Tiffany Poon plays Chopin Variations Brillantes, Op. 12

As far as we know, Chopin never considered writing an opera. However, he was a huge fan of it. He spent many evenings at the Opéra in his early years in Paris. He listened to Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Ferdinand Hérold. The latter was a lesser-known composer but had an impact on the Polish composer. His ardent adoration for the "fioritura" and "thrills" of the era's sopranos, mezzos, tenors, and basses reached a point where, in a statement about his solace at the Parisian opera, he wrote: "...In a word, only here one may know what singing is!".

"Ludovico"
In May 1833, he attended the Opéra Comique for a performance of "Ludovico", the last of numerous comic operas written by Hérold mentioned above. The piece never received widespread praise, then or now. However, one of its arias—the cavatina that starts with the line Je vend des scapulaires—did become famous for a while ("I sell scapulars"). Chopin was drawn to the melody despite being as straightforward and uncomplicated as a few others.
That same year the Polish genius published the Concerto in E minor, finished the three Nocturnes of Opus 9, and completed and released the twelve Etudes of Opus 10. Why bother to work out a little tune for the piano taken from a minor work?

The ebb and flow of fashion

Let's remember that by those years the middle classes had decided that they also wanted to listen to music. Parisian tastes were varied, and public concerts must have reflected them: to the traditional performance of a couple of symphonies or concertos (or part of them, rather) and the appearance of one or more singers amid allegros and scherzos, pianist-composers were added. In between arias and cavatinas, they would embellish the performance with their variations or fantasies on popular operatic pieces. This is what a Liszt, a Thalberg, or Kalkbrenner did. Chopin, a newcomer, had to get into fashion.
Thus, the Polish musician saved Ferdinand Hérold's name from total oblivion. Chopin's Brilliant Variations op. 12, whose original title is somewhat longer, was inspired by the cavatina.

Brilliant Variations on "Vendo escapularios" from the opera "Ludovico" by LJF Hérold, opus 12
The Variations, in B flat major, exhibit the usual form: introduction, theme, and variations, four in this instance. Their qualification as brilliant obeys, once again, the Parisian taste, the fondness for a "brilliant" style (and the Variations certainly are). The work was published a little later, in 1837, perhaps with the cavatina already forgotten and Chopin, unwittingly, in charge of its rescue.

Very short, with an approximate length of 8 to 9 minutes, are its sections (without pause):

00:00 Introduction: Allegro maestoso

01:30 Theme - Allegro moderato

03:19 Scherzo

04:11 Lento

06:09 Scherzo vivace

The rendition is by Hong-Kong born pianist, Tiffany Poon.

Alexander Scriabin, his first and only Piano Concerto

Having just graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, at the age of twenty-four Alexander Scriabin was already touring as a virtuoso pianist throughout Russia and part of Europe. He realized then that the time had come to show his skills as a composer of concertante works to the public. So, in the autumn of 1896, in just a couple of days, he completed his first and only piano concerto. It was his first work involving the orchestra, so its orchestration took him a little longer, but he finished it in May of the following year. A fervent admirer of Chopin in those years, his writing brings to mind the pianistic language established by the Polish genius fifty or more years earlier.

Although the composer, prone to mystical thinking, in his later years was drawn to more sophisticated areas of musical endeavor (including a certain flirtation with dodecaphonism), he never stopped performing his own concerto, which he did quite often. By that time, the concerto had also become a favorite of his former comrade at the Moscow Conservatory, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who conducted it in 1911 with Scriabin at the piano. Later, it would be Rachmaninoff himself who would sit at the piano to play it, in a tribute made in memory of Scriabin, in 1915, a few months after the author's death.

A. Scriabin (1872 - 1915)

Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, opus 20
Premiered on October 23, 1897, with Scriabin at the piano, the concerto is structured in the traditional manner, with three movements in the fast-slow-fast sequence, with a length of just under thirty minutes. As already mentioned, the atmosphere of the work clearly evokes Chopin's pianism, but the orchestral treatment shows a much more active and committed involvement of the orchestra than can be appreciated in the concertos of the Polish romantic master.

Movements
01:34  Allegro - The piano introduces the main theme, and then the orchestra takes over while the piano accompanies in octaves.

09:30  Andante - I's constructed in a novel and poetic form of theme and variations. Although written in major mode, the four variations are imbued with a nostalgic feeling.

18:01  Allegro moderato - More intensely expressive than the previous movements, its main theme is condensed into just the first two bars, to be followed by an extended and highly demanding arpeggio, no small challenge for Scriabin himself, a virtuoso with small hands.

The Slovenian pianist Ana Šinkovec Burstin is accompanied by the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Krečič.

Bach, Partita for violin No 2 - "Chaconne"

The celebrated instrumental piece popularly known as Bach's "chaconne in D minor" is the fifth and last movement of the Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004, composed around 1720 while the master, in his thirties, was a chapel master at the modest court of Köthen, where he remained for six years, from 1717 to 1723. Written for solo violin, without accompaniment, the work is one of the most complex, extensive, and demanding ever written for the instrument.

The violin

In Bach's time, the violin, recently invented in the middle of the 16th century, had reached its peak. Composers and instrumentalists such as Arcangelo Corelli and Giuseppe Torelli raised the art of violin music to new heights, supported by instruments from the hands of the master craftsmen Amatti, or Stradivari. Thus, the instrument succeeded in creating the interpreter as well. And together they created a different musical world that involved a new way of composing music for the violin.

Six solos for violin

Of course, Bach was not the first to compose music for solo violin. He was at least preceded by two German composers, J.J. Walther and J.G. Pisendel, the latter considered the greatest violinist of his time and whom Bach had the opportunity to meet in Weimar. But it will be Johann Sebastian who will take the genre to the highest perfection with the three sonatas and three partitas grouped in the Six Solos for Violin, whose autograph pages are preserved until today, pointing out in its title: "Sei solo a violino senza basso acompagnato. Libro Primo da Joh Seb Bach, ao 1720".

Partita No. 2 in D minor - Chaconne

Although the term is Italian, partita is the name by which the suite was known in Germany. The partita No. 2 includes an allemande, a courante, a sarabande, a gigue, and finally the chaconne, a movement with theme and variations that, unusually, Bach has extended to more than half the length of the complete partita. The basic theme consists of only four bars. Increasing the complexity of such a scarce bunch of music, Bach will add 64 variations to build almost fifteen minutes of the most sublime music in history, hailed by countless subsequent composers who have developed arrangements for the most diverse instruments or groups of these.

Brahms' opinion
One hundred and fifty years after its composition, Johannes Brahms wrote:

"The chaconne is in my opinion one of the most wonderful and mysterious works in the history of music. By adapting the technique to a small instrument, a man describes a whole world with the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings. If I could imagine myself writing, or even conceiving such a work, I am sure that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would drive me mad."

The rendition is by the late Russian master Nathan Mirounovich Milstein.

Mozart, Serenade No. 11, for eight winds

In a letter dated July 27, 1782, Mozart tells his father Leopold that he has been working in a hurry on the composition of a new serenade. But the serenade was not so new. What Wolfgang was doing was a revision of an earlier serenade for six wind instruments, which now had to be written for eight. Having settled in Vienna only a year earlier as a free pianist and composer, Mozart had heard about the brand-new wind orchestra that Emperor Joseph II had just added to his court. Unusually, the ruler had put together an ensemble with eight instrumentalists instead of six. Adapting the music to the emperor's tastes is what Mozart was urgently in need of.

The original serenade is a piece composed on the occasion of the feast of St. Therese, for the sister-in-law of Monsieur von Hickl, the court painter, in whose house it was first performed on October 15, 1781. In a letter to his father dated November 3, Mozart points out the main motive for its composition: the interest in winning the favor of Mr. von Strack, musical advisor to the Emperor, and assiduous visitor to Hickl's house. To our delight, Mozart, in his salty style, gives us some glimpses of Viennese musical life at the time:

"The six gentlemen who executed it are poor beggars who, however, play quite well together, particularly the first clarinet and the two horns.  But the chief reason why I  composed it was to let  Herr von  Strack,  who goes there every day, hear something of my composition;  so  I  wrote it rather carefully.  It has won great applause too and on  St. Theresa's  Night it was performed in three different places; for as soon as they finished playing it in one place,  they were taken off somewhere else and paid to play it."

We assume that Herr von Strack did hear the serenade. Unfortunately for Mozart, the Emperor's advisor never cared to get closer to the Salzburg genius.

Serenade No. 11, in E-flat, K. 375, for eight winds

The original version was written for two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons. The emperor's generous grouping imposed the addition of parts for two oboes. This is the version usually heard today. At just over 25 minutes in length, the work is in five movements:

00:00  Allegro maestoso

07:00  Menuetto

11:07  Adagio (the slow movement that fully justifies the term "serenata")

17:15  Menuetto

20:04  Allegro

The release is by the Scottish National Orchestra Wind Ensemble, conducted by Paavo Järvi.

Béla Bartók, Piano Concerto No 1, with Yuja Wang

Recognized as a remarkable pianist as well as composer, the Hungarian Béla Bartók composed three concertos for piano and orchestra during his lifetime. The first one was written between August and November 1926 and premiered in Frankfurt on July 1, 1927, with the composer as the soloist.

With Concerto No. 1 for piano and orchestra, Bartók intended to showcase his mastery as a composer as well as his skills as a virtuoso pianist. And he did just that. The work features great technical difficulties not only for the pianist but also a challenge for the orchestra... and the audience. In Bartók's own words:

"My first concerto [...] I consider it a successful work, although its style is up to a point difficult, perhaps even very difficult for the orchestra and the public."

A new language
Bartók thus initiated the exploration of a new language, dressing the piano in the garb of percussion instruments. Considered the apotheosis of the cluster (a cluster of adjacent notes played simultaneously) and dissonant counterpoint, the work received a lukewarm response in Germany, which was nevertheless not unaware of its agitated syncopation, its fiery percussion and "primitive" rhythm reminiscent of Stravinsky.

Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945)

In the US
Enthusiastic, the author soon set off on a tour of the United States. But the American critics didn't like the concert at all (neither, we suppose, did the public). One bloodthirsty critic even wrote that he had just heard... "one of the most appalling avalanches of bombastic nonsense and blunders ever perpetrated before an audience."

Pure bravura
But none of this bothered Bartók. What's more, the composer would not give up the new style. Nevertheless, due in part to its enormous difficulties, Concerto No. 1 has remained the least attended and listened to of the three he composed. And the truth is that the effort is worth it. And well worth it. It is pure concentrated bravura.

Movements

00:00  Allegro moderato - Allegro: Intense but calm beginning with the orchestra in the lower registers, the piano makes its entrance without greater virtuoso demand, attacking a single note, which then goes in octaves, for greater percussive emphasis. Soon, glissandos and dissonances follow. The movement ends with a sort of orchestral whiplash.

10:00  Andante - attacca (attacca: indicates that there is no pause between the second and third movements): Desolation best describes this section, perhaps because the strings are not involved. At times, the piano only accompanies the percussion.

18:08  Allegro molto: It is initiated by drums and trombone glissandos. The piano joins in instantly with its own extended glissando and then becomes a percussion instrument. Or almost, for there are clusters everywhere (for example min 21:25), three-octave glissandos (min 24:24), and jumps at incredible speeds. All this, in permanent syncopation with the orchestra. The movement ends abruptly as if the sound mass had crashed against a wall.

The performance is by Yuja Wang, superb, at the piano. The outstanding artist is accompanied by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. 

The concert lasts 25 minutes. The rest is applause, in fruitless expectation that the charming Miss Wang would give an encore, which she did not do, presumably because in the piano literature there is no short piece that after this performance would not be a nonsense purpose.