Monday March 29, 2010

Charley talks with Boulder Chamber Orchestra music director Bahman Saless about Lindsay Deutsch's appearance this weekend.

Boulder Chamber Orchestra

Bahman Saless, conductor; Lindsay Deutsch, violin 

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto No. 2 in G minor (Summer) from The Four Seasons, Op.8

Astor Piazzolla: "Spring," "Winter" & "Autumn" from Four Seasons in Buenos Aires (arr. Leonid Desyatnikov) 1/27/08
Also, Charley anticipates Margaret McDonald's "Double Duty: The life of a collaborative pianist" recital tomorrow at CU Boulder.
Franz Schubert: "Andante" (2nd movement) & "Scherzo: Allegro vivace" (3rd movement) from Grand Duo in C major, D.812
Margaret McDonald, David Korevaar, piano
CU Boulder Faculty Recital (11/2/06)


Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): The Four Seasons, Opus 8
Concerto No. 1 in E major (Spring)
I. Allegro
II. Largo
III. Allegro

The Four Seasons is the collective title for the first four concertos of a larger collection of twelve concertos titled The Test of Harmony and Invention (Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione), published in Amsterdam in 1725. Vivaldi dedicated the entire set to the Bohemian Count Wenzeslaus von Morzin, a cousin of another Count von Morzin who would be employing Haydn thirty years later.
With an effusion typical of the eighteenth century, Vivaldi wrote: ``I have decided to have this volume printed in order to lay it most humbly at Your Highness's feet. I beg of you not to be surprised if among these few and feeble concertos Your Highness should find the Four Seasons, which, with your noble bounty, Your Highness has for so long regarded with indulgence.''
Vivaldi went to extraordinary lengths to insure the perception of The Four Seasons as program music. Not only did he label each concerto as a specific season, but he also provided sonnets describing the events depicted in each. Further, he titled specific events in the score itself.
Accordingly, the following handy chart, distilled from Vivaldi's own pronouncements, indicates the program of each movement of each concerto:
Concerto No. 1 (Spring)
I.: ``Song of the Birds,'' ``The Brooks Flow,'' ``Thunderclaps,'' and the return of the birds.
II.: ``The Sleeping Goatherd,'' ``Murmuring of Boughs and Grasses'' and ``The Barking Dog.''
III.: ``Pastoral Dance'' of the nymphs and shepherds.

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons in Buenos Aires) [arr. Leonid Desyatnikov]
I. Primavera Porteña (Spring): Juguetón
III. Otono Porteña (Autumn): Lentón
IV. Invierno Porteña (Winter): Lento y dramático

Born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Piazzolla is known as “the king of the tango” for rescuing a dance tradition many considered moribund after the death of Carlos Gardel in 1935. Piazzolla invented a “nuevo tango” (new tango) with expanded harmonic language from American jazz and European concert music. Traditionalists were outraged (there were even death threats), but eventually Piazzolla’s role as the saviour of a great tradition was conceded even by his critics.
Piazzolla’s family moved to New York when Astor was a child. When the legendary Gardel came to the United States in the 1930s, he hired Piazzolla, then barely a teenager. When Piazzolla returned to Argentina in 1937, Anibal Troilo hired him to write arrangements and play the bandoneón, a hybrid instrument related to the concertina and the accordion. He studied with Alberto Ginastera in Argentina and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Both encouraged his composition of concert works, but advised him not to forsake the tango. He didn’t, producing a body of works not only for the traditional tango ensemble (orquesta típica) of violin, guitar, piano, bass and bandoneón, but also for solo and duo guitars, string quartet, big band and symphony orchestra.
In 1965 Piazzolla began The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, a kind of homage to both the tango and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. He finished it five years later. Originally written for his quintet, the work has seen numerous arrangements, including the present version for violin and string orchestra by Leonid Desyatnikov.