Von Weber, Overture to "Der Freischütz"

Carl Maria von Weber, cousin of Constance, Mozart's wife, was only 27 years old when he became director of the Prague Opera in 1813. He stayed there until 1817 when he went to Dresden to organize and conduct the German Opera. This task would force him to engage in a hard fight with the Italian lyric theater that in those days was monopolizing the audiences. By the way, they considered the idea of a German opera almost a contradiction in terms, despite the existing brilliant tradition of the singspiel, exemplified by Mozart's unparalleled Magic Flute.

Der Freischütz - A landmark opera
However, it was precisely under these circumstances that Weber was to compose a pivotal opera in the evolution of German dramatic music, thus paving the way for the emergence of Richard Wagner's proposal embodied in his "musical dramas" – so called by its author – thirty years later.

The opera in three acts Der Freischütz was begun on July 2, 1817, and finished on May 13, 1820. Regarded as the first German romantic opera, it premiered in Berlin in 1821 under the direction of its author, with immediate success. Shortly afterward it premiered with similar results in Vienna and Dresden.

Carl Maria von Weber

(1786 - 1826)

The Plot

True to his spirit of reading popular legends, Weber took inspiration from a very old Central European story centered on the figure of the "Freischütz", a hunter who makes a pact with the devil to obtain arrows that never miss the target, even if it is the devil himself. To the popular story, Weber added some romantic ingredients: the hunter is in love, and in his struggle to win the love of his beloved he turns to the Devil so that the girl sees him as the most skilled hunter in the whole region.

Today, the work is still performed quite regularly. And its beautiful Overture, as a concert piece, is a must for orchestral ensembles all over the world.

The Orquesta Joven (a very young one), a fraction of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, conducted by Rubén Gimeno.

C.M. von Weber, "Invitation to the Dance"

During his short life (39 years and months) Carl Maria von Weber wrote three operas, all three a success with audiences and critics, thus allowing him to be recognized as the initiator of German romantic opera. But he was also a brilliant pianist, and for the instrument, he wrote sonatas and concertos, as well as a number of short pieces, among which his most popular piano work, Invitation to the Dance, stands out.

Published in 1819, the work is dedicated to his wife, the singer Caroline Brandt, whom he had married two years earlier. At the time, the composer was director of the prestigious Dresden Opera, working intensely on the writing of the work that would be his greatest contribution, the opera Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter), which successfully premiered in 1821.

Carl M. von Weber (1786 - 1826)

The first concert waltz
Invitation to the Dance is the first concert waltz in the history of music, that is to say, it is the first piece in waltz form written to be listened to rather than danced. And despite not being danceable, the piece, with programmatic content, tells the story of a dance: a young man invites a beautiful girl to dance, who graciously accepts. After fluttering around the ballroom to the rhythm of a sequence of waltzes, they say goodbye and never see each other again.

In 1841, Hector Berlioz developed an orchestral version that helped to popularize the piece even more.
Presented here is the original piano version, highly demanding for the performer, not so much for the audience, who can joyfully attend to the generous sequence of simple waltzes. Be careful, however, not to burst into applause after the last resolute chords, as there is still a quiet coda, the real finale, to be heard.

The rendition is by the Russian pianist Peter Laul, at the Marinsky Theater in St. Petersburg.

Mozart, Piano Concerto No 2, K. 39

The salon, a meeting place for sophisticated social circles in Paris, played an important role in the cultural life of the 18th century. People talked there about literature, painting, music, poetry. Also about decoration, "good dress", and "good taste". By the middle of the century, good taste, or good tone, had imposed the tradition of inviting people to tea "English style". A sort of cocktail of our days, but at an earlier hour. It was accompanied by succulent dishes, which were consumed while listening to a group of musicians invited for the occasion.

At the Palais du Temple
The painting by Ollivier that heads this article illustrates the scene. Accompanied by his full court, the Prince de Conti celebrates an "English tea" in the four mirrors hall of the Palais du Temple, in Paris. On the left, as part of the group of musicians, a child is seated at the harpsichord... is Mozart. The painter is paying homage to the visit of the Mozart children to Paris in 1763. Wolfgang was then seven years old.

The pastiche
In Mozart's time, it was a widespread custom to give a "public" concert with fragments of various works. Gradually it also became a healthy custom (as widespread as it was) to compose one's own work by taking pieces from different authors. It was called "pasticcio", as it resembled the so-called operas, constructed with different arias to suit the abilities of different singers. Mozart was no stranger to pastiche, at least in his first four concertos. But that was the way of composing. Whether it was good or bad was another matter.

Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major
Along with three others (K 37, K 40-41), Mozart would have composed it at the age of eleven, back in Salzburg after the extensive family tour for more than three years through Europe.
The vast majority of scholars attribute it to Mozart, although it is important to note that the manuscript is almost entirely in the handwriting of Leopold, the father. However, all agree that the piano part may have been improvised by Wolfgang and committed to paper by Leopold.

Movements:
The materials Mozart used to construct the concerto for piano and orchestra come from sonatas attributed to a pair of German virtuosi whom Mozart admired, and whose work he may have encountered in Paris.

00:00   Allegro spiritoso
05:12   Andante staccato
11:05   Molto allegro

The performance (audio only) is by the excellent American pianist Murray Perahia, accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra.

Chopin, Prelude Opus 28 No 6

When Chopin traveled from Paris to Majorca in 1838 in the company of George Sand and her children, he had finished only two preludes of the 26 he was going to compose. But the remaining ones were sketched out. He had worked on them for long periods, in 1836 and 1837, and his intention was to finish them there, in the peace and quiet offered by the "island of calm", as it was then called. We know that the Mallorca winter proved to be not very calm and that the stay was not entirely pleasant, but Frédérick still managed to finish his preludes.

Its fabulous construction ("I travel through strange spaces" wrote Chopin) was witnessed by Georges Sand:

"... In those moments he composed the most beautiful of those brief pages that he modestly called preludes. They are masterpieces. Several of them bring to mind [...] funeral songs.... Others are melancholy and soft [...] Others bear a mournful sadness and at the same time they enrapture the ear, they tear the heart."

Camille Pleyel, his friend and publisher in Paris, was handed the finished preludes in January 1839. For all of them, Chopin asked for four thousand francs, the approximate equivalent of about three months of teaching. Dedicated to Pleyel, the French edition appeared in September of that year. Shortly thereafter, they were published in Germany and England.

Prelude No. 6 in B minor

Unabashedly steeped in "a mournful sadness", the brief piece of fewer than two minutes length claims from the left hand the steady sustaining of an unremarked lament, a chant, an elegiac melody, while the right hand plucks simple chords with regularity.

The prelude was played for Chopin's funeral (also No. 4) by the organist of the Madeleine church. We have no doubt of the emotion that must have gripped the souls present on that October 30, 1849, at the last farewell to this other magnificent but complicated soul that Chopin was.

The rendition is by South Korean pianist Chi Ho Han, at the 2015 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. 

Richard Wagner, "Rienzi" - Overture

Robert Ley, a well-known and highly corrupt Nazi party leader who committed suicide in his cell during the Nuremberg trials, once asked Hitler why he had decided to open the annual party meeting with the overture to Richard Wagner's opera Rienzi. The dictator replied thus:

"...It's not just a musical question. At the age of twenty-four this man, an innkeeper's son, persuaded the Roman people to drive out the corrupt Senate by reminding them of the magnificent past of the Roman Empire. Listening to this blessed music as a young man in the theater at Linz, I had the vision that I too must someday succeed in uniting the German Empire and making it great once more."

Well. At the end of the war, Germany did not end up greater but rather reduced to rubble. The anecdote, however, serves to illustrate Hitler's curious fascination with Rienzi, the mythical hero of Wagner's work who will end his days trapped and defeated.

The play, whose full title is Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes, is based on a novel of the same title, a 19th century best seller by an English author. It tells the story of Cola di Rienzi, a papal notary turned political leader, who lived in medieval Italy and managed to defeat the noble classes of Rome by handing over power to the people. His vicissitudes will end when he must face, with a few followers, his fatal destiny.

R. Wagner (1813 - 1893)

With texts and music by Wagner, the opera was written between July 1838 and November 1840. Its premiere, an apotheosis, took place in Dresden on October 20, 1842, and it represented the musical consecration of the composer at the age of twenty-nine. The Flying Dutchman (1841), Tannhäuser (1843), and Lohengrin (1845) were soon to follow.

The play is extensive. Originally it had five acts and its representation would take more than six hours. Wagner wrote shorter versions later, but it is still rarely performed today, although its Overture still enjoys wide public acclaim.

The Orchestra of the Franz Liszt University of Music, Weimar, conducted by Nicolas Pasquet, performs Rienzi Overture.