Benjamin Britten: Violin Concerto

Rendering service to his country as a musician in the midst of a war

British composer Benjamin Britten was not yet twenty years old when European politics entered a complex phase. On September 3, 1939, in response to the German army's invasion of Poland, Great Britain declared war on Germany. Four months earlier, in the company of tenor Peter Pears, his sentimental partner, Britten had left England for the United States. He would remain there until April 1942. An avowed pacifist, Britten understood perfectly well that his humanitarian stance would not be well received in an England in the midst of war, especially coming from an artist who was gay.

Back in England, 1942
When he returned to England, a judge had to decide his future as a potential combatant. He could have been incorporated into the rearguard, in non-combat duties, but the judge made a very wise decision: the best service Britten could render to England was to continue writing music. And that is precisely what he did. He would soon earn a reputation as the greatest British composer since Henry Purcell, two and a half centuries earlier. 

The Spanish Civil War
Even before the Second War, Britten's anti-war sentiments had been strengthened by the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. In 1936 he had traveled to Barcelona to participate in a festival of contemporary music with his suite opus 6, with himself at the piano and his friend Antonio Brosa on violin. There he had the opportunity to listen to Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, a "requiem-like" concerto of which he was captivated. That was his inspiration to write his own work for violin with a similar commemorative character. According to Brosa, the third movement was conceived as a tribute to the British volunteers who had fallen fighting the fascist forces in Spain.

Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976)

Violin Concerto, Opus 15
Dedicated to his former teacher at the Royal College of Music, the work was premiered in New York in March 1940 and was warmly received by critics. A contributor to the New York World Telegram, pleased, made a very personal comment: "Mr. Britten, a lanky 26-year-old boy came on stage after the concert and greeted the audience somewhat shyly and awkwardly. To be frank, he did not seem to be the author of this concerto. But, in music, you never know."

Movements:
There are three, in unusual slow-fast-slow sequence. They are played without interruption.

I Moderato con moto - Agitato - Tempo primo

II Vivace - Animando - Largamente - Cadenza

III Passacaglia. Andante Lento

The Dutch violinist Janine Jansen is accompanied by the Orchestre de Paris conducted by the Russian conductor Paavo Järvi.

Wagner, The Flying Dutchman - Overture

In early 1839, 26-year-old Richard Wagner was hired as director of the national opera in Riga, the capital of Latvia. An extravagant lifestyle coupled with the retirement from the stage of his wife, the singer Minna Planer, caused him to incur large debts. Unable to pay them, he devised a plan to evade his creditors. He would finish the work he was working on, the opera Rienzi, with the idea of performing it in Paris and making some money with it. He set off for Paris, via London.

The ghost ship legend
After illegally crossing the Prussian border, the couple embarked on a ship that would be the worst sailing experience of their lives. Faced with a series of storms, the ship was finally able to find shelter in a Norwegian fjord after days of endless struggle with rough seas. They arrived in London three weeks after leaving Riga. The experience reminded Wagner of the old legend of the ghost ship, the ship unable to call, forced to sail the seas for life in search of redemption.

And already in Paris, things did not improve either. Wagner could not get a job as a conductor and the Paris Opera refused to stage his Rienzi. The couple faced great financial hardship, having to live on the help of friends and the little money Wagner could get by publishing music articles and copying scores. In these circumstances, he drew on his recent experience and devised the composition of a short one-act play on the legend of the ghost ship, which in some versions has a Dutchman as captain, a "wandering Dutchman".

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883)

A resounding failure
The work was intended to serve as a "curtain-raiser" for a ballet at the Opera. Wagner based it on a satire by Heine that took up the legend of the Flying Dutchman, modifying the story to present the wandering captain as a cursed character who can only be redeemed by the loyal love of a woman. The libretto, with the title "The Phantom Ship", and together with three important passages of the opera, were released in July 1841 to the Paris Opera, which agreed to buy the rights from Wagner for 500 francs, and to entrust the music and the libretto in French to other artists.
"The Phantom Ship" was a resounding failure. After its premiere, in November 1842, it fell into complete oblivion.

Der fliegende Holländer
Meanwhile, during the summer of 1841, Wagner wrote the rest of the opera, expanding the work to the more traditional three-act form, and now titled Der fliegende Holländer. The initial libretto set the work in Scotland. Wagner changed the names of the characters and the setting to Norway, in an attempt to distance himself from the failed Ghost Ship.

It was premiered in Dresden in January 1843, under the baton of the author, but was not the success Wagner had hoped for. Soon after, however, it gained in popularity and became a favorite of the public to this day, because despite the initial disappointment, it is one of the most accessible operas of the German author.

The Flying Dutchman - Overture
The overture is the last section that Wagner wrote. It contains all the leitmotifs of the work, those famous musical passages that illustrate and accompany either the characters or the situations through which they pass according to the plot, and of which Wagner made his trademark for the rest of his work.
It opens with a motif that could be called "oceanic" or "stormy".

The performance is by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti.

Mahler, Ninth Symphony - Mov 4, Adagio

Gustav Mahler working, close to death

In 1907, two years before he began composing his Ninth Symphony, Gustav Mahler's world changed from heaven to earth. On March 17 he resigned as assistant conductor of the Vienna Opera, a position he had held for ten years (although he would soon sign a contract with the New York Met), capitulating to friction with the administration and the growing anti-Semitism of the Viennese press. In the interregnum of that summer, he took Alma and her two daughters to his villa in Maiernigg, where he could compose in the peace of his famous "composition hut." But on July 5, victim of scarlet fever, his eldest daughter, barely four years old, died. A few days later, Mahler was diagnosed with the heart disease that would take the composer to his grave in less than four years.

Mahler refused to return to Maiernigg the following summer, so Alma found a house in Toblach, in the Dolomites (in the mountain range of the Eastern Alps), a huge farmhouse with eleven rooms, two terraces and two bathrooms, "undoubtedly somewhat primitive, but in splendid surroundings," as Alma put it, referring to the expansive mountain view. There, over the course of the next three summers, Mahler will complete his last works: The Song of the Earth, the Ninth Symphony, and begin the Tenth, which was left unfinished when his heart finally failed.

Obsessed with the idea of death
The three works were written while Mahler was obsessed with the idea of death, and clearly reveal how disturbed he was by its immediacy. But the composer did not give up without a fight, even though his doctors tried to restrict his diet and warned him to discontinue the swimming, cycling and hiking he enjoyed so much. His last four years, filled with commitments as a conductor, great efforts to compose and varied personal affairs (a meeting with Sibelius in 1907, sessions posing for Auguste Rodin in 1909, and a single visit, that dreaded and often postponed session with Freud in 1910) hardly reflect the routine of an incapacitated person.

The superstition
Yet Mahler had tried to avoid composing exactly nine symphonies, knowing that neither Beethoven nor Bruckner had gone further than that. He therefore called The Song of the Earth (which followed the Eighth Symphony) "a symphony for alto, tenor and orchestra," without adding a number. Only a few days after completing the next symphony, which he openly, and perhaps even defiantly, called the Ninth Symphony, Mahler set about composing a tenth, as if to make sure he had defeated superstition, which, of course, won the day.

Symphony No. 9 in D major - 4th movement - Adagio
The work was premiered posthumously in June 1912 by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the German conductor Bruno Walter, Mahler's personal friend.
It is structured in four movements, slow first and last, thus breaking with tradition, although Mahler had already experimented with a slow finale in his Third Symphony.
The complete work lasts about an hour and a half.
Presented here is the fourth movement, the Adagio, marked, in German, Sehr langsam und noch zuruckhaltend, something like "very slow and 'held back,'" or literally, "reservedly." It is initiated by the strings.

The finale is almost pure silence, stillness and waiting. The first violins sing a phrase from the Kindertotenlieder, the songs of grief over the death of children that Mahler, to his own horror, wrote shortly before the death of his daughter Maria. In the last twenty-four bars, very slow and pianissimo - one of the most moving pages ever written, notwithstanding the sparse notes - the music gradually recedes, serene and resolute.

The performance is by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Mozart, Concerto for two pianos, in E-flat

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, called Nannerl in her family circle, lived to be 78, far surpassing her brother Wolfgang Amadeus. But that was her misfortune, being Mozart's sister. Nannerl was as musically gifted as her genius brother, playing the violin and harpsichord to perfection by the time she was seven years old. So when little Wolfgang was six and already shining as brightly as Nannerl, who was eleven, their father Leopold took the two children on tour to the courts of Paris, Vienna and London, to let the world know about the divine miracle: he had two genius children. However, when they were a little older, Leopold, a man of his time, chose to favor the boy's career, and Nannerl had to stay at home.

Maria Anna Mozart (1751 - 1829)

But Wolfgang never turned a blind eye to his older sister's remarkable talent. If he was on tour, or later, from Vienna, he always sent Nannerl a copy of his keyboard creations, to ask for her opinion, while encouraging her to study them carefully.

The Concerto for two pianos No. 10 is supposedly composed to be performed, at some time, with Nannerl. Mozart completed it in 1779 but there are hints that the first sketches were much earlier, from 1775, while the two teenagers were living in Salzburg. It is his only concerto for two pianos and the last one written before he left Salzburg for Vienna, where he arrived at the age of twenty-three to follow a path of his own, and thus escape the overwhelming but kindly domination of his father Leopold, who, incidentally, never willingly participated in this idea of independence.

Concerto for Two Pianos No. 10 in E-flat, K. 365
A concerto for two pianos differs from the solo piano concerto format because the very nature of the ensemble assumes that there will be a certain amount of dialogue between the two pianos as musical ideas sprout from one and the other, as if they were in competition. With Nannerl in mind, perhaps, Wolfgang had the finesse to give the two soloists equally striking passages, although the concerto is much more than an opportunity for the musical rivalry of two siblings in front of an audience.ts that the first sketches were much earlier, from 1775, while the two teenagers were living in Salzburg. It is his only concerto for two pianos and the last one written before he left Salzburg for Vienna, where he arrived at the age of twenty-three to follow a path of his own, and thus escape the overwhelming but kindly domination of his father Leopold, who, incidentally, never willingly participated in this idea of independence.

Movements:
00:00  Allegro - Vigorous at times and lyrical at others, it presents no particularly relevant musical ideas. Mozart seems to be just having fun, letting his ideas flow freely.
10:16  Andante - A fine, delicate movement. The orchestra, for the most part, remains in the background, allowing the enchantment to emerge from the couple in the solo parts.
17:31  Rondo: Allegro - The finale is energetic to a high degree, full of rhythmic momentum in the rondo's main theme. One of the great moments in Mozart's rondos is the novel way in which Mozart returns to the main theme. This movement is no exception.

The performance is by the extraordinary South American pianists Martha Argerich and Maria Joao Pires.

Vivaldi, "L'Estro Armonico" - Concerto 10

Twelve concertos for string instruments

Antonio Vivaldi was born and lived most of his life in Venice. There he served for a long time, albeit intermittently, as a violin teacher and composer at the Pio Ospedale della Pietá, a residence for orphan girls who were provided with an education with special emphasis on musical instruction. Vivaldi's task was to compose music for the girls to play at religious ceremonies and festivities, often accompanied, or conducted, by Vivaldi himself.

But the continuity of the job was not assured. Notwithstanding the composer's genius, his tenure at the institution was periodically put to a vote. In 1709, shortly before the publication of L'Estro Armonico, Vivaldi found himself out of a job, dismissed by a few votes. It was the first of his many departures from, and subsequent returns to, the Ospedale.

L'estro armonico (like The Harmonic Inspiration) is a set of twelve concertos for string instruments, published in Amsterdam in 1711. It is the author's opus 3, the two previous ones being sonatas, so this is the first set of concertos to be published. Much later, in 1725, the collection Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione would appear, which contains the famous Four Seasons.

Its publication was not only the most celebrated event in Italian orchestral music of the first half of the 18th century but also the most important work in all European orchestral music. In the opinion of scholars, L'estro armonico took Corelli's solid concerto style and infused it with a luminosity, muscularity, and virtuosity that completely determined the future history of the genre.

The "rediscovery" of Vivaldi
The ensemble was suitable for various transcriptions. The earliest and most important are those made by Bach as part of a series of arrangements for keyboard and organ during his stay in Weimar in the 1710s. It is these transcriptions that will play a decisive role in the "rediscovery" of Vivaldi during the first half of the 20th century, which is almost a serendipity since musicologists were not so much interested in Vivaldi himself but rather in how to deepen their knowledge of Bach through his transcriptions.

Concerto No. 10, for four violins, strings (two violas and cello) and continuo

The tenth work in the collection is the Concerto in B minor, RV 580. A work in three movements for four violins plus orchestral ripieno (the tutti) of violins, violas, cello, and basso continuo. As in the other concertos, the Allegro alternates between continuo and ripieno. In the central movement, spiccato chords from the ripieno alternate with imitative arpeggios by the soloists (a central episode predictive of the Winter slow movement from The Four Seasons follows). The final allegro: a dancing theme in ternary compass signature of the ripieno alternating with sparkling sections by the four soloists.

Bach's transcription of this piece is his Concerto in A minor for four harpsichords, strings and continuo, BWV 1065.

Movimientos:
00:00  Allegro
04:28  Largo e spiccato (spiccato, indication for the strings, the bow should move along the strings discontinuously, in small jumps).
06:56  Allegro

The rendition is by the Karol Szymanowski Music School Orchestra, of Polonia, conducted from the keyboard by his conductor Marcin Grabosz.