Borodin, String Quartet No 2 - "Nocturne"

Unlike the long time Alexander Borodin invested in most of his major works, his String Quartet No. 2 in D major was composed during a short summer vacation in August 1881. Borodin, a doctor of chemistry and cellist, had met the pianist Ekaterina Protopopova twenty years earlier, during an internship in Heidelberg as a scientist. Married in 1883, he wanted to pay tribute to the discovery of his love of two decades with the quartet that was to become the most important of the only two he composed for the genre.

The "secondary" vocation
Brief is the chamber music that Borodin wrote. The complete list of his corpus is also short. The illegitimate son of a Russian prince, the author of the popular Polovtsian Dances had access
to a privileged education that allowed him to spend most of his life as a chemistry professor at the medical academies in St. Petersburg. So music was always his secondary vocation, which did not prevent him from being part of the famous group known as The Five, Russian nationalist musicians who, by the way, did not look favorably on chamber music.

A. Borodin (1833 - 1887)

String Quartet No. 2 - Nocturne
The complete work lasts about half an hour. Structured in the traditional manner for the typical string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello), its four movements (scherzo and andante embraced by two agile outer sections) brim with warmth and bliss, reflecting the fact
that this is the work of a man in love who lacks nothing, and where, apparently, the cello sings for Alexander and the first violin for Ekaterina.

The third movement, andante, and entitled Nocturne, is the one
that has made the quartet popular and captivated a wide audience. Numerous versions proliferate in the most diverse art circles; in 2006, a Disney Studios animated short film made full use of the famous andante.

The rendition is by musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

Prokofiev, "Classical" Symphony - ...mocking the critics?

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Sergei Prokofiev was already recognized as a prominent figure of the Russian avant-garde music of the time. However, for the composition of his First Symphony, he chose to adhere to classical molds. Moreover, it was the composer himself and not some shrewd editor who subtitled the work with the nickname "Classical". Some say that with this the author was humorously announcing that the work would one day become no more and no less than a "classic". Others say that with the subtitle Prokofiev only wanted to mock the critics of the time, as he was sure to keep them intrigued for a long time.

USA, and the return
The time of its composition, 1916-17, finds Prokofiev, in his early twenties, in pre-Soviet Russia, although he will leave St. Petersburg soon, six months after the Bolshevik revolution, for the United States. His compatriot Sergei Rachmaninoff had already left in the same direction and everything seemed to indicate that things were going wonderfully there. Life behaved wonderfully, and something more, with Rachmaninoff, but not with Prokofiev. The author returned to Europe in 1922, and eleven years later he dared to make the leap to Stalinist Russia, in the company of his wife Lina and children. He managed to get by (Lina not so much, but that is another story), and there he died, in Moscow, as an artist of the Revolution, in 1953, the same day as Stalin.

Symphony No 1 opus 25, in D major, "Classical"
Whatever Prokofiev's purpose may have been, the moniker "classical" does not suit it badly, though this is not to be understood in the "neoclassical" vein adopted at the time by Stravinsky and other contemporary composers. Rather, with its simple elegance the work unabashedly evokes the spirit of the purest Viennese classicism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, although it is not lacking in surprising tonal leaps and the occasional unexpected dissonance.

Movements:
All in all, from a formal point of view, nothing is more classical than its structure in the usual four movements: rapids in the first and last, a slow second movement, and a Mozartian gavotte in the third.

00:00  Allegro con brio

04:55  Larghetto

09:05  Gavotta - non troppo allegro

10:51  Finale - molto vivace

The performance is by the symphonic ensemble hr-Sinfonieorchester - Frankfurt Radio Symphony, conducted by François Leleux.

Schumann, Romanza No 2, Opus 28

The Three Romances of Robert Schumann's opus 28 were written in 1839, intended as a work to be performed as a set. But yesterday and today, there was one piece that won the public's favor, No. 2, which pianists are used to presenting today as a stand-alone piece.
The Opus was dedicated to a certain Graf Heinrich II Reuss-Köstritz, a complete unknown today. Not so much for Clara Wieck (future Clara Schumann) because, enchanted with the lyricism of the second piece, she was not happy that it was dedicated to the now-unknown nobleman Graf Heinrich and not to her. And so she let Schumann know:

"...I being your bride, you must necessarily dedicate something else to me, though I know nothing more tender than these three romanzas, particularly the middle one, a beautiful love duet."

Indeed, Robert did not dedicate them to Clara but instead sent them to her as a Christmas present, in 1839, and that is how Clara knew them. We know that Clara was already an extraordinary pianist who spent half the year on tour in Europe. Robert understood that the three pieces were not worthy of an artist of such stature.

Perhaps the Three Romances were not up to Clara's standards, but that did not prevent Robert from holding them in high esteem. As time passed, "the middle one" Romanza became one of his most famous short works. Needless to say, Clara contributed significantly to this, making the Three Romances known to audiences in most of Europe. They thus earned a secure place in the piano repertoire, alongside Schumann's earlier works of greater scope, say Carnaval (1835) or Kreisleriana (1838).

Romanza No 2 from Opus 28

It is a relatively short piece. With its 34 measures, repetitions included, it does not exceed four minutes in the standard versions. Its 6/8 ternary meter (six eighth notes per measure) gives it the flavor of a barcarolle whose beautiful lyricism fades at the end in dying syncopations, piano and pianissimo.

Swiss pianist Luisa Splett gives us a superb rendition.

Mozart, Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457

In a sudden burst of composure and balance, in early 1784 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began a meticulous recording of his works. Thanks to this, we know today that Sonata No. 14 in C minor was completed on October 14 of that year. At least, it entered his private catalog with that date. Six months later, Mozart added to this record a new piano work, the Fantasia in C minor. Both pieces were sent in 1785 to his publisher in Vienna, the Artaria publishing house, to be published together as Opus 11, with the title "Fantasie et Sonate pour le Forte-Piano", and the opus dedicated to Therese von Trattner.

The Mozart family moves

For reasons that have never been fully elucidated, the Mozart family moved several times while living in Vienna. The years 1784-85 find them renting a house owned by Johann von Trattner, a Viennese bookseller and publisher who had built a small empire within the other empire thanks to a privilege granted by Maria Theresa that gave him the exclusive right to print all the textbooks required by the schools in and around Austria.

Therese von Trattner, dedicatée

Von Trattner was thus an impetuous and wealthy businessman, a prominent member of the rising bourgeoisie who could acquire with no hesitation a modern forte-piano for the enjoyment and solace of his family... An expensive Stein, for example, Mozart's favorite piano, which, however, he could never access. Unless the Trattner family piano had been precisely a Stein. Yes, because as befitted their interests and social status, Therese, Trattner's wife, became Mozart's pupil. And it is to her that the Sonata is dedicated, along with the Fantasia, of course, to give more soar to the offering.

The Sonata in C minor is the last of the five sonatas grouped in a "sonatistic" period that goes from 1782 (Mozart just settled in Vienna) to 1784. This production had no other purpose than to compose for his own satisfaction or for the practice of his students. Mozart was aware that the sonata form was the most complete of the "home" musical forms, the type of pieces intended for the enjoyment and solace of families, on an intimate level. Therese von Trattner, we suppose, would not have been out of place.

Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457

Ludwig von Köchel himself, the compiler of Mozart's work in the mid-nineteenth century, catalogued the work as the most important of the twenty-two piano sonatas composed by the genius of Salzburg for solo piano. Lasting around fifteen minutes in length, it exhibits a passion and intensity unusual for Mozart (we are talking about his sonatas), foreshadowing what the genre would later become in the hands of the subsequent genius, Beethoven. Moreover, in the noble and suffering adagio cantabile it is not difficult to hear "anticipations" of the adagio from the Pathetique Sonata, which would be released fifteen years later.

Movements

Like all Mozart's piano concertos, it is in three movements following the classical scheme: fast-slow-fast.

00:00  Allegro

08:26  Adagio cantabile

17:35  Allegro assai

The rendition is by the remarkable Austrian pianist and poet Alfred Brendel.

J.C.F. Bach, "the Bach of Bückeburg". Piano concerto in E major

As all we know, Johann Sebastian Bach was married twice. First with Maria Barbara, in 1707, and after her death, with Anna Magdalena, in 1721. Less said, or forgotten, is that Johann Sebastian was not only the father of harmony but also the father of no less than twenty children. Seven were born to Maria Barbara, and thirteen to Anna Magdalena. Of the twenty, only ten reached adulthood. Of these, four became great musicians. Each mother contributed an equal number of composers, two: Maria Barbara, with Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel; Anna Magdalena with Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian.

"The Bach of Bückeburg"

Of these four great composers, Johann Christoph Friedrich turns out today to be the least mentioned of Bach's musical sons. However, his long sojourn at the court of the small town of Bückeburg earned him a similar appellation to that of his two more famous brothers (Johann Christian, "the Bach of London", and Carl Philipp Emanuel, "the Bach of Hamburg"). Born in Leipzig when his father served as Kantor of the Thomaskirche in that city, at the age of eighteen he entered the service of a count established in Bückeburg. And there he remained all his life, to be remembered today as "the Bach of Bückeburg".

JCF Bach (1732 - 1795)

The end of the line

In 1755, Johann Christoph Friedrich married. He fathered a musician and composer son, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach, who married twice, like his grandfather, but had only one son, who died in infancy. Thus, this early death ended forever the Bach lineage, the most important and extensive family of German musicians of the 17th and 18th centuries.

A fruitful author  

Unlike the paths chosen by his three musical brothers, Johann Christoph Friedrich was the one who remained closest to his father's style. He is the most classical, the most restrained, and perhaps the most conservative of the musical sons of the "old Bach". He wrote twenty symphonies, a good number of oratorios, liturgical pieces, motets, concertos, and sonatas for the keyboard, although much of it disappeared with the bombing of Berlin during the Second World War.

Of his keyboard concertos, the Concerto for piano and strings in E major stands out in the preference of performers and audiences alike.

These are his movements:

00:00  Allegro

08:45  Adagio

14:01  Allegro moderato

The performance is by the French-Cypriot pianist and composer Cyprien Katsaris, accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra of the Echternach Festival, conducted by the South Korean conductor Yoon K. Lee.