Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini

 
Born into a wealthy family, Sergei Rachmaninoff did not look sympathetically at the revolutionary outbreaks of the early century that would later lead to the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. So as soon as the historical change began, he went on a tour of the Scandinavian countries. Once the tour was over, he decided to go to North America with his wife Natalia in a fragile boat that set them down on Long Island in the first days of November 1918. It was not his first visit to America, but this time he would stay there forever.

Between the US and Europe
The successes of the previous visit allowed him to get convenient access the American musical circuits.  He toured the country extensively in exhausting tours as a virtuoso piano player, although this forced him to neglect his career as a composer. But at the same time, the economic well-being achieved in North America provided him to divide his life and his time between the United States and Europe. Between the years 1932 and 1939, he was able to travel every summer to the small village he had built in Switzerland, near Lake Lucerne, in the company of Natalia.

In Villa Senar
The Swiss refuge was called Villa Senar, a name formed by the first two letters of his name, Natalia's own, and the initial of her surname. In this house, Russian was spoken, Russian food was cooked by Russian servants and immigrants and friends from Russia were welcome – the pianist Vladimir Horowitz among them. If there was enough peace, Sergei would try to compose.

It was in the comfort of this home, between July and August 1934, that Sergei Rachmaninoff composed one of his most acclaimed works, Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, premiered to great success by the Philadelphia Orchestra in Baltimore, on November 7 of that year, with the author at the piano under the leadership of Leopold Stokowski.

"Creme de Menthe" Variations

The work comprises twenty-four variations on Caprice N° 24 for solo violin by Niccolo Paganini. It is clear that Sergei was not the inventor of the idea, as the Caprice composed by the violinist who had a pact with the devil has inspired a wide and diverse number of composers including not only Brahms, Liszt or Lutoslawski but also Benny Goodman.

Although the work is executed in one go, it can be divided into three sections corresponding to the three movements of a concert: up to variation 10 they make up a first movement; from 11 to 18, a second slow movement; and the rest the final movement. Due to great technical difficulties, the piece forced Rachmaninoff to drink a glass of creme de menthe prior to going on stage on opening day in order to calm his nerves, a protocol he followed every time he had to perform the piece that he himself later dubbed "creme de menthe variations".

Variation 18 (14:50) is by far the best known. Slow and surprisingly romantic in character, it is often featured as a standalone piece in various compilations of classical music. Its use in Hollywood movies and various popular songs has also contributed to the popularity of the piece and the subsequent fame of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The rendition is by the Russian pianist born in 1991 Daniil Trifonov, accompanied by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.

Scarlatti, Sonata in A major

 

The Neapolitan composer Domenico Scarlatti met Handel during a trip the former made to Venice in 1708 when they were both twenty-three years old; both had been born the same year, 1685 (as Bach, in passing). Enthusiastic about Handel's abilities, Domenico followed him to Rome to listen to his improvisations. After a while, both musicians would consolidate a great friendship.

The contest
According to a Scarlatti biographer, Cardinal Ottoboni – Handel's patron at the time and patron of art – organized a healthy competition in Rome between the two musicians to liven up the evenings of his modest court. It was about knowing who was the best organist and harpsichord player, or Scarlatti, or Handel. At the end of the contest, and for the participants remained to be friends, the noble audience declared both artists tied: the best organist was Handel, and the best harpsichordist, Scarlatti.

D. Scarlatti (1685 - 1757)

555 "Exercises"
This exalted public was right. In 1733, installed in Madrid for the rest of his days as a music teacher to his student and former princess Maria Barbara, now Queen of Spain, he will compose his gigantic work for harpsichord: 555 short pieces of a single movement that he modestly called "exercises", however highly innovative compositions that herald the future sonata form of the coming decades.

A friendly welcome
The first edition of Domenico's modest "exercises" is headed by a singular and precious warning that for the understanding of his art and his personality provides us with more information than a complete encyclopedia: 

"Reader, do not expect, whether you are a dilettante or a professor, to find in these compositions any profound intention, but rather an ingenious banter in the art to exercise you in rigorous play of the harpsichord.

No point of view or ambition guided me, but obedience brought me to publish it. 

Perhaps they will be agreeable to you, and I will more willingly then obey your other orders to please you with an easier and more varied style. 

Therefore do not show yourself more judge than critic, and you will thereby grow your own pleasure.

To specify hand position I have used the letter D to indicate the right hand, and the letter M the left hand. 

Live happily."

Happy and less judge than critic, then, one must listen to the rendition of the sonata in A major K. 322, by the 16-year-old pianist born in Hong-Kong, Tiffany Poon, during a recital in Montreal in January 2013.

Antonio Lauro, "Natalia" waltz

 
The waltz, traditional European dance by nature, arrived in Venezuela in the mid-nineteenth century to acquire there its own personality, mostly from a rhythmic standpoint. Its rhythm would radically differ from the European one. Since then it was called the Venezuelan waltz, although it would keep the harmonic and formal structure inherited from the norms of the European tradition. Over the years, its popular character was losing strength while gaining ground as a concert piece. In that status, it will later show an important development in the field of classical guitar.

The maestro Antonio Lauro
It is at this point when one of the most internationally recognized Venezuelan musicians get involved. This is Antonio Lauro, whom the Australian guitarist John Williams graciously called "the Strauss of the guitar", and whose creations are today a mandatory repertoire in the music conservatories over the world. Born in Ciudad Bolívar to Italian immigrant parents, Maestro Lauro made a brilliant career as a composer and performer in Venezuela, being regarded today as one of the main Latin American masters of classical guitar.

Antonio Lauro (1917 - 1986)

Waltz No 3, "Natalia"
His famous waltz "Natalia" – a short piece of fewer than three minutes (three sections that are repeated in full) but highly demanding  – is one of the sixteen Venezuelan waltzes he wrote throughout his life and one of those pieces that cannot be missing from the repertoire of the instrument. The work dates from 1940 and for twenty-five years it was simply called Waltz N° 3, but thanks to a father's affection in the right circumstances it took the name of his daughter Natalia, who has been kind enough to let us refer to the story here in full detail:

“When dad composed the waltz, he still hadn't married my mom and it was about 10 years before I was born. The piece was part of a booklet that had three waltzes and that was number three. When I was 15 years old there was already an orchestral version. Dad asked me to dance it – it was played by the Daniel Milano orchestra. While dancing he dedicated the waltz to me and told me that from that day on the song would bear my name ... ".

 (Correo del Orinoco, digital, August 6, 2010)

The brilliant rendition is by the Greek-born guitarist, Nicholas Petrou.

JS Bach, Concerto for three harpsichords

 
On the afternoon of December 15, 1832, three young pianists of no more than twenty-two years took the stage at the Paris Conservatory. They were the Hungarian Franz Liszt, his friend Frédérik Chopin, who had just arrived from Warsaw, and the German pianist Ferdinand Hiller. The program included, along with music by various composers, the Concerto in D minor for strings and three harpsichords, composed nearly a hundred years ago by Johann Sebastian Bach. After his death in 1750, Bach had fallen into near oblivion and his reputation as a composer openly declined, before the emergence of a new style, classicism. The homage of the three pianists thus joined the admiration previously professed by Mozart and later Beethoven who had no doubt to point out Bach as "the true father of harmony".

The new times - the mismatch
The fact is that in the last two decades of the Baroque master's life, tastes had gradually begun to change, and Johann Sebastian, true to himself, had not known how to suited to or had not wanted to. According to Anna Magdalena Bach, his second wife, once heard him say that "since I write for my own pleasure, I cannot get angry because my art does not appeal to everyone". But this attitude caused him some troubles. Around the same period of composition of the concerto for three harpsichords, a close relative – his cousin and also a musician – dedicated only 39 lines to him in a monumental dictionary of music that he was making at that time.

"Old Bach"
None of his contemporaries could have been unaware that Bach was a genius, but in his later years the general judgment was that he was a bit "old fashioned". He was a genius but from the past. A question that was not difficult for him to verify by observing how the public began to prefer the works of his musical sons over his own.

In 1747, three years before his death, the maestro was invited to Berlin by Frederick of Prussia. The sovereign informed his courtiers of the arrival of the master with the following phrase: "Gentlemen, extraordinary news: old Bach has just arrived in Berlin." The singular announcement clearly shows what, enthusiasm aside, Bach was in those years even for a great admirer like Frederick the Great: old Bach.

That is why, almost a hundred years later, Liszt, Chopin and Hiller rush to pay homage to him.

Concerto for three harpsichord, strings and continuo, in D minor, BWV 1063
Old Bach would compose concertos for one, two, three and four keyboards. Scholars agree in dating the composition of this one, one of the two concertos for three harpsichords, before 1733. The work is supposed to be written for the exercise of Bach's many children to assist their formation, and of course, thus receiving their cooperation at frequent family evenings. It is also not excluded that the oldest sons, Wilhelm Friedrich or Carl Philipp Emanuel, have even taken part in its composition.

The work is in three movements:

- Allegro

- Alla Siciliana (4:57)

- Allegro (8:51 atacca)

Netherlands Bach Society with the soloists Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Siebe Henstra, and Menno van Delft,

Beethoven and Count Waldstein

Despite having sponsored the young Beethoven's first trip to Vienna to meet Mozart, the Prince-Elector of Bonn — named Maximilian Francis, patron of Ludwig at the time — did not show, on Beethoven's return, any particular favouritism for the musician, who at his seventeen wanted to acquire a greater technical base by studying with the old masters who at that time were standing out in Vienna.

Back to Bonn - court organist
According to tradition, Mozart would have listened to him and prophesied that Beethoven would "make people talk". But the trip lasted just two months because upon learning of the death of his mother, Ludwig had to return to Bonn where he will remain for the next five years, waiting for the elector prince offered his support again, in a hypothetical second trip. Until this happens, Maximilian Francis will assign Ludwig a salary of 170 florins for his performance as the second organist of the court.

The Breuning
During this extended period, Ludwig succeeded in forging valuable friendships, including that of an intelligent and distinguished widow, Mrs. von Breuning. She welcomed him into her home as a music teacher to two of her four children. Thus, Ludwig will find a second home, more welcoming even than his own, not counting the interest his student Eleonora aroused in him.

Count von Waldstein
Through the circle of friends of the refined lady, young Beethoven will easily find well-off students. But his most beneficial contact came in 1778, when Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, a member of the Viennese aristocracy and music lover, settled in Bonn. The count readily joins Mme Breuning's circle, hears Beethoven and becomes his devoted admirer, the first aristocrat of a long future list.

Count Waldstein (1762 - 1823)

To Vienna, for good
On the death of Emperor Joseph II, in 1790, Count Waldstein invited Beethoven to compose a funerary ode, which is not finally represented due to the difficulties it entailed for the musicians. That same year, passing through Bonn on his way to London, Haydn listened to Beethoven and invited him to Vienna to take him as a pupil on his return. After Count Waldstein spoke to the precise people, on November 2, 1792, at six in the morning, Beethoven left for Vienna, from where he will never return.

His travel notebook — in the style of Chopin when he left Warsaw — received fourteen greetings and beatitudes, including one from Eleonora and one from a single aristocrat, Count Waldstein, who wrote:

"Dear Beethoven! You go to realise a long-desired wish: the genius of Mozart is still in mourning and weeps for the death of its disciple. (...) By incessant application, receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands. Bonn, October 29, 1792. Your sincere friend, Waldstein"

Unfortunately, sincere friend Waldstein had a wretched life. Obsessed with creating his own army to fight the Napoleonic forces, he squandered his fortune and his wife's in such an undertaking. Aware of this, Beethoven dedicated to him the Sonata for piano opus 53, composed in 1804. The count, dismissed as a servant of the Empire, would die twenty years later in a home for the destitute, on the outskirts of Vienna. On the day of his death, a letter arrived informing him of the death of his elder brother — and that he was now to inherit the family fortune.

"Waldstein" Sonata, or "Aurora" Sonata, opus 53

Sonata No. 21 in C major, called "Waldstein" and also known as "Aurora", is performed here by Chilean maestro Claudio Arrau, on the occasion of the 1977 Beethovenfest, which is held in Bonn every year. At the time, maestro Arrau was 74 years old.

Originally, the sonata was in three movements but following comments suggesting that the sonata was too long, Beethoven eliminated the second movement, replacing it with a short introduction (12:20) at the final movement (15:55). The movement removed became later the famous Andante Favori, much sought after by the audience in the evenings of the time (and hence its name, suggested by Karl Czerny).