Tchaikovsky, Romanza F minor, for piano

 
Nine years before making the fatal blunder of marrying Antonina Milyukova, the young 28-year-old author Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was on the verge of making the same mistake, organizing for himself a rehearsal of the disaster of his own life. Fortunately, on the occasion it was the fiancée herself who thwarted the plans, by the simple means of abandoning her fiancé to marry another.

A prima donna

It was 1868 when Tchaikovsky met the Belgian soprano Désirée Artôt, five years his senior, who was then on tour in Russia as part of an Italian lyric company. They met at a palace party and seemingly became infatuated with each other. Something more Artôt on Piotr Ilich than this one on her, because in the course of the friendly relationship prior to the vital decision it was Désirée who was sending the daily letters and invitations, while Piotr Ilich thought that it was better to see each other only once in a while.

A life together...

By the end of 1868, however, they both began to think seriously about marriage. But Désirée's mother, who was traveling with the artist and had an eagle eye, did not take long before she learned of the composer's sexual preferences. She did not approve of the liaison and convinced her daughter that it was not good for her career to become engaged to a novice composer. For his part, Tchaikovsky, unlike nine years later, began to glimpse that engagement to a prima donna was not the best way to prevent the steady advance of rumors and gossip.

Désirée Artôt (1835 - 1907)

Désirée switches her mind

The decision was postponed. They arranged to meet in the summer of 1869, in Paris. But the meeting did not take place. In September of that year, on the way to Paris from Warsaw where the company had gone after leaving Russia, Désirée married a Spanish baritone, seven years her junior and a member of the lyric company. Tchaikovsky learned of this through third parties. As he would later say, she was the only woman he ever loved. The Romanza in F minor is dedicated to her.

Romanza in F minor, opus 5

Composed in November 1868, the short piano piece will be added to the young composer's creative corpus, which by that time included a cantata, an overture, a symphonic poem, a symphony, and two operas. Years later, Tchaikovsky would destroy the symphonic poem and the two operas, and renounce the cantata, the overture, and the symphony. But the Romanza in F minor will remain unscathed to such a phenomenal degree of self-criticism. Today, with its sentimental melody and simple three-part structure, it is one of the Russian composer's most performed solo piano works.

The performance is by Iranian-born American pianist Sara Daneshpour.

Georges Bizet, Suites from "Carmen"

Despite entering the Paris Conservatory before the age of ten, winning the first prize in solfège just six months later, being awarded first prize in piano at the age of 14 and, finally, obtaining the coveted Prix de Rome at 19, the French composer Georges Bizet often found it difficult to have his works performed. And on the occasions when he managed to overcome the obstacles during his short life, his works generally received a cold reception.

So it was the case, for example, with the 1862 opera Ivan IV, based on the life of Ivan the Terrible, which was only staged for the first time in 1946! Furthermore, on the occasions the first reception was favorable, as happened with La Jolie Fille de Perth of 1867, some financial difficulties of the organizers forced the performances to be canceled after only 18 stagings.
It seemed to be the fate of Georges Bizet.

Georges Bizet (1838 - 1875)

Carmen
And the case of his masterpiece and final work Carmen was no different, although in this case the difficulties could be anticipated, due to the drama's subject matter, starring a strong-willed gypsy and not a fragile maiden. (The performance of the protagonist was described by one critic as "the very incarnation of vice"). First performed, after the usual delays, on March 3, 1875, it had a hesitant reception, although after a while it began to meet with public approval. But Bizet did not get to know it. He died three months after the premiere, before his 37th birthday, convinced that he had conceived a new failure.

Carmen Suites
Some years after Georges Bizet's death, his close friend and collaborator Ernest Guiraud made two compilations of arias, preludes, and interludes from the opera, making up two orchestral works that he called Suite N°1, published in 1882, and Suite N°2, from 1887. Each of the suites is made up of six pieces. The version presented here is a "mix" of both suites and contains only four pieces, three of them from the first suite, and the famous Habanera, from Suite No. 2.

00      Preludio - In the opera, it came after the overture.

3:52  Aragonesa - Introduction to Act IV. This piece and the previous one make up the first "piece" of Suite No. 1.

6:58  Habanera  - Carmen's aria from Act I; included in Suite No. 2.

9:28  Los toreadores  - taken from the Prelude to Act I and the March of the Toreadors from Act IV.

The performance is by the youth ensemble Symphony Orchestra and Mixed Choir of the Kranj High School, Slovenia, conducted by its director, also Slovenian, Nejc Bečan.

Leroy Anderson, "The Typewriter"

The son of Swedish immigrants, American composer Leroy Anderson spoke nine languages. Therefore, at the beginning of World War II, he was recruited by the army to work as a translator and interpreter. Soon promoted to the rank of captain, he was assigned to the Scandinavian section of the Pentagon's Military Intelligence Service. At the end of the war, he was offered the post of military attaché in Sweden, but Anderson declined the offer as he felt it was time to return to his first vocation, music.

Leroy Anderson, Harvard University Band Director, 1929

The Beginnings
After earning a Master of Arts degree in music from Harvard University in 1930, he had pursued doctoral studies and in 1936 composed his first piece, which he presented to Arthur Fiedler, renowned conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, an ensemble specializing in light music and popular arrangements of classical music.

The piece, Jazz Pizzicato, delighted Fiedler, but since it was only 90 seconds long, he asked Anderson for an additional composition in order to complete the three-minute recording on a 78 rpm record of the time. Highly motivated, the composer responded on the fly with the missing seconds: Jazz Legato. It was the beginning of his career as a master miniaturist.

Leroy Anderson (1908 - 1975)

A master in miniatures
In 1952 Anderson was well known in the USA and Europe as a remarkable creator of sparkling "orchestral miniatures". Two years later, he ventured into somewhat larger works by composing a piano concerto that did not receive good reviews. Anderson responded by pointing out that the work had indisputable merits, which was not to say that it could not be improved.
But his miniatures continued to gain in popularity, and by the 1950s there were dozens of television broadcasts incorporating his short pieces as a theme song or musical curtain. But it was The Typewriter, unique work for typewriter and orchestra, that set the seal on his career.

The Typewriter
Less than two minutes long, it was composed in 1950 and premiered the same year by the Boston Pops Orchestra. The piece incorporates as a solo instrument a typewriter, whose performer is not a skilled typist or its female equivalent but one of the percussionists, a professional musician whose technical skill and knowledge enable him to follow the indications that Anderson wrote for the "instrument".

Miguel Roa conducts the Spanish group "Músicos Para la Paz". Soloist: Alfredo Anaya.

Beethoven, Septet op 20

By the time he composed his only piece for the unusual combination of seven instruments (three wind, four strings) – also called Septet and completed in 1800 – Beethoven was 30 years old, had been settled in Vienna for seven years, and deafness had begun to trouble him seriously. But it was still two years before he confessed his unfortunate situation to his brothers in the famous Heiligenstadt Testament. In the meantime, he developed a huge chamber music production to satisfy the musical craving of his noble friends.

But it was also not bad appealing to a wider audience. That is why, in December 1800, in connection with the Septet already published, Beethoven wrote to his publisher: "...in view of the customs, the three wind instruments could be transcribed... for one more violin, one more viola, and one more cello...".

It happened that the nobility and gentry had just discovered nature. So, the music that bourgeois and noble amateurs could play in open-air gatherings was in great demand. For the same reason, the Septet was an immediate success from its release, although Beethoven will always maintain a certain distance with the work. He would later say: "...there is a lot of imagination in it but little art.... At that time I did not know how to compose, now I think I do".

A handsome Beethoven, in 1803

Septet in E flat major, opus 20

Nevertheless, the work exudes great enthusiasm and energy, with no shortage of captivating and attractive solos for the instrumentalists to show off. Written in the style of the divertimentos and serenades of the closing century, its six movements certainly evoke the spirit of those forms that Haydn and Mozart had cultivated with such brilliance and elegance.

Surely made known previously in some prince's parlor, its public premiere took place at the Burgtheater in Vienna on April 2, 1800, together with the Symphony No. 1 and the Piano Concerto No. 2.
It is dedicated to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, whose strict connection to the maestro we have found somewhat difficult to elucidate.

Movements

Written for violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, and horn, the piece consists of six movements:

00       Adagio. Allegro con brio

10:57  Adagio cantabile  

20:47  Tempo di Menuetto  -  borrows its theme from the first movement of the sonata facile Opus 49 No. 2, an earlier composition despite its opus number.

24:02  Theme with variations. Andante 

31:36  Scherzo. Allegro molto e vivace 

34:42  Andante con moto alla marcia. Presto

The performance is by Janine Jansen, leading a group of instrumentalists that the Dutch violinist refers to as "her friends".

Olivier Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time - VI mov

On the train to the concentration camp, French composer Olivier Messiaen met a colleague in art and arms, clarinetist Henri Akoka, who, like him, was being transferred as a prisoner of war to a prison camp outside Görlitz, German territory that today belongs to Poland. In order to make the difficult circumstances more bearable, during the journey, Messiaen entertained himself discussing with Akoka the sketches of a clarinet piece that would later become part of a larger work, the Quartet for the End of Time, composed in the very same concentration camp a few months later.

A renowned composer
At the time, Messiaen was 31 years old and already recognized as one of the most remarkable French composers of his generation. The son of a literature professor and a poetess, the musician had grown up in an environment favoring artistic creation. A brilliant student at the Paris Conservatory, he made the organ his professional instrument of which he became an accomplished performer.

Deeply religious, his music drew inspiration from the Catholic faith as well as from Hinduism, forming a personal style that stands out for its rhythmic and harmonic richness. His richness of timbres is not far behind, sustained by a great love for nature and birdsong. All this was no impediment to his being captured by the Germans in June 1940 during the siege of Verdun and being sent to a prison camp.

Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992)

In the prison camp
While in prison, he had the opportunity to meet other soldier-musicians. Among them, a cellist and a violinist. Messiaen set about finishing the clarinet piece offered to Akoka and then composed a trio for the three musicians. A curious wartime indulgence granted to these non-combatant soldiers, brass band soldiers, allowed Messiaen to get an old piano back in Görlitz. The composer then devised a piano part and transformed the trio into a quartet.

Quatuor pour la fin du temps
Premiered in the concentration camp on January 15, 1941, before an audience of about 400 people, including prisoners and guards, the quartet takes its name from a passage in the Book of Revelations in which the angel announces the end of time. The unusual combination of instruments (violin, clarinet, cello, and piano) obeys, naturally, to the peculiar circumstances of its creation. And the uneven participation of them, to the fact that their genesis is very different. Of the eight movements that make up the piece, only half involve the four instrumentalists together. (The third movement is a clarinet solo, Akoka's, as might be expected).

"Dance of fury..."

The complete work lasts 50 minutes. Here we present movement VI, entitled "Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes"", the most characteristic rhythmic piece of the work, and where the four instruments are involved, playing, as a modern curiosity, in unison.

The musicians are: Marta Sikora, violin / Oded Shnei Dor, clarinet / Yedidya Shaliv, cello / Ayal Pelc, piano.