Pablo de Sarasate, "Carmen Fantasie"

Born in 1844 in Pamplona, the city of the famous running of the bulls for the San Fermin festival, the Spanish violinist and composer Pablo Martin Melton Sarasate y Navascuez, better known as Pablo de Sarasate, made his public debut at the age of eight. At twelve entered the Paris Conservatory thanks to a scholarship kindly granted by Queen Isabel II of Spain, after he dazzled the court in Madrid with his talent. Five years later, he won first prize for violin at the Conservatory.

A virtuoso concert pianist
It was the beginning of a long and successful career as a concert pianist that took him all over Europe and the United States in an almost non-stop tour that lasted three decades. Possessing a delicate touch and a virtuosity without boasting, a good number of the most significant works of contemporary composers were dedicated to him — Lalo's Spanish Symphony, Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo capriccioso and Max Bruch's Concerto No. 2 are among them.

Pablo de Sarasate (1844 - 1908)

Sarasate, the composer
Pablo de Sarasate is the author of nearly 50 pieces for violin and orchestra (or violin and piano), which were part of his sought-after repertoire. Among the most popular are Aires Gitanos, from 1878, and the Carmen-Fantasie op. 25, composed in 1883 when the opera had already won the public's favor after its failed premiere in 1875.
As he had already done with Don Giovanni and La Forza del Destino, Sarasate thought it was time to make an arrangement for violin and orchestra of Bizet's work, which was gaining more and more followers day by day, although its author had died convinced of its failure.

Fantasia - Sections
Following, the opera pieces from which Sarasate built his Fantasia:

00       Preludio - intermission adaptation introducing Act IV (Aragonesa).

02:56  Habanera, from Act I.

05:36  From Act I, episode in which Carmen mocks the officer of the guard.

08:00  Seguidilla, from Act I.

09:53  Baile Gitano, from Act II.

The performance is by Hilary Hahn, accompanied by hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony, conducted by Andrés Orozco.

Verdi, La Traviata, duet "Dite alla giovine"

In the late 1840s, with more than a dozen operas to his credit – including the highly successful Nabucco – Giuseppe Verdi was not yet rich, but he was close to it. By then he enjoyed the most complete financial independence and, lover of the countryside as he was, in 1849 he decided to buy a farm near Busetto, the town that had seen him grow as a musician. And there he took Giuseppina Strepponi, a singer he had met in the distant days of his first operas, and with whom he had become engaged after a chance meeting in Paris two years before.

Giuseppe and Giussepina, in Buseto
The people of Busetto were not amused by the return of Verdi, now victorious and famous, to live among them with a woman who was not his wife, and a singer as well. Verdi, in addition, was a widower. His first wife, Margherita, daughter of his first protector, Antonio Barezzi, had died in 1840. Barezzi was no stranger to gossip either, and when Verdi learned of his former father-in-law's disapproval, he replied with an indelicate letter.
A year later, Verdi began composing La Traviata, which tells the tragic story of Violetta Valery who must renounce her love for Alfredo so as not to tarnish the good name of a family.

Giuseppe Verdi, in 1843
(1813 - 1901)

Duet "Dite alla giovine"
In Act II, Violetta and Alfredo have already fallen in love and live together in the house she owns in the countryside, the fruit of her courtesan life. In the absence of her beloved, Violetta receives a visit from Alfredo's father, Giorgio, who has come to ask Violetta to end her relationship with his son, since his sinful behavior will only damage his family's reputation, especially now that his daughter, Alfredo's sister, is about to get married as God intended.

Violetta refuses at first, arguing that Alfredo is her first and only love, but Giorgio eventually convinces her. Violetta then sings Dite alla giovine, announcing "to the young girl" her renunciation of life with her beloved Alfredo, a sacrifice she fears will lead to her death. Giorgio then steps in to thank her for the merciful act.

In a performance by the Opéra National de Paris, Violetta: the Albanian soprano Ermonella Jaho; Giorgio: the Russian baritone Dimitri Hvorostovsky.

 

Mozart, Don Giovanni, overture

In January and February 1787, W.A. Mozart was in Prague conducting several performances of his most recent and successful opera The Marriage of Figaro when he received a commission for a new opera, which was to be based on the literary theme of Don Juan, to be premiered in Prague in October. He rushed back to Vienna to meet with Lorenzo Da Ponte, the author of the Figaro libretto. They agreed on the terms and each went about his task. While waiting for the first pages of the libretto, Mozart could well have worked on the overture but left it to the last minute.

Don Giovanni, the overture and the legend
Numerous and varied are the legends about the opportunity in which Mozart wrote the overture of Don Giovanni ossia Il disoluto punito (...the punished libertine). Some say that he wrote it the day before the premiere, others that he finished it a few hours before. A very sympathetic one refers that, after attending a merry evening on the eve of the premiere, Wolfgang and Konstance left after midnight because Wolfgang had to compose an overture. The conditions were not the best, but Konstance managed to keep Mozart awake with a pitcher of punch and tasty stories that she told him all night long. By seven in the morning, the overture was finished. Be that as it may, it was not the first time – nor would it be the last – that Mozart had composed a work in a jiffy.

The premiere in Prague
In Prague, the premiere of the two-act dramma giocoso was a resounding success. The indefatigable optimist Wolfgang Amadeus, who made a sense of humor almost a reason for living (of which he had little left, let us say in passing), wrote in this mood to a friend shortly after the premiere:

"On October 29 my opera Don Giovanni had its first performance, and was received with great applause. Yesterday it was given for the fourth time (and this time to my full benefit)... I intend to leave here on the 12th or 13th.... but everyone wants me to stay here a few more months, and compose a couple of operas. As flattering as the offer is, I can't accept it... My great grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop. So I intend to follow my sister's advice as it was handed down to her by our mother, our grandmother, and our great-grandmother, and I take this opportunity to put an end not only to this moralizing digression, but also to the whole letter."

The overture to Don Giovanni lasts just over five minutes. The Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by British conductor Daniel Harding, performs this version.

Barrios-Mangoré, "Sueño en la Floresta"

One of the main disadvantages in the composition and performance of classical guitar music is the short duration of string vibration, which makes the notes carried by a melody not long enough, contrary to what a violin or any bowed string instrument is able to produce by the simple expedient of passing the full extension of the bow over the string and, if necessary, pass it again in the opposite direction.

The tremolo
This disadvantage of the classical guitar was solved by the tremolo technique, born in the Romantic period and that the Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega brought to its climax in the second half of the 19th century, leaving it embodied until the end of time in the very popular work Recuerdos de La Alhambra, composed in 1896.

The technique, whose purpose is to extend the duration of the notes that make up the melody, basically consists of the repetition of a note using the ring, middle and index fingers, accompanied by the thumb that carries a bass resting on the lowest strings. The uniformity and regularity with which the three repeated notes are played is the key to the creation of an exquisite tremolo.

Agustín Barrios-Mangoré (1885 - 1944)

Barrios-Mangoré
As Tárrega did for Spain in the previous century, the Paraguayan composer and classical guitarist of Guaraní origin, Agustín Barrios-Mangoré forged in the first half of the 20th century one of the most extensive guitar productions in Latin America, combining the classical European tradition with the melodies and rhythms of popular Latin American musical forms.

An extraordinary guitarist, he made excellent use of the tremolo technique with short works such as El Último Trémolo – which turned out to be his last composition –, and the one presented here, the somewhat longer Un Sueño en la Floresta, in an outstanding rendition by the Scottish-born artist David Russell.

Tchaikovsky, "Romeo & Juliet" Overture

Despite his recurrent depressive episodes, before he was 35 years old Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky had definitively consolidated a career as a composer in Tsarist Russia. Between 1869 – when he was 29 –and 1875, a good number of his best works were released, including the popular Piano Concerto
No. 1, the Second and Third Symphonies, and the overture Romeo and Juliet, the first of his three works of descriptive music based on Shakespeare's dramas. The Tempest would follow, and much later, Hamlet.

First version
Setting to music the immortal tragedy of the lovers of Verona was certainly a good idea. His first intention was to write an opera, but his friend and advisor, Mili Balakirev, leader of the renowned group The Five, thought it would work better as an instrumental drama. To that end, he offered some advice, suggesting the scenes to be worked out and even the key in which they should be written. Too many suggestions for the highly self-critical author that Tchaikovsky was. He only half-heartedly listened. The premiere, in March 1870, went almost unnoticed.

Second version
When, some time later, he learned that the work had been whistled in Vienna and coldly received in Paris, he forced himself to take a closer look at the profuse correspondence exchanged with Balakirev. He wrote a second version, and hastened to publish it. Balakirev agreed that it had improved, but warned that it would have been better to keep it unpublished for a long enough time to await new ideas.

Tchaikovsky, in 1878
(1840 - 1893)

Third version - Fantasy Overture

The leader of The Five was right. Ten years later, Pyotr Ilyich wrote the third version, adding to it the subtitle "Overture-Fantasy". It is the one that today is performed on the stages of the world, surpassing in popularity, by far, the versions that in their time other authors – Berlioz and Prokofiev – made of the tragic love story of Juliet and her Romeo. The work lasts just under 20 min.

In popular culture
The various arrangements of the popular love theme (scene on the balcony: minute 7:45) are counted by the dozen, as well as its presence in the most diverse films and TV shows: in more than one episode it accompanied the never-ending and never-ended love affair between Doña Florinda and Professor Jirafales, in the Mexican series El Chavo del Ocho.

The performance is by The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Dima Slobodeniouk, a Russian conductor based in Finland with a Finnish citizenship.