Shortly after the Russian master Igor Stravinsky left Europe in 1939 to settle in sunny and joyful California, he began to experience financial problems. The royalties which, until then, had assured him regular income in France, were not available in this promising new world. He blamed this, through negligence, on his former partner Sergei Diaghilev, with whom he had known success and fame in Paris after The Firebird and The Rite of Springpremieres. Faced with financial uncertainty, Stravinsky wrote several short works with the explicit purpose of making some money. Tango, for piano, is one of them.
Two years earlier the maestro had lost his eldest daughter to tuberculosis. The following year, months before the outbreak of the Second World War, his wife and then his mother died. But the maestro did not take long to get back on his feet. At the beginning of 1940, shortly after giving some famous lectures at Harvard University, he married the former Russian ballerina Vera de Bosset, with whom he had maintained a parallel relationship for many years. Soon after, Stravinski and his new wife were settled in Hollywood. The war was still raging in the old world. At the end of the conflict, both took American citizenship.
Tango, for piano Although somewhat free rhythmically, the atmosphere of the dance is unmistakable in its three minutes of extension. A light but charming piece that does not hide the lightness of its genesis. As the consummate pianist he was, Stravinsky will have amazed audiences. But he went a step further. Seeking maximum return, he tried transcribing it to different orchestral combinations, including jazz band. Finally, he topped off with two arrangements for chamber orchestra and one for violin and piano.
The rendition is by the Israeli pianist Einav Yarden.
On March 26, 1828, eight months before his death, Franz Schubert was honored in Vienna by his circle of friends with a concert devoted entirely to his music, and for the artist's benefit. It was the first and the last. Almost simultaneously, Niccolo Paganini began his concert marathon in the capital of the Habsburg Empire. Beginning three days after the tribute to Schubert and ending on July 24, the violinist stuffed the Viennese with fourteen recitals. The press did not tire of singing the praises of the "Paganini phenomenon", but dedicated only a couple of lines to his fellow countryman Franz Schubert.
Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)
The tribute concert had been a great success, even though a large part of the audience was not familiar with the composer's works. A similar apathy had been the trend among music publishers until not so long ago. It was only in about 1822 that publishers began to show a somewhat waning interest in publishing the little master's music. The response of the publisher Peters to a letter from Franz's friends requesting the publication of some of his pieces is famous: "My interest is focused on already established artists... the mission of revealing new talents is for someone else...".
Domenico, a gentle publisher But in 1828, Schubert had long had a publisher: the Artaria House. The master had learned to deal with such circumstances, and also with his precarious health, very weakened as a result of syphilis contracted seven years earlier. Against all odds, that last year saw the birth of some of his best works: the last three Piano Sonatas, the Fantasy in F minor, and the remarkable and famous Serenade, among others. Domenico Artaria, the publisher, then felt the need to request a small work for piano four hands... the fortepiano, recently introduced in the salons of the rising bourgeoisie, was crying out for a piece for the enjoyment of the family.
Rondo in A major, D 951 Commenced in June of that year, Schubert's last work for piano four hands was published the month after his death, under the title "Grand Rondo". The work does not soar to great heights but neither does it reveal a melancholy mood, which might have been expected. In its twelve-minute length, Schubert returns to a period when he wrote little gems for himself and his friends, to simply enjoy them in a pleasant evening. For the same reason, the work does not present insurmountable difficulties for either the performers or the listener.
The rendition is by the great Argentine maestros Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim.
At the age of ten, almost every day, the German composer Paul Lincke watched from the window of his house in the center of Berlin the parade of troops marching to the rhythm of military bands. One day, he simply decided to join in: "As soon as I heard the music booming, I announced to my mother that I was coming down. Leaping, I gained the street. I waited for the soldiers to approach and marched enthusiastically to the steady beat of the music toward the Unter den Linden station."
It will be precisely a march, Berliner Luft (Berliner Air), that allows his name to appear even today in the Berliner Philharmoniker's handbills.
Regarded as the founder of Berlin operetta – just as Strauss Jr. was for Vienna, or Offenbach in Paris – the composer was born in Berlin in November 1866. As was to be expected, his first contact with music was in a band, that of the city of Wittenberge, where his mother sent him after finishing high school. There he played the bassoon, although he also learned violin and piano. But he did not pursue a career as a band musician. He would soon shine as a bassoonist and songwriter in various vaudeville theaters in his hometown. Later, as a mature musician, he served for two years at the Folies Bergère in Paris.
On his return, in 1899, he premiered his greatest success, the operetta Frau Luna (Lady Moon), which narrates a singular adventure: the story of a group of prominent Berliners who travel by hot-air balloon to the moon. Five years later, in 1904, he premiered a burlesque in two acts, Berliner Luft, to which belongs the homonymous march, today the unofficial anthem of Berlin, and which every year serves as the closing of the Berlin Philharmonic's performance on the Berlin open-air stage known as the Waldbühne.
Berliner Luft March It is customary for the conductor to occasionally leave the podium and take the place and instrument of one of the musicians. Kurt Masur has been seen on the timpani. This time, it is Gustavo Dudamel who exchanges places with the first violin.
Berliner Philharmoniker, at Waldbühne, Berlin, July 2017.
In 1901, Claude Debussy premiered Nocturnes, his first work for orchestra in three sections. Although the work was well received by his fellow musicians, it did not elicit much enthusiasm from the public. But the composer was satisfied with the spirit of his peers to attempt a new project in a similar format two years later.
Completed in 1905, the orchestral work La Mer had its premiere in October of that year. This time, the composer's work was not well received by either the public or the critics. Two circumstances had conspired. To the clumsy performance of that evening (according to reviews of the time) was added the bitterness generated among Parisians by Debussy's relationship with Emma Bardac, which had led his abandoned wife, his "green-eyed Gaby", to attempt suicide two days before the premiere.
First sketches The first sketches of La Mer were elaborated in August 1903 in the Burgundy region. Its three movements intended to illustrate musically the magnificent force of the sea, its tumultuous swell, and also its seductive calm, were completed in March 1905, but not in front of a majestic ocean but before the simple shores of the English Channel, in the south of England, where the sea, in the words of the master, "folds and unfolds with British correctness".
Debussy (1862 - 1918)
The Great Wave As he later pointed out, Debussy took more inspiration from pictures and paintings depicting the sea than from the circumstance of being located in its vicinity. The master was smitten by "The Great Wave", Hokusai's famous engraving, and did not hesitate to ask his publisher to reproduce it on the cover of the printed score.
Three Symphonic Sketches - Trois Esquisses Symphoniques Although the work contains three symphonic movements that would properly qualify it as a symphony, Debussy added to its descriptive title the subtitle "Three Symphonic Sketches" precisely so that the work would not be known as an orthodox symphony, nor as a symphonic poem. In line with the rejection of all formalism, it is speculated that the composer thus managed to emphasize the originality of the work while avoiding association with any other genre.
Satie (1866 - 1925)
The critics However, as we noted initially, the reviews were not favorable at the premiere. There were even admirers of Debussy's work who were disappointed on the occasion. The commentator of the newspaper Le Temps even noted that he could not hear the sea. Nor did he see or smell it, he said - which was certainly too much to ask. Erik Satie, a friend of Debussy, best expressed the audience's feelings, though in his particular style. At the end of the evening, he would have said to the master: "My dear friend, there is a particular moment that I found impressive: between half past ten and a quarter to eleven".
Significance But the disenchantment did not last long. It only took a couple of years for the Parisian public to become enchanted, and later, for the rest of the world, until today. More than a hundred years later, La Mer is considered one of the great orchestral works of the twentieth century, proving the master right. The work does not describe the sea (if it did, we would be before a symphonic poem, without appeal), it "portrays" it symbolically, we are before a piece of music "invented in the image of the sea, a mobile, unpredictable, and free element".
The three sketches: 00:00De l'aube à midi sur la mer - evokes the awakening of the sea and the welcoming of the sun. 10:06Jeux de vagues - on the gentle and permanent swaying of the waves. 17:44Dialogue du vent et de la mer - two antagonistic forces in continuous struggle, the sea and the wind.
Paavo Järvi conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Assessing his own significance as a composer, the German author Carl Heinrich Reinecke, with an unusual candor for a romantic artist (even of late romanticism), once confessed: "I cannot but agree with those who call me an epigone" (i.e., a continuator, a lesser follower of the one being followed). Posterity has proved him right, unfortunately. Of his enormous catalog, which reaches 288 opus numbers, few works are today properly part of the standard repertoire. His Concerto for flute and orchestra is one of those valuable exceptions.
Born in Altona, Hamburgo, in 1824, the composer showed early talent. As a teenager, he was a competent orchestral violinist, and before the age of twenty, he was touring northern Germany as a skilled pianist. He did not achieve a reputation as a great virtuoso, but Franz Liszt held him in high esteem, making him the teacher of his daughter Cosima (Richard Wagner's future wife).
In 1860 he was appointed conductor of the famous Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig and shortly afterward he was giving composition lessons at the Conservatory, where he remained until 1902. In his later years, he gave up public performances but continued to compose until the end of his days.
C.H. Reinicke (1824 - 1910)
His vast catalog includes six operas and operettas, three symphonies, numerous overtures, and abundant chamber music. He also wrote four piano concertos (one less than Beethoven), as well as concertos for violin, cello, harp, and flute. Of the latter, the concertos for flute and harp, it has been said that they are among his best compositions. And of the Flute Concerto in D major, one scholar has noted that it constitutes "an important contribution to the genre".
Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, in D minor, opus 283 Written in 1908, just two years before his death, this is the last of his works in the concerto genre for soloist and orchestra. Arranged in the usual three movements, its little more than 20 minutes appeal to a more "classical" than "romantic" orchestra, in the sense that, in the absence of moments of great exaltation, the trombones, for example, or the tuba, can be dispensed with.
As scholars remark, in line with his passionate reverence for the classics, Carl Reinecke constructed fluid, decorous, elegant, and scrupulously crafted music.
Movements: 00:00 Allegro molto moderato 09:30 Lento e mesto 16:00 Moderato
The rendition is by the young Genoa-born artist Sébastian Jacot.
