Boieldieu, Harp Concerto in C major

There have been minor composers in all ages. We call them so because their work has not lasted and only a tiny part of it has reached us. But in their time they were outstanding musicians who managed to make a living from their craft thanks to a good share of talent. They knew also celebrity and prestige. The Frenchman François-Adrien Boieldieu, a contemporary of Beethoven, was one of them.

Born in Rouen in 1775, at the age of eighteen he wrote his first opera. Later he specialized in "opéra comique", composing no less than 38 operas, earning him the place of the main French opera composer of the first quarter of the 19th century.

In 1804, he moved to St. Petersburg as a composer for the Tsar's court, with a commitment to produce three operas a year. He did not live up to such a high expectation but in the seven years he stayed there he managed to compose ten.

François-Adrien Boieldieu
(1775 - 1834)

Back in Paris, it was not difficult for him to win back the Parisian audience, but from 1823, when Gioachino Rossini settled there, something changed in the Parisian taste and he had to start dealing with the Rossinian crescendo. True to his style, Boieldieu wrote in response his masterpiece, the Dame Blanche, with enormous success in France and even internationally, as it remained in the European repertoire for decades.

Harp Concerto in C major, op 77

Boieldieu's instrumental repertoire is somewhat meager, although as a young man he wrote some pieces for piano. Having befriended Sebastian Erard, inventor of a new type of harp, he also wrote for this instrument. His concerto in C major, from 1801, is a striking and melodious work that retains to this day a central place in the standard repertoire.

Movements:

00       Allegro brillante

11:25  Largo

15:21  (atacca subito) Allegro agitato

The brilliant rendition is by Mexican harpist Baltazar Juárez, accompanied by the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, conducted by Rafael Payare.

Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No 3

The magnificent reception in 1901 of his Piano Concerto No. 2, together with the many merits gathered up to then by Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff as a conductor, led to the 29-year-old Russian pianist and composer being offered in 1904 the musical direction of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. There he remained until 1906 when, due to the social tension that was shaking Russian life in all areas, he was forced to resign after an escalation of resignations of a good number of his collaborators, for political reasons.

Natalia and Sergei, around 1920

The good years
They were, however, the best years of Sergei Vasiliévich. In 1902 he had finally succeeded in marrying a cousin, an audacious idea that, among other obstacles, meant obtaining the permission of the tsar. In the company of Natalia Alexandrovna Natina, the composer and magnificent pianist began a long journey that took the happy couple to Italy and Dresden, waiting for events in Russia to normalize. This was followed by performances in England, Germany, and Holland. In the meantime, he completed two operas. At the peak of his career, Rachmaninoff had no doubt that the New World would one day claim his presence.

Trip to New York

The family's summer residence, "Ivanovka", served the couple as a bucolic rest between tours. Faced with the idyllic setting, Natalia feared that the maestro, who showed a certain tendency to sluggishness, would not work hard enough. On the contrary, with his eyes set on the prescient tournée, the composer did work intensively, and when in 1909 he was finally invited to New York, Rachmaninoff traveled there with his Third Piano Concerto entirely completed. With the composer as soloist, the concerto premiered on November 28 of that year, followed by successful tours of Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston. In January 1910 Rachmaninoff made another appearance, this time accompanied by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Gustav Mahler.

The definitive departure

On his return to his homeland, the Russian stages dressed up every time the famous musician appeared as a piano player or conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic. But the Russian people were about to shake the world, and the First World War only precipitated the events. Sergei Rachmaninoff, a member of the Russian bourgeoisie, saw his way of life inevitably altered, and on December 22, 1917, taking advantage of a providential invitation, he got on a sleigh, with his wife and children, toward Helsinki. From there, the Rachmaninoffs would leave for the USA in October of the following year, never to return.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 in D minor

Fairly considered as the most remarkable of his works for piano and orchestra, it was at the same time resisted by many performers due to its almost insurmountable technical difficulties, as well as by the public who maintained their preference for the more melodious and compact Concerto No. 2. Rachmaninoff himself eliminated certain passages from the work to make it more "suitable for concert performances", although it has recently been performed again in its original version, which lasts about 40 minutes.

Movements:
00:00  Allegro ma non-tanto - Constructed in sonata-allegro form.
17:30  Intermezzo: Adagio: Theme and variations. It moves into the last movement, without pause, in:
29:02  Finale: Alla breve - Quick and vigorous, in sonata-allegro form.

The rendition is by Yuja Wang, accompanied by the Vienna Philarmonic conducted by Colombian maestro Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

Haydn in love, Sonata in E-flat

 
Franz Joseph Haydn was always aware that, in terms of looks, he was not an Adonis. According to one of his biographers, he once expressed that he could not understand how he had been loved by so many beautiful women in his life: "they could not have been captivated by my beauty", he said. However, at the age of 27, his first love affair not only failed to bear fruit but took the wrong path.

Maria Anna

While serving Count Morzin in Vienna, the composer became enthusiastic about Therese, the daughter of a hairdresser, but Therese was not cut out for marriage and soon after entered a religious order. The hairdresser father then offered the older sister, Maria Anna. In November 1760, they were married. Whole life will Maria Anna accompany Haydn, in a marriage that knew neither children nor happiness.

Luigia

A profound connoisseur of the personnel in his service, Prince Nicholas of Esterházy fully understood the reasons Haydn obliquely put forward for the mediocre Italian singer Luigia Polzelli to remain at court despite her scraggy talents when Nicholas wanted to dismiss her in 1780. Eighteen-year-old Luigia had arrived at the palace a year earlier, and shortly thereafter began a relationship with the maestro that lasted until 1791, when the relationship ran out of steam on its own.

Marianne

Apparently, the master was more interested in Mrs. Maria Anna von Genzingen, named Marianne in the intimacy. Wife of the personal physician of Prince Nicholas and an accomplished amateur pianist, she maintained with Haydn a mainly epistolary but abundant relationship, which only ended with her sudden death in 1793 at the age of 38. Haydn was sixty-one.

Sonata in E flat No. 59

For Marianne von Genzingen was written in 1790 the sonata for pianoforte in E flat, one of the most exquisite of the master. In a letter announcing his dedication to her, Haydn asks her special attention for the second movement:

"...for it contains many things which I shall analyze for your grace when the time comes; it is rather difficult but full of feeling."

Movements:

00        Allegro

08:03   Adagio e cantabile

17:28   Finale: tempo di minuet

The rendition is by the outstanding Austrian master Alfred Brendel.

Alkan, "Concerto" for solo piano - Finale

From his deathbed in October 1849, Frédéric Chopin bequeathed to one of his musician friends the method for piano he had been working on so that he could finish it. The chosen friend and recipient of this legacy was a pianist three years younger than Chopin. His name was Charles-Valentin Alkan, and he had been an extraordinary child prodigy who had entered the Paris Conservatory at the age of six, when the Polish musician was nine and could not imagine a future life in Paris.

The beginnings
Born in 1813 in the Jewish quarter of Paris to a musician father, Charles-Valentin Alkan got tired of winning first prizes at the Conservatory. The solfège was his first, at the age of seven. At eleven he won the piano prize; harmony at fourteen, and at twenty-one the organ prize. He quickly made a name for himself in the Parisian salons as a young and talented pianist, easily joining the intellectual circles in which Franz Liszt, Victor Hugo, Chopin, George Sand, and Délacroix were active. There was no shortage of evenings and recitals in which he was seen at the piano alongside Liszt or Chopin.

Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813 - 1888)

The isolation
But his markedly introverted nature drove him away from the madding crowd at age 25. The salons of Paris thus knew the first of his retreats. For the next 35 years, he appeared in public occasionally, albeit always back and forth. In 1853 he offered two highly acclaimed concerts. After this, despite his recognition and fame, the musician left the scene for the next twenty years, returning only in 1873 to offer six Petit Concerts in the halls of the Erard house.

Douze Études, opus 39 - Étude No 7
Little is known of Alkan's activity during his periods of seclusion, except that he read the Bible and, of course, composed like a man possessed. His catalog reached 76 opus numbers, mainly solo piano pieces, which claim superb technique. One of his most ambitious works is the set of Douze Études for piano, in all minor keys, from 1857. The twelve pieces comprise, in this order, a "symphony" (the first four), a "concerto for solo piano" (the next three), a theme with variations, an overture, and three independent pieces.
The Finale of the "concerto", Étude No. 7, is presented here.

The rendition is by Dutch pianist Bas Verheijden, recorded during a rehearsal.

Jean Sibelius, Violin Concerto

 

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius suffered from something similar to what today we would call "stage fright". His first instrument was the violin, and his early performances as a young man gave him hope of becoming a virtuoso on the instrument. He was not in the wrong direction, because at the age of twenty he had a technique that allowed him to tackle demanding works quite properly, let's say Mendelssohn's Concerto, among them.

But he had begun to study the instrument formally a little late ‒at the age of fifteen ‒ and, perhaps too aware of it, he showed before the public a certain nervousness that prevented him from handling the bow with the required ease. He had to give up his dream, a painful renunciation that would be compensated by the universal recognition of his work as a composer in his maturity.

Violin Concerto in D minor, Op 47

But the renunciation was not total. Before he was forty, the composer was able to transfer his intimate knowledge of the violin to a work born of his own creative imagination, the Concerto for violin and orchestra in D minor, completed in 1903. Conducted by Sibelius, the work was premiered in Helsinki on February 8, 1904, but failed to captivate the public, being received rather coldly.

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)

Somewhat surprised but not defeated, Sibelius withdrew the work from the stage to revise it. In October of the following year, Richard Strauss premiered a new, shorter version in Berlin. The public at large was not moved either. It was only in the thirties, after one of the most remarkable violinists of the twentieth century, the Lithuanian Jascha Heifetz recorded the work, that the concerto caught on with audiences thus becoming one of the most popular works of "nationalist" romanticism.

Maestro Sibelius once advised his pupils never to abuse the patience of the audience by writing long orchestral passages. In the revised version, Sibelius followed his own advice to the letter: the violinist begins the main theme four bars into the allegro and does not leave the center of the action for the entire half-hour of the concerto.

The rendition is by Korean American violinist Sarah Chang, accompanied by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of the Netherlands, conducted by Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden.

Movements:

Allegro Moderato / Adagio di molto - 17:23 / Allegro, ma non tanto - 25:13