Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia / Cavatina "Largo al factotum della cittá"

Gioacchino Rossini was an extraordinarily prolific composer. For 19 years he composed two operas a year, and more than once he composed as many as four. So when he was commissioned to compose two operas for the Rome Carnival of 1816, he poured himself, heart and soul, into the task, and the same day he finished the first, at the end of December 1815, he began the second, which was due on January 20, 1816. The two-act play, completed in less than three weeks, was called Almaviva o sia La inutile precauzione.

An already proven story

We do not know it today under that name, because the title Il Barbieri di Siviglia, with a common origin in Beaumarchais' work, had already been used more than thirty years ago by Giovanni Paisiello to set the same plot to music. Hence its premiere at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on February 16, 1816, was a complete failure, provoked, it is said, by the supporters of Paisiello's work, who saw in Rossini's a comfortable musical construction on an already proven theme.

Rossini, young (1792 - 1868) 

The rush

Comfortable or not, Rossini did not abandon here his propensity to use whole melodies or arias from previous works, including, on this occasion, even the overture. Rushing is a serious thing, so either the overture was lost, or he didn't get around to writing it. And Rossina's cavatina borrowed – in the second performance – previous melodies and Berta's aria is modeled on a Russian melody.

Even so, Rossini showed in this, his most popular work, arias that are a prodigy of inspiration and novelty. A perfect example of this is the famous aria sung by Figaro in the first act.

Cavatina "Largo al factotum della cittá".

After the Count of Almaviva in the guise of Lindoro, a poor student, sings his love to Rossina, Figaro, the Count's former servant, appears on the scene to announce to the crowd that, as the most famous barber in Seville, all doors are open to him - a prebend that Lindoro/Almaviva will later use to his advantage. Presumptuously, he sings and requests that "Make way for the factotum of the city".

2010 performance in Moscow, set in the 1950s. As Figaro, the Italian baritone Pietro Spagnoli.

Dvorak, 9th Symphony, Fourth Movement

The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904) did not find it easy to learn German. Nor was it easy for him to compose. For this reason, he only gained his first public recognition when he was 32 years old, although he had finished his studies at the Prague Organ School at the age of 18. For more than ten years, the author fought a hard battle to master the intricacies of composition, the result of which he finally captured in a choral work of 1873, which was followed the same year by his famous Slavonic Dances. From then on, it was all plain sailing.

An Austrian government scholarship
The following year, with the warm support of Johannes Brahms, he was awarded a scholarship that the city of Vienna granted to young artists of limited means. For five years, Dvorak received an annual pension of 400 guilders, a huge sum compared to the 10 guilders a month he had been earning as an organist at St. Adalbert's Church in Prague. After that, nothing hindered his progress. By 1878, the composer's career had definitely taken off, both in his homeland and abroad.

Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904)

The trip to New York
His efforts crystallized in the great choral work Stabat Mater, and in his eight symphonies, being also named doctor honoris causa of many European universities. The year 1891 brought him undisputed international recognition when Jeannette Thurber, founder of the National Conservatory of New York, sent him an invitation to take over the direction of the establishment. Dvorak, at first reluctant, eventually accepted the position. The fifteen thousand dollars a year offered was more than he had earned in his entire life.

Ninth Symphony "From the New World"
In September 1892, accompanied by his family, he set out for New York. He remained there for two years, and in 1893 composed what is perhaps his most popular work, the Ninth Symphony in E minor, which he himself entitled "From the New World". Premiered at Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893, it was an immediate success, being seen from then as a reflection of the "American musical universe".
Despite Dvorak's interest in the black and indigenous music of the United States, the day before the premiere, in an interview for the New York Herald, he slightly relativized the influence of that music in his work:

"I have not actually used any of the [Native American] melodies. I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of Indian music, and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms, counterpoint, and orchestral colour."

Movements:
The work is in four movements: Adagio - allegro molto / Largo / Scherzo / Allegro con fuoco, and lasts around 40 minutes.
Presented here is the fourth and last movement, in the rendition of the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

Franz Liszt, Piano Concerto No 1

It didn't take Liszt long to recover from his love affair with Countess d'Agoult in 1844. Soon he fell in love again, this time with Princess Carolyne von Sayn Wittgenstein, whom he had met on a tour of Russia in 1847. Two years later he was settled with her in Weimar, where, after resuming his position as chapel master, he would later carry out a fruitful work as organizer of the city's musical life.

Carolyne, aware of what could happen with the maestro and his fans during the tours, hastened to advise him to abandon his concert career so that he could focus his energies on symphonic composition. Liszt, the idol of multitudes of the first half of the XIX century, admirably solicitous, gave up piano recitals at the age of 36.

Concert works
Carolyne guessed correctly. Now we see that most of Liszt's concertante works are framed, precisely, in the period of his first stable stay in Weimar, from 1849 to 1861.
Before Weimar, the Hungarian master had made a name for himself in European musical circles as a virtuoso concert pianist, and so he devoted all his efforts to composing for solo piano, because that was the instrument he mastered and, after all, his status as a performer ensured the immediate diffusion of his creations.

Piano and orchestra
So when he wanted to compose for piano and orchestra, he found himself somewhat untrained. And this is where Weimar comes in because during his stay there he regularly conducted a large instrumental ensemble, for which he needed to know in depth the orchestral pages of the great masters, thus managing to climb steps in the experimentation of his own ideas. Even so, in his first orchestral works, he requested the intervention of his pupil Joachim Raff as an instrumentalist. This is the case of the Piano Concerto No. 1, although some say that Liszt required technical assistance not because he had doubts, but because it was comfortable for him.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 in E-flat major
Its first sketches date from 1830 when Liszt was 19 years old, but the master began to work resolutely on it only after 1840. He finished it in 1849 and after several revisions it was premiered only in 1855, in Weimar, with Liszt at the piano and Hector Berlioz conducting.

The rendition is by the Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang, accompanied by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, during the 2011 Proms at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Brief audition guide
The work consists of four sections, which are played with no interruption:

00 Allegro maestoso. The orchestra introduces, majestically, the first motive. The piano enters dramatically, at 0:40, with a passage in octaves, typical of Liszt. Then the initial, quieter motive reappears. A second theme is introduced by the piano at 1:33. At 2:27 the piano enunciates a beautiful melody that at 3:06 will establish a dialogue with the clarinet and then with the violin. The sweetness ends when at 3:52 the first theme appears again, now more dramatic. At 4:30 the second theme returns, even more romantic, if possible: the maestro Lang Lang can no longer contain so much lyricism.

5:53 Quasi adagio.  A cantabile theme introduced by the strings, in una corda. At 6:43 the piano, in solo, takes the theme and develops it. At 8:32 the strings take it again. After a few brief bravura passages, a very long piano trill (10:05) is enough to accompany the flute, oboe, and clarinet, ending the movement in complete calm.

11:08 Allegretto vivace - Allegro animato. A playful theme initiates the movement, but at 13:11 the shadows will reappear as the piano takes up the initial theme in the lower register. Previous themes are quoted. At 13:56, the orchestra and piano play the opening theme, almost unchanged from what was heard before, as if the piece is beginning again, though it will take a different course to link up with the next section.

15:13 Allegro marziale animato. The orchestra introduces a new theme. Alternating between intricate passages and stormy octaves, and after revisiting all the motifs, at 18:48 the concerto moves on to its finale in the most "classical" Lisztian style, with great bravura, as the maestro liked and was an expert at.

Mozart, Sonata for two pianos

The first sonatas for piano four hands or for two pianos composed by Mozart were intended to be performed together by him and his sister Nannerl, five years his elder. With them they toured most of Europe between 1763 and 1766, dazzling with their prodigious virtuosity every prince and noblewoman who had the opportunity to listen to them. The august audience entertained them with kisses and from time to time with a gift, once a watch, another time a gala dress, like this one little Mozart wears in the picture, a gift from the Empress Maria Teresa of Austria.

In 1781 Maria Theresa was no longer in this world and Mozart had long since ceased to be a child prodigy. He was 25 years old, and had also long since stopped "rolling around the world like a beggar," in Maria Theresa's not very restrained words ten years earlier.

And he had settled in Vienna, after his patron, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, had removed him from his position at the irrelevant court of Salzburg, following a bitter dispute a few months earlier.

In Vienna

Settled in Vienna as a free-lance pianist and composer, he obtains his first "outstanding success" with the opera Idomeneo. He has fallen in love with Konstance and plans to marry. Mozart, hunter and gatherer, gets some pupils and prepares and produces concerts presenting his own works, but his talented sister is no longer there to accompany him. Nannerl leads a simple life in Salzburg, under the care of her father Leopold, and somewhat oblivious to her own art.

Sonata for two pianos in D major, K. 448

Premiered in November 1781, it was composed specially for that occasion and performed in the company of fellow pianist Josephine von Aurnhammer, with whom he had already duetted in the Concerto for two pianos of 1779.

It is written in a gallant style, luminous and brilliant, and consists of the three "classical" movements:

00       Allegro con spirito

08:00 Andante

18:01 Molto allegro

Mozart Effect
The sonata was part of the scientific study aimed at testing the theory of the Mozart Effect, which postulates that classical music increases brain activity more than any other type of music. The research continues.

The rendition is by Russian pianists Anatalia Injushina and Vlatseslav Novikov, in a performance at Helsinki's brand new Temppeliaukio Lutheran Stone Church, opened in 1969.

Joseph Haydn, Variations in F minor

A biographer of Joseph Haydn notes that the Esterházy musician was surprised that in the course of his life he had been loved by so many beautiful women. The biographer quotes these words of Haydn: "They could not have been captivated by my beauty". Indeed, Haydn was not as handsome as he would have liked, but in 1760, at the age of twenty-eight, he began his official love life by marrying Maria Anna Keller, the daughter of a hairdresser. The marriage was not a happy one and Haydn had to seek happiness elsewhere, this time informally. And it didn't go badly at all.

Maria Anna

At least four girls, some of them noble, others not so much, established with Haydn a sentimental relationship, more or less lasting. The one who takes the cake seems to have been the "European beauty" Maria Anna von Genzinger, the wife of Prince Esterházy's family doctor, a noblewoman on her mother's side, and a talented music lover. Apparently, she began the relationship by sending the maestro her piano reduction of an adagio taken from one of his symphonies. The maestro responded, extremely flattered, and thus a relationship began, mainly epistolary – although without reaching the heights of Tchaikovsky in the coming century – that would last for many years.

The beloved one, in Vienna

Maria Anna lived in Vienna. Haydn, quite far away, in the Esterhaza palace. So when his patron decided to visit the capital of the empire, the maestro was delighted to accompany him, since it was a chance to see his beloved and not only to correspond with her. But the relationship was platonic. The fact that each belonged to a different social stratum made any other rapprochement impossible.
To make matters worse, it was only Haydn who succumbed to infatuation, and not Maria Anna who always responded to his messages as the faithful, sincere, and deep friend she was.

Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

A tribute to a friend

Sadly, Maria Anna died suddenly in 1793, at the age of 38, during a Haydn tour of London. This had a profound impact on the master, notwithstanding the asymmetry of the relationship.  The Variations in F minor, one of his most intimate and personal pieces, written at the height of his glory, is believed to have been published as a final tribute to Maria Anna, the wife of another.

Variations in F minor

Composed in 1793 and published in 1799, they belong to the type of variations with two themes, in which Haydn proved to be particularly skilled. The main theme has the character of a funeral march, which is followed by a trio in the major mode. At times, the harmonic language foreshadows certain aspects of the romantic style to come.

The rendition is by young Turkish artist, Can Cakmur.