Scriabin Études - Étude Opus 2 No 1

The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin is part of the long list of talented composers who left this world at an early age without seeing their most daring projects come to fruition."Mysterium" was the name of his last work, a piece of grandiose characteristics that would last a whole week, destined to be premiered in the foothills of the Himalayas, incorporating the senses of sight, sound, smell, and touch. After the premiere – the author believed – the world would end, vanishing amid great joy, giving way to a new human race composed of nobler beings.
Impossible to say that Scriabin did not aim high. But fate was not with him. Alexander Scriabin died in Moscow at 43 from septicemia caused by a mosquito bite.

Alexander Scriabin (1872 - 1915)

A piano virtuoso
Simultaneously with his mystical stage, the author also flirted with dodecaphony at the end of his life. But in his beginnings, as a piano virtuoso, he was influenced by the romantic pianists of the first half of the 19th century. It is a period in which he wrote mainly for the piano, working in the genres that Chopin used without rest: preludes, nocturnes, and studies written in an openly tonal language. Unusual textures and harmonies will come later.

He also wrote sonatas and a Piano Concerto but is today remembered mainly for his earliest works, which today turn out to be essential pieces of the piano repertoire, among them the 24 Preludes of Opus 11, brimming with lyricism and poetry.
Also noteworthy for their precocity are the Three Pieces of Opus 2, a set of three Etudes written in the period 1887-1889, the first of them when the author was fifteen years old, at a time when, of course, he was a fervent admirer of Chopin and Liszt.

Etude Opus 2 No 1, in C sharp minor
The influence of the Polish musician is undeniable here. Moreover, it is not difficult to guess Chopin's Etude which is inspired by: No. 7 of Etudes Opus 25, those dedicated to Marie d'Agoult, Liszt's partner at the time.

The harmonies are "Chopinian" and so is the emotional tone of the piece. However, the melody brings to mind, characteristically, Russian gypsy music, for its exoticism, somewhat melancholic. It is a slow and rather somber piece, yet, in its scarce three minutes of length, it presents the interpreter with no few difficulties while offering the listener an undeniable attraction.

The performance is by the Russian master Vladimir Horowitz.

Franz Liszt, "Les Preludes", symphonic poem

Although it is customary to point to Franz Liszt as the inventor of the symphonic poem, the term is not of his authorship, and it seems to be born almost unthinkingly. While in Weimar (1842-61), the master wrote twelve works in this genre, in the company of his writer Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who collaborated with the texts that usually accompanied them.

The third of these, called "The Preludes", was the first to bear the title "symphonic poem", although, in a letter to one of his publishers, dated February 1854, Liszt presents the work simply as "one of my new orchestral works: the Preludes".

A new genre
Two days later, however, a Weimar newspaper announced the work's premiere with the words: "Les preludes - symphonische Dichtung" (Dichtung = poem). Thus was born a new genre, the symphonic poem, which will have exalted continuers of the stature of Smetana, Dvorak, or Richard Strauss.

Considered the seed of the "programmatic music" of the 19th century, it is defined, in general terms, as a musical form in which a literary or other source provides the narrative basis for a single-movement orchestral work. Liszt's symphonic poems, in particular, are intended to inspire the listener to evoke scenes, images, or moods.

Liszt, in 1856
(1811 - 1886)

Lamartine Preludes
In the case of The Preludes, the most popular of them, the maestro "reconditioned" musical materials he already had, organizing them in such a way that they would tell a certain story, that would contain some kind of plot. It was not easy.
But he found the solution in a poem by Lamartine, precisely called The Preludes.
Now, the precise connection between Lamartine's poem and Liszt's music is rather vague, apart from the fact that both works mix, compare, or contrast, elements of idyll and stark reality. The work contains four sections that focus, successively, on love, war, country life, and fate.

Liszt's words
And since it was a matter of beginning the path of programmatic music, Liszt added to the premiere program a long text that begins with these words:

"What is our life but a series of preludes to an unknown song, of which the first solemn note is the one that sounds death?"

The text continues, wearily romantic, with references to love, fate, and death here and there. The audience who attended the premiere, on February 23, 1854, in Weimar, went home convinced that they had been given pieces of Lamartine's prose. Today, they are believed to have originated in the boundless stylistic loquacity of Carolyne, the princess writer.

Some pieces of the work have become part of popular culture. The most recognizable makes its first appearance at minute 2:35.

Daniel Barenboim conducts Berlin Philharmoniker - Staatsoper Berlin.

Beethoven, Symphony No. 8, in F major

The year 1812 marked the end of Napoleon's glory and the beginning of his downfall. After a dazzling invasion, he defeated the Russians and reached Moscow, but the victory was short-lived. He could not cope with the military technique of "scorched earth". After setting fire to Moscow, the Russians sat back and waited (that's putting it mildly) for Napoleon to retreat. During the retreat, the powerful Napoleonic army was annihilated at Vilna.

Beethoven meets Goethe
While the beginning of the end was brewing for his once idol, Beethoven traveled to Teplice to meet another model, the revered and great poet Goethe. He was invited. It was not an invasion. But the results were, in turn, also disastrous. Beethoven met, in his opinion, an aging courtier who was neither a fellow democrat nor even less an agitator, perhaps a dilettante. The poet, for his part, while impressed by Beethoven's personality, intensely disliked his coarse manners. It was all a great disappointment. However, it didn't stop the coarse-mannered maestro from sketching the first sketches of Symphony No. 8, just there, in Teplice.

Symphony No. 8, in F major, Op. 93
He completed it in Linz in the autumn of the same year. It was written "simultaneously" with Symphony No. 7, that is, when he started to write it he had already begun the Seventh, which was left for later. It seems that the Eighth functioned as an escape valve for the compositional problems presented by the Seventh. Scholars agree that the writing of the Eighth Symphony was for the maestro a task without difficulties, almost a divertimento, which would have been reflected in a pristine way in the general character of the work.

A " light-hearted" work
Indeed, compared to the Third, the Fifth, and certainly the Seventh, Symphony No. 8 has been called "benign," or "harmless," by acerbic critics. Others have jokingly described it as "Haydn's last symphony".
The truth is that Beethoven adopted this time a jovial, carefree scheme. He dispensed with the slow tempo and instead wrote two scherzos, the first of them a parody of the musical chronometer, of recent appearance, the device we know today as a metronome. And if it is a question of making comparisons, it is fair to say that not since Haydn's time had a more amusing resolution to a symphony been written than that offered by the allegro vivace with which the work ends.

The end
But as we can't always have rain on everyone's parade, a critical article of 1827 pointed out that the work depended "entirely on the final movement, destined to get applause at any cost; the rest is eccentric without entertaining, and laborious without any results."
Bad timing for such bitter criticism: the maestro died that same year.

Premiere
The work, without a dedication, and less than half an hour long, had its premiere on February 27, 1814, at the Redoutensaal, in Vienna, with Beethoven conducting. Audience impressions were not very enthusiastic either: the program included the Seventh as a poster work.
Sir George Grove, founder of the dictionary that to this day bears his name, recounted:

'It was not well received. Much more applauded was the Seventh, which puzzled Beethoven. But he took it philosophically: "That's because it's so much better than the other one," he observed.

Movements:
00:00  Allegro vivace e con brio
10:50  Allegretto scherzando
15:02  Tempo di menuetto
20:14  Allegro vivace

Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra – a conductor's creation, made up of Palestinian, Arab, and Israeli musicians – during the 2012 BBC Proms.

Dmitri Shostakovich, "Festive Overture"

Unlike Sergei Prokofiev, who had the misfortune of dying on the same day as Stalin (March 5, 1953), thus causing his funeral to pass into the background, Dmitri Shostakovich survived the great Soviet leader for over twenty years. During that period, Soviet cultural life underwent significant changes, which could be appreciated a few months after the great leader's death.

Dmitri, who, along with Sergei, had headed the sadly famous list of composers who had gone astray, witnessed the new airs when in December 1953, he was asked to compose a short work in commemoration of the next anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. He called it "Festive Overture"... so much so that the composer allowed himself to include in it a tune taken from the Opera that in 1932 had brought him the first reprimand.

 Legend has it that the master would have composed it with astonishing speed. Mythical versions of the time taken range from a few hours to three days.
What is unquestionable is that the new cultural era favored a fresh look at works that Shostakovich had abandoned due to the uncertainty surrounding their composition and subsequent reception. The maestro took them up again with the serious intention of finishing them. That is what he was doing when he received the commission. It is possible, therefore, that, in those circumstances, he devoted no more than three days to the brief work that greeted the revolution.

Festive Overture, for orchestra, in A Major, opus 96
Curiously, this is a traditional, if not conservative, work. In its scant six minutes long it brims with a joyful mood, without majestic boasts or pomp. The piece opens with a jaunty fanfare. It is followed by a lively section based on a melody from the already mentioned 1932 opera, which picks up speed. The somewhat grandiloquent finale shows that Shostakovich took no chances here. He was right, in over ten years, when it comes to a new symphony, the authorities will be wrinkling their noses again.

hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony / Pablo Heras-Casado, Dirigent.

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Chopin, Étude No 7 from Opus 25

The twelve Etudes of Opus 25 were composed by Frédéric Chopin between 1832 and 1836. Published in 1837, six years after having settled in Paris, they added one more achievement in the production of the author, by then "the artist of the moment", of the Parisian soirées. They were his second collection of studies for piano. The first, opus 10, had been published in 1833, dedicated to "mon ami, Franz Liszt", a distinction that could surprise no one since both knew each other and professed mutual admiration.

Marie d'Agoult, dedicatée
Four years later, opus 25 was dedicated to Marie d'Agoult, a former countess, talented writer, and salon habitué whose closeness to Chopin and his music was reduced to her status as Franz Liszt's partner. An act of courtesy that surprises us to this day. Even more so, when we learn that Marie did not get along with Frédéric. That same year, 1837, the Sand proposed to Marie that she join Nohant in the company of "the Poles" (Chopin and his poet friends). In response, Marie wrote: "...Chopin, an oyster sprinkled with sugar..." ... "In him, only his cough is permanent."
Another enigma, in the unfathomable personality of the master.

Marie d'Agoult (1805 - 1876)

Etude Opus 25 No 7, in C sharp minor
A beautiful melody, somewhat sad, accompanied by slow chords of both hands. The left hand, in a couple of passages, attacks semiquavers at a certain speed, but, nothing comparable to the extensive and fast run, also in semiquavers, required in other Etudes, the so-called "Revolutionary", for example. It could be said, then, that this is a rather simple Etude. The difficulty, however, lies elsewhere.

The melody advances shared by both hands. Sometimes on the left, other times on the right. To sing the melody properly, the interpreter must fully understand what is happening with it, musically speaking. And to this painful singing, extreme delicacy must be added. Mastery in phrasing is the demand of the one who was called the poet of the piano.

The Etude is the most extensive of the twenty-four. It is not a study of technique as such, or of acrobatic skills, if the term fits, but one of musicality and interpretation. This is what the work demands, which in less than six minutes, unveils one of Chopin's most emotional pages.

The marvelous performance is by the Polish pianist Szymon Nehring.