Longmont Symphony Orchestra
Robert Olson, conductor
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, Op.100 (4/19/03)
Also, Charley anticipates the Colorado Chamber Players concert this Sunday.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: "Allegro, vivo e schietto" (1st movement) from Guitar Quintet, Op.143
Colorado Chamber Players (Masakazu Ito, guitar; Jerilyn Jorgensen, Paul Primus, violins; Barbara Hamilton-Primus, viola; Katharine Knight, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 9/30/09 MS
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, Opus 100
I. Andante
II. Allegro marcato
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro giocoso
``I regard the Fifth Symphony as the culmination of a long period of my creative life,'' wrote Prokofiev. ``It was intended as a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit. I cannot say that I deliberately chose this theme. It was born in me and clamored for expression. The music matured within me. It filled my soul.''
The Fifth Symphony was written in the space of a single month during the summer of 1944 at the Composers' House near Ivanovo, whence the authorities had spirited Prokofiev and other composers during the war.
Prokofiev played through the new work on August 26. ``For some reason the composer was extremely nervous,'' recalled Dmitri Kabalevsky. ``He talked a great deal about irrelevant matters and seemed anxious to put off as long as possible the moment when he would have to sit down and play for us. When he did play, however, he played marvelously well, contriving to suggest the full spectrum of the orchestra on the piano. The symphony made a profound impression on all of us and we congratulated him. He was very pleased, for he always considered the Fifth Symphony one of his best compositions.''
The Fifth was first played at the Moscow Conservatory's Grand Hall on January 13, 1945. Before Prokofiev conducted the work, an announcer came on stage and declared: ``In the name of the Fatherland there will be a salute to the gallant warriors of the First Ukrainian front, who have broken the defenses of the Germans! Twenty volleys of artillery from 224 guns!'' At that very moment, the Soviet Army was crossing the Vistula River into Poland.
After the noise of the guns came the Fifth Symphony, whose effect was electric. According to Prokofiev's biographer, Israel Nestyev, ``Prokofiev's compelling music perfectly suited the mood of the audience. The critics commented on this in their glowing reviews of the new composition. Kabalevsky, extolling the Symphony as the embodiment of man's courage, energy and spiritual grandeur, also made a special note of its profoundly national character.''
Another biographer, Harlow Robinson, writes: ``What is most striking about the Fifth Symphony...is its epic scale and character....The long first movement begins with a heroic but supple theme, free of chromatic alteration and ironic leaps....Few themes in Prokofiev's oeuvre can match it for power and expansiveness. The second theme, announced by oboes and flutes, is more chromatic, but in the optimistic `classical' idiom....The slow third movement reveals Prokofiev's debt to Shostakovich, particularly to his Fifth Symphony....Like Shostakovich, Prokofiev balances the gloomy power of the third movement with the high spirits of the two movements which precede and follow it. The second movement contrasts a gently tongue-in-cheek martial theme with a free-falling one hinting at modality, while the concluding movement is playful and jaunty, with the quirky off-beat rhythms and sour dissonances that are the composer's trademarks....In the Fifth Symphony, Prokofiev finally succeeded...in finding a language sufficiently accessible and optimistic, one appropriate to `Soviet reality,' and yet highly individual.''
The Fifth Symphony is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, harp, piano, timpani, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, bass drum, military drum, and strings.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday October 8, 2009
Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Larry Rachleff, conductor
Jennifer Higdon: Loco
Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (5/8-10/09)
Also, Charley talks Ars Nova Singers artistic director Thomas Edward Morgan, cellist Jurgen de Lemos and soprano Tana Cochran, who are featured on the Ars Nova Singers's opening concert.
John Tavener: "Death" from Akhmatova Songs
Jurgen de Lemos, cello; Tana Cochran, soprano
KVOD Performance Studio 9/18/09 MS
Born in Brooklyn, Jennifer Higdon grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and Seymour, Tennessee, and now lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Bowling Green State University. Her teachers have included George Crumb, Ned Rorem, and Marilyn Shrude in composition, Judith Bentley and Jan Vinci in flute, and Robert Spano in conducting. She has served as composer-in-residence with the Music From Angel Fire Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Walden School, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, the Prism Saxophone Quartet and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
Loco was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in 2004. In her notes for the premiere, Higdon says "The work was the last of a series of "Train Commissions,' whic h featured the orchestra playing works that reflect the trains (and their noise) that run through the Ravinia train yard (and backyard of the orchestra' summer home, quit a noisy venue). I though about the idea of a locomotive, which led me to think about a fast moving piece, which made me think about the word 'loco,' which means crazy in Spanish. So I got the idea to write a piece about 'a crazy train.' The general sound of the piece is of a fast-moving train, or rather, what I imagined it to sound like."
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
I. Prologue: Allegro moderato
II. Somewhere: Adagio
III. Scherzo: Vivace leggiero
IV. Mambo: Presto
V. Cha-Cha: Andantino con grazia
VI. Meeting Scene: Meno mosso
VII. Cool-Fugue: Allegretto
VIII. Rumble: Molto allergro
Finale: Adagio
Jerome Robbins' idea for a kind of urban Romeo and Juliet was once called Gang Way!, and then East Side Story. With book by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story was the title used for the first performance, on August 19, 1957 in Washington, D.C. Starring Carol Lawrence, Larry Kert, Mickey Calin, Ken Le Roy and Chita Rivera, the show opened at the Winter Garden Theater in New York on September 26, 1957 and ran for 973 performances. The film version, with Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno, appeared in 1961. It was voted Best Picture of the Year and earned ten Oscars.
Meantime, with the aid of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, Bernstein had assembled the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The first performance took place at a Pension Fund Benefit concert of the New York Philharmonic on February 13, 1961. The all-Bernstein evening was billed as ``A Valentine for Leonard Bernstein,'' complete with heart-shaped program book. Bernstein himself was in the audience at Carnegie Hall, as Aaron Copland, Vladimir Golschmann and Lukas Foss directed the Philharmonic. It was Foss who conducted the Symphonic Dances.
There are nine dances, played without pause. The Prologue depicts the rivalry of the two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. Somewhere and Scherzo suggest a dream world beyond the city's confines. Mambo finds the two gangs in a competitive dance. The lovers Tony and Maria dance together in Cha-Cha and finally speak in the Meeting Scene. The Jets are getting hostile in Cool-Fugue and leaders of both gangs are killed during the Rumble. In the Finale, Tony dies in Maria's arms and the Somewhere theme is recalled during the funeral procession.
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings.
Larry Rachleff, conductor
Jennifer Higdon: Loco
Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (5/8-10/09)
Also, Charley talks Ars Nova Singers artistic director Thomas Edward Morgan, cellist Jurgen de Lemos and soprano Tana Cochran, who are featured on the Ars Nova Singers's opening concert.
John Tavener: "Death" from Akhmatova Songs
Jurgen de Lemos, cello; Tana Cochran, soprano
KVOD Performance Studio 9/18/09 MS
Born in Brooklyn, Jennifer Higdon grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and Seymour, Tennessee, and now lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Bowling Green State University. Her teachers have included George Crumb, Ned Rorem, and Marilyn Shrude in composition, Judith Bentley and Jan Vinci in flute, and Robert Spano in conducting. She has served as composer-in-residence with the Music From Angel Fire Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Walden School, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, the Prism Saxophone Quartet and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
Loco was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in 2004. In her notes for the premiere, Higdon says "The work was the last of a series of "Train Commissions,' whic h featured the orchestra playing works that reflect the trains (and their noise) that run through the Ravinia train yard (and backyard of the orchestra' summer home, quit a noisy venue). I though about the idea of a locomotive, which led me to think about a fast moving piece, which made me think about the word 'loco,' which means crazy in Spanish. So I got the idea to write a piece about 'a crazy train.' The general sound of the piece is of a fast-moving train, or rather, what I imagined it to sound like."
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
I. Prologue: Allegro moderato
II. Somewhere: Adagio
III. Scherzo: Vivace leggiero
IV. Mambo: Presto
V. Cha-Cha: Andantino con grazia
VI. Meeting Scene: Meno mosso
VII. Cool-Fugue: Allegretto
VIII. Rumble: Molto allergro
Finale: Adagio
Jerome Robbins' idea for a kind of urban Romeo and Juliet was once called Gang Way!, and then East Side Story. With book by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story was the title used for the first performance, on August 19, 1957 in Washington, D.C. Starring Carol Lawrence, Larry Kert, Mickey Calin, Ken Le Roy and Chita Rivera, the show opened at the Winter Garden Theater in New York on September 26, 1957 and ran for 973 performances. The film version, with Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno, appeared in 1961. It was voted Best Picture of the Year and earned ten Oscars.
Meantime, with the aid of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, Bernstein had assembled the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The first performance took place at a Pension Fund Benefit concert of the New York Philharmonic on February 13, 1961. The all-Bernstein evening was billed as ``A Valentine for Leonard Bernstein,'' complete with heart-shaped program book. Bernstein himself was in the audience at Carnegie Hall, as Aaron Copland, Vladimir Golschmann and Lukas Foss directed the Philharmonic. It was Foss who conducted the Symphonic Dances.
There are nine dances, played without pause. The Prologue depicts the rivalry of the two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. Somewhere and Scherzo suggest a dream world beyond the city's confines. Mambo finds the two gangs in a competitive dance. The lovers Tony and Maria dance together in Cha-Cha and finally speak in the Meeting Scene. The Jets are getting hostile in Cool-Fugue and leaders of both gangs are killed during the Rumble. In the Finale, Tony dies in Maria's arms and the Somewhere theme is recalled during the funeral procession.
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings.
Wednesday October 7, 2009
Colorado Music Festival Chamber Players (Calin Lupanu, Joseph Meyer, Rebecca Corruccini, Monica Boboc, violins; Shannon Williams, Matthew Dane, violas; Bjorn Ranheim, Greg Sauer, cellos)
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat, Op.20 33:34 (7/22/08)
Also, Charley talks with Colorado Chamber Players artistic director Barbara Hamilton-Primus about this weekend's concerts.
Maria Castelnuovo-Tedesco: "Allegro, vivo e schietto" (1st movement) from Guitar Quintet, Op.143
Colorado Chamber Players (Masakazu Ito, guitar; Jerilyn Jorgensen, Paul Primus, violins; Barbara Hamilton-Primus, viola; Katharine Knight, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 9/30/09 MS
Isaias Savio: Little Music Box
Masakazu Ito, guitar
Muse 724 Track 14 2:06
And, Charley talks with Cherry Creek Chorale conductor Brian Leatherman about this weekend's concerts.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Octet in E flat major, Opus 20
I. Allegro moderato ma con fuoco
II. Andante
III. Scherzo: Allegro leggerissimo
IV. Presto
Late in life, Mendelssohn confessed that the Octet was “my favorite of all my compositions,” and added, “I had a most wonderful time in the writing of it!” He was just sixteen years old when he finished it on October 10, 1825. A week later he presented it to his violin teacher Eduard Rietz on his twenty-third birthday.
The Octet was first played at one of the Mendelssohn family’s regular Sunday afternoon musicales. Felix’s composition teacher Carl Zelter wrote enthusiastically to Goethe of “an octet for eight obbligato instruments, which is full of life.” His sister Fanny loved the piece. “Everything’s new and strange and at the same time most insinuating and pleasing,” she said. “One feels so near the world of spirits, carried away in the air, half inclined to snatch up a broomstick and follow the aerial procession. At the end the first violin takes a flight with a feather-like lightness--and all has vanished.”
Mendelssohn made it very clear that he conceived the Octet for eight separate parts, not two string quartets combined. Even Ludwig Spohr--no stranger to the art of double string quartets--admitted, “An Octet for stringed instruments by Mendelssohn belongs to quite another kind of art in which the two quartets do not concert and interchange in double choir with each other, but all eight instruments work together.”
Fanny insisted that the Scherzo was inspired by the last lines of the Walpurgis Night scene in Part I of Goethe’s Faust:
The flight of the clouds and the veil of mist
Are lighted from above,
A breeze in the leaves, a wind in the reeds
And all has vanished.
For the London performance of his First Symphony in 1829, Mendelssohn orchestrated the Scherzo as a substitute for the Minuet. The Scherzo was even used during a Requiem Mass in memory of Beethoven. “I can scarcely imagine anything more absurd that a priest at the altar and my Scherzo going on,” he said.
Sir Donald Francis Tovey called the Octet “unmistakably a work of genius. Its first movement is an admirable specimen of Mendelssohn’s most spirited and energetic style; and if sometimes the inner parts degenerate into orchestral tremolo, Mendelssohn as the first offender has received the whole blame for a vice which is cheerfully condoned when later composers indulge in it far more unscrupulously. The slow movement is rather vague in structure and theme, but extraordinarily beautiful in scoring and colour….The finale is very boyish, but so amusing that it wears a good deal better than many a more responsible utterance.”
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat, Op.20 33:34 (7/22/08)
Also, Charley talks with Colorado Chamber Players artistic director Barbara Hamilton-Primus about this weekend's concerts.
Maria Castelnuovo-Tedesco: "Allegro, vivo e schietto" (1st movement) from Guitar Quintet, Op.143
Colorado Chamber Players (Masakazu Ito, guitar; Jerilyn Jorgensen, Paul Primus, violins; Barbara Hamilton-Primus, viola; Katharine Knight, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 9/30/09 MS
Isaias Savio: Little Music Box
Masakazu Ito, guitar
Muse 724 Track 14 2:06
And, Charley talks with Cherry Creek Chorale conductor Brian Leatherman about this weekend's concerts.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Octet in E flat major, Opus 20
I. Allegro moderato ma con fuoco
II. Andante
III. Scherzo: Allegro leggerissimo
IV. Presto
Late in life, Mendelssohn confessed that the Octet was “my favorite of all my compositions,” and added, “I had a most wonderful time in the writing of it!” He was just sixteen years old when he finished it on October 10, 1825. A week later he presented it to his violin teacher Eduard Rietz on his twenty-third birthday.
The Octet was first played at one of the Mendelssohn family’s regular Sunday afternoon musicales. Felix’s composition teacher Carl Zelter wrote enthusiastically to Goethe of “an octet for eight obbligato instruments, which is full of life.” His sister Fanny loved the piece. “Everything’s new and strange and at the same time most insinuating and pleasing,” she said. “One feels so near the world of spirits, carried away in the air, half inclined to snatch up a broomstick and follow the aerial procession. At the end the first violin takes a flight with a feather-like lightness--and all has vanished.”
Mendelssohn made it very clear that he conceived the Octet for eight separate parts, not two string quartets combined. Even Ludwig Spohr--no stranger to the art of double string quartets--admitted, “An Octet for stringed instruments by Mendelssohn belongs to quite another kind of art in which the two quartets do not concert and interchange in double choir with each other, but all eight instruments work together.”
Fanny insisted that the Scherzo was inspired by the last lines of the Walpurgis Night scene in Part I of Goethe’s Faust:
The flight of the clouds and the veil of mist
Are lighted from above,
A breeze in the leaves, a wind in the reeds
And all has vanished.
For the London performance of his First Symphony in 1829, Mendelssohn orchestrated the Scherzo as a substitute for the Minuet. The Scherzo was even used during a Requiem Mass in memory of Beethoven. “I can scarcely imagine anything more absurd that a priest at the altar and my Scherzo going on,” he said.
Sir Donald Francis Tovey called the Octet “unmistakably a work of genius. Its first movement is an admirable specimen of Mendelssohn’s most spirited and energetic style; and if sometimes the inner parts degenerate into orchestral tremolo, Mendelssohn as the first offender has received the whole blame for a vice which is cheerfully condoned when later composers indulge in it far more unscrupulously. The slow movement is rather vague in structure and theme, but extraordinarily beautiful in scoring and colour….The finale is very boyish, but so amusing that it wears a good deal better than many a more responsible utterance.”
Tuesday October 6, 2009
Friends of Chamber Music
Pieter Wispelwey, cello; Alexander Melnikov, piano
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op.19 35:53 (11/5/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Veronika String Quartet's opening program this Sunday in Pueblo and on October 18 in Colorado Springs.
Ludwig van Beethoven: "Allegro con brio" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.1 in F major, op. 18
Dmitri Shostakovich: "Allegretto" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op. 73
Veronika String Quartet
(Veronika Afanassieva and Karine Garibova, violins, Ekaterina Dobrotvorskaia, viola; Mary Artmann, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 10/1/09 MS
And, Charley also anticipates guitarist Masakazu Ito's appearance with Colorado Chamber Players this weekend.
Joaquín Turina: "Soleares" from Homage to Tárrega, Op.69
Masakazu Ito, guitar
Polgear 1036 Track 5 2:10
Pieter Wispelwey, cello; Alexander Melnikov, piano
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op.19 35:53 (11/5/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Veronika String Quartet's opening program this Sunday in Pueblo and on October 18 in Colorado Springs.
Ludwig van Beethoven: "Allegro con brio" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.1 in F major, op. 18
Dmitri Shostakovich: "Allegretto" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op. 73
Veronika String Quartet
(Veronika Afanassieva and Karine Garibova, violins, Ekaterina Dobrotvorskaia, viola; Mary Artmann, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 10/1/09 MS
And, Charley also anticipates guitarist Masakazu Ito's appearance with Colorado Chamber Players this weekend.
Joaquín Turina: "Soleares" from Homage to Tárrega, Op.69
Masakazu Ito, guitar
Polgear 1036 Track 5 2:10
Monday October 5, 2009
Charley anticipates pianist Mutsumi Moteki's recital with soprano Irene Friedlob tomorrow at CU Boulder.
University of Colorado at Boulder Faculty Recital
Michio Miyagi: Haru no Umi (The Sea in Spring)
Christina Jennings, flute; Mutsumi Moteki, piano 7:07
Kosaku Yamada: 3 Songs on Texts by Hakushu Kitahara 9:16
Julie Simson, mezzo-soprano; Mutsumi Moteki, piano
Yoshinao Nakada: From The Poems of Matinée Poétique 6:04
Sara Gartland, soprano; Mutsumi Moteki, piano
Sadao Bekku: Sakura Yokocho (Cherry Blossoms Lane) 3:50
Sara Gartland, soprano; Mutsumi Moteki, piano
Fumio Hayasaka: Uguisu (Nightingale) 4:19
Sara Gartland, soprano (9/26/06)
Also, Charley talks with cellist Jurgen de Lemos and soprano Tana Cochran, who are featured on the Ars Nova Singers's opening concert.
John Tavener: "Death" from Akhmatova Songs
Jurgen de Lemos, cello; Tana Cochran, soprano
KVOD Performance Studio 9/18/09 MS
Also, Charley talks with Ars Nova Singers artistic director Thomas Edward Morgan and Boulder Chamber Orchestra music director Bahman Saless.
Astor Piazzolla: "Winter" from Four Seasons in Buenos Aires [arr. Leonid Desyatnikov]
Lindsay Deutsch, violin; Boulder Chamber Orchestra/ Bahman Saless.
NCA
University of Colorado at Boulder Faculty Recital
Michio Miyagi: Haru no Umi (The Sea in Spring)
Christina Jennings, flute; Mutsumi Moteki, piano 7:07
Kosaku Yamada: 3 Songs on Texts by Hakushu Kitahara 9:16
Julie Simson, mezzo-soprano; Mutsumi Moteki, piano
Yoshinao Nakada: From The Poems of Matinée Poétique 6:04
Sara Gartland, soprano; Mutsumi Moteki, piano
Sadao Bekku: Sakura Yokocho (Cherry Blossoms Lane) 3:50
Sara Gartland, soprano; Mutsumi Moteki, piano
Fumio Hayasaka: Uguisu (Nightingale) 4:19
Sara Gartland, soprano (9/26/06)
Also, Charley talks with cellist Jurgen de Lemos and soprano Tana Cochran, who are featured on the Ars Nova Singers's opening concert.
John Tavener: "Death" from Akhmatova Songs
Jurgen de Lemos, cello; Tana Cochran, soprano
KVOD Performance Studio 9/18/09 MS
Also, Charley talks with Ars Nova Singers artistic director Thomas Edward Morgan and Boulder Chamber Orchestra music director Bahman Saless.
Astor Piazzolla: "Winter" from Four Seasons in Buenos Aires [arr. Leonid Desyatnikov]
Lindsay Deutsch, violin; Boulder Chamber Orchestra/ Bahman Saless.
NCA
Friday October 2, 2009
Monika Vischer talks with violinist Augustin Hadelich, who plays Mozart's "Turkish" Concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra this weekend.
Niccolo Paganini: Caprice No. 4 in C minor
Augustin Hadelich, violin
Avie 2180 Track 5 7:18
Colorado College Summer Music Festival
Joachim Raff: Octet in C Major, Op. 176
Mark Fewer, Steven Copes, Scott Yoo, Stefan Hersh, violins; Phillip Ying and Virginia Barron, violas; Bion Tsang and David Ying, cellos 26:46 (6/15/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Austin Lovelace 90th Birthday Celebration Sunday.
Austin Lovelace: Choral Anthem, "Unto the hills" & Toccata on "A Mighty Fortress"
Austin Lovelace, organ; Lamont Alumni Choir, Robeert Penn, director (8/26/01)
And, Charley anticipates the Telling Stories show, "Pilots," tomorrow.
Anne Guzzo: 2 Pieces for Clarinet
Anne Guzzo, clarinet
KVOD Performance Studio 9/29/09 MS
Niccolo Paganini: Caprice No. 4 in C minor
Augustin Hadelich, violin
Avie 2180 Track 5 7:18
Colorado College Summer Music Festival
Joachim Raff: Octet in C Major, Op. 176
Mark Fewer, Steven Copes, Scott Yoo, Stefan Hersh, violins; Phillip Ying and Virginia Barron, violas; Bion Tsang and David Ying, cellos 26:46 (6/15/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Austin Lovelace 90th Birthday Celebration Sunday.
Austin Lovelace: Choral Anthem, "Unto the hills" & Toccata on "A Mighty Fortress"
Austin Lovelace, organ; Lamont Alumni Choir, Robeert Penn, director (8/26/01)
And, Charley anticipates the Telling Stories show, "Pilots," tomorrow.
Anne Guzzo: 2 Pieces for Clarinet
Anne Guzzo, clarinet
KVOD Performance Studio 9/29/09 MS
Thursday October 1, 2009
Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Larry Rachleff, conductor; Jeffrey Kahane, piano
Samuel Barber: Overture to The School for Scandal, Opus 5
George Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F (5/8-10/09)
Also, Charley talks with Jennie Dorris, artistic director and den-mother of Telling Stories.
Benjamin Britten: "Andante sostenuto" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.1 in D major, Op.25
Telling Stories String Quartet (Chris Jusell, Chris Short, violins; Megan Tipton, viola; Dave Short, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 9/29/09 MS 8:41
Samuel Barber (1910-1981): Overture to The School for Scandal, Opus 5
Barber was a student at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia when he won the Joseph H. Bearns prize of $1200. This enabled him to travel to Italy during the summer of 1931. There he wrote the Overture to The School for Scandal, after the satirical play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). The next year he submitted the work as his graduation thesis from Curtis.
The first performance took place at Robin Hood Dell on August 30, 1933. Alexander Smallens conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra. By then Barber was in Italy again, having won a second Bearns prize for this very Overture.
Barber noted in the score that the music was only ``suggested'' by the Sheridan play, so the intrigues of Lady Sneerwell and Joseph Surface and the virtues of Maria are only indirectly depicted. As Nicolas Slonimsky puts it, ``from the onset the music reflects the theme of sly merriment, the shining metallic sonorities of trumpets, triangle and cymbals accentuating the brightness of the scene. As the festive metallic sound subsides, a pastoral theme is sounded by the oboe. But a school for scandal must have its wily elements as its farce. The tonality is dislocated and twisted, suggesting intrigue; the gaiety is resumed with an invigorating rhythmic bounce.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, bells, celeste, harp and strings.
George Gershwin (1898-1937): Concerto in F major for Piano and Orchestra
I. Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Allegro agitato
After the success of Rhapsody in Blue, Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony Society, commissioned Gershwin to write a full-length piano concerto in 1925. ``This showed great confidence on his part,'' said Gershwin, ``as I had never written anything for symphony before.'' Rhapsody had been orchestrated by Ferde Grofé.
With contract in hand, and a promise of $500 for the Concerto, Gershwin left for London, armed with ``four or five books on musical structure to find out what the concerto form really was!'' Returning to New York in late June, he set to work in earnest. ``It took me three months to compose this Concerto, and one month to orchestrate it,'' he said. By November 10, 1925, it was finished.
Eager to hear his new work, Gershwin hired 50 musicians and arranged for a run-through at the Globe Theatre. ``I enjoyed it,'' he admitted, ``not as one of my fair and mischievous friends said, as the mad King Ludwig enjoyed Wagner, being the sole audience in the theatre, for Mr. Damrosch was there, and about a dozen others who wished to hear it.''
Gershwin was the pianist at the first performance on a stormy Thursday afternoon, December 3, 1925, in Carnegie Hall. Damrosch conducted the New York Symphony in a program that also included Glazunov's Fifth Symphony, Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis Overture and Henri Rabaud's Suite Anglaise.
Audiences loved the Concerto; the critics were mixed. The most perceptive was Samuel Chotzinoff, who wrote in the World: ``He alone actually expresses us. He is the present, with all its audacity, impertinence, its feverish delight in its motions, its lapses into rhythmic exotic melancholy. He writes without the smallest hint of self-consciousness....And here is where his genius comes in, for George Gershwin is an instinctive artist who has a talent for the right manipulation of the crude material he starts out with that a lifelong study of counterpoint and fugue never can give to one who is not born with it.''
Gershwin himself provided an analysis of the Concerto: ``The first movement employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life....The second movement has a poetic, nocturnal tone. It utilizes the atmosphere of what has come to be referred to as the American blues....The final movement reverts to the style of the first. It is an orgy of rhythm starting violently and keeping to the same pace throughout.''
The score calls for solo piano, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, bells, xylophone, triangle and strings.
Larry Rachleff, conductor; Jeffrey Kahane, piano
Samuel Barber: Overture to The School for Scandal, Opus 5
George Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F (5/8-10/09)
Also, Charley talks with Jennie Dorris, artistic director and den-mother of Telling Stories.
Benjamin Britten: "Andante sostenuto" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.1 in D major, Op.25
Telling Stories String Quartet (Chris Jusell, Chris Short, violins; Megan Tipton, viola; Dave Short, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 9/29/09 MS 8:41
Samuel Barber (1910-1981): Overture to The School for Scandal, Opus 5
Barber was a student at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia when he won the Joseph H. Bearns prize of $1200. This enabled him to travel to Italy during the summer of 1931. There he wrote the Overture to The School for Scandal, after the satirical play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). The next year he submitted the work as his graduation thesis from Curtis.
The first performance took place at Robin Hood Dell on August 30, 1933. Alexander Smallens conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra. By then Barber was in Italy again, having won a second Bearns prize for this very Overture.
Barber noted in the score that the music was only ``suggested'' by the Sheridan play, so the intrigues of Lady Sneerwell and Joseph Surface and the virtues of Maria are only indirectly depicted. As Nicolas Slonimsky puts it, ``from the onset the music reflects the theme of sly merriment, the shining metallic sonorities of trumpets, triangle and cymbals accentuating the brightness of the scene. As the festive metallic sound subsides, a pastoral theme is sounded by the oboe. But a school for scandal must have its wily elements as its farce. The tonality is dislocated and twisted, suggesting intrigue; the gaiety is resumed with an invigorating rhythmic bounce.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, bells, celeste, harp and strings.
George Gershwin (1898-1937): Concerto in F major for Piano and Orchestra
I. Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Allegro agitato
After the success of Rhapsody in Blue, Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony Society, commissioned Gershwin to write a full-length piano concerto in 1925. ``This showed great confidence on his part,'' said Gershwin, ``as I had never written anything for symphony before.'' Rhapsody had been orchestrated by Ferde Grofé.
With contract in hand, and a promise of $500 for the Concerto, Gershwin left for London, armed with ``four or five books on musical structure to find out what the concerto form really was!'' Returning to New York in late June, he set to work in earnest. ``It took me three months to compose this Concerto, and one month to orchestrate it,'' he said. By November 10, 1925, it was finished.
Eager to hear his new work, Gershwin hired 50 musicians and arranged for a run-through at the Globe Theatre. ``I enjoyed it,'' he admitted, ``not as one of my fair and mischievous friends said, as the mad King Ludwig enjoyed Wagner, being the sole audience in the theatre, for Mr. Damrosch was there, and about a dozen others who wished to hear it.''
Gershwin was the pianist at the first performance on a stormy Thursday afternoon, December 3, 1925, in Carnegie Hall. Damrosch conducted the New York Symphony in a program that also included Glazunov's Fifth Symphony, Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis Overture and Henri Rabaud's Suite Anglaise.
Audiences loved the Concerto; the critics were mixed. The most perceptive was Samuel Chotzinoff, who wrote in the World: ``He alone actually expresses us. He is the present, with all its audacity, impertinence, its feverish delight in its motions, its lapses into rhythmic exotic melancholy. He writes without the smallest hint of self-consciousness....And here is where his genius comes in, for George Gershwin is an instinctive artist who has a talent for the right manipulation of the crude material he starts out with that a lifelong study of counterpoint and fugue never can give to one who is not born with it.''
Gershwin himself provided an analysis of the Concerto: ``The first movement employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life....The second movement has a poetic, nocturnal tone. It utilizes the atmosphere of what has come to be referred to as the American blues....The final movement reverts to the style of the first. It is an orgy of rhythm starting violently and keeping to the same pace throughout.''
The score calls for solo piano, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, bells, xylophone, triangle and strings.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Wednesday September 30, 2009
Colorado Music Festival Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op.92 40:73 (7/10/08)
Also, Charley talks with Boulder Chamber Orchestra music director Bahman Saless about their season opener next week.
Ludwig van Beethoven: "Adagio molto--Allegro con brio" (1st movement) from Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op.36
Boulder Chamber Orchestra/ Bahman Saless
NCA 5/3/09 12:59
Moreover, Charley anticipates Michelle Stanley's recital at CSU on Monday.
James McGuire: Dance
Michelle Stanley, flute; Jeff LaQuatra, guitar
Centaur 2881 Track 13 1:26
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 7 in A major, Opus 92
I. Poco sostenuto; Vivace
II. Allegretto
III. Presto; Assai meno presto
IV. Allegro con brio
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was completed in the late spring or early summer of 1812. It wasn't performed publicly until December 8, 1813 at a concert in Vienna to benefit wounded Austrian and Bavarian soldiers. Also on the program was Beethoven's Wellington's Victory.
Beethoven himself conducted. The composer Ludwig Spohr described the scene: ``The execution was quite masterly, despite the uncertain and often ridiculous conducting of Beethoven....It is a sad misfortune for anyone to be deaf; how then should a musician endure it without despair? Beethoven's almost continual melancholy was no longer a riddle to me.''
A review of the concert reported that the Symphony ``deserved the loud applause and the exceptionally good performance it received....This symphony...is the richest melodically and the most pleasing and comprehensible of all Beethoven symphonies.'' Beethoven regarded the Seventh as ``among my best works.''
Not everyone shared Beethoven's opinion. After a performance in Leipzig, Clara Schumann's father suggested that the music could only have been written by someone who was very, very drunk. When the Seventh was played before the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Carl Maria von Weber remarked that Beethoven was ``now quite ripe for the madhouse.'' Twelve years later, Weber conducted the London Philharmonic's performance of the Beethoven Seventh. Apparently Weber had changed his mind about the piece.
It was Wagner who dubbed the Seventh ``the apotheosis of the dance, the dance in its highest condition, the happiest realization of the movements of the body in ideal form.'' He wrote: ``If anyone plays the Seventh, tables and benches, cans and cups, the grandmother, the blind and the lame, aye, the children in the cradle, fall to dancing!'' Wagner once demonstrated his theory by dancing to the Seventh Symphony, accompanied by Franz Liszt at the piano.
``It would require more than a technical yardstick to measure the true proportion of this Symphony--the sense of immensity which it conveys,'' writes John N. Burk. ``Beethoven seems to have built up this impression by willfully driving a single rhythmic figure through each movement, until the music attains (particularly in the body of the first movement, and in the Finale) a swift propulsion, an effect of cumulative growth which is akin to extraordinary size.''
After a long introduction, the opening movement launches into a persistent rhythmic propulsion that Ernest Walker found virtually unparalleled elsewhere. The second movement, according to Marion M. Scott, is ``marvelous...full of melancholy beauty.'' Beethoven's biographer Alexander Thayer says the trio of the third movement is based on an Austrian pilgrims' hymn. In the Finale, George Grove discovered ``a vein of rough, hard, personal boisterousness, the same feeling which inspired the strange jests, puns and nicknames which abound in his letters.''
There is a story about Beethoven wandering around the park after the 1814 performance of the Seventh. He stopped to buy cherries from two young maids, who said: ``There is no charge to you. We were at the concert and heard your beautiful music!''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
Michael Christie, conductor
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op.92 40:73 (7/10/08)
Also, Charley talks with Boulder Chamber Orchestra music director Bahman Saless about their season opener next week.
Ludwig van Beethoven: "Adagio molto--Allegro con brio" (1st movement) from Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op.36
Boulder Chamber Orchestra/ Bahman Saless
NCA 5/3/09 12:59
Moreover, Charley anticipates Michelle Stanley's recital at CSU on Monday.
James McGuire: Dance
Michelle Stanley, flute; Jeff LaQuatra, guitar
Centaur 2881 Track 13 1:26
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 7 in A major, Opus 92
I. Poco sostenuto; Vivace
II. Allegretto
III. Presto; Assai meno presto
IV. Allegro con brio
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was completed in the late spring or early summer of 1812. It wasn't performed publicly until December 8, 1813 at a concert in Vienna to benefit wounded Austrian and Bavarian soldiers. Also on the program was Beethoven's Wellington's Victory.
Beethoven himself conducted. The composer Ludwig Spohr described the scene: ``The execution was quite masterly, despite the uncertain and often ridiculous conducting of Beethoven....It is a sad misfortune for anyone to be deaf; how then should a musician endure it without despair? Beethoven's almost continual melancholy was no longer a riddle to me.''
A review of the concert reported that the Symphony ``deserved the loud applause and the exceptionally good performance it received....This symphony...is the richest melodically and the most pleasing and comprehensible of all Beethoven symphonies.'' Beethoven regarded the Seventh as ``among my best works.''
Not everyone shared Beethoven's opinion. After a performance in Leipzig, Clara Schumann's father suggested that the music could only have been written by someone who was very, very drunk. When the Seventh was played before the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Carl Maria von Weber remarked that Beethoven was ``now quite ripe for the madhouse.'' Twelve years later, Weber conducted the London Philharmonic's performance of the Beethoven Seventh. Apparently Weber had changed his mind about the piece.
It was Wagner who dubbed the Seventh ``the apotheosis of the dance, the dance in its highest condition, the happiest realization of the movements of the body in ideal form.'' He wrote: ``If anyone plays the Seventh, tables and benches, cans and cups, the grandmother, the blind and the lame, aye, the children in the cradle, fall to dancing!'' Wagner once demonstrated his theory by dancing to the Seventh Symphony, accompanied by Franz Liszt at the piano.
``It would require more than a technical yardstick to measure the true proportion of this Symphony--the sense of immensity which it conveys,'' writes John N. Burk. ``Beethoven seems to have built up this impression by willfully driving a single rhythmic figure through each movement, until the music attains (particularly in the body of the first movement, and in the Finale) a swift propulsion, an effect of cumulative growth which is akin to extraordinary size.''
After a long introduction, the opening movement launches into a persistent rhythmic propulsion that Ernest Walker found virtually unparalleled elsewhere. The second movement, according to Marion M. Scott, is ``marvelous...full of melancholy beauty.'' Beethoven's biographer Alexander Thayer says the trio of the third movement is based on an Austrian pilgrims' hymn. In the Finale, George Grove discovered ``a vein of rough, hard, personal boisterousness, the same feeling which inspired the strange jests, puns and nicknames which abound in his letters.''
There is a story about Beethoven wandering around the park after the 1814 performance of the Seventh. He stopped to buy cherries from two young maids, who said: ``There is no charge to you. We were at the concert and heard your beautiful music!''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
Tuesday September 29, 2009
Friends of Chamber Music
Guarneri String Quartet
Franz Josef Haydn: String Quartet in G minor, Op.74 No. 3 (Rider) 19:32
Zoltán Kodály: String Quartet No. 2, Op.10 18:37 (12/3/08)
Also, Charley talks with cellist Jurgen de Lemos and soprano Tana Cochran, who are featured on the Ars Nova Singers's opening concert.
John Tavener: "Death" from Akhmatova Songs
Jurgen de Lemos, cello; Tana Cochran, soprano
KVOD Performance Studio 9/18/09 MS
Also, Charley talks with Ars Nova Singers artistic director Thomas Edward Morgan.
Moreover, Charley anticipates Hsing-ay Hsu's appearance on the "Music with a View" series at the Arvada Center Friday.
Frédéric Chopin: Mazurka in B-flat major, Op.7 No. 1 1:22
Hsing-ay Hsu, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 110608 MS
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): String Quartet No. 2, Op.10
Allegro
Andante—Quasi récitativo—Allegro giocoso
Composed between 1916 and 1918, the second string quartet was first performed on May 7, 1918 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely String Quartet in Budapest. Critical reception was mixed, one writer calling it the “eccentric, almost perverted, manifestation of a great and muscular, though misguided talent.” After the score was published in 1921, Philip Heseltine (who used the penname “Peter Warlock” for his own compositions) wrote: “This music is of a deceptive simplicity which will yield more to prolonged study than much that is of far greater apparent complexity.”
In his book on Kodály, János Breuer regards the work as a “dream in sound,” whose “large form, consisting of two movements, or more exactly, the outlines of a middle movement can be felt in the slow introductory music to the finale, were it not constructed in such a completely improvisatory manner.” With its gently swaying barcarolle rhythm, the opening movement, he writes, “can justifiably be considered as a monothematic structure outlining a sonata form, a single large-scale development with a series of variations.”
After the slow introduction to the finale comes a section marked “Quasi recitativo” (like a recitative), which Breuer says “serves as a free, improvisatory filling of an interval of a fifth--as if one heard a violin and then a cello version of distant piping. This sound of a shepherd’s pipe becomes almost ethereal and fleeting….The continuation both on the violin and the cello resembles speech melody, it almost asks for expressive words….In the profound silence the notes of a distant dance melody anticipate the actual, dance-like finale.” Breuer calls this “a pseudo-folk dance czárdás…lent an almost unreal effect by its pizzicato accompaniment.” Motives from the first movement are recalled, alternating with either the recitative or dance themes, sometimes including bagpipe effects, until the final “single heavy dance step.” This last section sounds to Breuer “like a revolving stage, a virtual consummation of esprit de corps.”
Guarneri String Quartet
Franz Josef Haydn: String Quartet in G minor, Op.74 No. 3 (Rider) 19:32
Zoltán Kodály: String Quartet No. 2, Op.10 18:37 (12/3/08)
Also, Charley talks with cellist Jurgen de Lemos and soprano Tana Cochran, who are featured on the Ars Nova Singers's opening concert.
John Tavener: "Death" from Akhmatova Songs
Jurgen de Lemos, cello; Tana Cochran, soprano
KVOD Performance Studio 9/18/09 MS
Also, Charley talks with Ars Nova Singers artistic director Thomas Edward Morgan.
Moreover, Charley anticipates Hsing-ay Hsu's appearance on the "Music with a View" series at the Arvada Center Friday.
Frédéric Chopin: Mazurka in B-flat major, Op.7 No. 1 1:22
Hsing-ay Hsu, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 110608 MS
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): String Quartet No. 2, Op.10
Allegro
Andante—Quasi récitativo—Allegro giocoso
Composed between 1916 and 1918, the second string quartet was first performed on May 7, 1918 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely String Quartet in Budapest. Critical reception was mixed, one writer calling it the “eccentric, almost perverted, manifestation of a great and muscular, though misguided talent.” After the score was published in 1921, Philip Heseltine (who used the penname “Peter Warlock” for his own compositions) wrote: “This music is of a deceptive simplicity which will yield more to prolonged study than much that is of far greater apparent complexity.”
In his book on Kodály, János Breuer regards the work as a “dream in sound,” whose “large form, consisting of two movements, or more exactly, the outlines of a middle movement can be felt in the slow introductory music to the finale, were it not constructed in such a completely improvisatory manner.” With its gently swaying barcarolle rhythm, the opening movement, he writes, “can justifiably be considered as a monothematic structure outlining a sonata form, a single large-scale development with a series of variations.”
After the slow introduction to the finale comes a section marked “Quasi recitativo” (like a recitative), which Breuer says “serves as a free, improvisatory filling of an interval of a fifth--as if one heard a violin and then a cello version of distant piping. This sound of a shepherd’s pipe becomes almost ethereal and fleeting….The continuation both on the violin and the cello resembles speech melody, it almost asks for expressive words….In the profound silence the notes of a distant dance melody anticipate the actual, dance-like finale.” Breuer calls this “a pseudo-folk dance czárdás…lent an almost unreal effect by its pizzicato accompaniment.” Motives from the first movement are recalled, alternating with either the recitative or dance themes, sometimes including bagpipe effects, until the final “single heavy dance step.” This last section sounds to Breuer “like a revolving stage, a virtual consummation of esprit de corps.”
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Monday September 28, 2009
Arapahoe Philharmonic
Vincent C. LaGuardia, Jr., conductor
Peter Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture
Ottorino Respighi: The Pines of Rome
Also, Charley anticipates the season-opener of the Arapahoe Philharmonic this Friday, and the Telling Stories show titled "Pilots" this Saturday.
Maurice Ravel: “Assez vif—Très rhythmé” (2nd movement) from String Quartet in F
Telling Stories String Quartet (Emily Lewis, Heidi Farr, violins; Megan Tipton, viola; Megan Titensor, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 040209 MS
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture
``I shall be thinking of something new and big to write,'' Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck. ``I want to find an operatic subject that will be deep and exciting. What would you say to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? The richness of that tragedy is fathomless.''
It was composer Mily Balakirev who suggested that Tchaikovsky write not an opera but a symphonic overture on the subject. ``Arm yourself with galoshes and a walking-stick,'' he advised, ``and set out for a walk along the boulevards, starting with the Nikitsky: let yourself be steeped in your plan, and I am sure that by the time you reach the Sretensky Boulevard some theme or episode will have come to you.''
The Overture occupied Tchaikovsky for most of October and November of 1869. He sent the main themes off to Balakirev, who complained that the music depicting Friar Laurence resembled ``the character of Haydn's quartet themes, the genius of petty bourgeois music, awakening a strong thirst for beer.'' What was wanted, in Balakirev's opinion, was something ``on the line of Liszt's chorales.''
Balakirev also commented on the love theme: ``I often play it, and would like to hug you for it. It has the sweetness of love, its tenderness, its longing....I have only one thing to say against this theme: It does not sufficiently express a mystic, inward, spiritual love, but rather a fantastic passionate glow that has hardly any nuance of Italian sentiment. Romeo and Juliet were not Persian lovers, but Europeans.'' Overall, he liked the piece: ``It is the first of your compositions that contains so many beautiful things one does not hesitate to pronounce it good as a whole.'' When Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov saw the full score in January, Tchaikovsky recalled, ``my Overture pleased them very much and it also pleases me.''
It was a different story when Nikolai Rubinstein conducted the first performance of Romeo and Juliet at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow on March 16, 1870. ``It had no success at all,'' Tchaikovsky complained. ``I longed for sympathy and recognition, but the Overture was wholly ignored. After the concert, a crowd of us supped at Gurin's Restaurant, and nobody spoke so much as a word to me about it!''
Tchaikovsky made the first revision of the score in 1870. When the work was introduced in St. Petersburg in 1872, Cesar Cui wrote: ``The composition is a most talented one. Its special merit lies in the excellence of its themes.'' Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky made another revision of the music in 1880.
``The characterization of the music is very good,'' writes biographer Edwin Evans, ``in fact the entire work is based upon characterization rather than action. Apart from the opening theme which typifies Friar Laurence, the work has two principal contrasted movements, the one representing the feud of the Montagues and the Capulets, and naturally all fire and animation, and the other the love-stricken pair, all sweetness and romance. It closes in a manner suggesting a reference to the final tragic scene.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, English horn, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, harp and strings.
Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936): Pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome)
I. The Pines of Villa Borghese: Allegretto vivace
II. The Pines near a Catacomb: Lento
III. The Pines of the Janiculum: Lento
IV. The Pines of the Appian Way: Tempo di marcia
Elsa Respighi records that in 1920 her husband ``asked me to sing for him the songs I sang as a child at play....The request surprised me and I was most amused to see Ottorino taking down the simple tunes that Italian children have sung for centuries.'' Four years later, those same melodies would surface in the opening section of The Pines of Rome. It is the second of the ``Roman trilogy'' of symphonic poems, the others being The Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals.
Bernardino Molinari conducted the first performance of The Pines of Rome on December 14, 1924 in Rome. Despite some isolated booing, the work was a success. ``Let them boo,'' said Respighi, ``what do I care?''
For performances in the United States, Respighi provided his own program note: ``While in The Fountains of Rome the composer sought to reproduce by means of tone an impression of nature, in The Pines of Rome he uses nature as a point of departure, to recall memories and visions. The century-old trees which dominate so characteristically the Roman landscape become testimony for the principal events in Roman life.''
Respighi and Claudio Guastalla developed a program for the work, which is printed in the score:
``1. `The Pines of the Villa Borghese:' Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of `Ring around the Rosy;' mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to...
``2. `The Pines near a Catacomb:' We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant which reechoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced.
``3. `The Pines of the Janiculum:' There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Janiculum Hill. A nightingale sings.
``4. `The Pines of the Appian Way:' Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet's fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting the Capitoline Hill.''
A recording of a real nightingale is used in the third section because Respighi ``simply realized that no combination of wind instruments could quite counterfeit the real bird's song. Not even a coloratura soprano could have produced an effect other than artificial.'' The English critic Ernest Newman disapproved. ``Musical realism of the Respighi type could be extended indefinitely,'' he wrote. ``We may live to see the evening when (Beethoven's) Pastoral Symphony will be given with real running water in the slow movement.''
The work is scored for piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, 6 Flügel horns, timpani, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, rattle, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, celesta, organ, harp, piano and strings.
Vincent C. LaGuardia, Jr., conductor
Peter Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture
Ottorino Respighi: The Pines of Rome
Also, Charley anticipates the season-opener of the Arapahoe Philharmonic this Friday, and the Telling Stories show titled "Pilots" this Saturday.
Maurice Ravel: “Assez vif—Très rhythmé” (2nd movement) from String Quartet in F
Telling Stories String Quartet (Emily Lewis, Heidi Farr, violins; Megan Tipton, viola; Megan Titensor, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 040209 MS
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture
``I shall be thinking of something new and big to write,'' Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck. ``I want to find an operatic subject that will be deep and exciting. What would you say to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? The richness of that tragedy is fathomless.''
It was composer Mily Balakirev who suggested that Tchaikovsky write not an opera but a symphonic overture on the subject. ``Arm yourself with galoshes and a walking-stick,'' he advised, ``and set out for a walk along the boulevards, starting with the Nikitsky: let yourself be steeped in your plan, and I am sure that by the time you reach the Sretensky Boulevard some theme or episode will have come to you.''
The Overture occupied Tchaikovsky for most of October and November of 1869. He sent the main themes off to Balakirev, who complained that the music depicting Friar Laurence resembled ``the character of Haydn's quartet themes, the genius of petty bourgeois music, awakening a strong thirst for beer.'' What was wanted, in Balakirev's opinion, was something ``on the line of Liszt's chorales.''
Balakirev also commented on the love theme: ``I often play it, and would like to hug you for it. It has the sweetness of love, its tenderness, its longing....I have only one thing to say against this theme: It does not sufficiently express a mystic, inward, spiritual love, but rather a fantastic passionate glow that has hardly any nuance of Italian sentiment. Romeo and Juliet were not Persian lovers, but Europeans.'' Overall, he liked the piece: ``It is the first of your compositions that contains so many beautiful things one does not hesitate to pronounce it good as a whole.'' When Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov saw the full score in January, Tchaikovsky recalled, ``my Overture pleased them very much and it also pleases me.''
It was a different story when Nikolai Rubinstein conducted the first performance of Romeo and Juliet at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow on March 16, 1870. ``It had no success at all,'' Tchaikovsky complained. ``I longed for sympathy and recognition, but the Overture was wholly ignored. After the concert, a crowd of us supped at Gurin's Restaurant, and nobody spoke so much as a word to me about it!''
Tchaikovsky made the first revision of the score in 1870. When the work was introduced in St. Petersburg in 1872, Cesar Cui wrote: ``The composition is a most talented one. Its special merit lies in the excellence of its themes.'' Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky made another revision of the music in 1880.
``The characterization of the music is very good,'' writes biographer Edwin Evans, ``in fact the entire work is based upon characterization rather than action. Apart from the opening theme which typifies Friar Laurence, the work has two principal contrasted movements, the one representing the feud of the Montagues and the Capulets, and naturally all fire and animation, and the other the love-stricken pair, all sweetness and romance. It closes in a manner suggesting a reference to the final tragic scene.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, English horn, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, harp and strings.
Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936): Pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome)
I. The Pines of Villa Borghese: Allegretto vivace
II. The Pines near a Catacomb: Lento
III. The Pines of the Janiculum: Lento
IV. The Pines of the Appian Way: Tempo di marcia
Elsa Respighi records that in 1920 her husband ``asked me to sing for him the songs I sang as a child at play....The request surprised me and I was most amused to see Ottorino taking down the simple tunes that Italian children have sung for centuries.'' Four years later, those same melodies would surface in the opening section of The Pines of Rome. It is the second of the ``Roman trilogy'' of symphonic poems, the others being The Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals.
Bernardino Molinari conducted the first performance of The Pines of Rome on December 14, 1924 in Rome. Despite some isolated booing, the work was a success. ``Let them boo,'' said Respighi, ``what do I care?''
For performances in the United States, Respighi provided his own program note: ``While in The Fountains of Rome the composer sought to reproduce by means of tone an impression of nature, in The Pines of Rome he uses nature as a point of departure, to recall memories and visions. The century-old trees which dominate so characteristically the Roman landscape become testimony for the principal events in Roman life.''
Respighi and Claudio Guastalla developed a program for the work, which is printed in the score:
``1. `The Pines of the Villa Borghese:' Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of `Ring around the Rosy;' mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to...
``2. `The Pines near a Catacomb:' We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant which reechoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced.
``3. `The Pines of the Janiculum:' There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Janiculum Hill. A nightingale sings.
``4. `The Pines of the Appian Way:' Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet's fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting the Capitoline Hill.''
A recording of a real nightingale is used in the third section because Respighi ``simply realized that no combination of wind instruments could quite counterfeit the real bird's song. Not even a coloratura soprano could have produced an effect other than artificial.'' The English critic Ernest Newman disapproved. ``Musical realism of the Respighi type could be extended indefinitely,'' he wrote. ``We may live to see the evening when (Beethoven's) Pastoral Symphony will be given with real running water in the slow movement.''
The work is scored for piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, 6 Flügel horns, timpani, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, rattle, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, celesta, organ, harp, piano and strings.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Friday September 25, 2009
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Butterman, conductor
Edward Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36 (Enigma) (3/24/07)
Charley talks with Boulder Philharmonic music director Michael Butterman about their season-opener on October 30, after which he anticipates the Martile Rowland's Opera Theatre of the Rockies production of Puccini's La Bohème.
Schubert: Song, "Auf dem Strom (On the River)," Op.119
(Martile Rowland, soprano; James Sommerville, horn; Susan Grace, piano)
Colorado College Summer Music Festival (6/23/00) [From COC 1] 10:05
Also, Charley notes the Denver Brass 5's "Tiny Tots Love Music" program tomorrow at Wellshire Presbyterian Church.
Gustav Holst (arr. Jeremy Van Hoy): "Jupiter" from The Planets, Op.32
Denver Brass/ Kenneth Singleton
DB 8837 "Epics in Brass" CD Track 4 7:43
Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36 (Enigma)
Theme: Andante
I. L'istesso tempo
II. Allegro
III. Allegretto
IV. Allegro di molto
V. Moderato
VI. Andantino
VII. Presto
VIII. Allegretto
IX. Adagio
X. Intermezzo: Allegretto
XI. Allegro di molto
XII. Andante
XIII. Romanza: Moderato
XIV. Finale: Allegro--Presto
``Dedicated to My Friends Pictured Within,'' Elgar's Enigma Variations consist of musical portraits of thirteen of the composer's friends, and a finale depicting Elgar himself. Elgar never revealed either the significance or the origin of the theme, which he labeled Enigma in the score. The theme came to him, he said, ``after a long and tiresome day's teaching, aided by a cigar.''
Here is the cast of characters, in the order of their appearance as variations: 1) Caroline Alice, Elgar's wife; 2) pianist Hew David Stuart-Powell; 3) actor Richard Baxter Townshend; 4) Elgar's neighbor William Meath Baker; 5) Richard Penrose Arnold, Matthew Arnold's son; 6) violist Isobel Fitton; 7) architect Arthur Troyte Griffith; 8) pianist Winifred Norbury; 9) ``Nimrod,'' or Arthur Jaeger, Elgar's close friend; 10) ``Dorabella,'' or Dora Penny; 11) organist George Robertson Sinclair and his bulldog, Dan; 12) cellist Basil Nevinson; 13) (the score is marked only with three asterisks and the word ``Romanza''), believed to be Lady Mary Lygon. The last variation is really the finale, a portrait of Elgar himself.
The first performance of the Enigma Variations was conducted by Hans Richter on June 19, 1899, in London. The critic for The Times complained that ``it is evidently impossible for the uninitiated to discuss the meaning of the work,'' but admitted that ``on the surface'' the work was ``exceedingly clever, often charming and always original, and excellently worked out.'' Another review said that ``the Variations stand in no need of a programme; as abstract music they fully satisfy.''
The subject of the ``Nimrod'' variation, Arthur Jaeger, wrote: ``Here is an English musician who has something to say and knows how to say it in his own individual and beautiful way....He writes as he feels, there is no affectation or make-believe. Effortless originality--the only true originality--combined with thorough savoir-faire and, most important of all, beauty of theme, warmth and feeling are his credentials, and they should open to him the hearts of all who have faith in the future of our English art and appreciate beautiful music wherever it is met.''
After his name on the score, Elgar wrote: ``This is the best of me, for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated like another; my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, cymbals, organ and strings.
Michael Butterman, conductor
Edward Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36 (Enigma) (3/24/07)
Charley talks with Boulder Philharmonic music director Michael Butterman about their season-opener on October 30, after which he anticipates the Martile Rowland's Opera Theatre of the Rockies production of Puccini's La Bohème.
Schubert: Song, "Auf dem Strom (On the River)," Op.119
(Martile Rowland, soprano; James Sommerville, horn; Susan Grace, piano)
Colorado College Summer Music Festival (6/23/00) [From COC 1] 10:05
Also, Charley notes the Denver Brass 5's "Tiny Tots Love Music" program tomorrow at Wellshire Presbyterian Church.
Gustav Holst (arr. Jeremy Van Hoy): "Jupiter" from The Planets, Op.32
Denver Brass/ Kenneth Singleton
DB 8837 "Epics in Brass" CD Track 4 7:43
Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36 (Enigma)
Theme: Andante
I. L'istesso tempo
II. Allegro
III. Allegretto
IV. Allegro di molto
V. Moderato
VI. Andantino
VII. Presto
VIII. Allegretto
IX. Adagio
X. Intermezzo: Allegretto
XI. Allegro di molto
XII. Andante
XIII. Romanza: Moderato
XIV. Finale: Allegro--Presto
``Dedicated to My Friends Pictured Within,'' Elgar's Enigma Variations consist of musical portraits of thirteen of the composer's friends, and a finale depicting Elgar himself. Elgar never revealed either the significance or the origin of the theme, which he labeled Enigma in the score. The theme came to him, he said, ``after a long and tiresome day's teaching, aided by a cigar.''
Here is the cast of characters, in the order of their appearance as variations: 1) Caroline Alice, Elgar's wife; 2) pianist Hew David Stuart-Powell; 3) actor Richard Baxter Townshend; 4) Elgar's neighbor William Meath Baker; 5) Richard Penrose Arnold, Matthew Arnold's son; 6) violist Isobel Fitton; 7) architect Arthur Troyte Griffith; 8) pianist Winifred Norbury; 9) ``Nimrod,'' or Arthur Jaeger, Elgar's close friend; 10) ``Dorabella,'' or Dora Penny; 11) organist George Robertson Sinclair and his bulldog, Dan; 12) cellist Basil Nevinson; 13) (the score is marked only with three asterisks and the word ``Romanza''), believed to be Lady Mary Lygon. The last variation is really the finale, a portrait of Elgar himself.
The first performance of the Enigma Variations was conducted by Hans Richter on June 19, 1899, in London. The critic for The Times complained that ``it is evidently impossible for the uninitiated to discuss the meaning of the work,'' but admitted that ``on the surface'' the work was ``exceedingly clever, often charming and always original, and excellently worked out.'' Another review said that ``the Variations stand in no need of a programme; as abstract music they fully satisfy.''
The subject of the ``Nimrod'' variation, Arthur Jaeger, wrote: ``Here is an English musician who has something to say and knows how to say it in his own individual and beautiful way....He writes as he feels, there is no affectation or make-believe. Effortless originality--the only true originality--combined with thorough savoir-faire and, most important of all, beauty of theme, warmth and feeling are his credentials, and they should open to him the hearts of all who have faith in the future of our English art and appreciate beautiful music wherever it is met.''
After his name on the score, Elgar wrote: ``This is the best of me, for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated like another; my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, cymbals, organ and strings.
Thursday September 24, 2009
Colorado Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Scott O’Neil, conductor;
Claude Debussy: Nocturnes
Maurice Ravel: La Valse (4/17-18/09)
Alos, Charley anticipates the opening concert of the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado tomorrow.
Johann Sebastian Bach: “Gigue” from Solo Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
Cynthia Miller Freivogel, violin
Georg Philipp Telemann: Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major
Frank Nowell, harpsichord; Cynthia Miller Freivogel, violin
KVOD Performance Studio 7/14/06 MS
Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Nocturnes
I. Nuages (Clouds)
II. Fêtes (Festivals)
III. Sirènes (Sirens)
Debussy's first large-scale orchestral work, the three Nocturnes for orchestra, occupied him on and off for a decade. Sometime in 1890, he began setting the Scenes at Twilight of Henri di Regnier. Two years later, discussing the works he intended to use during a projected American tour, he mentioned that ``Three Scenes at Twilight are almost finished, that is to say that the orchestration is entirely laid out and it is simply a question of writing out the score.''
The American tour fell through and the Three Scenes were shelved until 1894, when Debussy told the violinist Eugène Ysaye about a new work of his called Three Nocturnes. It was the same Three Scenes of four years before, but with solo violin instead of voice. Some have suggested that Debussy was inspired by James McNeill Whistler's painting Nocturnes. Indeed, Debussy described his own Nocturnes as ``an experiment with the different combinations that can be obtained from one color--like a study in grey in painting.''
By 1900 the solo violin was dropped and the first two of the three Nocturnes were played by the Lamoureux Orchestra on December 9. On October 27, 1901, all three Nocturnes were played by the same orchestra. Debussy was praised by one reviewer as ``one of the most original artists of the day,'' who was ``guided by a refined and unerring taste'' and who ``seems to have attained complete lucidity of thought and accuracy of expression.''
``The title Nocturnes,'' wrote Debussy, ``is to be interpreted here in a general, and more particularly, in a decorative sense. It is not meant to designate the usual form of the nocturne, but rather, all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.''
Debussy then described each movement: ``Nuages (Clouds) renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white.
``Fêtes (Festivals) gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling, fantastic vision) which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains persistently the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm.
``Sirènes (Sirens) depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, among the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on.''
The score calls for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 2 harps, cymbals, snare drum and strings.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): La Valse
``It is not subtle--what I am undertaking at the moment,'' Ravel wrote to a friend in 1908. ``It is a Grande Valse, a sort of homage to the memory of the great Strauss. You know my intense sympathy for this admirable rhythm and that I hold la joie de vivre as expressed by the dance in esteem.'' The original sketches for Ravel's homage to the younger Johann Strauss were titled simply Vienna.
The impetus to finish the piece came from Sergei Diaghilev, the director of the Russian Ballet, who asked Ravel to compose another ballet for him. Ravel had already written Daphnis and Chloe for the Russian impresario.
By 1919 Vienna had become La Valse, subtitled ``A Choreographic Poem.'' Ravel provided stage directions in the score: ``Drifting clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds gradually scatter, and an immense hall can be seen, filled with a whirling crowd. The light of chandeliers bursts forth. An Imperial Court about 1855.''
Recalling the piece later, Ravel wrote: ``I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an impression of a fantastic and fatal kind of dervish's dance.''
However, Diaghilev found La Valse impossible to choreograph, much less finance. Ravel took this as a criticism of his music. Five years later, impresario and composer met in Monte Carlo. When Ravel refused Diaghilev's handshake, Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel. Fortunately, mutual friends intervened and the duel was cancelled. The two men never met again.
Since Diaghilev refused to perform La Valse as a ballet, Ravel introduced the work as a concert piece in Paris in 1920. La Valse remained in the concert hall until 1928, when Ida Rubinstein, herself a former member of Diaghilev's company, produced the music as a ballet. That same year, Bronislava Nijinska choreographed it.
La Valse is dedicated to Misia Sert, the wife of the Spanish Painter Jose Maria Sert. It was she, besides Diaghilev, who originally suggested the idea to Ravel.
``This work seems to introduce us to the very mystery of Genesis itself,'' wrote Jean Cotté. ``In it is unveiled the formation of the formless, the birth of a shape torn, little by little, out of chaos by some creator of genius....The imaginary unreal becomes the source of the most clearly perceived reality.''
The score calls for piccolo, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps and strings.
Scott O’Neil, conductor;
Claude Debussy: Nocturnes
Maurice Ravel: La Valse (4/17-18/09)
Alos, Charley anticipates the opening concert of the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado tomorrow.
Johann Sebastian Bach: “Gigue” from Solo Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
Cynthia Miller Freivogel, violin
Georg Philipp Telemann: Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major
Frank Nowell, harpsichord; Cynthia Miller Freivogel, violin
KVOD Performance Studio 7/14/06 MS
Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Nocturnes
I. Nuages (Clouds)
II. Fêtes (Festivals)
III. Sirènes (Sirens)
Debussy's first large-scale orchestral work, the three Nocturnes for orchestra, occupied him on and off for a decade. Sometime in 1890, he began setting the Scenes at Twilight of Henri di Regnier. Two years later, discussing the works he intended to use during a projected American tour, he mentioned that ``Three Scenes at Twilight are almost finished, that is to say that the orchestration is entirely laid out and it is simply a question of writing out the score.''
The American tour fell through and the Three Scenes were shelved until 1894, when Debussy told the violinist Eugène Ysaye about a new work of his called Three Nocturnes. It was the same Three Scenes of four years before, but with solo violin instead of voice. Some have suggested that Debussy was inspired by James McNeill Whistler's painting Nocturnes. Indeed, Debussy described his own Nocturnes as ``an experiment with the different combinations that can be obtained from one color--like a study in grey in painting.''
By 1900 the solo violin was dropped and the first two of the three Nocturnes were played by the Lamoureux Orchestra on December 9. On October 27, 1901, all three Nocturnes were played by the same orchestra. Debussy was praised by one reviewer as ``one of the most original artists of the day,'' who was ``guided by a refined and unerring taste'' and who ``seems to have attained complete lucidity of thought and accuracy of expression.''
``The title Nocturnes,'' wrote Debussy, ``is to be interpreted here in a general, and more particularly, in a decorative sense. It is not meant to designate the usual form of the nocturne, but rather, all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.''
Debussy then described each movement: ``Nuages (Clouds) renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white.
``Fêtes (Festivals) gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling, fantastic vision) which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains persistently the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm.
``Sirènes (Sirens) depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, among the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on.''
The score calls for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 2 harps, cymbals, snare drum and strings.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): La Valse
``It is not subtle--what I am undertaking at the moment,'' Ravel wrote to a friend in 1908. ``It is a Grande Valse, a sort of homage to the memory of the great Strauss. You know my intense sympathy for this admirable rhythm and that I hold la joie de vivre as expressed by the dance in esteem.'' The original sketches for Ravel's homage to the younger Johann Strauss were titled simply Vienna.
The impetus to finish the piece came from Sergei Diaghilev, the director of the Russian Ballet, who asked Ravel to compose another ballet for him. Ravel had already written Daphnis and Chloe for the Russian impresario.
By 1919 Vienna had become La Valse, subtitled ``A Choreographic Poem.'' Ravel provided stage directions in the score: ``Drifting clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds gradually scatter, and an immense hall can be seen, filled with a whirling crowd. The light of chandeliers bursts forth. An Imperial Court about 1855.''
Recalling the piece later, Ravel wrote: ``I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an impression of a fantastic and fatal kind of dervish's dance.''
However, Diaghilev found La Valse impossible to choreograph, much less finance. Ravel took this as a criticism of his music. Five years later, impresario and composer met in Monte Carlo. When Ravel refused Diaghilev's handshake, Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel. Fortunately, mutual friends intervened and the duel was cancelled. The two men never met again.
Since Diaghilev refused to perform La Valse as a ballet, Ravel introduced the work as a concert piece in Paris in 1920. La Valse remained in the concert hall until 1928, when Ida Rubinstein, herself a former member of Diaghilev's company, produced the music as a ballet. That same year, Bronislava Nijinska choreographed it.
La Valse is dedicated to Misia Sert, the wife of the Spanish Painter Jose Maria Sert. It was she, besides Diaghilev, who originally suggested the idea to Ravel.
``This work seems to introduce us to the very mystery of Genesis itself,'' wrote Jean Cotté. ``In it is unveiled the formation of the formless, the birth of a shape torn, little by little, out of chaos by some creator of genius....The imaginary unreal becomes the source of the most clearly perceived reality.''
The score calls for piccolo, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps and strings.
Wednesday September 23, 2009
Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Glenn Einschlag, bassoon
Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll 19:42
Marjan Mozetich: Concerto for Bassoon and Strings with Marimba 21:47 (7/15/07)
Also, Charley anticipates the Boulder Philharmonic Chamber Players (music director Michael Butterman, piano; Jennifer Carsillo, violin; principal cellist Charles Lee) tomorrow at the Arvada Center.
Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dance No.10
Richard Wagner: Prelude to Die Meistersinger
Boulder Philharmonic/ Michael Butterman
NCA 1:52 + 9:57
Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Siegfried Idyll
Siegfried Idyll was written as a surprise present for Wagner's bride Cosima on her thirty-third birthday. It also celebrated the birth of their first son Siegfried.
The first performance took place on Christmas Day, 1870 on the staircase of the Wagners' villa at ``Triebschen'' near Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Wagner had organized a small band of musicians, who rehearsed in secret and crept into the house at 7:30 in the morning to awaken the sleeping Cosima with the music. By a strange coincidence, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a house guest at the time.
Cosima was stunned. ``As I awoke,'' she later recalled, ``my ear caught a sound, which swelled fuller and fuller; no longer could I imagine myself to be dreaming: music was sounding, and such music! When it died away, Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears, but so was all the rest of the household.''
The original title for the work was Triebschen Idyll, with Fidi's Bird Song and Orange Sunrise, presented as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870. ``Fidi'' was the parents' nickname for young Siegfried. ``Orange sunrise'' refers to the wallpaper in Cosima's bedroom.
After its initial early morning performance, Siegfried Idyll was played twice more during that Christmas Day in 1870. The assembled musicians also played the Wedding March from Lohengrin and a sextet by Beethoven.
Wagner considered the music too personal for public performance, but in 1878 money worries forced him to sell it. Cosima wrote in her diary: ``My secret treasure is becoming common property; may the joy it will give mankind be commensurate with the sacrifice that I am making.''
Various themes in Siegfried Idyll date back to 1864, so it was the opera Siegfried that borrowed from the Idyll, and not the reverse, as is often supposed. The Idyll also contains the German folk song Schlaf', Kindchen, schlafe (Sleep, Little Child, Sleep).
Cosima was the daughter of Franz Liszt. She first married the conductor Hans von Bülow, but ran off with Wagner after an intense meeting at the Berlin Zoo in 1863. Before her divorce from von Bülow, she had three children by Wagner: Siegfried, Isolde and Eva. Wagner and Cosima were married on August 25, 1869.
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Glenn Einschlag, bassoon
Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll 19:42
Marjan Mozetich: Concerto for Bassoon and Strings with Marimba 21:47 (7/15/07)
Also, Charley anticipates the Boulder Philharmonic Chamber Players (music director Michael Butterman, piano; Jennifer Carsillo, violin; principal cellist Charles Lee) tomorrow at the Arvada Center.
Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dance No.10
Richard Wagner: Prelude to Die Meistersinger
Boulder Philharmonic/ Michael Butterman
NCA 1:52 + 9:57
Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Siegfried Idyll
Siegfried Idyll was written as a surprise present for Wagner's bride Cosima on her thirty-third birthday. It also celebrated the birth of their first son Siegfried.
The first performance took place on Christmas Day, 1870 on the staircase of the Wagners' villa at ``Triebschen'' near Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Wagner had organized a small band of musicians, who rehearsed in secret and crept into the house at 7:30 in the morning to awaken the sleeping Cosima with the music. By a strange coincidence, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a house guest at the time.
Cosima was stunned. ``As I awoke,'' she later recalled, ``my ear caught a sound, which swelled fuller and fuller; no longer could I imagine myself to be dreaming: music was sounding, and such music! When it died away, Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears, but so was all the rest of the household.''
The original title for the work was Triebschen Idyll, with Fidi's Bird Song and Orange Sunrise, presented as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870. ``Fidi'' was the parents' nickname for young Siegfried. ``Orange sunrise'' refers to the wallpaper in Cosima's bedroom.
After its initial early morning performance, Siegfried Idyll was played twice more during that Christmas Day in 1870. The assembled musicians also played the Wedding March from Lohengrin and a sextet by Beethoven.
Wagner considered the music too personal for public performance, but in 1878 money worries forced him to sell it. Cosima wrote in her diary: ``My secret treasure is becoming common property; may the joy it will give mankind be commensurate with the sacrifice that I am making.''
Various themes in Siegfried Idyll date back to 1864, so it was the opera Siegfried that borrowed from the Idyll, and not the reverse, as is often supposed. The Idyll also contains the German folk song Schlaf', Kindchen, schlafe (Sleep, Little Child, Sleep).
Cosima was the daughter of Franz Liszt. She first married the conductor Hans von Bülow, but ran off with Wagner after an intense meeting at the Berlin Zoo in 1863. Before her divorce from von Bülow, she had three children by Wagner: Siegfried, Isolde and Eva. Wagner and Cosima were married on August 25, 1869.
Tuesday September 22, 2009
Friends of Chamber Music
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Inon Barnaton, piano; Stephen Taylor, oboe; David Shiffrin, clarinet; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Stewart Rose, horn
Francis Poulenc: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano
Wolfgang Mozart: Piano Quintet in E flat major, K. 452 (3/5/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the new season of the Friends of Chamber Music.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Excerpts from English Suite No. 5 in E minor, BWV 810
Murray Perahia, piano
Sony 60277 16-21 15:16
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Quintet in E flat major, K.452
Largo--Allegro moderato
[Larghetto]
Rondo: Allegretto
Mozart finished the Piano Quintet on March 30, 1784. In April, he wrote a letter to his father: "Please don't be vexed that I haven't written to you for so long. Surely you realise how much I have had to do in the meantime! I have done myself great credit with my three subscription concerts, and the concert I gave in the theater was most successful. I composed two grand concertos (K.450 and 451) and then a quintet (K.452), which called forth the very greatest applause; I myself consider it to be the best work I have ever composed….How I wish you could have heard it! And how beautifully it was performed! Well, to tell the truth I was really worn out in the end after playing so mucy--and it is greatly to my credit that my listeners never got tired."
Mozart's view that the quintet was "the best work I havge ever composed" is not to be taken lightly. The editor of the third edition of the Köchel catalogue of Mozart's works, Alfred Einstein, remarks that "there must have been some grounds for such an opinion. Beethoven, at any rate, considered it worth while to try to surpass this work in his Piano Quintet, Op.16, although he did not succeed in doing so. For the delicacy of feeling with which Mozart touches the boundaries of the concertante field without overstepping them can only be admired, not surprassed; and the particular charm of this work consists in its feeling for the tonal character of each of the four wind instruments, of which none is disproportionatley prominent--not even the clarinet…and in the fact that none of the instruments is subordinated--not even the horn."
Instrumentation: piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn.
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Inon Barnaton, piano; Stephen Taylor, oboe; David Shiffrin, clarinet; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Stewart Rose, horn
Francis Poulenc: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano
Wolfgang Mozart: Piano Quintet in E flat major, K. 452 (3/5/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the new season of the Friends of Chamber Music.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Excerpts from English Suite No. 5 in E minor, BWV 810
Murray Perahia, piano
Sony 60277 16-21 15:16
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Quintet in E flat major, K.452
Largo--Allegro moderato
[Larghetto]
Rondo: Allegretto
Mozart finished the Piano Quintet on March 30, 1784. In April, he wrote a letter to his father: "Please don't be vexed that I haven't written to you for so long. Surely you realise how much I have had to do in the meantime! I have done myself great credit with my three subscription concerts, and the concert I gave in the theater was most successful. I composed two grand concertos (K.450 and 451) and then a quintet (K.452), which called forth the very greatest applause; I myself consider it to be the best work I have ever composed….How I wish you could have heard it! And how beautifully it was performed! Well, to tell the truth I was really worn out in the end after playing so mucy--and it is greatly to my credit that my listeners never got tired."
Mozart's view that the quintet was "the best work I havge ever composed" is not to be taken lightly. The editor of the third edition of the Köchel catalogue of Mozart's works, Alfred Einstein, remarks that "there must have been some grounds for such an opinion. Beethoven, at any rate, considered it worth while to try to surpass this work in his Piano Quintet, Op.16, although he did not succeed in doing so. For the delicacy of feeling with which Mozart touches the boundaries of the concertante field without overstepping them can only be admired, not surprassed; and the particular charm of this work consists in its feeling for the tonal character of each of the four wind instruments, of which none is disproportionatley prominent--not even the clarinet…and in the fact that none of the instruments is subordinated--not even the horn."
Instrumentation: piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn.
Monday September 21, 2009
St. Martin’s Chamber Choir
Timothy J. Krueger, conductor; Matthew Dane, viola
John Ferguson: Christus 25:41 (4/3/09)
David Rutherford talks with the Mountain Music Duo and composer Marcia Marchesi.
Marcia Marchesi: Ciranda
Mountain Music Duo (Tenly Williams, oboe; James Cline, guitar)
KVOD Performance Studio 101708 MS
Also, Charley anticipates harpsichordist Elizabeth Farr's recital at CU Boulder tomorrow.
William Byrd: "My Ladye Nevells Grownde" from My Ladye Nevells Booke
Elizabeth Farr, harpsichord
Naxos 8.570139-41 CD 1 Track 1 6:37
Timothy J. Krueger, conductor; Matthew Dane, viola
John Ferguson: Christus 25:41 (4/3/09)
David Rutherford talks with the Mountain Music Duo and composer Marcia Marchesi.
Marcia Marchesi: Ciranda
Mountain Music Duo (Tenly Williams, oboe; James Cline, guitar)
KVOD Performance Studio 101708 MS
Also, Charley anticipates harpsichordist Elizabeth Farr's recital at CU Boulder tomorrow.
William Byrd: "My Ladye Nevells Grownde" from My Ladye Nevells Booke
Elizabeth Farr, harpsichord
Naxos 8.570139-41 CD 1 Track 1 6:37
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday September 18, 2009
Monika Vischer talks with CSO soloist Chris Thile, who demonstrates themes from his Mandolin Concerto.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Corrente" (2nd movement) from Solo Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
Chris Thile, mandolin
KVOD Performance Studio 9/17/09 MS
Colorado Music Festival Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op.60 35:19 (7/10/08)
Also, Charley talks with CSO timpanist and composer William Hill.
William Hill: Four Moments Musical
Colorado Symphony Brass & Percussion Ensemble/ William Hill
NCA 11:05
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Opus 60
I. Adagio; Allegro vivace
II. Adagio
III. Allegro vivace
IV. Allegro ma non troppo
Beethoven had already begun his C minor Symphony (No. 5) when he and his patron, Prince Franz Lichnowsky, visited Count Franz von Oppersdorf at his castle in Silesia. The Count's private orchestra played Beethoven's Second Symphony for the guests. The host then commissioned a new symphony from the composer.
Setting aside the Fifth, Beethoven started a new symphony in B flat major. Most of the work was done in the autumn of 1806. By November, the Symphony--now known as the Fourth--was finished. Beethoven wrote to his publishers: ``I cannot give you the promised symphony yet--because a gentleman of quality has taken it from me.'' In fact, Beethoven never sent the score to Count Oppersdorf. All he ever received was the dedication to the published edition.
The first performance of the Fourth Symphony probably took place at the Viennese palace of another Beethoven patron, Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz. Two all-Beethoven concerts were given there during March of 1807. The programs included the first four symphonies, the Coriolan Overture, excerpts from Fidelio and a piano concerto. One review noted that ``richness of ideas, bold originality and fullness of power, which are the particular merits of Beethoven's muse, were very much in evidence to everyone at these concerts; yet many found fault with the lack of a noble simplicity and the all too fruitful accumulation of ideas which on account of their number were not always adequately worked out and blended, thereby creating the effect more often of rough diamonds.'' Another critic noted the new Beethoven symphony ``which has pleased, at most his fanatical admirers.''
Carl Maria von Weber, then a rash twenty-year-old, wrote an article on Beethoven's Fourth Symphony that he would later regret. In it, he portrayed the violin complaining of having to ``caper about like a wild goat'' in order to ``execute the no-ideas of Mr. Composer.''
Referring to its place between the mighty Eroica (No. 3) and Fifth Symphonies, Robert Schumann called the Fourth ``a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants.'' Hector Berlioz found the Fourth ``generally lively, nimble, joyous, or of a heavenly sweetness.''
Berlioz loved this symphony. After the seminal slow introduction, he writes, ``the first movement is almost entirely given up to joyfulness....As far as the Adagio--it escapes analysis. It is so pure in form, the melodic expression is so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness, that the prodigious art of the workmanship disappears completely.''
Sir Donald Francis Tovey found great fun in the last two movements. Towards the end of the third, he says, ``the two horns blow the whole movement away.'' The last movement contains what he calls ``The Great Bassoon Joke,'' when the solo bassoon clowns the return of the main theme.
The Symphony is scored for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Corrente" (2nd movement) from Solo Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004
Chris Thile, mandolin
KVOD Performance Studio 9/17/09 MS
Colorado Music Festival Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op.60 35:19 (7/10/08)
Also, Charley talks with CSO timpanist and composer William Hill.
William Hill: Four Moments Musical
Colorado Symphony Brass & Percussion Ensemble/ William Hill
NCA 11:05
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Opus 60
I. Adagio; Allegro vivace
II. Adagio
III. Allegro vivace
IV. Allegro ma non troppo
Beethoven had already begun his C minor Symphony (No. 5) when he and his patron, Prince Franz Lichnowsky, visited Count Franz von Oppersdorf at his castle in Silesia. The Count's private orchestra played Beethoven's Second Symphony for the guests. The host then commissioned a new symphony from the composer.
Setting aside the Fifth, Beethoven started a new symphony in B flat major. Most of the work was done in the autumn of 1806. By November, the Symphony--now known as the Fourth--was finished. Beethoven wrote to his publishers: ``I cannot give you the promised symphony yet--because a gentleman of quality has taken it from me.'' In fact, Beethoven never sent the score to Count Oppersdorf. All he ever received was the dedication to the published edition.
The first performance of the Fourth Symphony probably took place at the Viennese palace of another Beethoven patron, Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz. Two all-Beethoven concerts were given there during March of 1807. The programs included the first four symphonies, the Coriolan Overture, excerpts from Fidelio and a piano concerto. One review noted that ``richness of ideas, bold originality and fullness of power, which are the particular merits of Beethoven's muse, were very much in evidence to everyone at these concerts; yet many found fault with the lack of a noble simplicity and the all too fruitful accumulation of ideas which on account of their number were not always adequately worked out and blended, thereby creating the effect more often of rough diamonds.'' Another critic noted the new Beethoven symphony ``which has pleased, at most his fanatical admirers.''
Carl Maria von Weber, then a rash twenty-year-old, wrote an article on Beethoven's Fourth Symphony that he would later regret. In it, he portrayed the violin complaining of having to ``caper about like a wild goat'' in order to ``execute the no-ideas of Mr. Composer.''
Referring to its place between the mighty Eroica (No. 3) and Fifth Symphonies, Robert Schumann called the Fourth ``a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants.'' Hector Berlioz found the Fourth ``generally lively, nimble, joyous, or of a heavenly sweetness.''
Berlioz loved this symphony. After the seminal slow introduction, he writes, ``the first movement is almost entirely given up to joyfulness....As far as the Adagio--it escapes analysis. It is so pure in form, the melodic expression is so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness, that the prodigious art of the workmanship disappears completely.''
Sir Donald Francis Tovey found great fun in the last two movements. Towards the end of the third, he says, ``the two horns blow the whole movement away.'' The last movement contains what he calls ``The Great Bassoon Joke,'' when the solo bassoon clowns the return of the main theme.
The Symphony is scored for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
Thursday September 17, 2009
Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado
Frank Nowell & Cynthia Miller Freivogel, co-leaders;
St. John’s Schola Cantorum/ Stephen Tappe
Claudio Monteverdi: Dixit Dominus I 11:05
Claudio Monteverdi: Christe redemptor omnes 4:06
Jesse O’Shell, tenor; Timothy Krueger, baritone; David Farwig, bass
Giovanni Gabrieli: Sonata for Three Violins 3:55
Cynthia Miller Freivogel, Stacey Brady, Tekla Cunningham, violins
Andrea Gabrieli: Toccata in the First Tone 1:54
Frank Nowell, organ
Claudio Monteverdi: Beatus Vir I 8:22 (4/22/07)
Antonio Vivaldi: Recorder Concerto in A minor, RV 108 8:32
Linda Lunbeck, recorder
Antonio Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in D minor, RV 242 9:44
Cynthia Miller Freivogel, violin (4/22/07)
Also, Charley anticipates the Denver Lyric Opera Guild's event tomorrow.
Albert Roussel: Poeme de Ronsard, Op.26 No.2
Martile Rowland, soprano; Marina Piccinini, flute
Colorado College Summer Music Festival (6/26/01)
Frank Nowell & Cynthia Miller Freivogel, co-leaders;
St. John’s Schola Cantorum/ Stephen Tappe
Claudio Monteverdi: Dixit Dominus I 11:05
Claudio Monteverdi: Christe redemptor omnes 4:06
Jesse O’Shell, tenor; Timothy Krueger, baritone; David Farwig, bass
Giovanni Gabrieli: Sonata for Three Violins 3:55
Cynthia Miller Freivogel, Stacey Brady, Tekla Cunningham, violins
Andrea Gabrieli: Toccata in the First Tone 1:54
Frank Nowell, organ
Claudio Monteverdi: Beatus Vir I 8:22 (4/22/07)
Antonio Vivaldi: Recorder Concerto in A minor, RV 108 8:32
Linda Lunbeck, recorder
Antonio Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in D minor, RV 242 9:44
Cynthia Miller Freivogel, violin (4/22/07)
Also, Charley anticipates the Denver Lyric Opera Guild's event tomorrow.
Albert Roussel: Poeme de Ronsard, Op.26 No.2
Martile Rowland, soprano; Marina Piccinini, flute
Colorado College Summer Music Festival (6/26/01)
Wednesday September 16, 2009
Charley talks with CSO timpanist and composer William Hill.
William Hill: Four Moments Musical
Colorado Symphony Brass & Percussion Ensemble/ William Hill
NCA 11:05
Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Scott O’Neil, conductor; Daniel Mueller-Schott, cello
Hector Berlioz: The Corsair Overture, Opus 21
Camille Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Opus 33 (4/17-18/09)
Also, Charley talks with artistic director of the Front Range Chamber Players David Brussell, who also plays horn with the CSO.
August Klughardt: "Allegro non troppo" (1st movement) from Wind Quintet, Op.79
Crystal 250 Track 1 7:21
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): The Corsair Overture, Opus 21
The Corsair Overture was composed, revised, renamed, and generally fiddled with for a period of twenty years, from 1831 to 1851. At various times it was called The Tower of Nice, The Red Corsair and finally The Corsair. The last title has prompted some to imagine that Berlioz was inspired by Lord Byron's poem of the same name. After all, in 1834 he had written a symphony for viola and orchestra based on Byron's Harold in Italy. But this Berlioz Overture actually has more to do with James Fenimore Cooper's The Red Rover than anything by Byron.
In the 1830s Berlioz was desperately in love with a young pianist named Marie Moke. Upon learning from her mother that she planned to marry another, Berlioz flew into a rage and left for Paris, bent on murdering both mother and daughter. He was in Rome at the time, having finally won the ``Prix de Rome.'' On the way to Paris, he attempted suicide in Genoa. Failing at suicide, he thought better of murder and decided to rest up at Nice.
Nearby was a ruined tower, where Berlioz could ``watch at my ease the approach of distant ships.'' He began sketching what would later become The Corsair Overture, which he was then calling The Tower of Nice Overture.
Thirteen years later, in 1844, Berlioz returned to Nice, under doctor's orders to rest, and revisited his beloved tower. He also resumed work on his Overture, which was performed in 1845 as The Tower of Nice.
But Berlioz was still not satisfied. In 1851 he revised the score, renaming it The Red Corsair, after Cooper's novel, in which a tower on a cliff figures prominently. Ultimately Berlioz assumed--correctly--that few had read the novel, and so changed the name to The Corsair.
After the sudden attack of the two opening chords, strings and winds alternate in a wild chase. A lyrical second theme intervenes, only to be trounced by the fiery first theme. The lyrical theme is developed a bit, but soon enough the headlong rush of the opening measures prevails until the end. Biographer D. Kern Holoman says that Berlioz here ``gives up thematic interest for rhythmic ploy and contrapuntal device.''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani and strings.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Opus 33
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Allegretto con moto
III. Allegro non troppo; Un peu moins vite
``Not so very long ago,'' wrote Saint-Saëns in the early 1870s, ``a French composer who was daring enough to venture on to the terrain of instrumental music had no other means of getting his work performed than to give a concert himself and invite his friends and the critics. As for the general public, it was hopeless even to think about them. The name of a composer who was French and still alive had only to appear on a poster to frighten everybody away.''
In an attempt to remedy the situation, Saint-Saëns and other musicians, including César Franck, Gabriel Fauré and Édouard Lalo, founded the National Society of Music on February 25, 1871. The purposes of the Society were to ``favor the production and diffusion of all serious musical works, published or unpublished, by French composers; and to encourage and bring to light, so far as lies in its power, all musical experiments, whatever their form may be, provided they reveal high and artistic ambitions on the part of the composer.''
One measure of the success of the organization is the case of Saint-Saëns' First Cello Concerto. The work was introduced, not at a National Society of Music concert, but at the Paris Conservatory, usually a bastion of programs by long-dead composers. August Tolbecque, the principal cellist of the Conservatory Orchestra, was the soloist at the première, on January 19, 1873.
Sir Donald Francis Tovey wrote: ``The worldly wisdom of Saint-Saëns is at its best and kindliest in the opusculum, which is pure and brilliant without putting on chastity as a garment, and without calling attention to its jewellery at a banquet of poor relations. Here, for once, is a cello concerto in which the solo instrument displays every register throughout its compass without the slightest difficulty in penetrating the orchestral accompaniment. All the adroitness of Saint-Saëns is shown herein, and also in the compact form of the work.''
The Concerto is scored for solo cello, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
William Hill: Four Moments Musical
Colorado Symphony Brass & Percussion Ensemble/ William Hill
NCA 11:05
Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Scott O’Neil, conductor; Daniel Mueller-Schott, cello
Hector Berlioz: The Corsair Overture, Opus 21
Camille Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Opus 33 (4/17-18/09)
Also, Charley talks with artistic director of the Front Range Chamber Players David Brussell, who also plays horn with the CSO.
August Klughardt: "Allegro non troppo" (1st movement) from Wind Quintet, Op.79
Crystal 250 Track 1 7:21
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): The Corsair Overture, Opus 21
The Corsair Overture was composed, revised, renamed, and generally fiddled with for a period of twenty years, from 1831 to 1851. At various times it was called The Tower of Nice, The Red Corsair and finally The Corsair. The last title has prompted some to imagine that Berlioz was inspired by Lord Byron's poem of the same name. After all, in 1834 he had written a symphony for viola and orchestra based on Byron's Harold in Italy. But this Berlioz Overture actually has more to do with James Fenimore Cooper's The Red Rover than anything by Byron.
In the 1830s Berlioz was desperately in love with a young pianist named Marie Moke. Upon learning from her mother that she planned to marry another, Berlioz flew into a rage and left for Paris, bent on murdering both mother and daughter. He was in Rome at the time, having finally won the ``Prix de Rome.'' On the way to Paris, he attempted suicide in Genoa. Failing at suicide, he thought better of murder and decided to rest up at Nice.
Nearby was a ruined tower, where Berlioz could ``watch at my ease the approach of distant ships.'' He began sketching what would later become The Corsair Overture, which he was then calling The Tower of Nice Overture.
Thirteen years later, in 1844, Berlioz returned to Nice, under doctor's orders to rest, and revisited his beloved tower. He also resumed work on his Overture, which was performed in 1845 as The Tower of Nice.
But Berlioz was still not satisfied. In 1851 he revised the score, renaming it The Red Corsair, after Cooper's novel, in which a tower on a cliff figures prominently. Ultimately Berlioz assumed--correctly--that few had read the novel, and so changed the name to The Corsair.
After the sudden attack of the two opening chords, strings and winds alternate in a wild chase. A lyrical second theme intervenes, only to be trounced by the fiery first theme. The lyrical theme is developed a bit, but soon enough the headlong rush of the opening measures prevails until the end. Biographer D. Kern Holoman says that Berlioz here ``gives up thematic interest for rhythmic ploy and contrapuntal device.''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani and strings.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Opus 33
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Allegretto con moto
III. Allegro non troppo; Un peu moins vite
``Not so very long ago,'' wrote Saint-Saëns in the early 1870s, ``a French composer who was daring enough to venture on to the terrain of instrumental music had no other means of getting his work performed than to give a concert himself and invite his friends and the critics. As for the general public, it was hopeless even to think about them. The name of a composer who was French and still alive had only to appear on a poster to frighten everybody away.''
In an attempt to remedy the situation, Saint-Saëns and other musicians, including César Franck, Gabriel Fauré and Édouard Lalo, founded the National Society of Music on February 25, 1871. The purposes of the Society were to ``favor the production and diffusion of all serious musical works, published or unpublished, by French composers; and to encourage and bring to light, so far as lies in its power, all musical experiments, whatever their form may be, provided they reveal high and artistic ambitions on the part of the composer.''
One measure of the success of the organization is the case of Saint-Saëns' First Cello Concerto. The work was introduced, not at a National Society of Music concert, but at the Paris Conservatory, usually a bastion of programs by long-dead composers. August Tolbecque, the principal cellist of the Conservatory Orchestra, was the soloist at the première, on January 19, 1873.
Sir Donald Francis Tovey wrote: ``The worldly wisdom of Saint-Saëns is at its best and kindliest in the opusculum, which is pure and brilliant without putting on chastity as a garment, and without calling attention to its jewellery at a banquet of poor relations. Here, for once, is a cello concerto in which the solo instrument displays every register throughout its compass without the slightest difficulty in penetrating the orchestral accompaniment. All the adroitness of Saint-Saëns is shown herein, and also in the compact form of the work.''
The Concerto is scored for solo cello, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
Tuesday September 15, 2009
Friends of Chamber Music
Trio con Brio Copenhagen
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in D major, Op.70 No. 1 (Ghost)
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op.67 (4/23/08)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Piano Trio No. 4 in D major,
Op.70 No. 1 (Ghost)
I. Allegro vivace con brio
II. Largo assai et espressivo
III. Presto
During the fall of 1808 Beethoven was staying with his friend Countess Maria von Erdödy. The two Opus 70 piano trios, composed at this time, were dedicated to her. The works were first played at a private recital in her salon that Christmas. Beethoven himself played the piano part, with violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh and cellist Joseph Linke.
Beethoven referred to the Countess as his ``father confessor'' because of her advice on various matters. Johann Reichardt described her as a ``very beautiful, fine little woman who from her first confinement was afflicted with an incurable disease which for ten years has kept her in bed for all but two to three months...whose sole entertainment was found in music, who plays even Beethoven's pieces right well...yet is so merry and friendly and good .'' She is said to have paid Beethoven's servants to stay with him.
After a quarrel with the Countess in 1809, Beethoven asked his publisher to change the dedication to Archduke Rudolph, one of Beethoven's patrons. They were eventually reconciled, but the dedication to the Archduke remained. The Countess later received the dedication to Beethoven's last two cello sonatas, Op.102.
Beethoven had begun an opera on Heinrich von Collin's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, but left it unfinished after second act ``because it threatened to become too gloomy,'' according to an early biographer. His music for the opening scene of the witches is said to have found its way into the middle movement of the D major trio, especially a repeated motive that John N. Burk describes as ``a weird figure which might be described as a soulless cry..''
Arthur Berger says the overall structure of the D major trio resembles an arch shape. ``The two outside movements are lucid and direct in style,'' he writes, ``the high point of the trio is the middle movement, the foreboding Largo.'' Maynard Solomon agrees. The work, he writes, ``has two unproblematic and relaxed movements flanking a powerful pre-Romantic Largo, whose atmospheric tremolo effects and sudden dynamic contrasts gave rise to the work's nickname.'' He regards the second trio as ``one of the masterpieces of the middle period,'' a delicate balance ``between the traditional Viennese style and Beethoven's own most mature style.''
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Opus 67
I. Andante
II. Allegro con brio
III. Largo
IV. Allegretto
On February 11, 1944, Ivan Sollertinsky, a musicologist and staff lecturer for the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, died. Four days later, in memory of ``my closest and dearest friend,'' Shostakovich began his second piano trio, dedicated to Sollertinsky. ``I owe all my education to him,'' said the composer. ``It will be unbelievably hard for me to live without him.''
In 1944 the Russian people were learning of the Nazi atrocities at Treblinka and other death camps. The news inescapably affected the content of the trio, which Shostakovich completed on August 13, 1944 at the Composers' Collective Farm near Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow.
The work was introduced on November 9, 1944 at the Composers' Club in Moscow. Shostakovich played the piano part, with two members of the Beethoven Quartet, violinist Dmitri Tsiganov and cellist Serge Shirinsky.
In his book Not by Music Alone, Rostislav Dubinsky, the violinist of the Borodin Trio, describes the first performance: ``The music left a devastating impression. People cried openly. The last, the `Jewish Part' of the Trio, by popular acclaim had to be repeated. An embarrassed, nervous Shostakovich repeatedly came onto the stage and bowed awkwardly....After the first performance it was forbidden to play the Trio. Nobody was surprised. The Trio not only expressed music, something else was there, as if it were a truthful interpretation of our reality.''
The Trio has no ``official'' program. However, Dubinsky's thirty-year friendship with the composer emboldens him to comment. ``Its very beginning,'' he writes, ``sounds like an anxious premonition of misfortune. We feel how it overwhelms us without mercy and eventually in the second part of the Scherzo (second movement) there is a burst of fiendish, destructive dance of death. In the third part, the Passacaglia, one hears bloodcurdling piano chords. Is it not the sound of a hammer on a piece of railway line which tells the prisoners of the concentration camp, that `One more day in the life Ivan Denisovich' has started? While this evil sound resounds across the hall as if in a concentration camp, the violin and cello weep, rather pray, for the people who perished.''
In the finale, ``the Jewish motif in it reaches the height of a powerful angry protest....When it seems that all means of expression are exhausted the violin and cello unexpectedly become mute. Then in deathly agony a wail escapes from a throat strangled by an iron hand. The Trio ends with the initial Jewish motif disappearing into a state of non-existence like a question mark about the fate of the whole nation.''
Trio con Brio Copenhagen
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in D major, Op.70 No. 1 (Ghost)
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op.67 (4/23/08)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Piano Trio No. 4 in D major,
Op.70 No. 1 (Ghost)
I. Allegro vivace con brio
II. Largo assai et espressivo
III. Presto
During the fall of 1808 Beethoven was staying with his friend Countess Maria von Erdödy. The two Opus 70 piano trios, composed at this time, were dedicated to her. The works were first played at a private recital in her salon that Christmas. Beethoven himself played the piano part, with violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh and cellist Joseph Linke.
Beethoven referred to the Countess as his ``father confessor'' because of her advice on various matters. Johann Reichardt described her as a ``very beautiful, fine little woman who from her first confinement was afflicted with an incurable disease which for ten years has kept her in bed for all but two to three months...whose sole entertainment was found in music, who plays even Beethoven's pieces right well...yet is so merry and friendly and good .'' She is said to have paid Beethoven's servants to stay with him.
After a quarrel with the Countess in 1809, Beethoven asked his publisher to change the dedication to Archduke Rudolph, one of Beethoven's patrons. They were eventually reconciled, but the dedication to the Archduke remained. The Countess later received the dedication to Beethoven's last two cello sonatas, Op.102.
Beethoven had begun an opera on Heinrich von Collin's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, but left it unfinished after second act ``because it threatened to become too gloomy,'' according to an early biographer. His music for the opening scene of the witches is said to have found its way into the middle movement of the D major trio, especially a repeated motive that John N. Burk describes as ``a weird figure which might be described as a soulless cry..''
Arthur Berger says the overall structure of the D major trio resembles an arch shape. ``The two outside movements are lucid and direct in style,'' he writes, ``the high point of the trio is the middle movement, the foreboding Largo.'' Maynard Solomon agrees. The work, he writes, ``has two unproblematic and relaxed movements flanking a powerful pre-Romantic Largo, whose atmospheric tremolo effects and sudden dynamic contrasts gave rise to the work's nickname.'' He regards the second trio as ``one of the masterpieces of the middle period,'' a delicate balance ``between the traditional Viennese style and Beethoven's own most mature style.''
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Opus 67
I. Andante
II. Allegro con brio
III. Largo
IV. Allegretto
On February 11, 1944, Ivan Sollertinsky, a musicologist and staff lecturer for the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, died. Four days later, in memory of ``my closest and dearest friend,'' Shostakovich began his second piano trio, dedicated to Sollertinsky. ``I owe all my education to him,'' said the composer. ``It will be unbelievably hard for me to live without him.''
In 1944 the Russian people were learning of the Nazi atrocities at Treblinka and other death camps. The news inescapably affected the content of the trio, which Shostakovich completed on August 13, 1944 at the Composers' Collective Farm near Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow.
The work was introduced on November 9, 1944 at the Composers' Club in Moscow. Shostakovich played the piano part, with two members of the Beethoven Quartet, violinist Dmitri Tsiganov and cellist Serge Shirinsky.
In his book Not by Music Alone, Rostislav Dubinsky, the violinist of the Borodin Trio, describes the first performance: ``The music left a devastating impression. People cried openly. The last, the `Jewish Part' of the Trio, by popular acclaim had to be repeated. An embarrassed, nervous Shostakovich repeatedly came onto the stage and bowed awkwardly....After the first performance it was forbidden to play the Trio. Nobody was surprised. The Trio not only expressed music, something else was there, as if it were a truthful interpretation of our reality.''
The Trio has no ``official'' program. However, Dubinsky's thirty-year friendship with the composer emboldens him to comment. ``Its very beginning,'' he writes, ``sounds like an anxious premonition of misfortune. We feel how it overwhelms us without mercy and eventually in the second part of the Scherzo (second movement) there is a burst of fiendish, destructive dance of death. In the third part, the Passacaglia, one hears bloodcurdling piano chords. Is it not the sound of a hammer on a piece of railway line which tells the prisoners of the concentration camp, that `One more day in the life Ivan Denisovich' has started? While this evil sound resounds across the hall as if in a concentration camp, the violin and cello weep, rather pray, for the people who perished.''
In the finale, ``the Jewish motif in it reaches the height of a powerful angry protest....When it seems that all means of expression are exhausted the violin and cello unexpectedly become mute. Then in deathly agony a wail escapes from a throat strangled by an iron hand. The Trio ends with the initial Jewish motif disappearing into a state of non-existence like a question mark about the fate of the whole nation.''
Monday September 14, 2009
Colorado College Summer Music Festival
Festival Orchestra
Scott Yoo, conducting
Igor Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments 14:23 (6/22/08) Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10 30:24 (7/1/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Boulder Philharmonic's season opening gala this Saturday.
Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dance No.3
Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger Overture 10:22
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Butterman, conductor (11/4/06)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Opus 10
I. Allegretto--Allegro non troppo
II. Allegro
III. Lento
IV. Allegro molto--Lento--Allegro molto
Shostakovich entered the Leningrad Conservatory at thirteen. To make money, he played piano every afternoon and evening at a drafty movie theater. Somehow, he found the time to work on his First Symphony, which he finished in June, 1925.
He submitted the new work as a graduation exercise at the Conservatory and a performance was scheduled. After the first rehearsal, the young composer exclaimed, ``Everything sounds--everything is all right!''
Nikolai Malko conducted the first performance, in Leningrad on May 12, 1926, just four months before Shostakovich's twentieth birthday. The composer's mother was in the audience. ``All went more than brilliantly--a splendid orchestra and magnificent execution!'' she reported. ``But the greatest success went to Dmitri. The audience listened with enthusiasm and the scherzo had to be played twice. At the end Dmitri was called to the stage over and over again. When our handsome young composer appeared, looking almost like a little boy, the enthusiasm turned into one long thunderous ovation.''
Bruno Walter saw the score and was ``struck at once by this magnificent work, by its true symphonic form.'' He conducted the work in Berlin. Meanwhile, Leopold Stokowksi brought the Symphony to the United States, and Shostakovich's international reputation was launched.
The Symphony begins with a flourish by the muted trumpet. Charles Burr says ``it is Shostakovich `signing in,' as it were.'' James Lyons writes: ``The entire Symphony is to grow out of the material disclosed in this short introduction--a sort of author's preface at once arch, quizzical, cryptic, even philosophical, but beguiling in its deftness and directness of purely musical expression.''
Festival Orchestra
Scott Yoo, conducting
Igor Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments 14:23 (6/22/08) Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10 30:24 (7/1/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Boulder Philharmonic's season opening gala this Saturday.
Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dance No.3
Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger Overture 10:22
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Butterman, conductor (11/4/06)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Opus 10
I. Allegretto--Allegro non troppo
II. Allegro
III. Lento
IV. Allegro molto--Lento--Allegro molto
Shostakovich entered the Leningrad Conservatory at thirteen. To make money, he played piano every afternoon and evening at a drafty movie theater. Somehow, he found the time to work on his First Symphony, which he finished in June, 1925.
He submitted the new work as a graduation exercise at the Conservatory and a performance was scheduled. After the first rehearsal, the young composer exclaimed, ``Everything sounds--everything is all right!''
Nikolai Malko conducted the first performance, in Leningrad on May 12, 1926, just four months before Shostakovich's twentieth birthday. The composer's mother was in the audience. ``All went more than brilliantly--a splendid orchestra and magnificent execution!'' she reported. ``But the greatest success went to Dmitri. The audience listened with enthusiasm and the scherzo had to be played twice. At the end Dmitri was called to the stage over and over again. When our handsome young composer appeared, looking almost like a little boy, the enthusiasm turned into one long thunderous ovation.''
Bruno Walter saw the score and was ``struck at once by this magnificent work, by its true symphonic form.'' He conducted the work in Berlin. Meanwhile, Leopold Stokowksi brought the Symphony to the United States, and Shostakovich's international reputation was launched.
The Symphony begins with a flourish by the muted trumpet. Charles Burr says ``it is Shostakovich `signing in,' as it were.'' James Lyons writes: ``The entire Symphony is to grow out of the material disclosed in this short introduction--a sort of author's preface at once arch, quizzical, cryptic, even philosophical, but beguiling in its deftness and directness of purely musical expression.''
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