When Chopin arrived in Paris in September 1831, the city had just under a million inhabitants and its size was a far cry from that of modern Paris. It was a year and a little more since the "three glorious days" of July 1830, which led to Charles X's abdication and the ascension to the throne of the last king of France, Louis-Philippe, putting an end to republican aspirations. In the autumn of the same year, Henri Délacroix – Chopin's friend in the years to come – painted his famous composition, La Liberté Guidant le Peuple, commemorating the toppling of Charles X –not the French Revolution, as is often believed.
A year later, the atmosphere in the city was still rarefied, and Chopin must have noticed for his first impressions were sweet and sour.
"...Here one finds, all at the same time, the greatest luxury and the worst filth, the highest virtue and the greatest vice..."
At the same time he is pleasantly surprised at the way Parisians behave in the streets:
"What a curious city! All the French prance and chatter, even if they don't have a penny...".
The Parisian salons
That was the open-air atmosphere. In the salons of the decadent aristocracy, of the rising bourgeoisie, also in those salons where Republicans and Saint-simonists (of which George Sand was one of its champions) met, the "romantic" evenings multiplied. Poets, painters, musicians, writers, and singers united their talents in the evenings, to exchange visions of society and the world. It was there that the "poet of the piano" would make his profit, with his veiled touch of preludes and nocturnes.
Nocturne Opus 15 N° 2
Between 1829 and 1846 Chopin wrote 21 nocturnes, 18 of them published during his lifetime and spread over several opuses. Published in 1831, the two nocturnes of opus 15 were dedicated to Ferdinand Hiller, a German pianist contemporary of Frédérick.
The nocturne No. 2 of opus 15 fully represents the structure with which Chopin, from the original proposal of the Irishman John Field – inventor of the genre –, endowed his nocturnes: a ternary structure whose second section must establish a clear contrast with the first:
Thus, obeying the Doppio movimento mark, which tells the performer to double the speed, the piece acquires in its second section (2:00) another "inner" rhythm (five beats against four) with an expressiveness radically different from the first. The third section (2:45) is little more than a re-exposition of the first, slightly modified for the purpose of closing the piece.
The rendition is by the great Cuban-American pianist Jorge Bolet, who died in 1990.
When the set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin by J.S. Bach was published in Bonn in 1802, its author had been dead for 52 years. Even after its publication, the work was largely ignored until the middle of the 19th century when the famous violinist Joseph Joachim made them known, joining his name to Felix Mendelssohn's as a judicious rediscoverer of the baroque master and his work.
Sonatas for solo violin
Begun around 1703 while Bach was in Weimar, the Sei solo-a-violino senza basso acompagnato – as Bach titled them – were finished in 1720 when the maestro was serving as Kapellmeister at the court of Köthen. It is not known if they were performed during the maestro's lifetime, but Bach himself likely made them known, as his son Carl Philipp Emanuel tells us "from his youth until well into his old age, he played the violin limpidly and passionately".
Sonata No. 2 BWV 1003
Since its rescue by the violinist Joachim, the work has been widely disseminated, being the object of arrangements for the most diverse instruments, among them, for solo cello, harp, organ, piano, trombone, trumpet, viola, string trio, and guitar.
Likewise, of the group of six sonatas and partitas, the one that has received the greatest favor from the public and performers is the sonata No. 2. Its movements are the typical four movements of the sonata da chiesa: slow-fast-slow-fast. In this case: Grave - Fugue - Andante - Allegro.
The charming artist Tatyana Ryzhkova, born in Minsk, capital of Belarus, in 1986, offers us her no less charming rendition of the second movement, Fugue, in an arrangement for solo guitar.
One day in the summer of 1898, Sir Edward Elgar, the foremost British composer since the days of Handel and Purcell, was improvising at the piano in his home, absorbed and distracted, when suddenly a theme attracted the attention of his wife who, respectful and restrained, asked him to repeat it. Edward gladly agreed. Encouraged by the interest of his spouse, Edward not only repeated the theme but also made variations on it for a long while. When finishing, he thought that the material could be used to make a series of musical portraits of his friends, who would have to guess the variation that portrayed them. Sir Edward, among his many hobbies, was also a lover of riddles.
Enigma Variations Thus was born one of the masterpieces of Edward William Elgar, born in 1857 in Broadhead, England, knighted in 1904, and died in Worcester in 1934.
Popularly known as the Enigma Variations, the Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra Opus 36 consists of fourteen variations on a theme that remains hidden – in Elgar's words, "is never played". Of all of them, the ninth variation is the jewel of the group.
Sir Edward Elgar (1857 - 1934)
Elgar titled it "Nimrod", in reference to an Old Testament patriarch described as "a brave hunter in the presence of the Lord". The variation IX is supposed to portray Augustus J. Jaeger, a close friend of Elgar's whose surname in German means "hunter", and who was a permanent critic and spiritual support of the author in difficult times, which he certainly had.
The welcome to the work Despite the fascination of the refined orchestration, the critics received the Variations... with some astonishment, but at the same time, they were perplexed by the programmatic content, which was considered not very serious – just musical portraits of the composer's friends. Nevertheless, a few years later the work was successfully performed in St. Petersburg, garnering the admiration of Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1910 it had its premiere in New York under the baton of Gustav Mahler.
"Nimrod" and the Pathetique Sonata
Legend has it that while in a state of depression, Elgar was visited by his friend Jaeger who, upon seeing him in that condition, reminded him of all the torments Beethoven had gone through, ending his harangue with an inflamed intonation of the Adagio from the Pathetique Sonata.
Elgar would thank the gesture by "quoting" in his composition the opening bars of the adagio in variation IX, "Nimrod."
The rendition is by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by maestro Leonard Bernstein.
The contract signed by Joseph Haydn upon entering the service of Prince Paul Esterházy in 1761, stipulated in its article 5 that the musician had to "appear twice a day in the antechamber to find out whether His Highness is willing to audition for music or not." A great attentiveness, for the prince, of course. Unfortunately, His Highness could not enjoy it for long as he passed away after a year, leaving no offspring. He was succeeded by his brother Nikolaus, nicknamed "the Magnificent".
The Esterháza Palace And as magnificent as he was, Nikolaus found that the family residence – the palace of Eisenstadt – was going to be insufficient for his work and purposes, so he decided to build a large castle on marshy land bordering a lake.
The palace was called Esterháza and was completed in 1784, when the waterfall in front of the central building was inaugurated, an ornament in addition to the opera house, the puppet theater, the library, the picture gallery, and the 126 rooms.
1768, Haydn in Esterháza But long before the construction was considered completed, Haydn and his musicians had already settled there in 1768, for Prince Nikolaus, patron of the arts like his brother, kept the composer in his post, without changing a comma in the contract. Until Nikolaus' death in 1790, Haydn remained in the service of his prince and patron, whom he served for twenty-eight years.
Nikolas Esterhazy (? - 1790)
Six sonatas for the prince During his last years in Esterháza, Haydn hardly wrote any works for the court of Nikolaus because, already famous, his output was in demand by an increasing number of publishers, from Paris, Vienna, and London. But earlier, in a single year, 1773, he wrote six sonatas for the prince, which, following the Hoboken catalog, are numbered from 21 to 26. Unlike those produced in the 1880s – strictly for fortepiano – these were written to be performed indistinctly at the harpsichord or at the piano.
Sonata No. 23 in F major In a rendition by the pianist Sara Daneshpour, we present here Sonata No. 23, structured in the usual three movements: fast - slow - fast. It is a work of great conceptual maturity, and demands from the performer a certain virtuosity, if not in the extended and beautiful adagio, certainly in the fast movements that surround it.
The large and generous inheritance that Nadezhda von Meck received after the death of her husband, allowed her to maintain, or acquire, a series of estates and palaces scattered throughout Europe, which she enjoyed very much. Among the most opulent was the one in Florence, the Villa Oppenheimer, today a hotel called Villa Cora.
The villa, located on the Paseo dei Colli, was a sumptuous dwelling, with princely rooms, surrounded by a vast garden populated by statues corroded by the sun and rain, where Nadezhda – Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's epistolary lover, and patroness – moved every summer with her family, accompanied by a butler, a couple of Russian waitresses, three Italian servants, and a detachment of cooks, footmen, and coachmen.
By Nadezhda's villa
In the late autumn of 1878, Nadezhda's last letter to Pyotr Ilyich mentioned the villa and contained an invitation for the composer to visit Florence. Thus they could both get away from the Russian winter. Piotr telegraphed his acceptance, and Nadezhda set about looking for lodgings, as the invitation was not to the village itself but to the surrounding area. Nadezhda found two lodgings.
After receiving the details of both, Piotr opted for the one on the outskirts, half a kilometer from the Oppenheimer villa, where the composer arrived on December 2.
A grand piano dominated one of the rooms, which Nadezhda had furnished as only she could.
Tchaikovsky, in 1878
The proximity then gave rise to a strange ritual: each passing day after day in front of the other's house, on foot or by car, giving each other advance notice of their itinerary; they attended the same shows without crossing paths; and, carried by a servant, they sent letters to each other daily. At the end of December, Nadezhda left Florence. Piotr took off for Paris soon after.
Serenade for strings in C major
In September 1880, Pyotr Ilyich added a brief note to his profuse correspondence with Nadezhda: "... I have ready the sketches for a symphony or a string quartet... I do not yet know which one...". A few weeks later, Nadezhda received another note, this time more specific: "The serenade... arose from an innate impulse, that is, it was born of the sole freedom to think [but] it is not devoid of true value."
Of course, Piotr had not composed his masterpiece, but within its genre, the Serenade for strings opus 48 is a perfect piece and a worthy successor of the typical eighteenth-century serenades, of which Mozart was the great master. It consists of four movements bearing a title, and lasts about thirty minutes.
The rendition is by the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin, conducted by the young German maestro Mateusz Moleda.
Movements:
1. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo - Allegro moderato: Written in homage to the great genius of Salzburg.
2. Valse (11:00): Moderato - Tempo di valse: One of Tchaikovsky's most popular pieces, for its grace, inspiration and elegance.
3. Élégie (15:20): Larghetto elegiaco: The necessary contrast that, despite its heartfelt melancholy, never goes beyond the framework of a serenade.
4. Finale (24:21): Andante - Allegro con spirito: It is built on Russian folk themes full of energy and vitality.
