JS Bach, Prelude for cello solo

It is very likely that without the invaluable collaboration of Anna Magdalena Bach, we would not have known the Six Suites for cello solo by Johann Sebastian since the original manuscripts ended up lost. It had to be Anna Magdalena who, willingly, at night in the light of a candle, decided to make a copy of them, around 1722, shortly after Bach married her after being widowed of his first wife, Maria Barbara.

Bach in Köthen
Bach, 32, had arrived at the small court of Köthen in 1717, to serve as a chapel master at the service of Prince Leopold, a great music lover and musician himself. In a first era, Johann Sebastian made very good crumbs with Leopold. The Calvinist prince considered that religious services did not require especially elaborated music, and therefore, Bach's work of that period was oriented towards not religious instrumental music.

Suites and Partitas
The Orchestral Suites, the Six Partitas for violin and the Six Suites for cello solo date from those days. Its writing is the result of the French influence exerted by the most distinguished and exquisite courts of that time, for example, that of Versailles, on which, incidentally, the wrath of the Lord will fall seventy years later.
But first, the suites will delight the modest court of Köthen. Constructed as a succession of dances with a French name lasting no more than two or three minutes in duration (courante, gavotte, sarabande, minuet, polonaise, bourré, passepied, or giga), the first movement leads them, which is usually the most important: the overture or prelude.

Prelude for cello solo in the cinema
The Prelude to the first of the six suites for cello solo, is precisely one of Bach's pieces included in the 2007 film by Catalan director Pere Portabella, "The Silence before Bach", a kaleidoscope of attractive scenes with fragments of the life of Johann Sebastian masterfully linked to today's world. One of the most innovative moments is the one that takes place in the subway cars, where 20 or 30 cellists perform the Prelude of Suite No. 1 while the train leaves the tunnels entering an empty platform, then cross with another train, whose rattling is not muted, creating the feeling that a new prelude has emerged, one for 30 cellos and subway cars, on an original JS Bach motif.

Donizetti, "Una furtiva lágrima"

The vocal style known as bel canto was born in the 17th century, flourished during the 18th century and will reach its maximum splendour and development in the first third of the 19th century, with the works of the Italian maestros Gioacchino Rossini (n. 1792), Gaetano Donizetti (n. 1797) and Vincenzo Bellini (n. 1801). They managed to combine the purity of the voice and technical virtuosity of baroque bel canto with a new eloquence that early romanticism began to encourage: the expression of human emotions.

Rossini, the older, surprised half the world when he decided to leave the stage forever, after composing his last opera in 1829. But doing so, he left the way open to his colleagues so that they cemented their own style.
Especially for Donizetti, because when his very young comrade Vincenzo Bellini left this world, Gaetano was in the stage of his life when his fame and reputation were on the top.

Gaetano Donizetti (1797 - 1848)

By 1835, the year of Bellini's death, Gaetano Donizetti had composed four of his greatest works, if not evenly greeted by critics, at least popularly successful: Anna Bolena, L'elisir d'amore, Lucia di Lammermoor and Lucrezia Borgia, and he was yet to compose La fille du régiment, another great success, both public and critical.

L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of love), a two-act comic opera premiered in Milan in 1832, is one of Donizetti's works most frequently performed today. His most famous aria is the romanza for tenor, Una furtiva lágrima, from Act II (A furtive tear). Such is its resonance today that Woody Allen did not hesitate to include it in the soundtrack of his 2005 movie "Match Point," which led another director to do the same in a more recent film, "Lovers."

Nemorino, a naive peasant in love with a rich and wealthy girl, has fallen into the deception of a charlatan who travels town after town selling a magic potion to conquer the heart of the one beloved, which is nothing more than a few deciliters of cheap wine – "the elixir of love". Nemorino has had a good drink just to verify that it has not had any effect on his beloved. But despite this, he believes that his beloved let out a tear when she saw him go away, disenchanted. A sign that she loves him, he thinks, and because of that he sings.

The rendition, the best available, by far ... Pavarotti, greeted for a minute and a half's applause.

Chopin: Sonata No 2 - Funeral March

Upon returning from the unfortunate trip to Mallorca, the "family" made up of George Sand, his two sons and Frédéric Chopin, after an escape to Geneva where the weather was adverse again, finally landed in Nohant, George Sand's summer house, in May 1839.
The house, Louis XV style, was not a mansion but had all the comforts that in the nineteenth century could be aspired to. To enjoy the countryside, every year came till there personalities such as Balzac, Délacroix, Liszt and their partner Marie d'Agoult, the famous singer Pauline Viardot-García, and another great singer, a friend of Sand (likely her girlfriend), Marie Dorval.

The summer of 1839 was no different. Surrounded by her friends and in the company of "her three children", Mme Sand is happy. In the beautiful countryside, life goes peacefully between the singing of larks and nightingales. Guests are free to do as they please, until dinner time. Sand looks after them to the extent her obligations allow it because she must write one novel after another — the pension she receives from her ex-husband is not enough to pay for the house.

The new guest, Frédéric, gets up late. He has breakfast alone in his bedroom. Then walks, writes letters. After dinner, he plays the piano for the guests, accompanies Viardot or runs a four-handed fragment with eleven-year-old Solange, to whom he gives lessons. He also composes or amends what in Mallorca managed to be outlined, despite the circumstances. In a letter to his friend Fontana, he tells him that he is working hard on the sonata in B-flat minor, "which contains the funeral march that you already know." Indeed, Chopin has decided to add to his second sonata a "funeral march" composed two years before. The remaining three movements will be completed in Nohant, that summer of 1839.

The rendition is by the Russian pianist, Alexander Ghindin. Tokyo, April 2006.

First movement. Grave - Doppio movimento
Four imposing measures introduce the first theme (doppio movimento: at twice the previous speed). Second theme: more lyrical, in 1:03 minute. Chopin was demanded not to obey the rules of the piano writing of a first sonata movement: the recapitulation of the subjects is incomplete ... lack of handling of the traditional ways ... I prefer to believe that all this couldn't care less to Frédéric. Brilliant ending.

Second movement. Scherzo
The Italian word scherzo means "joke", "game" or "charade". In Nohant, some nights, there were plenty. The puppet theater was the great fun: the cloth dolls are made by Sand; Solange and Maurice, are the actors behind the scenes; Frédéric, when he doesn't show his talent for mimicry, accompanies the piano, improvising. It has been his idea and that is when he plays around. In music no. His scherzos are not cheerful in nature, and he left it stamped on the four independent pieces that bear that name. Nor is the case of this piece. Minute 1:15: a lyrical theme, which is quoted very briefly in 6:11, which ends the movement, in complete stillness.

Third movement. Marche Funébre - Lento
Tripartite structure, ABA, that is, first theme - second - return to the first theme. The famous Funeral March of Chopin, which has served to say goodbye to as many personalities who say goodbye to this world, of all colors. On the other hand, the second theme, Chopinian to the core (minute 2:33), has been used in a shortened version by more than one lobby pianist – I know – to take a break between "Bésame mucho" and "My way". As far as I know, nobody claimed for making them listen to Chopin's funeral march while they sipped their bloody mary, delighted with life.
Fourth movement Finale - Presto. (7:07) This brief piece of closure amazed the audience, and musicologists from another century would speak of early atonality. Chopin, on the other hand, only said that: "... after the march, the left hand chatter in unison with the right ...".

Strauss Blue Danube, step by step

The son far exceeded the father. We remember the father for the Radetzky March. We remember the son for the 500 and more dance pieces, including over one hundred waltzes and as many polkas and marches, composed between 1840 (at fifteen) and 1899, the year when death reached him while he was focused on the composition of a ballet.
Johann Strauss, Jr., is the promoter of the endeavour that took the waltz from its original condition of peasant dance until its conversion into a consensual dance piece, in the Habsburg court in Vienna in the mid-19th century.

His most famous dance piece is, of course, the waltz By the Beautiful Blue Danube, whose nome de guerre, "The Blue Danube", is not unknown to anyone. The work was composed on demand: a sung waltz for the Viennese to forget the recent defeat suffered at the hands of Prussia, during the war of picturesque name – the "seven-week war" – of the previous year, 1866. The work did not please many. Nor did Johann have much confidence in it: "It was not sticky enough," he said. However, shortly thereafter, being invited to conduct in Paris, Johann decided to include in the program this battered waltz, but without the choirs. It was a resounding success. To this day.

Johann Strauss Jr (1825 - 1899)

The famous waltz, of course, celebrates the incomparable beauty of the very long Danube river, flowing through five capitals of Europe and which at some time will have been blue, although almost certainly it was not in Strauss's time either. In the twentieth century, it was set up a joint venture between neither more nor less than Romania and the former Yugoslavia in order to build a dam, there, in the very same and "beautiful blue Danube." Work began in 1964 and at the end, in 1972, the second-largest hydroelectric power station in Europe stood next to the dam. It was not heard of demonstrations or social networks claiming for a "Danube without dams."

The rendition is by the Vienna Philharmonic, 2009. The waltz is made up of five small waltzes. Its linkage and development are detailed below. We have heard it thousands of times, it is worth knowing what it is made of.

00: Introduction, largo, delicately outlines the unmistakable main theme.
0:42  Forte passage, majestic, which quickly lowers its intensity and then returns to the calm of the first bars.
1:38  After a brief accelerando at 1:17, the rhythm slows down and three descending notes by the strings, in staccato, welcome the main melody.
1:45  Section 1A. The celebrated theme played by cellos and horns, accompanied by the harp, in D major.
2:27  Section 1B. In the same tone, a somewhat playful theme.
2:42  Section 2A. A new theme slides, calm, without pimps.
2:58  Section 2B. Sub-theme, melodious, by the violins. Goes back to 2A.
3:29  Section 3A. A new theme, a little more alive, in G major.
3:58  Section 3B. A melodic passage of eighth notes; after its repetition, it will lead to a spirited intrata (4:27) that leads to:
4:37  Section 4A. The most sensual or romantic passage. Its repetition leads to:
5:15  Section 4B. A livelier moment, in the same key.
5:41  Very brief intrata that will lead to:
5:51  Section 5A. A touching melody. Its repetition ends with another intrata that will lead to climax.
6:24  Section 5B. The climax, punctuated by a vibrant clash of cymbals (propitious moment to go through the lounge from end to end, in big jumps if possible).
6:52  The coda begins. The first sections (3A and 2A) are quoted, then furious chords give way to the recapitulation of the romantic fragment 4A (7:34).
8:08  A silence that lasts a full measure precedes the repetition of the initial tune, 1A, very slow. It will suffer an abrupt cut at 8:49, to give way to the final codetta, based on an ingenious variation of 1A.
9:25  Passage in accelerando. Fast eighth notes, loudly underlined by the snare-drum roll, rise and fall and then route resolutely to the three final chords.

Scriabin, three piano pieces

The year after finishing his studies at the Moscow Conservatory, the young Russian composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin, twenty years old, damaged his right hand forever, after forcing it to make a gigantic effort in his attempt to master a very difficult piece by the Hungarian master Franz Liszt. His ungratefully small hands, which barely reached more than an octave, could not stand the effort.

The son of a government official and of an outstanding pianist, the ten-year-old Alexander had started a military career in Moscow's Cadet School in 1882, which did not prevent him from simultaneously pursuing piano studies, in which he clearly stood out as to decide and secure his entrance to the Conservatory in 1888.

There he met another star pupil, Sergei Rachmaninov, with whom he shared the same tutor, although both musicians didn't forge a deep friendship, which is reflected in the different course their careers took. If at the end of their studies, the excellent pianist was Alexander, and Sergei a notable composer, in the maturity of life, Sergei will have become a piano virtuoso, and Alexander, due to of his hand injury, will find his place among the minor Russian composers of the post-romantic period.

Alexander Scriabin (1872 - 1915)

In his youth a great lover of Chopin, like this one Alexander Scriabin will compose music almost exclusively for solo piano ― not taking into account his five orchestral works and his piano concerto. He tried to innovate in the development of harmony, and his philosophy of music was marked by a great mystical sense, to the point of believing himself a messianic figure that would come to recompose everything.

At the end of his life, he flirted with dodecaphony, performing his own harmonic experiments, with independence from the Viennese masters but without reaching their height. Today, he is especially remembered for his early works, preludes and nocturnes, mainly the 24 Preludes of Opus 11, essential pieces in the piano repertoire of our day, full of lyricism that bring to mind Chopin's harmonies, by the way, but also the poetry of Schumann and the sensual romanticism of Wagner.

From the 2010 version of the Chamber Musical Festival of Santa Fe, New Mexico, we take this balanced and correct selection of three piano pieces by Alexander Scriabin, performed by the excellent Beijing-born pianist Yuja Wang.

The young musician, today 31, earned a fair place in the circuit of international career pianists, after making her debut in 2003 successfully replacing Radu Lupu at Beethoven's No. 4 concerto, and later, Martha Argerich, committed to concerto No 1 also by Beethoven which Miss Wang simply replaced by Tchaikovski's No. 1.
Petty souls, always present in every human activity, qualified her as a replacement pianist for sick colleagues. As for me, let everyone get sick.

The selection includes:
00:00  Prelude in B-major, Opus 11 No 11
04:50  Étude in G-sharp major, Op 8 No 9 (includes a slow section)
09:18  Poem, in F-sharp major, Op 32 No 1