Posted on by tjphilbrick · 1 Comment

Just For Fun

Hello all,

I thought we would take a break from our series on the Brandenburg concerti and enjoy a lighthearted encore by the Finish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. The performance itself needs very little explanation, so I thought I would provide you with a bit of background on the artist himself. As you’ll see, this performance showcases an unbelievable combination of instrumental and vocal talent.

Mr. Kuusisto is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to musical performance. One night he will play a concerto that has only existed for a few days, and the next night he can perform 16th-century compositions just as well. While this ability may be hard to appreciate without doing it, suffice it to say that this is somewhat similar to having the ability to dance a ballet one day and play in the NFL the next. As the video showcases, he is also a gifted improviser and singer. One fact about Kuusisto that I thought was particularly interesting in light of our recent study of the Brandenburg concerti is his fascination with the music of J.S. Bach. This is reflected in many ways, most notably in his composition of a series of rock and roll concerti based on several Bach sonatas.

Enjoy!

T

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Brandenburg #3

 

The first two Brandenburg concerti have shown us that Bach is not afraid to embrace new styles (such as the Italian concerto grosso format) and is a master creating texture (remember the strange assortment of solo instruments in the second concerto?). As we will see, he will continue this exploration of new styles and sounds throughout the rest of the concerti.

Brandenburg #3 is no exception. Bach returns again to the concerto grosso format, but this time he does so without featuring a soloist. Is every instrument a soloist? Are none of them soloists? We’re not really sure, but we do know that the structure of the piece is unmistakably similar to concerti written by Antonio Vivaldi only a few years earlier. In Bach’s Germany, where the concerto format was seen as a remote and distasteful musical style, his embrace of it would have been very controversial.

Bach must have really loved controversy, because he didn’t just stop with his use of the concerto format. He also added a cadenza, another musical convention that was almost unheard of at this time. A cadenza is an opportunity for the solo instrumentalist to impress the crowd by improvising on top of the composition’s main themes. In this concerto, the cadenza replaces the middle movement and is played by the lead violinist.

Enjoy!

T

 

 

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Brandenburg #2

Hello all!

Welcome back to our series on the Brandenburg concertos. This week will be hearing the second concerto, which features the trumpet, recorder, oboe, and violin as solo voices. This strange conglomeration of solo instruments becomes a delightful ensemble in Bach’s masterful hands. He expertly balances their different sonorities by including the most detailed dynamic markings in the entire set of six concerti. He also includes conversational elements with the entire orchestra to ensure that no one instrument overpowers the others (although in the final Allegro movement, it seems that he can’t help but let the trumpet loose at full strength for at least a few bars 🙂 .

You will notice right away that this concerto is much more virtuosic than the first concerto. Bach wastes no time in making sure we experience the power and range of the trumpet, whose part regularly soars above the accompanying orchestra during the first movement. The trumpet backs off, however, in the second movement, which features that same melancholy sighing theme that we heard in the first concerto. We also hear a fragment of the first concerto in the final movement of this concerto, which is structured as a fugue.

I found it interesting that Bach was writing the six Brandenburg Concertos at the same time he was writing his famous six solo sonatas for violin. He also wrote six miniatures for solo piano (much lesser known) and six sonatas for solo cello. This numerical pattern is typical of Bach, who was fascinated with numerology and was constantly experimenting with representations of numbers in his music.

Enjoy!

T

 

 

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Brandenburg #1

 

Welcome to a new series! Over the next six weeks, we will be hearing the six Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach. These are some of the most well-known pieces of classical music ever written.

Despite their popularity, these concertos were not very popular during Bach’s lifetime. Even Bach himself did not think that they were worth very much – he intended them merely as his resume for a new job. Apparently, the Duke that he was working for at the time had recently remarried, and his new wife is not a fan of classical music. Faced with an increasingly shrinking role, Bach decided to seek employment elsewhere. Ironically, he was rejected by the job that he applied for using these six concertos, leading snarky scholars everywhere to title them “the most successful failed job application of all time.”

The first concerto, which we will hear today, is the only one of the six that does not follow the convention of a concerto grosso. This is a format that features two or more solo instruments accompanied by a small orchestral ensemble. It usually includes a fast movement at the beginning and the end and a slow movement in the middle, but this one has four movements. This format was made popular by Antonio Vivaldi, composer of the very famous Four Seasons, and much of the first concerto reflects characteristics of his style. For instance, Bach incorporates a violin piccolo, a tiny instrument played only in Italy and almost never heard in his native Germany. Bach also utilizes wind instruments to create a sound color more often associated with the Italian music of that time than the German music. However, he does not fail to provide his usual sampling of counterpoint genius, as well as the sound of hunting horns throughout the piece. See if you can pick them out! Another thing to listen for it is the sad, almost-weeping voice that occasionally is featured any violin and woodwind parts; this voice is repeated and the subsequent Brandenburg Concertos as well.

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Brahms on the Cello

Hello all,

Our music for this week is the Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano by Johannes Brahms, performed by Jean-Guihen Queyras on the cello and Alexandre Tharaud on the piano.

If you have been with us for a while now, you have probably picked up on the importance of J.S. Bach in the world of classical music. Many consider him to be the father of Western music, and almost every single composer has written at least one composition in homage to him. Brahms is no exception. This cello sonata was written in honor of J.S. Bach, and we can see very tangible evidence of this in the fugue that Brahms includes in the first movement.

Brahms, however, also did his fair share of trailblazing. As an accomplished pianist, he was not a fan of the accompaniment role so often given to the piano in sonatas. He therefore wrote in the front of the manuscript that the piano “should be a partner – often a leading, often a watchful and considerate partner – but it should under no circumstances assume a purely accompanying role.” He also titled the work, “Sonata for Piano and Cello,” which, by listing the piano first, implies that the cello is the accompanying voice. It is also telling that the sonata was written for a man named Joseph Gansbacher, an amateur cellist who reportedly lacked the ability to project an adequately robust sound into a concert hall. During the first rehearsal, with Brahms at the piano and Gansbacher at the cello, Gansbacher had to stop mid-phrase because the piano was so loud he couldn’t even hear himself play. When he complained to Brahms about this predicament, the composer growled, “Lucky for you,” and thundered on.

A few things for you to listen for:

  • The first movement is where you will hear the fugal structure that is reminiscent of Bach’s music. It can be a bit difficult to pick out the cello line at times because of the deep and dark colors that Brahms assigns it.
  • Listen for a Baroque dance in the second movement, another reference to Bach.
  • The fugue returns in the third movement, but this time it is assigned to both instruments. Again, however, Brahms makes sure that the piano is the dominant voice; in fact, it carries three out of the four voices in the fugue.
Posted on by tjphilbrick

Souvenir de Florence

Our music for this week is the Souvenir de Florence by Tchaikovsky.

This string sextet was composed during a time in Tchaikovsky’s life that was devoid of inspiration. Historians have found journal entries from this time in his life that evoke despair and depression. In several of them, Tchaikovsky doubts his ability to compose at all. It is therefore surprising that this cheerful and upbeat composition is the result of such a time in Tchaikovsky’s life.

The composition is structurally very easy to understand. As a rule of thumb, every theme is presented by a single instrument family. In other words, the exposition of a theme will begin in the two violins, progress to the two violas, and end in the two cellos. Although these voices will of course be independent of each other at times, they always resolve in their original pairs.

We are very fortunate to have some of Tchaikovsky’s letters to his colleagues about the piece. We know from these letters that the first movement needs to be played with “great fire and passion.” Similarly, we know that he wanted the slow second movement to reflect a summer thunderstorm with muted lightning in the distance. Tchaikovsky also ventured into relatively uncharted territory by incorporating a fugue format into the third movement. This is a structural and stylistic marker that was much more common 200 years before Tchaikovsky’s time. However, he bravely builds the entire third movement around a fugal system in which the pairs of instruments continuously add and subtract identical thematic material above and beneath each other.

Enjoy!

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Beethoven’s 9th

Our music for this week is the famous Ninth Symphony by Beethoven.

We’ve all heard this piece before. It is on the Mount Rushmore of classical music. It is as familiar as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Bach’s Ave Maria. I would even venture to guess that we all have similar images in our head when we hear its themes. We see the dark portrait of an angry-looking Beethoven glaring at the viewer; we picture a massive choir filling a cathedral with the sounds of “Ode to Joy”; or perhaps we picture Leonard Bernstein conducting it in Berlin as the Berlin Wall came crashing down. Although we’ve heard it time and again, I think there are a few nuances worth mentioning that could make our understanding of it more complete.

As you can imagine, the Ninth Symphony was Beethoven’s greatest struggle. Faced with near-complete deafness and a receding circle of friends, he was wracked by despair and loneliness throughout many of the months he spent composing this piece. The sheer size of the symphony is mind-blowing, but what is perhaps even more impressive is the fact that it is based entirely on a simple German folk tune. “Ode to Joy” was nothing more than a popular countryside poem before Beethoven catapulted it into posterity.

Listening to the entire symphony in one sitting is highly recommended. It is a complete journey in and of itself. Although we can see these types of journeys in Beethoven’s earlier symphonies, none are as developed as the Ninth Symphony. Beethoven takes us with him on his journey from darkness to light, and we begin to see his gradual acceptance of his deafness as well as his constant struggle to remain relevant. None of Beethoven’s compositions have such a strong sense of fate and destiny, and given that this was Beethoven’s final symphony, we can easily conclude that he knew his life was nearing its end. These new and powerful themes, however, cannot displace the elements of Beethoven that are so characteristic of his works. For instance, the second movement showcases his typical explosion of furious energy, but the third movement reminds us of his uncanny ability to reduce a simple theme to an even more simple prayer. Over all of this complexity reigns the unmistakable and incredible “Ode to Joy,” unmatched in both its glorious power and its youthful serenity.

Enjoy!

Posted on by tjphilbrick

A repeat!

Hello all!

Our music for this week is one of the all-time classics, and its one of the few repeats we’ve had over the past few years. There is so much amazing music out there that it is only worth sending a repeat if it is a truly foundational composition, and this piece qualifies as one such piece. It is the Holberg Suite by Edvard Grieg.

 

A few thoughts for your listening pleasure:

– Notice that it is written for a strings-only orchestra, giving it an almost Baroque feel at times. This is also reflected in the fact that this Suite is sometimes known by the title of “Suite in the Olden Style.”

– Grieg originally wrote the Holberg Suite for the piano, since he was dedicating it to a playwright friend of his who was a pianist. Later on, however, he is told to have thrown away the piano music in disgust and rearranged the entire work for a string orchestra

– This composition is one of the hallmarks of neoclassicism, which was a musical movement that blended stylistic elements of both the late Romantic/Eduardian era and the early Classical/late Baroque eras.

– It is interesting to note that, aside from his piano concerto and a few of his operas, Grieg is best known for works like the Holberg Suite, which feature an assortment of small dances. This is the exact opposite of most of his contemporaries, who were renowned for their massive four and five-movement symphonies.

– I like to think of this work in the same vein as Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, which we heard last week. It puts aside the Romantic style and harkens back to the Classical era with an almost Mozartian lightness.

– Notice the names of the movements – Praeludium, Gavotte, Air, Rigaudon. All of these names are also the names of the French dance styles that Bach and Handel used in their compositions. This is yet another way that Grieg is paying homage to his predecessors in the Classical era.

Enjoy!

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Our music for today comes from Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. This song is a soprano solo titled Katerina’s Aria, and it is sung by Galina Vishnevskaya.

This opera was based on a Russian folk story about a young woman who falls in love but is shunned by the object of her affections. This rejection later drives her to madness and, eventually, murder. However, Shostakovich was not interested in the story itself; rather, he was interested in exploring all of the possibilities of the soprano voice. The opera is almost entirely focused on glittering soprano solo lines, and even the oft-powerful tenor line is noticeably absent. Shostakovich even changed the folk story so that he could give the soprano more of a solo presence. The aria that you hear this recording is one in which the main character, Katerina, sings of the guilt and remorse that have resulted from her murderous actions.

Shostakovich which was not only interested in displaying the soprano voice through a dark and tragic story. He also wanted to paint a new and different conception of what love could be. As he wrote about the opera, “I dedicated Lady Macbeth to my bride, my future wife, so naturally the opera is about love, too, but not only love. It’s also about how love could have been if the world weren’t full of vile things.”

The opera enjoyed spectacular success until early 1936, when it was the object of a sudden and shockingly harsh reprimand by the ruling Communist Party. This denunciation was, for the time being, a death knell for this opera. Sadly, it became well known later on largely because of its history of censorship.

The singer you will hear is Galina Vishnevskaya, who was honored as a People’s Artist of Russia in 1966. As a child prodigy growing up under the guidance of the renowned Moscow Conservatory, she rose to fame at a young age and performed most of the world’s most popular Sopranos lines before the age of 30. She was married to the world famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and the two of them where best friends with Shostakovich himself. It is therefore quite likely that Shostakovich wrote this soprano line with Galina’s voice in mind.

Enjoy!

Posted on by tjphilbrick

Ernest Chausson – Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet

Our music for this week is the Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet by Ernest Chausson.

This is a bizarre piece of music. There are six instrumentalists, but it is not called a sextet. There is a solo violin part, but it is not called a concerto. It is named in the fashion of 16th-century dances, but the composer was adamant that it should not be danced to. In other words, we really aren’t sure what this piece is.

Chausson was a lawyer who also studied at the Paris Conservatory. His tragically short lifetime was packed with musical and non-musical endeavors. For instance, he spent years helping to rebuild the city of Paris in the 1850s while also managing a writers group, opening a salon, practicing law, exhibiting his art work at multiple Paris galleries, and composing music. And all this was before he age of 44, when he was killed in a bicycle accident while on vacation in the French countryside.

His compositional style is on full display in this piece. Those of you who are musicians may recognize stylistic elements similar to those of Cesar Franck, with whom Chausson happen to study with at the Paris Conservatory. Chausson, like Franck, is all about creating drama.  You will hear the thematic material being traded back and forth between the solo violin and the underlying piano part. At the same time, you will hear the string quartet building on that same theme in its own separate chromatic progression. Throughout the entire piece, Chausson continues to make references to the 16th-century dance forms that he sought to model this piece off of. The second movement, for instance, is a Baroque Sicilienne (a form of royal dance from French courts).

Chausson dedicated this piece to the famous Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye, who gave the peace its first performance in Brussels. After the premiere, Chausson was overheard to say that the composition was an utter failure. Perhaps our taking the time to listen to it today is enough to prove him wrong.

Enjoy!

T