the first queen to meet the guillotine, Marie Antoinette, and of Archduke Ferdinand, governor of Lombardy, even jealously instructed the latter not to hire that family of musicians who were "rolling around the world like beggars".

As usual, Wolfgang was not deterred from his excellent willingness to work, and in the first months of 1772, he had already composed the three divertimentos K. 136-138, also known as the "Salzburg Symphonies", since Mozart set them up in three movements, typical of the "Italian" symphonies: fast - slow - fast.

Divertimenti: "Ambient Music" in the 18th Century

Divertimenti usually consisted of more than three movements, generally five, in some cases adding up to nine, as a remnant of the fading suite, the musical form from which the divertimenti appear to have originated.

Very popular in the 18th century, there are divertimenti for ensembles of three, four or five stringed or wind instruments, or some combination of them. Light in character, its purpose was no other than entertainment, a piece of pleasant background music while talking about state affairs, or blabbering about some petty palace intrigue.

Divertimento in D major

The work we are listening to is the Divertimento in D major K. 136, for string quartet or orchestra (or, "Salzburg Symphony No. 1"). It is the most popular of the three already mentioned. An essential piece in the modern chamber repertoire, a Russian conductor used to place it at the beginning of his concerts because "it is like offering a glass of champagne when the guests arrive".

The notation K. 136, according to Ludwig von Köchel's catalog (1862), states that this composition is preceded by no less than 135 opus numbers. These include about twelve operas and masses, and some twenty symphonies. Wolfgang Amadeus, at the time, was sixteen years old.

Movements: Allegro - Andante (4:17) - Presto (10:07).

The rendition is by the American chamber ensemble New York Classical Players, made up of young talents who use to give free concerts in the New York metropolitan area.

Lepo Sumera, "Piece from the year 1981"

In the late 1980s, the Estonian-born contemporary composer Lepo Sumera was strongly attracted to electroacoustic music and, seduced by the genre, decided to found the Electronic Music Studio at the Estonian Academy of Music in 1995, which he directed until 1999.

One of his best-known works in this genre is the multimedia work Heart Affairs, from that same year, which made use of the sounds of a human heart treated electronically. The performance was accompanied by images of echocardiograms, some of his own heart, which apparently never worked properly, as Sumera died the following year, precisely as a result of heart failure.

Works
Born in the Estonian city of Tallinn in 1950, Sumera came to public attention in 1972 with his work In Memoriam, an orchestral tribute to his teacher and compatriot Heino Eller. After postgraduate studies at the Moscow Conservatory, he finished the composition of six symphonies, three concertos and numerous vocal and chamber works, which have been performed by numerous orchestras in North America and Europe, as well as Australia and Cuba.

Lepo Sumera (1950 - 2000)

The commitment
Sumera is one of the few musicians who have added to their creative activity the concern and militant commitment to the society in which they live. During the years of Estonian independence from the late Soviet Union, the composer took an active part – albeit with the utmost diplomacy – in the so-called "Singing Revolution", while serving as Minister of Culture of his country.

"Piece from the year 1981"

While the modern orchestra was his primary medium of expression, during 1981 he composed two crucial pieces for solo piano, which he titled simply Two pieces from the year 1981. The first of these, even more simply, is entitled Piece from the year 1981.

The minimalist piece weaves a simple melody that is gradually enriched over a bass accompaniment as ostinato as it is hypnotic. Sumera held this work in high esteem as he would use it as the basis for his First Symphony of the same year.

The rendition is by the Estonian pianist Kadri-Ann Sumera, daughter of the composer.

Franz von Suppé, Light Cavalry Overture

 
As happened with a good number of musicians in the 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz von Suppé first had to study law to please his father, before taking the bumpy road of music. But, after all, this was not such for the prolific author of nearly thirty operettas and almost two hundred compositions for various theatrical genres that were warmly applauded by Viennese audiences for almost half a century.

In Vienna

After the death of his father in 1835, his mother, who had not forgotten that in his childhood little Franz had shown great musical promise, took him with her to Vienna, where he obtained an honorary position as conductor at the Theater an der Josefstadt. In 1845 he moved to the historic Theater an der Wien, where he remained for almost twenty years. His last active years were spent conducting ballets and vaudevilles at the Carltheater in the suburbs of Vienna.

Light Cavalry

Although widely recognized in his time, Franz von Suppé is remembered today mainly for a handful of overtures. Among them, The Poet and Peasant and perhaps the most famous of all, the overture to Light Cavalry, deservedly stand out. The latter, an operetta in two acts with a libretto by Karl Costa, was premiered at the Carltheater on March 21, 1866.

Franz von Suppé
(1819 - 1895)

The plot

The play tells the love story between Vilma, a beautiful young orphan raised by Hungarian villagers, and Hermann, whose uncle the mayor, an old man, also wants her even though Vilma is in his past lightcone. Only the ingenious tricks of a group of hussars – the Hungarian light cavalry – stationed in the village, will make possible the happy union of the young lovers.

The operetta is no longer performed today, but the overture's main theme has been widely used to accompany scenes of "galloping to the rescue of anything" in cartoons, television shows and various advertisements.

The rendition is by The Cleveland Orchestra, under Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst.

A majestic fanfare opens the overture. The famous tune is heard at minute 2:28.