Anton Arensky, piano trio

 
Anton Arensky, Russian composer, conductor, and pianist born in Novgorod, Russia, in 1861, was the son of amateur musicians. Perhaps they saw in him the realization of the professional future that had been denied to them because as soon as the child Anton showed some musical aptitudes, the family moved to St. Petersburg so that the offspring could continue his studies in the Conservatory of the city. They were not wrong, because after graduating with a gold medal in 1882, Anton Arensky was hired by the Moscow State Conservatory, joining the teaching staff as its youngest member.

A miniaturist
Despite this promising start, Arensky never managed to enter the major leagues of Russian musical writing as a composer, as his pupils Scriabin and Rachmaninoff would. His style, miniaturist, unfolded better on the small scale, because in the larger-scale compositions he was indebted, first, to Rimski-Korsakov, and then to Tchaikovsky, although without reaching their genius. In his early forties, he opted for the performer's variant and toured Russia as a successful pianist and conductor on extensive, hectic, and vital tours. His somewhat dissipated lifestyle led him to die of tuberculosis at the age of 44.

Anton Arensky (1861 - 1906)

The oblivion of eighty years
As Rimsky-Korsakov indelicately predicted at his funeral, Anton Arensky was soon to be forgotten. Indeed he was, for a long time. It is only since the eighties of the twentieth century that there has been a renewed interest in his work. Much of it has been recorded, and today it is not uncommon to attend the performance of some of his pieces on the stages of the world. Author of a piano concerto, a violin concerto, and two symphonies along with other minor works, his Piano Trio in D minor is today part of the standard chamber music repertoire.

Piano Trio in D minor, opus 32

Composed for piano, violin, and cello, the distinctly post-Romantic work was written in 1894 in memory of cellist Karl Davidov, a friend of the composer and director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory while Arensky was his pupil.

Movements:

00:00  Allegro moderato

12:30  Scherzo: Allegro molto

17:56  Elegia: Adagio

24:30  Finale: Allegro molto

The rendition is by the artists Gil Shaham (violin), Arnon Erez (piano), and Rafael Wallfisch (cello).

Beethoven, "Leonora" Overture

 
One of the rare occasions in which the concert halls around the world have been crowded with active military personnel took place in Vienna in 1805 on the occasion of the premiere of Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera. With the city occupied by Napoleonic troops, most of the audience was made up of officers and non-commissioned officers of the French army. Unperturbed, they attended the performance of the first version of the opera in the Theater an der Wien. By the way, the reception was pitiful.

Fidelio - a second version
Beethoven revised the work the following year. After rearranging some sections and reducing the original three acts to only two, it was performed again in March 1806 at the same theater, this time successfully. But the composer had begun to suspect that he was not receiving the full economic benefits that were due to him, and soon after decided to withdraw the work from the stage.

Third version
A new performance only took place in 1814, when, after the revision of some texts, it was featured at the Kärntnertor theater with the title "Fidelio" together with an overture of the same name. The work, initially inspired by the play "Leonora, ossia l'amore coniugale", by Jean N. Bouilli, tells the story of Leonora who, in her endeavor to rescue her husband – a political prisoner – from a 17th-century Spanish prison, goes to work there disguised as a man, as a certain Fidelio.

Leonore Overture No. 3 in C major, Op. 72
Each of these three versions featured a different overture. The last one, as already mentioned, featured the Fidelio overture. The first included what is known today as Leonora No. 2 (composed No. 1 for a performance in Prague that never took place). It was the second version – that of 1806 – the one performed with the overture that has come down to us as Leonora No. 3, opus 72, and which has finally proved to be the favorite of audiences and conductors, with the exception of the French who, it is said, still prefer No. 2 as it would be the one Napoleon heard.

Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Jean Sibelius, "Valse Triste"

Born on December 8, 1865, in the provincial town of Hämeenlinna, the most important Finnish composer of all time was christened Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, but at the age of 21, he decided to Frenchify his name. He had recently abandoned his law studies against his family's advice and decided to follow the impulse of his early musical vocation. Betting on the future internationalization of his career, he henceforth went by the name Jean.

Jean Sibelius was quite right. In 1892, his symphonic poem Kullervo gave him a prominent place in the musical scene of his country while warning the world that a new voice was emerging from northern Europe.

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)

Success did not dazzle him, but it gave him enough confidence to decide to start a home. That same year he married Aino, sister of the composer and conductor Armas Järnefelt, who had introduced Sibelius into the family, which also had a son, Arvid, a writer.

Valse Triste, opus 44 n° 1
In 1903, Arvid asked his brother-in-law Jean to compose the incidental music for a play called "Death" (Kuolema). The work, which had a deep psychological resonance (as was to be expected), was premiered in December of that year, together with the six orchestral pieces that Sibelius wrote for it.

The first piece was entitled Tempo de valse lente - Poco risoluto. The following year, Sibelius revised it and premiered it as a brief concert piece under the name Valse Triste. It was an immediate success, to this day.

Nothing better than the opening bars of this piece to confirm the assertion that Sibelius is capable of establishing in a few seconds a sound world entirely his own. After a more lively middle section, a somber ending will close the piece with three mournful chords. It lasts about 

The rendition is by the Estonian Festival Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Järvi.

Franz Schubert, "Trout" Quintet

In mid-1818, life seemed to have started smiling for little Franz. That summer he was hired by Count Johann Esterházy, cousin of Haydn's protector, as music tutor to his daughters. The 21-year-old musician moved to the family's country residence in the Hungarian village of Szeliz, an idyllic place where he spent four months teaching singing and piano to thirteen-year-old Caroline and fifteen-year-old Maria. The salary was not bad, and the workload was light. Franz took the opportunity to compose.

The good times
The following year was better, it's perhaps the best year of the composer's life. He gave up teaching at the school run by his father and went to live with friends in Vienna. He had time to compose, read, talk, and enjoy meetings well stocked with beer and wine with his friends. Among them was the famous baritone Josef Vogl, in Schubert's opinion the first singer who had understood him and knew how to interpret him. In the summer of 1819 they both set off for a trip to the town of Steyr, 125 km from Vienna.

The cellist Paumgartner
The small town was bustling with abundant musical activity. Franz and Vogl's performances there – especially of the lied "The Trout" composed in 1817 – attracted the attention of the wealthy businessman and amateur cellist Sylvester Paumgartner, who asked Schubert to compose a major work based on the lied. The result was the Quintet in A major, one of Schubert's most popular works. Completed in Vienna in the autumn of that year, it is dedicated, as expected, to the cellist-entrepreneur.

Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, "The Trout"
Written for the unusual ensemble of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass, it comprises five movements: allegro vivace, andante, scherzo, andantino allegreto and allegro giusto. The work uses in its fourth movement the theme of the lied of the same name.

Listening Guide

00:27  Allegro vivace  –  Written in "allegro de sonata" form, after an introduction the main theme is brilliantly presented at 1:13. Development section: 4: 42. Recapitulation: 6:40, initiated by the violin.

10:09 Andante  – Beautifully lyrical, in a minor key. Contains three motives, one of them is given to the solo piano at 12:20; the strings in the role of accompaniment.

18:01  Scherzo: Presto – With an aggressive beginning, and whose momentum does not stop for a moment, it includes several Austrian folk melodies.

22:57  Andantino - Allegretto – The movement that gives its name to the piece: Theme and variations on the lied "The Trout". The variations are six: Var I: 24:00. Var II: 24:56. Var III: 25:57. Var IV: 26:52. Var V: 27:46. Var VI: 29:11.

30:34  Allegro giusto – Simple and light. Like the third movement, it seems to contain smaller units in the style of a set of dances.

The rendition is by Natalia Lomeyko (violin), Yuri Zhislin (viola), Juan Cadenas (cello), Andrei Feigin (double bass) and Damián Hernández (piano).

Béla Bártok, Romanian Folk Dances

As his pianist mother once said, the child Béla Bartók could distinguish and repeat the rhythms of the dances she played on the piano when he could no to pronounce a complete phrase. By the time he released the first one, the boy already had in his repertoire a few songs to which he added as many as he continued to grow. Before he was five, his mother understood that the boy should pursue formal piano studies. She was not mistaken, because at the age of eleven Béla Bartók was warmly acclaimed in the Hungarian city of Pozsony where he gave his first recital which included the first work of his own, incidentally.

The composer finished his studies in 1901 at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, where he had as a companion his compatriot and future composer Zoltan Kodaly, with whom he began a lifelong friendship.

The song of a nanny
In 1902, while on vacation, Bartók had overheard an eight-year-old girl singing folk songs to entertain the children in her care. Captivated by this music, six years later the composer would travel through Hungary and neighboring countries in the company of Kodaly collecting thousands of old folk songs, in search of the genuine ones that the eight-year-old nanny had unknowingly made known to him.

Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945)

The composer's enchantment with this music lasted for decades. It was difficult to escape from its various intricacies that allowed him alternating between quiet plaintive singing and the most fiercely aggressive rhythms. The complexity and perfection he found in Eastern European folk music would exert a powerful influence on Bártok's musical language in the years to come, just as it had done in the previous century with his compatriot Franz Liszt.

Romanian Folk Dances
Composed in 1915, these are arrangements for seven instrumental melodies that Bartók collected between 1910 and 1912 in Romanian localities. The author choose those that best served his intentions because of their timbral diversity and variety. The melodies are practically those of the original source, which Bartók elaborated scarcely because his intention was none other than their transformation into small miniatures whose duration did not exceed one minute. For it, Bartók took care to indicate in the score the exact duration that each one should have.

The original version is for solo piano, but arrangements for other instruments or ensemble of instruments are numerous. Here it is presented in a version for piano and violin by Hungarian musicians Katika Illenyi and Tamas Bolba. (The miniatures are six in all because the last one contains two themes).