Fictitious author of the most famous musical composition of a supposedly baroque era – the Adagio associated with his name –, Tomaso Albinoni was a highly prolific composer although today he is mainly remembered for his instrumental music and, of course, for the Adagio that made his name known to the general public, even though he was not the composer. His musical corpus includes no less than 80 operas, 40 cantatas, 79 sonatas, 50 concertos, and 8 symphonies.
Concerti a cinque With his instrumental music, he took a step beyond the concerto grosso, initiating a form, the concerti a cinque, which emphasizes a soloist performer facing a reduced orchestral formation. This meant a profound change in the way music was made throughout Europe, since the individual work of the most skilled musician in a small orchestral ensemble, capable of mastering and overcoming all kinds of technical and interpretative difficulties, began to be valued. Thus the foundations were laid for the future virtuosity that would characterize the performer of concertos for solo instrument and orchestra as we know them today.
Concertos for oboe
Among his concerti a cinque, those composed for oboe stand out – at least eight, known – where the instrument is treated in a lyrical and melodic way as it had not been done until then, accompanied by a small string ensemble, consisting of two violins, viola, cello, and basso continuo.
Tomaso Albinoni (1671 - 1751)
Today it is customary to double the orchestral formation because, we imagine, the halls are larger and a greater sonority is required, and also because this way it is realized that we are facing the first concertos for soloist and orchestra, those dating from the first half of the eighteenth century, and whose authorship, now it is, we owe unequivocally to Tomaso Albinoni.
The most celebrated of his oboe concertos is Opus 9, No. 2, in D minor, from his first series of twelve concerti a cinque, printed in Amsterdam in 1722. The entire series is dedicated to Elector Massimilian II Emanuele of Bavaria.
Its movements are the usual three, following the scheme advocated by Vivaldi: fast-slow-fast.
01:30 Allegro e non presto
05:29 Adagio
09:32 Allegro
The rendition is by the ten-year-old oboist, Pijus Paškevičius, at a performance in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in May 2013.
Emma Bardac was smart and educated. In addition, she sang, and very well (Gabriel Fauré had composed a song for her). In 1903, one of the things she wanted most in the world was to meet the famous composer Claude Debussy, who at the age of forty was enjoying the height of his fame in the company of his wife Lily, whom he had married four years earlier. Emma, on the other hand, had married a banker, was rich, and had her life figured out.
There was nothing that could suggest it, but the year 1903 would bring a commotion that would shake the peaceful lives of Claude and the wealthy Emma.
Claude and Emma The occasion to meet arose through the lessons Debussy began to give to a son of the well-to-do couple. At first, the composer tried to resist Emma's charms, but her fluent conversation and worldly air eventually seduced him. Deeply in love, the following year they both got a divorce, after overcoming some incidents such as Lily's suicide attempt that caused the momentary estrangement of some of the musician's friends. They married in 1908, when the only child of the couple was already three years old, little Claude-Emma, as she was called.
Debussy and his child, in 1916
Suite for little Chouchou That same year, as an offering to his little daughter, Debussy composed a short suite for piano that the composer entitled Children's Corner, in English, as well as its parts, in support of the child's efforts to learn the language from her English governess. In the dedication, Debussy will immortalize the nickname by which the girl was familiarly called: "To my very dear little Chouchou, with her father's most tender apologies for what follows".
Claude Debussy will only live ten more years, and Emma Bardac will accompany him until his death. Little Chochou also, but a victim of diphtheria, will outlive her father by only one year.
Suite for piano Children's corner - Movements
The suite is composed by six miniatures evocative of the nature and essence of childhood, although they were not conceived to be performed by inexperienced pianists. Premiered in December 1908, the work was orchestrated by a friend of Debussy's three years later.
Its parts are:
00 Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum - Slightly ironic piece about tedious piano lessons.
02:28 Jimbo's Lullaby - Lullaby for the elephant Jumbo (pronounced Jimbo by the French).
05:56 Serenade for the Doll - About the mysterious and fun life that toys would have.
08:44 The Snow is Dancing - Snow falling in the garden, seen from a cozy room.
11:41 The Little Shepherd - About a little shepherd and his flute.
14:13 Golliwogg's Cakewalk - The dancing (cakewalk, reminiscent of jazz) of a black doll (golliwogg).
By the mid-1880s, Gustav Mahler's prestige as a conductor was on the rise, and as a composer, he could showcase an early work, considered his first masterpiece, a cantata, completed in his early twenties. So he could present himself to the world as a composer of genius who by now was earning his living as a conductor of various orchestral ensembles in much of Europe. At the same time, his extreme severity, uprightness, and capacity for work began to become famous, as well as the usual endless rehearsal sessions.
Leipzig After two successful seasons as conductor of the German Theater in Prague between 1884 and 1886, Mahler felt that the city had become too small for him and that it was time to look for new paths. His next destination was Leipzig, where a stroke of "luck" - the sudden illness of the elderly chief conductor - put him in a privileged position. The performances of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung under his baton were a colossal success. From then on, his reputation in Leipzig was assured.
Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911)
Marion Soon after, he became acquainted with a grandson of Carl Maria von Weber, a personage who attracted Mahler's interest to work on the sketches of a comic opera that his grandfather had left unfinished. The task was enormous, so the work sessions multiplied, many of them at the grandson's house, whose wife was a beautiful woman named Marion. The 27-year-old Gustav soon fell in love with her.
Le au revoir It is widely believed that the relationship was not reciprocated, but some testimonies assure that Marion also fell under the spell of the acclaimed director. At the end of the day, good sense prevailed and according to Alma Mahler in her memoirs, for Gustav "it was a relief that the train left without the woman who was going to flee in his company". However, the affair had a virtue: Mahler returned to composition and his First Symphony resulted.
Symphony No. 1 in D major ("Titan") - Third movement: Funeral march Interestingly, the work is still named "Titan" in concert programs even though Mahler himself very early on discarded its original title. Composed of four movements, it was completed in 1888 and premiered in Budapest the following year.
Its third movement, deeply ironic according to connoisseurs, contains a funeral march based on the popular children's song Frére Jacques, which Mahler worked on in a minor key by entrusting its presentation to a solo double bass. The central trio, meanwhile, evokes slightly corny cabaret music from Vienna at the time.
The performance is by the Orquesta Juvenil Universitaria Eduardo Mata, from Mexico.
Like many the figures of German romanticism, Carl Maria von Weber was not only a renowned composer but also a conductor, piano virtuoso, novelist, and essayist. Born in a small town in northern Germany, his father initiated him early in music, hoping that he could emulate the then-famous musician and relative-in-law who, as a child, had become famous. Indeed, although more than twenty years younger, Carl Maria was a cousin of Constanze Weber, Mozart's wife.
First steps But the father's longing for his own child prodigy was frustrated from the start. Although very talented, the little boy suffered from a congenital hip ailment that would never have withstood the strain of the extensive touring that Leopold Mozart had subjected Wolfgang and his sister to more than 30 years earlier. Nevertheless, little Carl Maria loved music and devoted himself to it with childlike passion. At the age of four, he was already singing and playing the piano with ease, even if walking was a little tricky for him.
C.M. von Weber (1786 - 1826)
The opera By the age of 27, however, Carl Maria von Weber had become the director of the Prague Opera, where he remained for three years. He then traveled to Dresden where he composed his masterpiece, the one he is chiefly remembered for today, the opera Der Freischütz (The Marksman, or The Freeshooter), which premiered to great acclaim in Berlin in 1821.
This served as a stimulus to his determined efforts to reform German opera away from the dreadful Italian influence of the time. However, his second great success would be an English-language opera, after receiving an invitation to work in London. The result was Oberon, based on Shakespearean texts, well received by English audiences although only its overture is performed today.
The Piano Concertos Of course, von Weber also ventured into symphonic music and composition for various instruments and orchestra. Especially well known are his concerto for clarinet and orchestra and his two piano concertos, the latter written before his stay in Prague, in 1810 and 1812. Both of them are highly dependent – according to scholars – on Beethoven's concertos Nos. 1 and 5 (including the tonalities), but the beautiful themes and their melodic development are more overtly romantic, and naturally, genuinely Weberian.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major In a performance by the chamber ensemble of young musicians New York Metamorphoses Orchestra, conducted by the Russian-born Eugene Sirokine, we present here the Concerto No. 1 in C major, premiered in Mannheim in 1810 with its composer at the piano.
Before he was 25 years old, George Gershwin had obtained a resounding success with the orchestral piece Rhapsody in blue, which premiered in February 1923 with the author as soloist. This was followed by four years of great success in his theatrical career, devoted to writing music for Broadway revues. On the "serious" side, he added the Piano Concerto of 1925, with similar success to the Rhapsody, and the Preludes for piano, the following year, equally applauded.
In Paris, 1928 The succession of achievements never seemed to end, but in 1927 he had to endure the small misstep of a satirical political comedy that turned out to be a failure. This perhaps reminded him of his friends and some critics who advised him to dedicate himself a little more to "serious music" and a little less to show business. Be that as it may, the following year Gershwin undertook a trip to Europe. Settling in Paris, he tried to persuade Ravel, Milhaud, and Prokofiev to give him lessons. Although pleasantly surprised, the masters refused. If Mr. Gershwin was concerned that his knowledge was purely intuitive, the masters felt that all that was enough.
A little trip to Vienna Half confused, half flattered, Gershwin undertook a trip to Vienna. There he met Alban Berg. He did not ask him for lessons, as Berg, as soon as he met him, did everything he could to encourage him to continue on his own original path. Back in the French capital, Gershwin began to write his first and only programmatic work, the symphonic piece An American in Paris, released in December of 1928 with the New York Philharmonic, and which was received with thoughtless delight, a few months before the onset of the Great Depression.
George Gershwin (1898 - 1937)
An American in Paris, symphonic poem for orchestra
A light work, its music tries to suggest the Parisian journey of an American tourist, describing his impressions and moods: first, a walk accompanied by honking horns, then moments of self-absorption, a dialogue with someone (commissioned to violin and viola, 7:48), some homesickness (the blues, 8:42), a new dialogue perhaps with a countryman (the Charleston, 13:45). After the majestic recapitulation of the blues (15:50), the theme of the initial promenade resurfaces and others are repeated. The work concludes after a powerful coda.
The performance is by The Moscow City Symphony Orchestra, conducted by American maestro Hobart Earle.
