Beethoven, String Quartet No 14, in C♯ m

During his lifetime, Beethoven composed sixteen quartets for strings: the first six, before the age of thirty, grouped under Opus 18; the five culminating the series, finished during the last four years of his life when deafness had preyed on the master. Of course, the quartets are not the genre that keeps Beethoven in the high regard of the general public today, but, in the opinion of scholars, they represent the most valuable and profound part of Beethoven's thought. After the Ninth was finished in 1824, the master closed the grandiose cycle of his Symphonies and Sonatas, and turned to himself. His music would become more profound and conceptual.

Most notably, the penultimate in the series of sixteen, Quartet No. 14, from 1826, astonished his contemporaries, at least his musician contemporaries. "What remains for us to write after this?" noted Schubert. A few years later, Wagner would not lag behind and write about the quartet a thoughtful article, pondering its greatness. And Beethoven himself, of course, held it in high esteem, even though it was created at the request of a Russian prince, along with two other quartets that today bear Nos. 12 and 13.

The genesis
In November 1822, Prince Nikolas Galitzin asked Beethoven to compose "one, two, or three quartets" for his personal enjoyment. True, the master had not written a quartet in fourteen years at that point, so some academics credit the prince with inspiring Beethoven to pick up the form once more. However, it so happens that the master had contacted Leipzig publisher Peters months prior to Galitzin's request, informing him that he had a half-finished quartet.

50 ducats for each quartet
Beethoven thus received the prince's commission as if it were the perfect fit. In a letter from January 1823 in response to the prince, the maestro demonstrated genuine desire for the assignment and committed himself, optimistically, for "the end of February or, at the latest, the middle of March." He also stated his fee, fifty ducats for each quartet. In fact, it took him a little bit longer. And, from that point on until his passing, Beethoven won't produce another work of that stature. It has been noted that No. 14 in particular is the most ambitious piece he has ever tried.

String Quartet No 14 Op 131 in C♯ minor
The work was completed in May 1826, just under a year before the composer's death. It was published in 1827 but was not performed in public until 1835 although it is possible that the master heard it, privately, before his death.
Large dimensions work, it is unusually structured in seven sections, which are played without interruption. However, scholars consider it to be the usual four movements to which two brief interludes plus a fugal introduction have been added.

Movements:
00:00  Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
06:40  Allegro molto vivace
09:39  Allegro moderato (first interlude)
10:27  Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile (the longest movement, in the form of a theme and variations)
23:13  Presto
28:37  Adagio quasi un poco andante (second interlude)
30:00  Allegro

The performance is by the American String Quartet.

Joaquín Rodrigo, "Concierto Andaluz", for 4 guitars

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a joke spreading in Paris, a prank that Spanish people did not like at all. It was said that the best Spanish composers were French. The gossip, however, had some substance. In fact, in those years it was difficult to find anything more Spanish than the Andalusian dances of Bizet's Carmen, or Chabrier's rhapsody España, or even Ravel's Bolero. So when Joaquín Rodrigo arrived in Paris in 1927 to study composition with Paul Dukas, he had to redouble his commitment to music to put an end to such talk.

After finishing his studies, Rodrigo returned to Spain to devote himself entirely to composition. But fame was slow in coming. In 1940 he premiered in Barcelona the work that would give him universal recognition, the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, a work that definitively affirmed his musical personality. His contribution to the incorporation of the guitar as a concert instrument is invaluable: the Fantasía para un Gentilhombre, of 1954, composed on themes by the baroque composer Gaspar Sanz, crowned what the Concierto de Aranjuez had begun.

Los Romeros
In 1967, the already internationally acclaimed musician received a request from a famous quartet of Spanish guitarists, Los Romeros (Celedonio, the father, and three sons). On August 1 of the following year, a poetic evocation of Andalusia saw the light of day.
The Concierto Andaluz for four guitars and orchestra premiered at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with the collaboration of the famous quartet as soloists, accompanied by the city's Philharmonic. The sones, the color, and the Hispanic rhythms were back on stage, with honors.

Concierto Andaluz
The piece is in three movements, blending impressionistic Spanish music with baroque touches. A familiar, lively opening movement, bolero time, evokes popular dances, with strings and guitars imitating castanet percussion. It is followed by a high-flying, lyrical adagio, comparable to a similar movement in the Concierto de Aranjuez. The work closes with a vibrant and vigorous allegretto.

00:19  Tempo de Bolero 
09:09  Adagio-Allegro-Adagio
19:10  Allegretto-Allegro-Allegretto

The performance is by instrumentalists Nick and David Kvaratskhelia, Peter Ernst and Christopher Brandt, accompanied by the Merck Philharmonic Orchestra, which owes its name to ancestral pharmaceutical entrepreneurs, the Merck family, since the seventeenth century. Wolfgang Heinzel conducts.

Fanny Mendelssohn, piano suite Das Jahr (The Year)

Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix's older sister, was as talented and precocious a pianist and composer as her brother, if not more so. She enjoyed the same musical education and toured like him half of Europe under the generous patronage of Abraham Mendelssohn, the father, a banker. Saving some obstacles, she could have made a career as a concert pianist, choosing the destiny that Clara Schumann would later take, but she opted for composition. And composition, in those years, was almost exclusively a male domain.

Fanny Mendelssohn - Hensel
(1805 - 1847)

The younger brother's view
Her brother Felix was also not very enthusiastic in his support of Fanny's undisputed talents. Comfortably true to the times, in 1837 he wrote: "From what I know of Fanny, I would say that she has no vocation for composition, nor does she feel a natural inclination for it." Happily married for eight years, Fanny was a housewife, in the eyes of her brother: "...to publish her works would only add to her difficulties, and I cannot say that I would approve of that," he added.

Fanny, a real pianist
All in all, Felix agreed to publish several of Fanny's songs under his name. And he was never reluctant to listen to her advice and criticism. Not for nothing, comments of the time point out that Fanny was a better pianist than Felix. At the age of thirteen, she had greeted her father's birthday by playing the 24 Preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier by heart.

A single opus
In 1846, with the strong support of her husband, the painter Wilhelm Hensel, Fanny decided to publish a collection of songs, her Opus 1. The critics were favorable, but, very unfortunately, Fanny died the following year as a result of complications from a heart attack suffered while rehearsing works by her brother. Felix would follow her within six months, and for the same reasons.

Piano Suite "Das Jahr" - The Year
About 460 works survive from Fanny, mostly songs and works for solo piano. Among the latter, a novel piano suite, Das Jahr, a sort of musical diary of the year she spent with her family in Rome in 1841, stands out.
Begun that same year, it consists of twelve sections describing or representing each month of the year. In a letter to Felix from Rome, Fanny hastens to clarify that the titles are provisional, intimate, familiar nicknames, and that she will think of something else when she has to "interpret them in society". The latter will never happen.

The rendition is by the Canadian pianist Laurence Manning.

Paganini, Sonata for guitar and violin

Not everyone seems to be aware that Niccolo Paganini, the most brilliant violin virtuoso of the 19th century, was also a talented guitarist. It is not by chance that within the context of his chamber works – somewhat forgotten, it is true – the pieces composed for guitar amount to a considerable sum. Of the five opuses published during his lifetime, let us note that No. 1, containing the 24 Caprichos by the way, is the only one that does not include the guitar. 

According to contemporary artists who met him, the Italian maestro believed that it was not worthwhile to perform on stage also as a guitarist. He had enough with the violin. Besides, his physiognomy, his height, thinness, bony hands and long legs favored the supernatural aura that surrounded him much more effectively if he remained standing with the violin than sitting with a guitar between his legs.

The works for guitar
Paganini's works for solo guitar include no more and no less than 37 sonatas and five sonatinas. But there are also works for violin accompaniment. Of the latter, the best known and performed today are the Grand Sonata in A major, opus 35, and the Sonata Concertata in the same key, opus 61, both composed around 1805, although the latter was published only in the twentieth century, in 1955.

"Sonata Concertata" per chitarra e violino, op.61
Note that the original title states that the sonata is written for guitar and violin, in that order. However, in the third movement, the liveliest, the violin takes on a certain prominence.
The piece lasts less than fourteen minutes but includes the three standard movements of the time:

01:00  Allegro spiritoso
08:35  Adagio, assai espressivo
11:58  Rondo: Allegretto con brio - Scherzando

The rendition is by American guitarist Eliot Fisk accompanied by Italian violinist Chiara Morandi.

Allegri's Miserere, taken in loan by Mozart

The Pontifical Musical Chapel, that is, the schola cantorum of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, has had a permanent choir for five hundred years. Some original pieces have been composed for it. The most famous is the one that begins with the words Miserere mei, Deus (God, have mercy on me), popularly known as Miserere, composed around 1630 by the Italian priest and composer Gregorio Allegri to be performed during Holy Week. Regarded by the Vatican as the exclusive property of the papal choir, its copying and distribution were punishable by excommunication. What no one expected was that an attentive auditor would be able to learn the piece by heart and transcribe it to paper. 

The attentive auditor
As part of their first trip to Italy, after visiting Milan and Verona and being entertained and celebrated there, Leopold Mozart and his son Wolfgang Amadeus arrived in Rome in high spirits for Holy Week in 1770.

Gregorio Allegri (c.1582 - 1652)

Drawn by the mystery of the prohibition, they attended the Sistine Chapel on Holy Wednesday and listened attentively to the interpretation of the Miserere.
On his return to his lodgings, the little fourteen-year-old Mozart transcribed onto ruled paper those inaccessible twelve minutes of polyphonic music sung a capella by... two choirs of four and five voices!
On Good Friday, when the piece was to be repeated, father and son returned to the chapel to check the accuracy of the transcription, which needed only a few minor corrections.

A legend?
Undoubtedly, the story has all the characteristics to resemble one of many legends about the superhuman musical abilities of the young Mozart. But unless Leopold was in the habit of falsely impressing his own wife and daughter, the following words sent by Leopold to Salzburg cannot but make the veracity of the anecdote undeniable:

"You have often heard of the famous Miserere in Rome, which is so greatly prized that the performers in the chapel are forbidden on pain of ex communication to take away a single part of it, to copy it or to give it to anyone. But we have it already. Wolfgang has written it down and we would have sent it to Salzburg in this letter, if it were not necessary for us to be there to perform it. But the manner of performance contributes more to its effect than the composition itself. So we shall bring it home with us." 

The Knight Mozart
One might think that the Mozart family was not pious and obedient enough but, truth be told, the papal prohibition was never so strict. Allegri's work could be requested by high officials of the church or political power and, although rare, such requests were welcomed and authorized. And in Mozart's case, when Pope Clement XIV learned of the piece's copying, not only did he not excommunicate the child prodigy, but he called him to the Holy See to salute his art by naming him Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur. 

In the rendition by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, the masterwork of Allegri, being asked in loan by little Mozart, in 1770.