André Previn (*1929)

No. 257 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast257

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Summer is entering its last few weeks, and my two-month hiatus from the Tuesday Blog comes to an end with one of my “quarterly” montages.

The term “triple threat” comes up from time to time in sports and in performing arts as a very distinct form of praise to somebody who can hit for percentage, hit for power and steal bases in baseball, or act, sing and dance on the Broadway stage or act, write and direct in Hollywood.

The primary subject for today’s musical share is himself a triple threat – as a composer, conductor and pianist. We could also state his threat status somewhat differently as a man of jazz, film and concert music.

In spite of a French-sounding name, André Previn (no accent aigu on the family name, I checked!) isn’t French at all – he’s born in Berlin, emigrated to America where, to make ends meet, his father gave music lessons at home. Young Previn studied piano, theory, and composition from the best instructors available, Joseph Achron and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and later conducting studies with Pierre Monteux. As a teenager Previn practiced piano up to six hours a day. 

Eager to help his family financially, he quickly followed up when he heard that the movie studio Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) needed someone to compose a jazz arrangement (a musical score). This led to writing more arrangements, at first sporadically and then more regularly, several times a week after school. Seduced by Hollywood's glamour, he signed a contract with MGM when he turned eighteen. 

His early career of orchestrating film scores at MGM led quickly to conducting engagements of symphonic repertoire and on to an international career as Music Director of orchestras as London, Los Angeles, Oslo and Pittsburgh. In the 1980s, he concentrated increasingly on compositions for the concert hall and opera. His own richly lyrical style underscores his love of the late Romantic and early 20th-century masterpieces of which his interpretations as conductor are internationally renowned.

Previn’s discography as a jazz pianist, classical pianist and conductor is impressive. I retained two of them in today’s montage both concertos featuring him as soloist and conductor. The first is of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 17 (with the Vienna Philharmonic) and the other is of Gershwin’s Jazz-inspired Concerto in F with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

To complete the montage, I added a solo piano composition by Previn – a series of short piano vignettes “Five Pages from my Calendar” composed in the 1970‘s.

Oboe Concertos

No. 256 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast256

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The oboe (and its larger relative, the cor anglais - literally translates from French as English Horn) produces a beautiful, sweet, haunting sound. When used as solo instruments the sound is sometimes described as a 'pastoral' sound. This is because it descended from the type of reed instruments that have been used in folk music and by shepherds the world over for thousands of years. Modern oboes blend superbly with all instruments of the orchestra and can also be surprisingly agile. Oboes have been used in orchestras for about 400 years and are among the most established instruments of the orchestra.

The standard oboe has several siblings of various sizes and playing ranges. The adorementioned cor anglais, the oboe d'amore, the “ mezzo-soprano” member of the family. J.S. Bach made extensive use of the oboe and oboe d'amore as well as the taille and oboe da caccia.

I can’t find backing data, but I would hazard to say that of all the instruments that are featured as solo instruments, the oboe must be the most popular wind solo instrument in concerto repertoire, with more concerti than the flute, clarinet or trumpet. It was logical, given Italy's - and, indeed, Venice's - pioneering role in the development of the Concerto, that sooner or later the first concerti with parts for oboes would be written. The big question was how, if at all, Should, they differ in style and form from violin concerti?

For Vivaldi, as for most Italian composers, the problem was easily resolved. In his hands the oboe becomes a kind of ersatz violin. To be sure, he takes care not to exceed the normal compass of the instrument, remembers to insert pauses for breathing and avoids over-abrupt changes of register, but the solo part still seems remarkably violinistic - as Vivaldi himself tacitly acknowledged when, on more than one occasion, he prescribed the violin as an alternative to the oboe.

It was left to Vivaldi's important Venetian contemporary, Tomaso Albinoni, to find another way of treating the oboe in a concerto. Apart from being a capable Violinist, Albinoni was a singing teacher married to an operatic diva. His experience of writing operas and cantatas decisively affected the way in which he approached melody and instrumentation. His concerti equate the oboe not with a violin but with the human voice in an aria.

Domenico Cimarosa is mainly known for his scintillating operas, which are generally of a comic nature. His orchestral writing shimmers with transparent harmonies and lively rhythms. But in the year 1787, he took up the post of composer in residence to Catherine II of Russia. At the time, Russia's coffers were not overly plentiful, and the amount of money the Empress was willing to spend on opera dwindled with each season. Cimarosa took to composing instrumental music to pass the time. Among his instrumental works composed in Russia are a group of thirty-two keyboard sonatas after the style of Domenico Scarlatti. In 1949, Arthur Benjamin took four of his favorite keyboard sonatas of Cimarosa and combined them into the larger concerto form. He rewrote the pieces, scoring them for oboe and string orchestra, keeping most of the melody in the solo voice.

Two other opera composers complete our montage of oboe concerti - Vincenzo Bellini's only surviving concerto was most likely composed his in 1823 and constitutes an important part of his limited instrumental output.

American oboist John de Lancie was a corporal in the U.S. Army unit which secured the area round the Bavarian town of Garmisch where Richard Strauss was living in April 1945, following World War II. As principal oboist of the Pittsburgh Orchestra in civilian life, he knew Strauss's orchestral writing for oboe thoroughly, visited the composer in his home, and in the course of a long conversation asked him if he had ever considered writing an oboe concerto. Strauss answered simply "No", and the topic was dropped.

However, in the months to follow, the idea grew on him and he completed the short score of his Oboe in the Fall of 1945. The work was premiered on 26 February 1946 in Zürich. Strauss saw to it that the rights to the U.S. premiere were assigned to de Lancie, who after the war had switched to the Philadelphia Orchestra and was only a junior member there. Protocol made de Lancie's performing the premiere impossible since the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal oboist had priority. De Lancie instead gave the rights to the U.S. premiere to a young oboist friend at the CBS Symphony Orchestra in New York, Mitch Miller, who later became famous as a music producer and host of a sing-along TV show.

John de Lancie later became the principal oboist for the Philadelphia Orchestra for 30 years but it was only after his retirement that he finally performed the concerto.

I think you will love this music too.

René Leibowitz (1913–1972)

No. 255 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT  series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast255

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This week’s Blog and Podcast features music by Polish-born and French-naturalized composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher René Leibowitz.

Training early as a violinist, Leibowitz studied composition and orchestration with Maurice Ravel during the early 1930s in Paris, where he was introduced to Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-note technique by the German pianist and composer Erich Itor Kahn. Many of the works of the Second Viennese School were first heard in France at the International Festival of Chamber Music established by Leibowitz in Paris in 1947. Leibowitz was highly influential in establishing the reputation of the Second Viennese School, both through activity as a teacher in Paris after World War II (in 1944 he taught composition and conducting to many pupils, including Pierre Boulez (composition only), Antoine Duhamel, and Vinko Globokar) and through his book Schoenberg et son école, published in 1947.

As a composer, René Leibowitz adopted the 12-tone method of composition, becoming its foremost exponent in France. The two works retained, but most especially his piano concerto, are fine examples of this.

Leibowitz studied conducting in Paris with Pierre Monteux, and made his debut as a conductor in 1937 with the Chamber Orchestra of the French Radio in Europe and the USA. Meanwhile, he continued to conduct whenever he found time - though his podium activities were interrupted by the war. It was during this period that he wrote several books concerning the music and techniques of the Schoenberg school. Also, during the war he was an active member of the French resistance against the Nazis. Upon the conclusion of the war, he returned to conducting - reluctantly at first. He felt that in his five-year enforced retirement he might have lost his touch as a maestro. This proved to be totally untrue. Soon after his return to the conducting world, he became one of the most sought-after directors in Europe. Attesting to his international success is the fact that his list of recordings is well over the hundred mark.

One of his most circulated and most notable recordings is a set of Beethoven's symphonies made for Reader's Digest; it was apparently the first recording to follow Beethoven's metronome markings. Leibowitz also completed many recordings as part of Reader's Digest's compilation albums. The first work in our montage, an arrangement of Bach’s Passaglia and Fugue for two orchestras and the closing Beethoven’s 8^th come from this period.

I think you will love this music too