Ravel, "Alborada del gracioso", from Miroirs Suite

The heritage he received from his Basque mother

Great was the surprise of Manuel de Falla when the summer of 1907 Maurice Ravel told him in Paris that the only link he had with Spain was having been born near the border. On the occasion, Ravel and his close friend the Catalan pianist Ricardo Viñes had played for him a four-hand version of his latest work, the famous Spanish Rhapsody.
De Falla was very astonished by the Spanish character of the piece and so he asked the question, and the answer surprised him even more. In fact, Ravel was born in the Lower Pyrenees, in Cibure, a small French commune that barely was part of France. His mother, a woman with an exquisite conversation, was of Basque origin and had spent her youth in Madrid. It was all due to his mother's heritage.

But the Rhapsody was not Ravel's first flirtation with Spanish airs. Nor would it be the last. Two years ago he had finished Miroirs, a suite for piano in five movements, the fourth section of which he entitled, in Spanish, Alborada del Gracioso. The five pieces are dedicated to five friends, all members of a group of artists, musicians, and poets who met under the name of Societé des Apaches, a term coined by the pianist Viñes to signify a brotherhood of marginalized or proscribed artists, or simply outcasts.

Ravel, in 1825 (1875 - 1937)

Ricardo Viñes was also the one who premiered Miroirs in 1906, at the Érard Hall in Paris. Later, at the request of Sergei Diaghilev, creator of the Russian ballets, Ravel orchestrated La Alborada... with great success; and it is thus, in its symphonic version, that it has become best known, but from time to time, a daring pianist boldly confronts La Alborada in an encore.

Alborada del Gracioso
The short play, of course, is written in the popular Spanish vein, and its very Spanish title deserves a few words. By "alborada", we mean a song at the hour of dawn, and "el gracioso" is the witty and sly character of the Spanish comedy theater of the Golden Age who winks at the spectator in search of his complicity.

In its seven-minute length, it demands considerable virtuosity. It is dedicated to the music critic M.D. Calvocoressi, who wrote of it with great admiration, noted it as "a great independent scherzo in the manner of Chopin or Balakirev... the humor and lively fantasy of La Alborada deserve the highest praise."

The rendition is by Ukrainian pianist Vitaly Pisarenko, winner of the 2008 Franz Liszt International Competition.

Chopin, Piano Concerto in E minor

Young Frédérick, looking for a teacher

When Chopin settled in Paris in 1831, six years had passed since the German-born pianist, teacher, and piano maker Friedrich Kalkbrenner had done the same. After a long period in London as a pianist and businessman, he arrived in the City of Light, the center of European musical activity at the time, with the label of "the best pianist in Europe", made up by himself. Twenty-one-year-old Chopin, a newcomer, came to him for advice and contacts. Kalkbrenner offered to make him an accomplished virtuoso within three years if he would take lessons with him.

Chopin, having a second thought
It is true that Chopin did not have a piano teacher until then. Those who gave him the basic tools were his teachers in Warsaw, but one was a violinist and the other a composer. So it is not surprising that he wrote enthusiastically to his parents and sisters that he intended to stay in Paris for "about three years," precisely the time frame suggested by Kalkbrenner. But his enthusiasm for his potential teacher waned as, with the weapons he already possessed, he dazzled those attending the Parisian soirées where he was invited to play. Finally, Chopin resigned Kalkbrenner's support but distinguished him with the dedication of his Concerto in E minor, when it was published in Paris in 1833.

Young Chopin, by Ary Scheffer

The second concerto
It was the second piano concerto Chopin wrote, but the first to be published. For this reason, the publisher assigned it No. 1. The first had been the Concerto in F minor, which would be published three years later, in 1836, and consequently designated as No. 2.
Both were composed in Warsaw, when Chopin was between 19 and 20 years old, and had their premiere on the occasion of the numerous soirees organized to bid farewell to the young virtuoso who was leaving Warsaw with the idea of being away for perhaps "about three years", but who would never return.

Concerto No. 1 in E minor, opus 11
There has been no lack, then or now, of opinions about the weakness, or the lack of ingenuity or brilliance of Chopin's orchestration. "Uninteresting", is the most common imputation. It happens that the young composer does not have as models the Beethovenian or Mozartian concerto, but those of his contemporaries, less notable (Hummel, Hiller, or Kalkbrenner himself), in which the piano is openly the protagonist, with the orchestra on a secondary plane, in charge of the initial exposition of the themes and of underlining the moments of great expressiveness in support of the soloist. What they all agree on is that piano writing is unparalleled.

Movements:
There are three, typical of the period:
00        Allegro maestoso
22:02  Romance. Larghetto
33:38  Rondo. Vivace

Olga Scheps performing live at Tonhalle Düsseldorf with the Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio, conductor Agnieszka Duczmal.

J.S. Bach, "Musical Offering"

A personal present to Frederick II "The Great"

For seven years, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Bach's second son, had to put up with his patron's burdensome request to invite his father for being able to hear the old master live at the court in Potsdam. Back in 1740, Carl Philipp had arrived at the court of the King of Prussia, Frederick II The Great, so nicknamed because of his skills in the military arts (among other arts, such as playing the flute). From then on he was a court harpsichordist and chamber musician, poorly paid and phlegmatically exploited by Frederick, who had the habit of asking Carl Philipp for the obligatory accompaniment for the expression of his inner world, at any time of the day or night.

The 62-year-old father of modern harmony left Leipzig and finally arrived in Potsdam on May 7, 1747. Joyful, Frederick II the Great escorted the master through the corridors and rooms of the royal residence of Sanssouci, making him stop at every keyboard on the way, and inviting him to improvise a fugue on a theme that the king claimed as his own invention. Bach stayed there for two months in the company of his son and Frederick.

After returning to Leipzig, the master revisited Frederick's theme. He expanded it, added ideas to it, dressed it up in various forms, and dedicated the result to the monarch. He published it two months later.

"Musical Offering", BWV 1079
In its final form, the set of pieces consists of ten canons, a trio sonata (for flute –of course–, violin and basso continuo), and two ricercares (an old word for fugues). The work responds to a sort of obsession Bach had in the last decade of his life: the writing of cyclical works, on a large scale, where to explore exhaustively the contrapuntal possibilities of a brief and simple theme.

The master had already made brilliant forays into this in the Goldberg Variations of 1741-42. And at the time of the Offering, he was simultaneously working on The Art of the Fugue, his farewell act in this remarkable autumnal passion.

Frederick's response
The reception on Frederick's part seems, sadly, to have followed the fate of the Brandenburg Concertos. Frederick went off to war shortly after receiving the scores, and to this day it is unknown whether he loved them or not, or whether he ever played the sonata on his transverse flute, accompanied by Carl Philipp Emanuel, naturally.

Bach did not specify any instrumentation for the fugues and canons. It is customary to play them on keyboard instruments, but they can also be performed on other instruments. In 1935 they were orchestrated by the composer Anton Webern.

Ricercar at six – six-voice fugue
The complete performance of the work takes approximately one hour. Presented here is the eight-minute Ricercar a 6 (six-voice fugue) section, in a version by Israeli pianist Asaf Kleinman, on the maestro's birthday, which would have been 334 years old for the occasion.

Schubert, 8th Symphony, "Unfinished"

Little Franz, experiencing a creative block

Franz Schubert's Symphony in B minor is traditionally assigned the number 8 when it is actually number 7. And it is called the Unfinished Symphony because it has two movements, although there is nothing to suggest that Schubert had in mind to add a third one, to complete it. It was never premiered during the composer's lifetime and audiences only learned of it almost forty years after the death of little Franz. These considerations are part of the mystery surrounding the creation of this symphony, considered by scholars to be the first great romantic symphony.

The years 1818 to 1822-23 were critical for Franz, creatively, as well as intimately. In February 1818 he completed the Sixth Symphony and in 1822 he embarked on the Wanderer Fantasy. In those four years, little Franz, who was characterized by a certain tendency to procrastinate, began and abandoned a dozen major works, including, of course, the symphony now called "unfinished," begun in the fall of 1822 and abandoned in early November.

The little maestro began writing the symphony without a commission, without an immediate diffusion program and never mentioned it in his correspondence. Having written the first two movements, he sketched a trio and a scherzo on the back of the last page. And that was all. He never took up the work again. And clearly, he had only six years to live.

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)

The Challenge
The reasons for the abandonment have been widely discussed. On the one hand, a great disappointment of the composer is adduced, not being able to advance the sketches of the scherzo in a way that was on par with the two magnificent previous movements, already orchestrated. This was a Beethovenian challenge, the construction of a grand finale. It should not be forgotten that by those years the Bonn master had already written almost all of his symphonies, an achievement Schubert could not fail to notice.

The syphilis
At the end of 1822, on the other hand, little Franz contracted syphilis, an unglamorous disease accompanied by physical and emotional trauma. The disease completely incapacitated him, and that is when he gave up the task. By the spring of the following year, he had regained some of his strength. He was accepted as an honorary member of a musical society and sent the first two movements as a sign of recognition. The work was put away on a desk and soon forgotten. It languished there until 1860 when it was "rediscovered". It was finally premiered on December 18, 1865, in Vienna.

The AI contribution
In our time, having already started the 21st century, the newspapers inform us that a computer would have finished the unfinished symphony of the master Schubert. We will certainly have to see it, and hear it.

Symphony in B minor, No 8 - Movements
Surprisingly, its only two movements alone are enough to give the symphony the status of a masterpiece and make us forget the existence of any other fragment.

00:00  Allegro moderato - Its clearly romantic character made a famous musicologist say: "After a few bars of introduction, the clarinet and oboe begin in unison a sweet song over the soft murmur of the violins. A low exclamation runs through the hall: Schubert!"
18:06  Andante con moto - Here, the tempo and dynamic contrasts are more pronounced. Less violent and dramatic than the first, this movement is not yet without intimately tragic traits, which made another scholar, somewhat overdrawn perhaps, proclaim it "a premonition of the grave."

The performance is by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of German conductor Christoph Eschenbach.

Charles Gounod: Funeral March of a Marionette

A reflection on the brevity and toils of life, even when you are a puppet

French composer Charles Gounod entered the Paris Conservatoire at 18, and by 21 he was on his way to Rome as a prizewinner of the coveted Prix de Rome. There he focused on 16th-century sacred music with such intensity that he considered becoming a priest. But in the end, music won out.

On his return to Paris, the composer met the mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, a renowned diva in the artistic circles, who secured the commission for his first opera, Sapho, from the Paris Opera. It was the beginning of his career as a composer of operas, with Faust and Romeo and Juliet, the most outstanding and for which he is remembered today, in addition to the most famous of the Ave Maria, the one built on the first prelude of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.

But the war was to come. Between 1870 and 1874 (well past age 50) Gounod lived in England, fleeing the upheavals of the Franco-Prussian war. While there, he composed a lot of music, mainly religious. But he also took the time to compose a short piece for piano, light natured, although, curiously, it is a funeral march.
In 1872, Gounod had begun writing a piano suite which he called Suite Burlesque, a satirical work intended to mock the personality of a music critic of the time. Gounod wrote the first piece, Funeral March of a Marionette, but the critic died, and Gounod abandoned the suite.

Charles Gounod cartoon, 1879
(1818 - 1893)

The revival, through Hitchcock
Later, aware of its popularity, Gounod orchestrated it in 1879. Others made arrangements of it for various instruments. In the first half of the 20th century, it was recorded many times, incorporated into the cinema, and used as a musical curtain in several radio programs, and later, on television.
According to Alfred Hitchcock, he heard it for the first time in a 1927 film. He loved it, and thirty years later, he incorporated it as a theme song in his television series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", which began in 1955. From that appearance, the little work acquired great popularity, although no one could identify its author, a similar experience to the overture to Rossini's Guglielmo Tell, made known to the general public by the series "The Lone Ranger".

Funeral March for a Marionette
The little piece, barely five minutes in length, has never lost its charm, and also tells a story:
The marionette has died in a duel held with another member of the puppet troupe, and the funeral procession begins in the direction of the cemetery, in a march rhythm, of course. As the piece progresses, the music takes on a more cheerful character because some members of the procession, exhausted by the march, seek relief at an inn on the road where they have a drink, commenting on the many virtues of the deceased. After a while, they rejoin the procession, which is already entering the cemetery, once again in marching time. The final closing of the gates, later, invites a reflection on the brevity and toils of life, even when you are a puppet.

The performance is by the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, conducted by Óliver Díaz.