Mauro Giuliani, Gran Sonata Eroica

 
Unlike what was customary in those years, for the premiere of his Seventh Symphony in 1813 Beethoven was fortunate to have among the members of the improvised orchestra a good number of famous musicians. The involvement of Salieri, Hummel, Meyerbeer, Spöhr is not in doubt, but it is said that a 32-year-old Italian musician settled in Vienna since 1806, Mauro Giuliani, provided his services as well. On the occasion, the virtuoso guitarist and composer would have played the cello, an instrument that he also mastered since he had begun his musical education on it.

A guitar virtuoso
But Giuliani was essentially a guitar virtuoso. Along with Fernando Sor, he was one of the last outstanding instrumentalists of the classical era, before the fortunate rescue of the instrument at the beginning of the 20th century. Born in the town of Bisceglie in 1781, at the age of 19 he undertook a tour of Europe motivated by the interest in making a career, since the interest of the Italian public was increasingly oriented towards opera, not to mention the fact that in those years Italy abounded in talented guitarists.

Vienna
The tour was successful, and in 1806 Mauro Giuliani decided to settle in Vienna, where he was to remain until 1819. There he was recognized and acclaimed by the Viennese high society after joining their musical circles and taking part with colleagues of the stature of Hummel and Moscheles in the musical life of the capital of the empire.

His talent was also recognized by Rossini and Beethoven. The latter even referred to the Italian guitarist in very good terms on more than one occasion, and perhaps that is why Giuliani decided to repay the gesture by taking part in the premiere of the Seventh Symphony.

Mauro Giuliani (1781 - 1829) 

Eroica Sonata in A major, opus 150
Mauro Giuliani published more than 200 works, for solo guitar and various orchestral ensembles. Not all have survived to this day. However, his Great Eroica Sonata is today an obligatory piece of the guitar repertoire.

Little is known about the circumstances surrounding its creation. The only mention Giuliani made of the work in his entire life is in a letter he sent to the publishing house Ricordi, in 1821, offering the sale of five pieces composed "in a style never seen before". One of them, which he names as Gran Sonata Eroica, is described by the author as "very extensive and never heard before", an illuminating remark because it informs us of Giuliani's concern to ensure that the work does not come from self-plagiarism, a common resource at the time. In 1840, nineteen years later, Ricordi published a work by Giuliani with that title, as opus 150. Giuliani had died in 1829.

The piece has a single movement, marked allegro maestoso. The rendition is by the Spanish guitarist Paola Requena, born in Cartagena in 1982.

JS Bach, Keyboard Concerto in A major

Bach, an applicant for Kantor in Leipzig

"Magdalena, we will have to leave Köthen and go somewhere else. There is no longer a place for a musician here".

These are words Magdalena Bach puts in Johann Sebastian's mouth to describe the moment when her husband confessed to her that he had had enough of the court in Köthen, He urgently needed to get a new position at another court, hopefully a more prestigious one, which, needless to say, was not at all easy.

But as in general terms luck was always on the master's side, right around that time the post of Kantor of St. Thomas' church in Leipzig became vacant due to the death of its incumbent in June 1722. When Bach heard of this, he hastened to send in his application for admission. However, a little ordeal awaited him.

Bach, a recently known portrait

At the first convocation – which Bach possibly did not know about – Georg Philipp Telemann applied and was elected. But Telemann was just making a play. As music director of Hamburg's five main churches, his aim was to force the authorities to raise his salary. When he succeeded, he resigned from the post he had just obtained. The Thomaskirche was once again without a Kantor.

For the second convocation, it is said that Bach did not send his application in time, or if he did, he was unlucky because the favored candidate was another candidate, Christoph Graupner, at the time Kapellmeister of the court of Darmstadt. But to take office, Graupner had to request permission from his employer, the landgrave (the prince, or count) of Darmstadt. Weeks passed and the permission did not come. The Leipzig City Council had to meet again... the Thomaskirche was still without a Kantor.

Obligations

The church's greatest difficulty for filling the vacancy was that the candidate, in addition to being in charge of church music, was to teach singing to the children of the Thomasschule, the school run by the church since before the Lutheran reformation. Aware of this, Bach – in case he got the appointment – undertook "to conform to the curricula, as they are currently ordered or as they will be ordered in the future, and in particular to teach singing to the children who are admitted to the school, not only during the normal established hours, but also privately and free of charge".

At the end of April 1723, the final session of the Council took place. All the councilors present gave their vote to Bach. After accepting the terms of his new job and having passed a short examination in theology, Johann Sebastian Bach took up the post of Kantor of the Thomaskirche on May 15. He was 38 years old.

Concerto IV for keyboard and orchestra in A major - BWV 1055

Except for Brandenburg concertos, all of Bach's concertos for keyboard and orchestra were originally written for another solo instrument, possibly in Köthen, and "arranged" for keyboard in Leipzig, around 1738. It is believed that this concerto was originally written for oboe d'amore. In any case, only the keyboard versions have survived. 

Compared to the "original" version for harpsichord and strings, the one presented here shows some modernization, if the term fits. Instead of harpsichord, piano; and as for the orchestra, it has grown a bit from the original violins I and II, viola and continuo.

Movements:

00       Allegro

04:01  Larguetto

08:50  Allegro ma non tanto

The rendition is by Concerto Köln, a Baroque music chamber ensemble formed in 1985, one of many groups associated with the surging interest in period instruments.

Chopin, Scherzo No 1

 
By 1833, barely two years after settling in Paris, Frédéric Chopin had won over a large part of French high society, to the point that the Revue Musicale of those years would express its opinion of the Polish musician in the following terms:

"Chopin deliberately departs from the beaten path. His playing and his composition have been accepted from the beginning with such consideration, and he has acquired such a reputation that in the opinion of many this artist is an inexplicable phenomenon."

And, interestingly, all this was also inexplicable for Chopin himself. In a letter to a Polish childhood friend, he writes, in January 1833:

"I am already launched! I see myself in high society, among ambassadors, princes and ministers, and I do not know by what miracle, since I have done nothing to enter it. But they say that for me it is indispensable to rub shoulders with these people because from there, they say, comes good taste. You are possessed of great talent on the spot if you have been heard at the English or Austrian embassy. You play better if the princess of Vaudemont has protected you..."

Good times
I don't know by what miracle, writes Chopin. Now that's incredible. There was nothing fatuous about Chopin, it would seem. In those years things were going well, in general. His students, at the beginning most of them amateurs, belonged to the Parisian aristocracy. This allowed him to charge 20 francs an hour for his lessons. If we think that, for example, his servant meant an outlay of 70 francs per month, the twenty francs per hour was not bad for him. 

Another story, very different, is the one related to the revenues per published work. Chopin sold to his publishers his entire work for only 17,000 francs. The four scherzos published between 1835 and 1843 are part of this production.

Scherzo No. 1 opus 20 in B minor

Likely sketched in 1831 in Stuttgart while on his way to Paris from Vienna, Scherzo N°1 was published in Paris in 1835, with a dedication to his friend Thomas Albrecht, who after the failed Warsaw uprising of 1831 had rightly suggested to him not to return to Poland.

The work inaugurates the model to which Chopin will be faithful in the three subsequent scherzos. Innovative in name and form, Chopin's scherzos are neither a diversion nor part of a larger work where they are intended to separate the allegro from the adagio or one of these from the end of the piece, in the style of Mozart or Haydn. They are, in the words of pianist and conductor Alfred Cortot "...terrifying games; they are dances, but feverish, hallucinatory; they only seem to be following the rhythm of human torments," which applies, genuinely, at least to the first three scherzos.

The rendition is by the Chinese pianist Yundi Li.

Structure

Like the rest of the scherzos, the piece is ternary in nature, with an ABA structure with a coda, that is, 1st theme (00), 2nd theme (3:50), and back to the first (7:00), plus a coda (9:12). It begins with two chords in fortissimo introducing the first theme at a tremendous speed putting early pressure on the performer. The central section offers him a comfortable truce in the form of a tender lullaby, taken - something unusual for Chopin - from a popular melody ("Sleep, Jesucito, sleep"). Then the furious line will reappear. After its repetition, it will lead to a short coda that will bring the piece to a brilliant ending.

Beethoven, Piano Sonata Op 49 No 2

Around 1800, the "classical" sonata, understood as the one that came out of Clementi, Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, was not yet a concert piece in the sense of a work to be performed within the framework of a piano "recital". And for many reasons, including the fact that recitals did not exist, nor did solo performers. All this will take time. Moreover, as late as 1838, Franz Liszt, the virtuoso par excellence, was to receive a cold reception at La Scala in Milan for a program entirely devoted to Beethoven's sonatas. The public was simply not prepared, even though the maestro had been dead for eleven years.

Opus 49
Less well prepared it was, of course, at the turn of the century. But the publication of the works did bring economic benefits. It is thus understandable that, being twinned in time to the portentous Appassionata or Waldstein from 1804, Beethoven decided to publish in 1805 a pair of very simple sonatas that make up his opus 49, the so-called "easy sonatas" or also, "sonatinas". Very simply structured and technically undemanding, they were certainly written much earlier, in the previous decade, for the study and enjoyment of his pupils, who must have performed them at home, as was the custom, in the company of their parents.

Sonata No. 20 (op. 49 No. 2) in G Major
Written in the key of G major, the second of the two sonatas of opus 49 is easier, and certainly the easiest of all Beethoven's sonatas. For this reason, listening to it in a live concert is only possible on the occasion of the complete master's sonatas, an opportunity offered by Daniel Barenboim in Berlin in mid-2005.

Movements
The beautiful and simple sonata just eight minutes long has only two movements and, interestingly, almost no dynamic indications (only two pianissimo in the minuet), which at first glance might seem a complication but rather results in an interesting challenge for the performer who must show signs of good taste born of his own musical intuition.

00     Allegro ma non troppo   Exhibition, in G major: 00 - 1:22. It must be repeated. Development section, with a bit of drama: 2:43 - 3:03. Recap: 3:04.

4:32 Tempo di menuetto   Beethoven also gave no indication about the left hand articulation, legato or not, for the main motif (which Beethoven would reuse in his Septet opus 20). Barenboim chose legato.

         Middle section: 4:48. Repetition of the theme in the upper octave: 4:55.

         Separated by several episodes, the theme is repeated six times, which has inspired some performers to add, each time, one or another ornamentation. This is not the case of Barenboim, who strictly kept to Beethoven's writing.

         6:33 New episode, with some brio.

         7:43 The piece is heading towards its conclusion, ending very quietly with two dominant and tonic chords; delicatissimo, is the generalized approach, although Beethoven did not say a word about it.

As noted above, Beethoven again used the minuet theme in the Septet opus 20, this time with a certain rustic dance character. The piece is presented here in a rendition by the Chicago Chambers Musicians.

With all due respect, I'll stick with the piano version for the longest time.

Offenbach-Binder, Orpheus in the Underworld Overture, "Can-Can"

The prolific author of operettas Jacques Offenbach, of German origin, earned his living in Paris as a virtuoso cellist before taking over in 1850, at the age of 31, the direction of the Théatre Français' orchestra, where, much to his regret, he never managed to have any of his works staged on. Five years later, he decided to set up his own company, located in a small theater that he baptized with the name of Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens.

Orpheus in the Underworld

In his new headquarters, Offenbach would premiere very witty short musical stage plays whose humorous texts and catchy melodies were all the rage in Paris at the time. Enthused by the success and the welcome given to his musical inventiveness – in addition to the lifting of the curious restrictions stated for his license (one act and a maximum of three performers) –, in 1858 he premiered a major work. The mythological satire Orphée aux Enfers is a delightful parody where he mocks the myth of Orpheus, poet, and singer, and his wife Eurydice, gloating in passing with Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice.

The play is, of course, also a social satire, in which the novel character Public Opinion plays an important role. More than a century later, in a 1980s version in London, the character will draw a satirical portrait of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Jacques Offenbach (1819 - 1880)

Gods and Can-Can

But it is not only Orpheus who is ridiculed but the entire pleiad of Greek gods. Full of delicious incongruities, the play presents Jupiter, Venus, Juno, Cupid, Mars, Pluto, Diana, Mercury, Minerva, Morpheus, and the inevitable Bacchus, in situations where no reverence is granted, whose climax will come at the end of Act II when the gods must dance an irreverent Can-Can, a dance of recent invention and practiced with ardent enthusiasm in the ballrooms of the Parisian popular classes in the mid-nineteenth century.

The critics

However, the reception to the premiere of October 21, 1858, was rather mediocre, although it did manage to impress some critics. Offenbach then decided to revise it, providing it with new orchestration and expanding the original two acts to complete four acts and twelve scenes. The scathing opinion of a critic of the time – to whom the composer responded by pointing out that the texts sung by one of the characters in the play were based on his opinions – turned out to be a tremendous endorsement of the work, which after the little skirmish enjoyed 228 performances before being paused for a short time, simply because the performers needed a well-deserved rest.

Carl Binder (1816 - 1860)

A new overture

The work returned to the stage a few weeks later, and in 1860 it was successfully performed in Vienna with a new overture. To the original, rather brief one, the Austrian operetta composer Carl Binder added a series of episodes culminating in the famous Can-Can.
The new overture opens with a poignant fanfare, followed by a clarinet solo introducing a tender love song by the oboe (1:44). After a brief dramatic passage (3:26), the concertino announces the first bars of a calm waltz (4:18) that later acquires a certain drama. Finally, the widely spread Can-Can kicks off with all its crazy glee at 6:59.

The rendition is by the Slovenian Youth Orchestra Gimnazija Kranj.