JS Bach, English Suite No 2 - Prelude

Just as the French Suites of the baroque master are only French because they were published under the title Suites pour le clavecin, the English Suites are not English either. The origin of the title is a complete enigma.
They were never published during Bach's lifetime, but a handwritten copy once existed with the inscription "fait pour les Anglois". Then speculations began, ranging from a wrong interpretation of what was written (someone understood "Anglois" where it could say something else) to the possibility that they were indeed written for an anonymous English nobleman who would have requested them to Bach during a visit to Köthen. The debate continues.

The Six "English" Suites

The group of six keyboard suites was likely composed in the 1720s, shortly before the French Suites, and possibly in Köthen where the master served as Kappellmeister from 1717 to 1723. Speculation aside, they must have been composed for the private use of pupils, relatives, and acquaintances. Whoever did read "Anglois" may also have read "Angoisses", griefs, given the difficulty of many of its movements.

The dances, or movements

Like the "French" suites, the six "English" suites maintain the traditional structure, with their four movements, or dances: allemande - courante - sarabande - gigue, to which are added, between the sarabande and the gigue, a variable number of supplementary movements such as a minuet, a gavotte, bourré, or an aria. The difference is that in the "English" Bach incorporated a prelude, at the beginning (as expected), which will no longer appear in the later French suites.

It is the section that is often played as an encore after a performance. Its great technical complexity lends itself to the performer's brilliance.

Prelude from the English Suite No. 2 in A minor

Just over four minutes of a remarkable exercise in counterpoint. The outstanding rendition is by a beautiful and very young Martha Argerich, in a 1969 recording. The video, badly edited, starts late, missing a couple of notes at the beginning, but it is still very worthwhile.

Chopin, Waltz op 70 No 3

The three waltzes grouped in opus 70 are posthumous. They were published in Berlin in 1855, six years after Chopin's death. The decision was made by his friend and pianist Julian Fontana (a Pole of Italian origin), after consultation with Chopin's mother and his sister Ludwika. The last of them, No. 3, is actually the first of the three that he composed. And it was not far from being marked as the first waltz of all his work in the genre, since it is only preceded by the two waltzes of opus 69, from 1827.

Waltz opus 70 No 3, in D-flat major

It was composed in 1829, when Chopin was back in Warsaw after his first trip to Vienna. At that time, Chopin seemed to be in love with a fellow student at the Warsaw Conservatory. In a letter to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski, he points out that in this waltz he evokes "a charming being". Chopin does not give names because "...I know that it is not necessary to draw your attention to that detail: you will feel it yourself," he confesses.

Konstancja 

The charming being is Miss Konstancja Gladkowska, a singing student, who will appear repeatedly in the correspondence that the young master maintains with his friend Tytus. He will tell him, for example, that he has been her piano accompanist. Later, he will confess that the Adagio of the Concerto No. 2 (chronologically, the first) was inspired by his charming fellow student.

A simple piece

Although "deliciously polyphonic" according to scholars, the piece is rather simple. With an A-B-A structure (a first theme, second, return to the first), it presents no major technical difficulties, other than a couple of left-hand trills, which demand a sonority as elegant as it is substantial.

The rendition is by Martin Leung, an American pianist born in Hong Kong.
A delicious two-minute a half of music.

Karl Czerny, pedagogue and composer, Variations on "La Ricordanza"

Karl Czerny, the Viennese composer and pedagogue, is remembered today mainly for his pedagogical work. Every piano student has had to deal with his etudes and exercises on speed and fingering. Not for nothing is he considered one of the fathers of modern piano technique. As a teacher, he taught Liszt. As a student, he was a pupil of Hummel, Salieri, and Beethoven. He was a child prodigy, as befits every great pianist.

Beethoven's pupil

At the age of nine, when he was already composing and handling the standard repertoire, he was introduced to Beethoven in Vienna, for whom he played the Pathetique Sonata. Beethoven wrote to his father: "The boy has talent. I accept him as a pupil. I will teach him myself. Send him to me once a week."

Czerny received lessons from the master from 1800 until 1803. Two years later, he needed a recommendation. This is what Beethoven wrote, in 1805:

"I, undersigned, have the pleasure of attesting that young Karl Czerny has made an extraordinary advance on the piano, beyond what could be expected at the age of 14. I think he deserves all the help he can get, not only because of what I have just stated but because of his amazing memory."

Karl Czerny (1791 - 1857)

A vast oeuvre
Indeed, Czerny was one of the great pianists of the first half of the 19th century. In 1812 he premiered his master's Emperor Concerto in Vienna.
But he did not like to play in public. He did not tour much either, preferring to stay in Vienna and compose, in which he was prolific: his oeuvre totals more than a thousand published opus numbers, including masses, symphonies, concertos, and sonatas. He never married, and at his death he left an important fortune. 

Variations on a theme by Rode
The 20th century, however, had forgotten him as a composer. Until 1940, when Vladimir Horowitz discovered some interesting variations, stemming from his writing. They are variations on "La Ricordanza", an aria by Pierre Rode, a French violinist and composer.

After Horowitz's discovery, the master and great pedagogue Karl Czerny has enjoyed a modest rebirth, rescuing part of his work in the last twenty years; the compositional work we say, because his pedagogical contribution has been continuously present for two centuries.

The performance is by the South Korean pianist Sangyoung Kim.

Chopin, Scherzo No 4, in E major

As in all the years following the trip to Majorca, the "family group" consisting of Chopin, George Sand, and her two children, spent the summer of 1842 in the vacation house the writer had in Nohant. It was a year in which life smiled on Chopin. In the company of his adopted family, he moved to a more comfortable residence in Paris, in February he gave a concert at the Salle Pleyel, and his creative work at Nohant paid off handsomely.

Scherzo No. 4 in E major

From that fruitful year date the Ballade No. 4, the third impromptu, four mazurkas and the last of the scherzos, No. 4, in E major, opus 54. This is the less frequently performed scherzo because of its very different character compared to Chopin's earlier works in the form, pieces that arouse greater enthusiasm among performers. In this work, the Polish composer offers us a more whimsical work, with greater panache or elegance rather than intimacy or depth.

A "real" scherzo

Indeed, it is the most radiant, joyful, and lively of his four scherzos, in keeping with the meaning of the Italian word scherzo: play or joke.

The piece shows a ternary structure, that is, two themes and a return to the first theme with witty modifications. The middle section (second theme) contains a beautiful and inspired melody with the occasional hint of nostalgia or sadness, typical of the composer's most intimate music, traits that are barely hinted at here. The piece culminates with a brilliant ending.

The work was published in Paris in 1843 and in London in 1845. Both editions are dedicated, one for each, to the Miss Caraman sisters, Chopin's pupils in those years.

The rendition is by the Polish pianist Raphael Blechacz.

Béla Bartók, Violin Concerto No 1

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was a piano professor at the Budapest Academy when in 1908 he solemnly handed over the manuscripts of his first violin concerto to Stefi Geyer. The girl accepted them on the express condition that the work should only be known after death. After her death, we mean, because the girl, seven years younger, assumed that Bartók would be the first to leave this world.

Stefi Geyer

Stefi was a talented violin student, a pupil of the Academy, with whom Bartók had fallen in love, in a crush, when the composer was around twenty-seven. With a marked personality and strong religious convictions, Stefi never reciprocated Bartók's feelings, due to the composer's introverted character, in addition to his deep atheism. But she accepted the offering, with the aforementioned requirement.

(In matters of the heart, Bartók fared better with piano students. Barely a year after his offering to Stefi, the author married a sixteen-year-old pupil, Marta Ziegler).

Béla Bartók, young (1881 - 1945)

Violin Concerto No. 1, posthumous opus
Stefi Geyer died in 1956, faithful to her commitment. The premiere of Béla Bartók's youthful work, his First Violin Concerto, took place in 1958, fifty years after its composition, when no one knew about its existence.

The work, in only two movements, is considered a sort of "portrait" of Geyer, where the author expressed his pain at the failure of love while drawing the beloved in two facets: a first movement for an "idealized, celestial and interior" Stefi, and a second movement for a "cheerful, witty and funny" Stefi.

Movements:

00:00  Andante sostenuto

09:01  Allegro giocoso

The performance is by the Brazilian-born German violinist José Maria Blumenschein, accompanied by the NRW Youth Orchestra (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste.