No. 228 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series series series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast228 |
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This week’s
Blog and Podcast assembles “short” concertante works. As you would expect, “short:”
is a subjective term – concertos can be “large” works – think of Brahms’
second piano concerto, or even Busoni’s monumental piano concerto at one
end of the spectrum, and some of the hundreds of concerti by Antonio Vivaldi
which last anywhere between 9 and 12 minutes at the other.
Nobody
would ever think of calling any of Vivaldi’s gems a “short” work… The term
“concertino” is proposed as a “diminutive” term and some of the works
programmed this week – works by Québec’s André Mathieu and Germany’s Ferdinand
David are about as long as those cute Vivaldi concerti. That doesn’t mean
they don’t pack a mean punch!
Carl
Maria von Weber
composed two concerti for clarinet, and one concertino for clarinet and
orchestra. This work is a “typical” Konzertstück – literally concert
piece –laid out in a single continuous movement with distinct sections
(fast-slow-fast) we have come to associate with a concerto.
Richard
Strauss’ Duett-Concertino,
his last completed composition, is one of those works from his final years in
which he sets aside the large orchestras and big Romantic gestures that served
him so well in his great tone poems in favor of a more restrained, almost
neo-classical style and a more transparent orchestral sound. Unlike Weber’s
“short and sweet” concertino, this genial work in three movements has all the
trappings of a double concerto (obvious reference to Brahms) so it is only
diminutive in scale, not in length. Strauss told conductor Clemens Krauss that
the work had a connection with Hans Christian Andersen's story The Swineherd,
in which a prince (here, the bassoon) puts himself into position to woo a
princess (the clarinet) by taking the job of a swineherd at her father's
palace. But he also told his bassoonist friend Burghauser of a different
scenario in which a dancing princess (the clarinet) is alarmed by the strange
cavorting of a bear (the bassoon); when she finally dances with the bear, it is
transformed into a prince.
To close
the montage I programmed Saint-Saëns’s violin concerto no. 1, like
Weber’s concedrtino, a short and sweet piece in one continuous movement with three
distinct sections.
I think you will love this music too!
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