Ligeti: "Lux Aeterna", for a mixed chorus, 16 voices a capella

 
In 1964, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick set his sights on making a film that would explore man's relationship with the Universe. Four years later, "2001: A Space Odyssey" was released to mixed reviews: "Monumentally unimaginative," wrote one critic. Another, on the other hand, noted that it was "a magnificent success on a cosmic scale." With some derision, a third noted: a work "somewhere between hypnotic and dull." Today, fifty years after its premiere, critics agree with the popular opinion of its time: a work of genius.

In this popular enchantment, the soundtrack played a very prominent role. At first, Kubrick opted for original music, but halfway through opted for pre-existing music: some very well-known, some known in certain circles, and some completely unknown. To this last category belongs the work Lux Aeterna, incorporated by Kubrick into the soundtrack without asking permission from the author, the Hungarian composer György Ligeti.

Kubrick incorporated no more and no less than four works by Ligeti into the film without canceling rights. Ligeti learned of this through a friend who suggested he go to see the movie with a stopwatch. He found that a good half hour of the film contained his music. But he didn't make a fuss. He simply sued the filmmaker, demanding compensation for one dollar. We ignore how the conflict ended. We only hope that in their subsequent work together (The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut) Kubrick had learned to behave.

György Ligeti (1923 - 2006)

Born in Hungary in 1923, a survivor of concentration camps, Ligeti was part of the great Hungarian exodus of 1956, settling in Germany where he was able to soak up the burgeoning development of contemporary music. He quickly joined the avant-garde, and soon began to produce works captivating for their boldness and complexity, often within very free rhythmic frameworks.
From 1960 onwards, the warm reception to several of his works transformed him into one of the prominent authors of the European avant-garde. After all, then, Ligeti was not so unknown when Kubrick took the liberty of borrowing his works without permission.

Lux Aeterna, for a mixed choir

This mysterious and rather gloomy but very beautiful work is written for a mixed choir of 16 voices a cappella, that is to say, without accompaniment. The words, in Latin, are taken from the traditional Requiem Mass of the Catholic liturgy. Composed in 1966 using the technique known as "sound mass", introduced by Ligeti in the sixties, it results in a body of sound that dispenses with rhythm and melody, using harmony to produce variations of vocal timbres in time.

At just over eight minutes long, it seems to suggest, with its whispering texture, a universal presence capable of permeating everything. This is what the voices emanating from the monolith, in the famous scene of Kubrick's film, arouse.

The rendition is by the Taipei Chamber Singers, conducted by its director Chen Yun-Hung.

Chopin, Polonaise - Fantaisie in A-flat

Throughout his life, Chopin wrote at least twenty-seven polonaises, the first of which was when he was only seven. The last was in 1846, three years before his early death at age 39. And we count "at least" 27 because at least seven polonaises have been lost; they appear in his correspondence to publishers, pupils, or friends but have not come down to us.
He called Polonaise-Fantasie the last one, for lack of a better title. So he confesses in a letter of 1845 to his Polish family, pointing out his "difficulty in finding the title of a new composition." These were only some of the difficulties. Family harmonies are fading, and so is love. He will spend that summer in Nohant, and it will be his last.

The difficulties are domestic but no less burdensome. The Sand children are no longer children. Maurice is twenty years old and Solange is fifteen. Both are entering life as difficult teenagers. Chopin does not take sides, for now. Rather, he is bored:

"The whole summer was spent here in walks and excursions in the region.... As far as I am concerned, I did not take part, because I would have found more fatigue than pleasure in it. I am tired, I am bored. My character suffers because of it and the young people experience no pleasure in my company."

Nevertheless, that year of 1846 proved to be prodigal. The three mazurkas of Opus 59, the sonata for cello and piano, the Barcarolle, and the Polonaise-Fantaisie, which had probably been outlined the previous year, were completed.

As mentioned, this "new composition" is preceded by at least twenty-six polonaises. There are brilliant, heroic, military, and tragic ones. But this time it took a lot of work for Chopin to find a suitable title or subtitle. And the question arises: why didn't he simply call it Polonaise. There was a reason. The work was far more than a familiar polonaise and, curiously, also something less.

Polonaise-Fantaisie for piano No. 7, in A-flat major, opus 61
It is one of Chopin's most important works and one of the most complex harmonic writing so only in the twentieth century the work began to be favored by audiences, critics, and performers.
In the opinion of scholars, the new composition seems more like a fantasy than a polonaise (with which Chopin, hesitantly, would have finally hit the nail on the head), a sort of melancholic reverie that, despite the atmosphere, manages to maintain the rhythmic characteristics of the traditional dance, albeit at times.
A long improvisatory introduction, marked allegro maestoso, leads into the thematic material proper.
Lasting a little more than twelve minutes, it was published that same year 1846, with a dedication to a student, Mme. Veyret, the wife of the honorary consul of Ecuador.

The rendition is by the brilliant pianist Kate Liu – born in Singapore – during her presentation at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, in 2015, when she was awarded the Third Prize.

Mozart, and the indelicate words by Maria Theresa / Piano Concerto No 1

 
Following the custom of the time, the first four piano concertos Mozart wrote are arrangements for keyboard and orchestra of movements from sonatas by other composers. They were called "pastiches". The first foray into composing for keyboard and orchestra – in the "pastiche" mode, of course – was made by Mozart in the summer of 1767 when he was only eleven years old. The family was back in Salzburg after their second European tour, which lasted three years.

Five years earlier, they had made their first tour. They visited Vienna, and Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl, four years older, had the opportunity to play at Schönbrunn Palace before Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. The Empress greeted them effusively and presented them with the gala costumes in which the children were later portrayed in paintings that are now famous.

Wolfgang Amadeus, age seven,
wearing the finery given by Maria Theresa 

But time went by, and nine years later, Maria Theresa would have some indelicate words for the Mozart family. In 1771, Mozart was in Florence in the company of his father Leopold, obeying a commission for a short opera in two acts in celebration of the wedding of Archduke Ferdinand, governor of Lombardy. Ferdinand praised the work with a celebrated "bravissimo, maestro".Leopold was enthusiastic and tried to place his son in the archduke's service.
The Archduke consulted with his mother, Maria Theresa of Austria. Maria Theresa responded by advising against the engagement: "...if they [the Mozart] are in your service they will degrade it by going about the world like beggars".By this time, Mozart the beggar had added thirteen symphonies to his four piano concertos from his boyhood days.

Concerto No. 1, K 37, in F major
Compared to his later concertos (at least, from No. 6 onwards), the first four concertos appear as "light", even somewhat naive works. But let's remember that the composer is eleven years old and, perhaps, he is just practicing writing for piano and orchestra.

Movements
Of course, there are three, in the Vivaldi style: fast - slow - fast.
01:28 Allegro (based on the opening allegro of a sonata for violin and piano by H.F. Raupach)
07:35 Andante (of unknown provenance, some scholars believe it belongs to Mozart)
13:25 Allegro (based on the first movement of a sonata by L. Honauer)

The performance is by the great Russian maestro Sviatoslav Richter, accompanied by the Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Russian conductor Rudolf Barshai.

Aram Khachaturian, Violin Concerto

In 1937, three years after graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, the composer Aram Khachaturian joined the Union of Soviet Composers, created by Stalin five years earlier. The composer, one of the leading composers of his generation, was elected two years later to a leading position of some importance. But this did not prevent him from completing that year the Violin Concerto that would earn him an award, the Lenin Prize.
The illustrious distinction, however, will not be an obstacle for the composer to be accused, ten years later, together with Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other prominent authors, of writing music contrary to the interests of the Soviet people.

Indeed, in 1948, Khachaturian was blacklisted by Commissar Andrei Zhdanov, along with the composers already named, accused of "formalism", "modernism" and other deviations from "proletarian" conduct. Naturally, Khachaturian had no alternative but to "repent", by confessing his "mistakes" in a humble apology. However, his music remained the same, unchanged. Apparently, rather than his music, the Politburo was concerned about his participation in the Composers' Union, considered by that time a bastion of incorrect music. In any case, from then on, the composer managed to combine art and politics with remarkable skill.

A neo-romantic work
Now, if the maestro's music contained irreverence, it was far from presenting the characteristics and features of the music of his more daring colleagues, say, Shostakovich. Clear examples are the ballet Gayane, from 1942 (with its famous Sabre Dance), or the ballet Spartacus (which won a Stalin Prize! in 1959). The Violin Concerto of that laborious year, without going any further, is an openly romantic, clear, expressive work, which immediately gained popularity and has never left the world stages until today.

Violin Concerto in D minor
Like all the maestro's music, folkloric (Armenian) elements permeate the work, through exuberant rhythms and melodic fragments repeated obsessively. Structurally, it does not overstep any limits, ascribing to the traditional three-movement format in a fast-slow-fast sequence. The first is in sonata form, the second is a lyrical interlude, and the third is a brilliant concluding rondo.

The work is dedicated to the Russian maestro David Oistrach, who was the soloist for its premiere on November 16, 1940.

Movements:
00:22  Allegro con fermezza
15:33  Andante sostenuto
28:58  Allegro vivace 

The rendition is by Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan, with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, conducted by Tugan Sokhiev.

Bernstein, Dance at the Gym ("Mambo") / Orquesta Sinfónica Infantil de Venezuela

Throughout his career, Leonard Bernstein had to sustain a constant struggle to achieve and maintain a healthy balance between all his extended talents as a conductor, composer, pianist, classical music popularizer, and well-known media personality. It would seem that his task as a composer could have been affected by such a workload, but he managed to leave us, at his death in 1990, a huge catalog especially rich in symphonic works and works for the musical stage. Among the latter, the musical West Side Story, a 1957 Broadway production that was made into a film with spectacular success only four years later, in 1961, stands out luminously.

The Story
The play was originally called East Side Story. It loosely told the timeless story of Romeo and Juliet and was set, of course, on New York's East Side, with a large Jewish population. But soon it was felt that a story reflecting the conflicts of rival teenage gangs, with Latino immigrants playing a prominent role, was a better fit with the times. The location was changed to the Upper West Side. It was a hit. The story of young love, with a spectacular choreographic backdrop and brilliant ad-hoc music, forever earned a prominent place in the heart of American culture.

Leonard Bernstein, in 1975
(1918 - 1990)

Dance at the Gym
Its musical highlights include the romantic ballad Maria, the mixed meter song America, Something is Coming for tenor, Tonight, the "balcony scene", and others of lesser prominence. A special place is occupied by the first act number Dance at the Gym, a Cuban-inspired, highly rhythmic mambo. In the heat of the mambo, rival gangs, the Jets (white Americans) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican Americans) fire up the engines for that night's fight.
The dance has become an autonomous piece, also an essential encore when paying tribute to Latin rhythms with the means of a symphonic orchestra.

Venezuelan Children's Symphony Orchestra
The version we are featuring is by the amazingly professional Orquesta Sinfónica Infantil de Venezuela, conducted by the English maestro and conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle, during the Venezuelan orchestra's participation in the Salzburg Festival in 2013.
On that occasion, 1,400 young Venezuelan musicians attended the festival, marking a historic milestone. Eight ensembles forged in the National System of Orchestras and Youth and Children's Choirs of Venezuela, offered, in just over three weeks, fifteen concerts. The one mentioned here was one of them.
The musicians we hear here are between eight and fourteen years old. Prior to Bernstein's mambo, these little artists delivered their version of Mahler's First Symphony.

El Sistema
The Venezuelan organization, also known as El Sistema, is a music education program whose mission is to systematize the instruction and collective and individual practice of music through symphony orchestras and choirs, as instruments of social organization and human development. Its beginnings date back to 1975, inspired by the Venezuelan maestro José Antonio Abreu. Its fruits are in sight, or, if one could say, "in earshot".

But, most unfortunately –and I can't explain it– the video can only be watched on YouTube.
I'm so sorry!