Programming Note for June-August 2022

 Normally around this time I reduce my activities here and on different forums. 

Recently, a lot of things are happening on the home front, and I need to focus more attention on these projects - nothing sinister, I assure you - meaning I will enter my summer hiatus a month early, starting June 1st.

I have a number of series ongoing - Lundi aec Ludwig, the Lyrical Alphabet and our ITYWLTMT Podcast series (at 387 and counting down towards 400). I will do my best to continue these series in June, and into the Summer, time permitting of course.

There won't be daily podcasts for the foreseeable future, though I may drop a few shares occasionally. Remember you can always find our old material on the Internet Archive under Community Audio.

Have a great Summer

Pierre 

“Otto Klemperer A la Carte

 

No. 387 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast387

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Original posts: TalkClassical; Blogger

As may has five Tuesday, my A la Carte post doubles as our quarterly Tuesday podcast. For the occasion, I am extending my Vinyl’s Revenge share from 2016 by adding a Mozart symphony, which in turn uses one of the three symphonies we had featured in our 2011 post called “Mozart’s European Vacation”. Here’s what I wrote then about the Prague symphony:

Mozart is often said to have had a special relationship with the city of Prague and its people. Mozart is claimed to have said, "Meine Prager verstehen mich" ("My Praguers understand me"), a saying which became famous in the Bohemian lands.

Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, which premiered in Vienna, was produced in late 1786 in Prague with tremendous success. The orchestra and some affiliated music lovers funded a personal visit by Mozart so he could hear the production. Mozart arrived on 11 January 1787 and was feted everywhere. On 19 January he gave an "academy" (that is, a concert for his own profit) at which the “Prague” Symphony in D major was premiered.

Again, this performance features Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra

I think you will (still) love this music too

Carl Nielsen A la Carte

No. 386 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast386

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Original posts: TalkClassical; Blogger

With this A la Carte poat, we conclude our week-long look on the #FYLP podcast at the symphonies of Carl Nielsen with two of my favourites – the second and fourth, performed here by Herbert Blomstedt but this time in an earlier Nielsen cycle he recorded for EMI with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Herbert Blomstedt’s first Nielsen Symphony cycle has made the rounds of reissues; all of these performances were surpassed, by and large, by his San Francisco remakes which feature better playing, better sonics, and generally a bolder and livelier guiding hand from the podium. Still, there are things here to enjoy.

The original post added a pair of short works to the Fourth. Today’s share expands by adding the second symphony, nicknames “the four temperaments”. Nielsen himself describes the background to the symphony in a programme note for a performance at the Konsertföreningen (Concert Society) in Stockholm shortly before he died in 1931.

I had the idea for ‘The Four Temperaments’ many years ago at a country inn in Zealand. On the wall of the room where I was drinking a glass of beer with my wife and some friends hung an extremely comical coloured picture, divided into four sections in which ‘the Temperaments’ were represented and furnished with titles: ‘The Choleric’, ‘The Sanguine’, ‘The Melancholic’ and ‘The Phlegmatic’. The Choleric was on horseback. He had a long sword in his hand, which he was wielding fiercely in thin air; his eyes were bulging out of his head, his hair streamed wildly around his face, which was so distorted by rage and diabolical hate that I could not help bursting out laughing. The other three pictures were in the same style, and my friends and I were heartily amused by the naivety of the pictures, their exaggerated expression and their comic earnestness. But how strangely things can sometimes turn out! I, who had laughed aloud and mockingly at these pictures, returned constantly to them in my thoughts, and one fine day I realized that these shoddy pictures still contained a kind of core or idea and – just think! – even a musical undercurrent! Some time later, then, I began to work out the first movement of a symphony, but I had to be careful that it did not fence in the empty air, and I hoped of course that my listeners would not laugh so that the irony of fate would smite my soul.

I think you will (still) love this music too

Igor Stravinsky, Neville Marriner, Academy Of St. Martin-in-the-Fields – Pulcinella (Complete Ballet) / Suites Nos. 1 & 2 For Small Orchestra

 

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

This week’s Tuesday Blog is a new installment in our Vinyl’s Revenge series featuring works by Igos Stravinsky performed by the Academy of St-Martin-in-te-Fields, a pair of soloists, all under the direction of Sir Neville Marriner.

The main work on this Angel ADD release is Stravinsky’s one-act ballet ballet Pulcinella, one of two ballets inspired by the works of earlier composers. It is a based on an 18th-century play, Quatre Polichinelles semblables ("Four identical Pulcinellas"). The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Léonide Massine created both the libretto and choreography, and Pablo Picasso designed the original costumes and sets. 

Pulcinella is a classical character that originated in commedia dell'arte of the 17th century and became a stock character in Neapolitan puppetry. Pulcinella's versatility in status and attitude has captivated audiences worldwide and kept the character popular in countless forms since his introduction to commedia dell'arte by Silvio Fiorillo in 1620. Many regional variants of Pulcinella were developed as the character diffused across Europe In many later adaptations, Pulcinella was portrayed as a puppet, as commedia dell'arte-style theatre did not continue to be popular throughout all of the continent over time. He was said to evolve into "Mr. Punch" in England. The key half of Punch and Judy, he is recognized as one of the most important British icons in history.

Not unlike The Fairy’s Kiss (1928) where Stravinsky elaborated several melodies from early piano pieces and songs by Tchaikovsky in his score, Diaghilev wanted a ballet based on an early 18th-century commedia dell'arte libretto and music then believed to have been composed by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. This attribution has since been proved to be spurious. Some of the music may have been by Domenico Gallo, Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, Carlo Ignazio Monza and Alessandro Parisotti. Stravinsky adapted the older music to a more modern style by borrowing specific themes and textures, but interjecting his modern rhythms, cadences, and harmonies.

Pulcinella marked the beginning of Stravinsky's second phase as a composer, his neoclassical period.

As filler, the disk includes Stravinsky’s two suites for small orchestra. These enchanting, gently satirical Suites are orchestrations made by Stravinsky of the eight piano duets he had written for his children, Theodore and Mika, the first three in 1914-1915 and then five more in 1917. 

Note the YouTube link is to a compilation set of Stravinsky music. Clips 29-47 are the contents of today’s disc.

Happy listening!

Igor STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)

Pulcinella, Ballet with Song in One Act (1920)

Bass Vocals – Robert Lloyd 

Soprano Vocals – Yvonne Kenny 

Tenor Vocals – Robert Tear 

Two Suites (Nos. 1 and 2) for Small Orchestra (1921, 1926)

 

Academy Of St. Martin-in-the-Fields

Neville Marriner, conducting

Angel Records Digital – DS-37899

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo

Released: 1982

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/8137760-Igor-Stravinsky-Neville-Marriner-Academy-Of-St-Martin-in-the-Fields-Pulcinella-Complete-Ballet-Suite

YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kwJYQNmX91HFW1SmKCrSIe4rSv-5AMGZ8 

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/02-pulcinella-ballet-avec-chante-m

Mendelssohn: Double Concerti

No. 385 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast385

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Over the last couple of weeks on our podcasting channel, we’ve spent time revisiting posts of music by Felix Mendelssohn. Today’s Friday podcast is the first in several months that doesn’t revisit Tuesday programs, ad proposes a pair of double concerti by Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn was considered by many of his time to be a prodigy comparable only to the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Besides being a brilliant piano virtuoso, his composition took a firm step forward in musical development. At the age of eleven, he had written a trio for strings, a violin and piano sonata, two piano sonatas and the beginning of a third, three more for four hands, four for organ, three songs (lieder), and a cantata. While aged 12 to 14, Mendelssohn composed twelve string symphonies; the two concerti proposed here today are contemporaneous to that period.

The Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Strings in D minor was written in 1823 when Mendelssohn was 14 years old. Mendelssohn composed the work to be performed for a private concert on May 25, 1823 at the Mendelssohn home in Berlin with his violin teacher and friend, Eduard Rietz. Following this private performance, Mendelssohn revised the scoring, adding winds and timpani and is possibly the first work in which Mendelssohn used winds and timpani in a large work. It remained unpublished during Mendelssohn's lifetime and it wasn't until 1999 when a critical edition of the piece was available. This concerto was previously paired with two Mozart double concerti in an early podcast, with different soloists and orchestra.

The Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in E Major (the first of two he composed for that combination in this early phase of his career) was written in the late summer and early fall of 1823. It was first performed in December 1823 with Felix and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn as the two soloists. Regarded as immature by the composer, the work remained unpublished during his lifetime, though he substantially revised it, perhaps a decade after the première, in which form the Leipziger Ausgabe der Werke Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy published it in 1961. The version I chose here is the world premiere recording of the concerto’s first movement restored to its original form thanks to research by musicologist Steve Lindeman. 

I think you will love this music too.

A LA CARTE #13 - Mendelssohn in London (Alternate Programme, M-273A)

 

We are repurposing the music from a Friday Blog and Podcast post of March 9, 2018 as a new montage in our ongoing A la Carte series on For Your Listening Pleasure. Mobile followers can listen to the montage on our Pod-O-Matic Channel, and desktop users can simply use the embedded player found on this page. The following notes are an update.

Don't you wish sometimes you could have a do-over, a Mulligan?

As we inch closer to our 400th ITYWLTMT Montage, I find there are quite a few playlists I wish I coukd do over, so that they would fit my overall programming better.Today is the first time I do just that, revisiting our montage #273.

As I stated  then, the United Kingdom and the city of London in particular is the home of several world-class ensembles, from chamber orchestras to large-scale Symphonies. Three of these are featured in today’s playlist which features three of Felix Mendelssohn’s ymphonic works.

Of the original montage, I kept Michael Rabin and the Philharmonia in Mendelssohn's E Minor violin concerto. The remaining works are symphonies.

To open the eponymous "London Festival Orchestra" performs Mendelssohn's first String symphony.From the same LSO/Abbado Mendelsohn symphony cycle I reached into in the original montage, I switched he third symphony with the first. As filler, I close with  an orcgestra setting of the Scherzo from the Octet, which Mendelssohn had envisaged originally as the scherzo for that same symphony.

Happy listening!

Felix MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809-1847)

Sinfonia No.1 in C, for string orchestra , S1 no. 1

London Festival Orchestra

Ross People, conducting

[NEW]

Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op.64

Michael Rabin, Violin

Philharmonia Orchestra 

Adrian Boult, conducting

[M-273]

Symphony No.1 in C Minor, Op.11

Octet in E flat, Op.20 - III. Scherzo (Arr. for orchestra by the composer)

London Symphony Orchestra

Claudio Abbado, conducting

[NEW]

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/alc-13

Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte / Songs without Words

 

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

Our Cover2Cover share this month is taken from YouTube and Brilliant Classics. The following is from the official webpage:

Felix Mendelssohn was a virtuoso pianist, and it worth remembering that he was born in 1809, with his friend Schumann being born a year later in 1810, as was Chopin, and Liszt following in 1811. These composers were among the greatest pianists of the 19th century, and they were born at a time when the piano was a relatively modern instrument, and composers such as Hummel, Moscheles (Mendelssohn’s friend), Kalkbrenner and Ries were accorded adulation similar to pop stars today. Beethoven commenced his career in the 1790s as a virtuoso pianist.

No surprise then that the young Mendelssohn composed extensively for his chosen instrument from the outset. From early concertos and sonatas he quickly established his ‘mature’ style in works such as the Rondo capriccioso, and the Andante cantabile e Presto agitato. The masterpieces that followed include the famous Songs without Words. On this recording, these piano 'songs' are played by Dutch pianist Frank van der Laar.

We will deploy this share on our podcasting channel over 2 episodes, May 3rd and 4th). Happy Listening!

Felix MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809-1847)

Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words) 

Songs without Words, Book 1, Op.19b

Songs without Words, Book 2, Op.30

Songs without Words, Book 3, Op.38

Songs without Words, Book 4, Op.53

Songs without Words, Book 5, Op.62

Songs without Words, Book 6, Op.67

Songs without Words, Book 7, Op.85 

Songs without Words, Book 8, Op.102 

Frank van de Laar, piano

Brilliant Classics 93833

Release November 2007

Archive Page - https://archive.org/details/1-19-book-iv-op.-53