Franz Schubert, Musical Moment No 3

With the disappearance of the princes, church lords, and various patrons who had previously ensured their subsistence, Romantic musicians had to fend for themselves in the XIX century, which had a true impact on the universe of genres and compositions of the new era. The salon of the rising bourgeoisie and decadent aristocracy will take an important turn in the character of its social activities, adding to the political reflection and literary novelties, an increasing interest in art and music. The piano, in addition to being a status symbol, became a guest of honor in the salons, a sign of good taste. And for this instrument, composers would feel called upon to write short pieces for the enjoyment and pleasure of the new class.

Thus, nocturnes, preludes, impromptus, and musical moments flooded the musical universe of the early 19th century. Sometimes their publication would generate revenues that, for this new musician, deprived of patronage, could get him out of a financial quagmire, even though, as is obvious, the biggest slice remained in the hands of the publisher. It was in this way that Franz Schubert managed, for example, to get some breathing space with the Impromptus Opus 90, in 1827.

Musical Moments

The following year, suffering from illness but still in high spirits, Schubert sent to his publisher, for similar purposes, a series of six short pieces to be published as a set, though without indicating how the work was to be titled. Four of them were of recent creation; the third and last, from 1823 and 1824, respectively.

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)
by W.A. Rieder, 1825

The "French" title
The Viennese editor, following the tradition that considered it glamorous to speak and write in French, titled them pretentiously in that language, ascribing them to the genre "musical moments". But where it should have said "Moments," he wrote "momens", and where it should have said "Musicaux" he wrote "musicals". And so they were published, in July 1828, when Schubert was not in a position to ask for corrections of any kind, for by then the little master was only fighting for his life, which would finally end in November of that year.

Musical Moment No. 3 in F minor - 5 virtuosos
Composed in 1823, as already noted, it has become the most popular of the series, perhaps because of the display of a certain oriental flavor that encouraged the publisher to add the subtitle "Air Russe", this time correctly written.

Marked allegro moderato, it is presented here in a version by five piano masters, since it lasts less than two minutes. The masters are Seong Jin Cho, Yulianna Avdeeva, Vladimir Horowitz, Natasha Stojanovska, and Kit Armstrong.

Tchaikovsky, First Quartet for Strings - Andante

In 1871, a 31-year-old Tchaikovsky had been teaching harmony for five years at the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society, which would later become the Moscow Conservatory. He had come to that position following an invitation extended by his friend Nicholas Rubinstein, who at the time was serving as director of the school. But the salary was rather meager, and Tchaikovsky was forced to write articles of music criticism to increase his income, thus taking precious time away from composition.

The Quartet No. 1 - Premiere

In these circumstances, five years before the appearance on the scene of Madame von Meck and the six thousand rubles a year that came with her, the young master resolved to stage a concert with his own works and for his own benefit, which took place in March 1871. The concert included the contribution of his friend Rubinstein who accompanied some ladies of the nobility on the piano in a couple of songs, and ended in style with the First Quartet for Strings written by Tchaikovsky, composed just a month before, and which on the occasion was performed by professors of the Russian Musical Society.

Tolstoy and the Andante

The evening was a success, even financially, and constituted an important first step in the composer's career. During the rest of his life, Tchaikovsky would write only two other string quartets, and although according to connoisseurs the third is the best of them all, none is as popular as this one, No. 1, due, especially to its famous second movement, Andante. According the maestro himself recounts in his Diary, it once made Leo Tolstoy weep:

"I believe that never, in all my existence as a musician, have I ever felt so flattered and moved as the moment when Tolstoy, seated next to me, began to sob on hearing my First Quartet."

Quartet No. 1 in D major, opus 11 - Andante cantabile
It is in the usual four movements. Presented here is the second, Andante cantabile, in a performance by the Russian Borodin Quartet. It opens with a simple folk melody that Tchaikovsky would have once heard sung by a carpenter. The second theme is original, and is introduced by the first violin, at 2:29. Numerous arrangements for string orchestra and various other instrumental combinations have contributed to the movement's popularity.

Ravel, Piano Concerto in G major

By the mid-1930s, well past the age of fifty, Maurice Ravel was one of the great internationally recognized musicians.
In 1927 he created his most popular work, Bolero, which, it is said, could be heard in those days whistled and hummed in the streets. In 1928 he toured Canada and the United States on an acclaimed tour, receiving composition commissions and meeting American musicians, among them Gershwin, who asked him to give him lessons. Ravel replied that there was no need. On the contrary, it was Ravel who was captivated by the jazz twists in the music of the author of Rhapsody in Blue.

Oxford
That same year he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford. According to Ravel himself, the dazzling initial theme of the Piano Concerto emerged while he was traveling by train from Oxford to London, we don't know if it was on the occasion of the doctorate or some other.
By the following year, he had the concerto well underway. He thought of premiering it during a tour planned for that year, but the tour never took place. The composer was already 54 years old and his health had begun to decline.

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)

Piano Concerto in G major
The concerto was completed only in November 1931 and was not premiered by Ravel but by the famous French pianist and pedagogue Marguerite Long (to whom it is dedicated), during a legendary concert held on January 14, 1932, with Ravel conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra. The premiere was a great success and a few weeks later Ravel and Long toured nearly twenty European cities, to the applause of all audiences.

Jazzy harmonies and language – which the composer had experienced firsthand on his American tour –, are abundant in the first and third movements, but maintain a strictly "Ravelian" character, in the sense that they do not come across as music brought from elsewhere.

Movements:
The work is in three sections, in the traditional fast - slow - fast scheme:
00       Allegramente
09:30  Adagio assai (at its conclusion, it requires the performer to maintain an interminable trill for more than half a minute)
18:46  Presto

The performance is by the incomparable Argentine pianist Martha Argerich, accompanied by the Orchestre National de France conducted by Emmanuel Krivine.
The video includes two encores, Kreisler and Scarlatti.

JS Bach, Keyboard Concerto in F minor

When Johann Sebastian Bach left his position as Kapellmeister at the court of Köthen to assume the position of Kantor at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in May 1723, he clearly descended in rank. We say this in a figurative sense, of course, but the fact is that he went from holding the highest rank in the musical organization of the Germany of his time – in a minor court – to that of church Kantor but in a large city. In this last position, apart from composing music and leading performances in the two most important churches of the city, the maestro had to teach Latin, catechism – that of Luther –, and music, to the pupils of the Thomasschule, the public school that depended on the St. Thomas Church.

The Collegium Musicum

Four years later, the situation had become more difficult due, on the one hand, to the bureaucracy of the authorities of the Leipzig City Council and, on the other, to Bach's impetuous and somewhat stubborn character. And the disagreements increased.

Fortunately, in April 1729, he was entrusted with the leadership of one of the many secular musical societies that flourished in Germany during the first half of the 18th century, the Collegium Musicum of Leipzig.

There he had at his disposal a remarkable instrumental ensemble, which was capable of giving one or two concerts every week. For that ensemble, Bach revised and adapted the instrumental music he had composed while in Köthen.

Arrangements for keyboard

With the sole exception of the Flute Concerto in A minor, all the "arrangements" were made for harpsichord and orchestra. They exist for one, two, three, and even four harpsichords, as they were also intended to be performed at home, in the company of his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, both of whom had become skilled "keyboard players", by the time the arrangements are dated, 1730.

Concerto No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1056

Seven are the adaptations for solo harpsichord. Presented here is the Concerto No. 5 in F minor, structured in the usual three movements: fast - slow - fast. Originally for harpsichord, violins I and II, viola, and continuo, it is offered here in a version for piano and string orchestra by Sven Brajkovic accompanied by the Samobor Strings chamber ensemble.

Movements

00       Allegro moderato    Like the third movement, it probably comes from a piece for violin, in G minor.

3:39   Largo (Arioso)    The more popular of the movements. From an oboe concerto. It was also used by Bach in a cantata. Its first measures are quite similar to the Andante from Telemann's G major flute concerto, with some certainty earlier. As was the custom, perhaps Bach wanted to pay homage to his friend Telemann in this way.

6:25   Presto    Taken from a violin work, as noted above.

The video includes (10:43) the Sarabande from Bach's French suite no. 6 in E- major.

Mussorgsky / Ravel, "Pictures at an Exhibition"

The famous group of Russian nationalist musicians known as The Five, born in the 60s of the 19th century, had creators among its members who were not always exclusively dedicated to music, nor did they turn it into the profession with which they earned their livelihood. Borodin, an expert in aldehydes, never abandoned his profession as a chemist. Rimski-Korsakov was an officer in the Russian Navy, and César Cui was a military engineer. Balakirev combined music studies with engineering, and Mussorgsky, a military man when young, spent most of his life as a ministry official.

On the verge of oblivion

Now, if we make the exercise of bringing to mind the most relevant musicians of the famous group, Rimsky-Korsakov comes to mind, of course, and secondly, Modest Mussorgsky, although the latter was recognized in his time as an interesting author of songs and operas that will not stand the test of time, with the remarkable exception of his masterpiece in the genre, Boris Godunov. Precious hours will have been taken away from Mussorgsky's musical creation by his work as an obscure clerk, for had it not been for the orchestrations of his works made by colleagues after his death, we would perhaps remember him less than César Cui.

Without going any further, his most popular work, A Night on Bald Mountain, from 1867, was orchestrated by his friend Rimsky-Korsakov in 1886, five years after the author's death, gaining only then the popular favor (and it is even said to be an original work by Rimsky based on pages by Mussorgsky that did not reach completion).

The right guess of Ravel
And the case of the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, from 1874, is no different (its genesis and description, here). Also published five years after his death, although edited by Rimsky-Korsakov again, it had to wait until 1931 to be published keeping fidelity to the composer's manuscripts. And in spite of being Musorgsky's most finished piano composition and one of the most original creations of Russian romanticism, it only became known to the general public through the orchestral version that Maurice Ravel made of it in 1922. There were many previous attempts, but in the face of the fullness of Ravel's success, these have proved to be "unnecessary", in the opinion of scholars.

Modest Mussorgsky, in 1874
(1839- 1881)

Art and solitude

Modest Mussorgsky did not enjoy a good life. Constantly afflicted by nervous depression and some episodes of epilepsy, he had to face sentimental loneliness, economic hardship, and, at times, the incomprehension of his work by his peers. At the age of forty, Musorgsky was a human being in sorrowful decadence, given in some degree to drink, but even in those conditions, he had the courage to abandon definitively his position as a civil servant and become a modest pianist accompanist in singing schools. From there, sometimes an event would arise, regrettably paid, to accompany at the piano some aspiring diva who was trying to gain an audience.

Posthumous celebrity

Mussorgsky died in a military hospital on March 28, 1881, without ever having known anything close to prestige, or fame. Forty years later, the most formidable orchestrator on record, Maurice Ravel, will provide it, copiously, to keep his name high to this day.

This is the RTVE Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Miguel Ángel Gómez Martínez.