Beethoven, Sonata violin & piano "Spring"

Beethoven wrote ten sonatas for violin and piano in the span of fourteen years, from 1798 to 1812, although nine of them were born during a much shorter period, from 1798 to 1803, the year the famous "Kreutzer" Sonata was published. Almost ten years elapsed, then, between this famous ninth sonata and the last, of 1812, thus completing the corpus of ten sonatas that in the chamber works of the master from Bonn are graciously placed in second place in importance, only surpassed by the string quartets.

Sonata No 5 was composed between 1800 and 1801 when the beginnings of deafness were starting to worry him. Even so, it is a quiet and fruitful period for the master, established in Vienna since 1792. Composed along with Sonata No. 4, it is contemporary with the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the First Symphony.

"Spring" Sonata
Published in 1801, it is dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries, Beethoven's generous patron and recurrent dedicatee of his work (the Seventh Symphony would be dedicated to him). Also known as the "Spring" sonata, together with the Kreutzer they are the only two sonatas to bear the title with which they became popular after the composer's death.

Sonata No. 5 in F major, opus 24 - Movements
Its first sketches date from around 1795, so the Mozartian influence in it is somewhat visible, or if you prefer, "audible", in all the sections that make it up. This is a four-movement structure that Beethoven would use for the first time in this genre, although it should be noted that the added scherzo lasts a minute and a bit longer. Its complete audition takes just over twenty minutes.

00:00   Allegro – The violin sings, generously lyrical, over a delicate piano accompaniment.

11:51   Adagio molto espressivo – A nostalgic melody, first introduced by the piano.

18:10   Scherzo: Allegro molto – Deliberately asynchronous moments between the two instruments.

19:32   Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo – Perhaps the most "Mozartean" of the movements.

The rendition is by German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and American pianist Lambert Orkis.

Chopin, "Tragic Polonaise", op 44

 
Although everybody wrote polonaises (there are those of Telemann, Mozart and Schubert, and the path will be continued by Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky) the most famous and outstanding ones are due to Chopin's inspiration. An important part of the Polish composer's life was occupied by the creation of works in the Polonaise form. The first was written at the age of seven; the last, in 1846, three years before his death. The one that concerns us today was written in 1840 and published in Paris the following year. It was once called "tragic polonaise" but such a calamitous epithet no longer seems necessary. After all, it is a dance. In addition, the year 1841 had begun one of Chopin's most fruitful periods.

A "mixed" polonaise
In spite of its name, it is a " compound " piece, that is, mixed, because in the most unexpected way Chopin inserts a tempo di mazurka in the very center of the piece. His friend Liszt will be pleasantly surprised by such an occurrence and will point this out in a review of its Paris audition. In his usual flowery style, he will note that: "... In the pages of the greatest composers we have seen nothing comparable to the impression produced by this passage, abruptly interrupted by a country scene, by a mazurka in an idyllic style, which has the fragrance of mint and oregano".

The Komar ladies
The work is dedicated to the youngest of the Komar sisters, prominent ladies of the Polish émigré community in Paris, and enthusiastic friends of art in all its forms. By this time, however, the sisters no longer had that surname. Ludmila, dedicatée of the Polonaise, is now Princess Ludmila de Beauvau, having just married Charles-Just de Beauvau-Craon. Her sister Delfina, although divorced from her Count Potocki, will still be recognized as Delfina Potocka. For her there will be also an attentive regard (she is his pupil): Chopin will dedicate to her his popular "Minute Waltz", in 1847.

Polonaise in F sharp minor, opus 44

Three clear sections, preceded by a fiery crescendo, are distinguished in the piece:

00:20   The polonaise proper, martial, haughty, provocative.

03:00   A long episode in triple eighth notes, which seems to simulate a drum roll.

04:35   In the middle, the unforeseen mazurka, inserted by Chopin in the heart of a vehement piece. Thanks to his genius, this interlude will lead to the resumption of the introduction (7:50) and the first rhythmic theme (8:01).

In Liszt's words, the piece ends "with a somber murmur that leaves the soul caught in a blanket of disconsolation." Hence, perhaps, the tragic connotation mentioned at the beginning.

The rendition, immaculate, is by the Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin.

Haydn: Concerto for Trumpet and orchestra

The trumpeter Anton Weidinger, a member of the Vienna court orchestra at the end of the 18th century, did not feel comfortable with the instrument of that time, which was not capable, for example, of producing the sounds of a chromatic scale, the one including semitones. Faced with such a severe limitation, he devoted several years to finding a solution, achieving in 1792 the invention of a trumpet with keys that allowed it to produce semitones. Though the new device reduced the quality of its timbre, the instrument could sing melodiously, as well as a clarinet or a flute.
A friend of Joseph Haydn, Weidinger asked the old Austrian master to compose a concerto to try out his new instrument.

Concerto for trumpet and orchestra
By that time Haydn had ceased to serve in the palaces of the Esterházy family (with whom he remained for 30 years). And his last efforts were devoted to the production of great choral works (The Creation oratorio, among them) rather than the elaboration of pieces for solo instrument. However, he felt intrigued by Weidinger's request, and by the autumn of 1796, he had finished composing the Concerto for trumpet and orchestra in E flat major, the only concerto that the maestro composed for this instrument, and at the same time, the first one written for a trumpet capable of playing chromaticism.

Premiere and reception
A diligent instrumentalist, trumpeter Weidinger spent four years practicing his invention with minor works until he felt capable of tackling the novel contribution to the repertoire that emerged from Haydn's inventiveness. And so the master's most celebrated solo concerto was premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on March 22, 1800, with Weidinger on trumpet, as expected. It was a successful premiere. However, the manuscript was never published during the composer's lifetime. Nor was it later. It disappeared for decades, until it was rediscovered in the late 19th century by a trumpeter of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (Its first recording dates only from 1938).
Weidinger's invention was surpassed as early as 1813, with the invention of the three-piston trumpet, the germ of the current trumpet in use in symphony orchestras.

Movements

Brilliantly orchestrated, the concerto fully serves the new technical capabilities of the instrument, in its three movements: in the Allegro, with a new stock of notes in the low register; in the second movement, it exposes its lyrical and expressive potential; in the last movement, it allows the soloist to display all his skill with the new technical effects.

00:00  Allegro

06:41  Andante

09:48  Finale. Allegro

The rendition, superb, is by jazz trumpeter (and much more, as it turns out) Wynton Marsalis, very young, accompanied by the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by the brilliant film music composer John Williams.

S. Revueltas, "Sensemayá", a tone poem

 
A song to kill a snake
 "Sensemayá" is a symphonic poem by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas inspired by some verses of Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén, which bear that title accompanied by the apostille "canto para matar una culebra" (song to kill a snake). Originally written for chamber ensemble in 1937, a year later the author transcribed the work for wind and string orchestra with the participation of no less than fourteen percussion instruments. A paradigm of rhythmic complexity, it is the author's most performed work worldwide and a highlight of his musical production, to which he dedicated only the last ten years of his short life.

United States and Mexico
In fact, Revueltas began to compose "seriously" at the age of thirty. Born in 1899 in a municipality in the state of Durango, he began his violin studies at the age of eight, and as a teenager, he completed his musical training in violin and composition in the United States. Before committing himself to musical creation, he visited Mexico on multiple occasions offering recitals until 1929, when his fellow countryman Carlos Chávez invited him to take over the position of the assistant conductor in the Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, recently created by Chávez and of which he was its director.

Silvestre Revueltas (1899 - 1940)

A musician and intellectual
He remained in that position until 1935, when both artists broke up. Revueltas, a musician and intellectual, defender of the rights of musicians and workers, chose to create his own orchestra, which had a short life. He would then intensify his activity as a composer, although without much effort to disseminate it: during his life he published very little, practically nothing. At his death, he was virtually unknown outside Mexico. His last years were marked by discouragement and consequent dipsomania that led him to spend time in sanatoriums.

Pablo Neruda
Now considered one of the most original musicians of the 20th century, Silvestre Revueltas died poor and forgotten. But not for everyone. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda attended the funeral ceremony and read there a poem dedicated to him that would later become part of his monumental Canto General. The "minor oratorio" – that is what Neruda called it – ends with these words:

"Ahora son las estrellas de América tu patria
y desde hoy tu casa sin puertas es la Tierra"

(Now the stars of America are your homeland / and from today your house without doors is the Earth)

The work
From 1930 onwards, Silvestre Revueltas produced more than ninety percent of his catalog, which includes orchestral pieces, vocal, chamber, and theater music. Also, around 1935 he successfully ventured into music for the cinema (Mexican, naturally).
He is the author of six symphonic poems, the last of them, Sensemayá, a little less than seven minutes long, and which for its effectiveness in musically illustrating a ceremony (the Cuban rite of killing a snake) has been compared to what Stravinski achieved with respect to pagan Russia with The Rite of Spring.

Hobart Earle conducts the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, in July 2012, with an illustrative introduction.

Igor Stravinsky, a brief story / "Firebird" ballet - Finale

Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky was the third of four children of a famous singer of the Russian Imperial Opera and a mother to whom he "only felt duties", according to his own confession. His siblings bored him to the extreme, so little Igor had to manage to find a note of joviality in an oppressive childhood. His only joy seemed to come from the care of his wet nurse, whom he kept an emotional memory of all his life and whom he mourned more than his own mother when she died.

The Music, or the Law
Fortunately, the family's musical evenings provided a fruitful breath of life and encouraged his taste for music. At the age of 9, he began his first piano lessons, and at 11 he was dazzled when he attended the opera for the first time. Soon after, he was present at the premiere of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, and this time, he was spellbound. At the same time, he was composing his first pieces. Everything seemed to be going wonderfully for the young Igor to make music a career. Still, the ominous fate of the young Russian musical promises stood before him and he had to enter the Faculty of Law at the age of eighteen.

The master Nicolai
Only his acquaintance with the composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov saved him from his juridical fate. Although he frowned upon his first works, he finally took him into his home for three years to teach him the trade, introducing him to musical forms and their language, and supporting him in the orchestration of his own piano scores. Master Nicolai, perhaps unwittingly, thus became the only musician from whom Stravinsky later acknowledged having learned something.

Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)

Meeting Diaghilev
The year 1908 he already had several scores to his credit, applauded by the public and critics. All that was missing was a bit of luck. This came in the form of a concert where two of his works were performed and attended by an attentive spectator, Sergei Diaghilev, the creator of the Ballets Russes, the latest sensation in Paris at the time. Sergei did not delay in asking Stravinsky to orchestrate Chopin's music for a projected future ballet to be called The Sylphides.

The Firebird
Igor was happier than ever. Even so, he did not imagine that celebrity was just around the corner and that he was going to conquer it overnight. Indeed, in the late summer of 1909, he received a telegram from Diaghilev commissioning him to write the score for the ballet The Firebird, scheduled for the next season of the Ballets Russes. Despite the short deadline granted, Igor completed the work on time, which premiered on June 25 of that year at the Paris Opera, not without some setbacks. The frenetic rhythm of the music unsettled some dancers, so much so that the famous Anna Pavlova refused to dance "such barbarities". Tamara Karsavina (in the "photo") had to replace her.

Le tout Paris was immediately seduced by Stravinsky's music and by the costumes and the innovative sets of the staging. The dazzling and enchanting music of the young 28-year-old master will greatly influence the choreographic activity, revitalizing an art that seemed exhausted, due to so many pas de deux. The Firebird will put an end to them forever, taking the tutus with him in passing.

Listening "with other ears"

The rendition, as a suite for orchestra, is by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Boulez, and features the last tableaux: Danza Infernal, Berceuse, and Finale (the whole ballet lasts fifty minutes, circa).
One last word. It is not easy to distinguish in this music tunes that can be hummed, but as it is already more than one hundred years old, I think it is time to make an effort to listen to it "with other ears". To do so, we should abandon for a few minutes the sonorous and harmonic schemes of the 19th century and earlier.