Friday March 5, 2010

Charley talks with Boulder Bach Festival executive director Carole Whitney.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Largo, ma non tanto" (2nd movement) from Two-Violin Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043
Krista Feeney, Owen Dalby, violin; Boulder Bach Festival Orchestra
Charley talks with oboist Joseph Robinson about his teacher, Marcel Tabiteau.
Also, Longmont Symphony Orchestra
Robert Olson, conductor; Hsing-ay Hsu, piano
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58 33:16 (3/8/08)
And, Charley talks with Longmont Symphony music director Robert Olson about their concert tomorrow.
Moreover, Charley talks with pianist Zoe Erisman and Andrew Cooperstock about Saturday's Broomfield Fine Arts Festival.
Frederic Chopin: Nocturne in B flat minor, Op.9 No.1
Andrew Cooperstock, piano 3:51
KVOD Performance Studio 3/1/10 MS


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58
I. Allegro moderato
II. Andante con moto
III. Rondo: Vivace

The Fourth Piano Concerto was composed for the most part during 1805 and 1806. It was first played at a private concert at the Viennese palace of Beethoven's patron Prince Lobkowitz during March of 1807.
The conditions surrounding the first public performance on December 22, 1808 were less than ideal. The piano was out of tune. The orchestra was under-rehearsed. The hall was unheated. And the program was typically massive. Besides the Concerto, the all-Beethoven evening included the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasy, the concert aria Ah, Perfido, and two movements from the C major Mass. One eyewitness complained, “there we continued, in the bitterest cold, too, from half past six to half past ten, and experienced the truth that one can easily have too much of a good thing--and more still of a loud thing.”
The concert was a disaster. Pianist Ignaz Moscheles observed: “I perceived that, like a run-away carriage rushing downhill, an overturn was inevitable.” Critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt said he wanted to leave the theater because “many a failure in the performance vexed our patience in the highest degree.”
Nevertheless, Beethoven's playing, despite the piano, was praised. Reichardt noted the final work on the program, “a new piano concerto of extreme difficulty, which Beethoven played with astonishing bravura, at the fastest possible tempi. The Adagio, a masterly movement of beautifully developed song, he sang on his instrument with a profound melancholy that thrilled me.”
Beethoven's deafness prevented further performances of the Concerto during his lifetime. Indeed, his efforts to persuade other pianists to tackle the piece were unsuccessful. The work lay dormant until 1836, when Felix Mendelssohn resurrected it in Leipzig. Schumann was in the audience, and later recalled, “I sat in my place without moving a muscle or even breathing.”
“A creation of absolute and consummate mastery,” writes Harris Goldsmith of the Fourth Concerto, “a miracle of deceptive simplicity and elevated emotion, exhibiting a graceful and incandescent originality with no sign of an Achille's Heel anywhere.” The opening movement begins with the solo piano, a device used earlier by Mozart in his E flat Concerto, K.271. Franz Liszt said he heard the story of the Beauty and the Beast in the middle movement. Novelist E.M. Forster granted that image, but wondered, “What about Orpheus and the Furies, though? That is the idea that has slipped into my mind to the detriment of the actual musical sounds.” Sir Donald Francis Tovey flatly replied: “The orchestra does not imitate wild beasts, and the piano does not imitate a lyre or a singer.” Biographer Maynard Solomon points to the “military” character of the finale, “with its snare-drum rhythms and `bayonet motif’ opening theme.”
The score calls for solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.