Mozart: Piano Sonata in C major, K 545

The exact circumstances that Mozart was living while composing the Sonata in C major, usually nicknamed "sonatina" or sonata "facile" or "semplice", are completely unknown. The only certainty we have in this respect is the fact that Wolfgang's brought it into his catalogue on June 26, 1788, adding in his own handwriting both the brief and enlightening description: "Sonata for beginners".

The same month, Mozart and Konstance decided to move to the outskirts of Vienna, and there they went taking their eldest son and their six-month-old daughter, Thérese, who will die ten days after the move. Despite this unfortunate circumstance, Mozart is going to compose his last three symphonies that year, in the surprising span of barely six weeks. Going a little further we could speculate that between one symphony and another Wolfgang composed the Sonatina in C major because among the composer's many virtues it was his enormous capacity for abstraction from the everyday world, which allowed him to write festive scores in moments of great personal pain.

Mozart's most elaborated sonatas, including the three "Parisian sonatas", had come to existence nearly ten years ago, and the last "autonomous" sonata (if the term fits), that is, those whose invention did not need rondos or allegros elaborated beforehand – or destined for other purposes –, dated from 1784. In my humble opinion, it is surprising that an author of that gigantic category, at that point of his life and in those circumstances, devoted his time and energy to the composition of a sonatina that, beyond its deliciousness, was intended for those who just gave their first steps on the keyboard.

That is what makes this little work not performed but as bis, following the original program of the pianist, and attacking either the first or the second movement. A happy exception is Daniel Barenboim's, who offers here a great complete rendition, apparently, in a recording with no audience.

Movements:
0:00  Allegro
3:01  Andante
6:44  Rondo

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Gershwin: Porgy and Bess - Summertime

The same year George Gershwin published the version for two pianos of his Rhapsody in Blue, the novel Porgy, by the writer DuBose Heyward, became the bestseller of that year, 1926. Gershwin was fascinated with the work, which addressed the painful life of black people of the south in the United States, and thought about writing an opera based on it, for which he initiated contacts with the author to obtain the copyright and his permission.

But other projects distracted him and it was not until eight years later, in 1934, when he began to work intensely on the music for the libretto that Heyward and George's brother lyricist, Ira Gershwin, had written on the basis of the same name play, written in duet by Heyward and his wife. At the beginning of 1935, the opera was finished and Porgy and Bess was released in September of that year. The name of the co-star was added to the original title of the novel and the play, so as to compare, favourably, with Tristan and Isolde, to give an example.

The play tells the story of Porgy, a black beggar, and a handicapped person, to make things worse, who tries to rescue Bess, young black woman, from the clutches of a possessive and violent lover.
Originally four hours long, the work is divided into three acts. In the first one, a young mother sings a lullaby, Summertime, to her little son. (In the third act, Bess will sing it). And contrary to the common opinion, his verses are not Ira Gershwin's but Heyward's.

Countless versions have been made of the theme, a large part of them for jazz groups and performed by the most famous African-American music singers, among them, to name a few, Janis Joplin, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and many others.
The original song is offered here, in a concert version, with the American soprano Kathleen Battle, accompanied by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Unlike other singers, Kathleen sings in the tonality, very demanding, that Gershwin set out.

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Max Bruch: Violin Concerto in G major

The German composer Max Bruch, born in Cologne, Kingdom of Prussia, in 1838, is part of the group of minor post-romantic musicians, from the second half of the European nineteenth century. It is a time when composers live a kind of forced transition in which they are forced to prolong romantic forms and aesthetics, to please an increasingly vast public formed by an enriched bourgeoisie that does not advocate sophistication.

Bruch's Violin Concerto in G minor, from 1868, is in a certain way part of that aesthetic because in the work we can still appreciate that exacerbation of pyrotechnics and virtuosity that will be later abandoned by the authors to come, putting a definite end to the great romantic century.
Max Bruch composed three violin concertos but the only one that remains to this day as part of the violinists' standard repertoire is Concert N° 1 in G minor. Composed at age 30, it enjoyed enormous acceptance for a long time, to the extent that the author seriously thought about forbidding its performing because it impeded the interpretation of the others. Apparently, the audience today and yesterday were right.

Max Bruch (1838 - 1920)

The concert score also has a story. At the end of World War I, due to the chaotic economic situation, Bruch's editor was not in the position to pay the copyright to this and other works of the composer. Bruch did not like it at all and sent the autograph score to a couple of sisters who were a famous piano duet for whom he had already composed a concerto for piano, in order that they sold the concerto in the United States. Rose and Ottilie Sutro, two pioneering girls in the country of opportunities, sold it on their own and Bruch never got a penny for the transaction. The composer died in Berlin in 1920, not knowing what happened with his popular concerto on his tour through the new world.

Violin Concerto in G major - Finale (allegro energico)
The concerto is in three movements. We offer here the last of them – the one that made the work famous – in the rendition of the extraordinary American violinist Sarah Chang, of whom Yehudi Menuhin pointed out she was "the most wonderful, the most perfect, the most ideal violinist I've heard". Sarah is the daughter of Korean parents but was born in the USA in 1980. At the age of nine, she made her debut in New York accompanied by the New York Philharmonic.

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Chopin: Revolutionary Étude

After leaving Warsaw for Paris in 1830, Chopin stopped for a short time in Breslau, Dresden, Vienna, Munich, and then Stuttgart, where he arrived in 1831. There he learned of the Warsaw occupation by the tsarist troops and, according to some biographers, this news would have led him to compose, enraged, several piano pieces, among which the Étude N° 12, Opus 10, consequently called "Revolutionary Étude", stands out as one of the most energetic.

Before Chopin (and before Liszt, as well) the musical form Étude was linked to the practice of the instrument so that the student could approach other works at a later stage. Expressiveness was not relevant to them, much less the enjoyment of the sounds. On the other hand, if Chopin's Études have acquired their own personality in the history of music, it is not only due to their technical challenges (the pedagogical contribution) but also because Chopin took them as a pretext to create masterpieces, precisely because the inventiveness needed to its construction was going hand in hand with a marvellous musical inspiration.

Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849)

Chopin's Études, for the twelve major and minor scales, are contained in two collections of 12 études each, to which are added three others, posthumous. The first of these collections is the Opus 10 and was dedicated to Franz Liszt. The second is Opus 25 and, as the gentleman he was, Frédérick dedicated them to Liszt's mistress in those years, Countess Marie d'Agoult. Composed in Warsaw, probably Vienna, Stuttgart, and then Paris, were finally published in this latter city, between 1832 and 1837.


Étude Opus 10 N° 12, "Revolutionary"
The main technical difficulty demanded by the étude N ° 12 of Opus 10, "Revolutionary", is the handling of fast scales and very large arpeggios entrusted to the left hand, destined to sweep practically the entire keyboard, providing the entire piece with a character that we could call "resounding", condition surprisingly valid also for the diminuendo passages, in which case the challenge is even greater.

However, it should also be noted that, despite the enormous demand, the hand, an indispensable tool in this occupation, remains "comfortable" for a large part of the piece – and large hands will be more comfortable than small hands – that is, the hand (the left hand) is almost always very close to its natural disposition, thus diminishing the possibilities of fatigue and stiffness because the hand repeats structures that suit it, even when it must work at great speed.

In the early Twentieth Century, Polish pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky (1870 - 1938) surprised the musical world with some Études on Chopin's Études, composed perhaps from a somewhat daring consideration that the original demands were not many. In this work, Godowsky addresses the Chopin études and asks the left hand to do what is written for the right and vice versa, or creates versions of them for one hand, or put together two or three études in one.

The video shows the Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky playing the Revolutionary Étude in the traditional way to continue undeterred with the amazing version of Godowsky for the left hand alone. (A nice comment on Youtube about the video points out: "If I was Boris, I would be sipping some tea on my right hand while I play this. That would be Epic.")

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Schubert: String Quintet in C major

The last Schubertiad attended by Franz Schubert took place on the eve of his birthday, January 30, 1828. He was 31 years old and was to live for less than ten months.
Just three years ago, he had sent to Göethe, for the second time, a small collection of his poems set to music and dedicated to the poet. The German bard, also for the second time, turned a deaf ear.
Those were years in which the Viennese society was captivated by the entertaining and joyful operas of the talented Rossini, making the comprehension and understanding of this more complex composer, uphill. Those were the circumstances in Vienna, the composer's hometown, so, little could be expected from the German poet, who apparently was not only deaf but also discourteous.

But not all aspects were negative in those years. Some publishers thought that the 28-year-old composer's works could contain an unsuspected treasure. Little by little, they began to publish their compositions, although without stopping exploiting him, because they paid misery for them. But he was becoming known, and by 1827 he was already a musician who was quoted in foreign newspapers and magazines. There were no economic benefits but "honorary": that same year he was appointed a member of the Vienna Philharmonic Society. And in March of 1828, it was possible to organize a whole evening entirely programmed with music by Schubert, the first one and the last. The concert was a success popularly and financially and allowed Franz to pay off a large part of his debts.

Schubert and a couple of friends

What if Göethe had lent a little hand? The recognition, yes, could, or should have, arrived earlier. On Schubert death, his possessions were some clothes and an amazing number of scores, whose total value was estimated at 63 florins. The funeral and the doctor's bill cost around 250. The short, plump and nearsighted Franz Schubert, apart from being unfortunate in love, departed from this world indebted.

String Quintet in C major - Adagio
One of the greatest works of chamber music of all time was completed only weeks before his death. The work was premiered twenty-two years later, in 1850. And publication occurred  ... three years after the premiere.
The work is written for two violins, one viola and unusually, two cellos (the usual thing was to double the violas, not the cellos). It is in four movements, and the complete work lasts approximately one hour.
We present here the second movement, the Adagio. It is in ternary form (A-B-A). A melody developed in the simplest mode imaginable but of extraordinary beauty starts the movement. The central section is intensely turbulent: it breaks suddenly into the tranquility in the distant key of F minor. Towards the end, the initial idea is picked up again, ending in a climate of even more intense lyricism. The work as a whole serves as a tantalizing reminder of what might have been, had Schubert been granted more time to create and innovate.

The rendition is by the chamber group conducted by the Japanese-born German violinist Susanna Yoko Henkel.

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