Project 366 - Five "odd" Collections

Project 366 continues in 2019 with "The Classical Collectionss - A Continued journey through the Western Classical Music Repertoire". Read more here.

To bring Part 3 of Project 366 to a close, I assembled our last five collections which, in their own way, are “odd”. By odd I don’t mean anything sinister but rather that some may not look at them as being “complete.

The Mozart Violin Concertos

The collection I assembled here includes the “basic five numbered” violin concertos we can safely attribute to Mozart.  To that lust, I added two other “numbered” concertos which have been attributed to Wolfgang but whose authorship is debatable. Missing from the list are the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola (sometimes “bundled” with these concertos, and other youth or fragmentary works.

Violin Concerto No.1 in Bb, K.207 [Guide # 245]

Violin Concerto No.2 in D, K.211 [Guide # 246]

Violin Concerto No.3 in G, K.216 [Guide # 156]

Violin Concerto No.4 in D, K.218 [Guide # 246]

Violin Concerto No.5 in A, K.219 ('Turkish') [Guide # 288]

Violin Concerto No.6 in E flat, K 268 [Guide # 288]

Violin Concerto No.7 in D, K.271a [Guide # 156]

Listener Guide #288 - Josef Suk (1929 – 2011)

What distinguishes Mozart’s violin concerti from the hundreds of the Baroque masters and the seminal Romantic ones is the need for very precise, economical yet steady lines that are required from the soloist. This is oil painting, not house painting, if you get my drift… The Suk set is the most satisfying group in that regard, and the orchestra is solid and well-matched. The recordings didn’t get much distribution in the West – par for the course during those years – but were issued on boutique European labels, which is probably where most of us got to enjoy them. (ITYWLTMT Montage # 312 – 17 May 2019)

Max Bruch’s Concertos and Concertante works

When we think of Max Bruch’s contributions to the concertante genre, we think mainly of his three violin concertos and Scottish Fantasy. I added to the list a couple more works we featured in past montages, which makes this list “odd” insofar as it is incomplete.

Violin Concerto No.1 in G-, Op.26 [Guide # 38 & 207]

Violin Concerto No.2 in D-, Op.44 [Guide # 289]

Scottish Fantasy, for violin and orchestra, Op.46 [Guide # 290]

Violin Concerto No.3 in D-, Op.58 [Guide # 291]

Concerto for Clarinet, Viola, and Orchestra in E minor, Op. 88 [Guide # 207]

Listener Guide # 289 – Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908)

Like Lalo, Wieniawski and Saint-Saëns, Max Bruch composed two works for Sarasate; Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor was composed around 1878, dedicated to and premiered in London by Sarasate with Bruch conducting, in November 1878. (ITYWLTMT Montage # 194 – 17 April 2015)

Listener Guide # 290 - Bruch, Wieniawski, Michael Rabin, Sir Adrian Boult ‎– Scottish Fantasy / Concerto #1

The two works on this LP harken back to Pablo de Sarasate and Henryk Wieniawski, two preeminent violin virtuosi of the late Romantic period. Sarasate was the dedicatee of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, and Wieniawski composed a pair of concerti for his own use – the first being featured here. Both these works feature Rabin in top form and fully display his fabulous natural technique and melancholic temperament. (Vinyl’s Revenge # 40 – 17 July 2018)

Listener Guide # 291 – James Ehnes

Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 3 in D minor was composed in 1891 and dedicated to his friend and colleague at the Berlin Academy of Music, the eminent violinist Joseph Joachim, who had persuaded Bruch to expand what had started out as a single movement concert piece into a full violin concerto. (ITYWLTMT Montage # 195 – 24 April 2015)

Richard Strauss’ Tone Poems

This collection, I believe, is a complete set of Strauss’ tone poems, which include two “symphonies”. If that doesn’t make this an odd collection, I added Don Quixote to the list, which we would argue is more a concertante work than a tone poem.

Don Juan, Op.20, TrV156 [Guide # 29]

Macbeth, Op.23, TrV163 [Guide # 292]

Tod und Verklärung, Op.24, TrV158 [Guide # 293]

Also sprach Zarathustra, Op.30, TrV176 [Guide # 292]

Don Quixote: Fantastic Variations for Cello and Orchestra, Op.35, TrV184 [Guide # 294]

Ein Heldenleben, Op.40, TrV190 [Guide # 202]

Sinfonia domestica, Op.53, TrV209 [Guide # 295]

Eine Alpensinfonie, Op.64, TrV233 [Guide # 296]

Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op.28, Trv171 [Guide # 29]

Listener Guide # 292 – More Richard Strauss

Also sprach Zarathustra, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel of the same name. The initial fanfare – titled "Sunrise" in the composer's program notes – became well-known after its use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Elvis Presley used the opening fanfare as the opening piece in his concerts between 1971 and his death in 1977, and as the introduction to several of his live albums. Macbeth was his first tone poem, "a completely new path" for him compositionally. Originally composed between 1886 and 1888, the piece was revised more thoroughly than any of Strauss's other works; these revisions show how much the composer was struggling at this point in his career to balance narrative content with musical form. (ITYWLTMT Montage #269 – 31 August 2018)

Listener Guide # 293 – You’re Killing Me

Richard Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration is one of his great tone poems, where the music depicts the death of an artist. As the man lies dying, thoughts of his life pass through his head: his childhood innocence, the struggles of his manhood, the attainment of his worldly goals; and at the end, he receives the longed-for transfiguration "from the infinite reaches of heaven". (ITYWLTMT Montage #129 – 1 November 2013)

Listener Guide # 294 – Richard Strauss – Don Quixote Viktor Simon / Gennady Rozhdestvensky

Although he was best known internationally for his work within the Russian repertoire, and most especially with the living Russian composers of his prime, conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky also brought foreign works to his home audience, including the first performance in Russia of Benjamin Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream and the first complete cycle of Ralph Vaughan Williams' symphonies. With the Soviet orchestra, he recorded the complete symphonies of Shostakovich, Alexander Glazunov and Alfred Schnittke — and also Anton Bruckner and Arthur Honegger — for Melodiya, the Soviet state-owned record label for which he was one of the earliest and most prolific recording artists. (Vinyl’s Revenge # 47  – 12 March 2019)

Listener Guide # 295 – Richard Strauss: Violin Concerto in D minor; Sinfonia Domestica

When Strauss began composing the Sinfonia Domestica, he intended it to be the sequel to Ein Heldenleben, the next installment of the autobiography of the now-successful artist. Where Heldenleben is more popular and, dare I say, pompous and not at all self-effacing, this “symphony” is more subtle. (Cover 2 Cover # 16  – 26 February 2019)

Listener Guide # 296 – Richard Strauss - Berliner Philharmoniker · Herbert von Karajan ‎– Eine Alpensinfonie

Strauss’ penchant for "music as life" type pieces wholly justifies this Alpine Symphony; this expansive work has a very detailed program depicting the experiences of eleven hours (from daybreak just before dawn to the following nightfall) spent climbing a mountain. The score calls for around 115 players, including the operator for both the wind and thunder machines. Amongst the other features are an expanded wind choir, a huge brass group, including 12 off stage Horns , 2 harps and a string compliment of 64, the so-called "Wagner 64”. (Vinyl’s Revenge # 46  – 12 February 2019)

The Stravinsky Ballets

This collection is odd in more ways than one. First, some ballets are missing altogether and, second, not all ballets are complete as some are only represented as “suites”.

L'oiseau de feu (1910 version) [Guide # 297]

(*) L'oiseau de feu (1945 version) [Guide # 239]

Le sacre du printemps (1913 version) [Guide # 58]

Petrushka (1947 version) [Guide # 240]

(*) Pulcinella (ballet with song; after Pergolesi, Gallo, others, 1920) [Guide # 239]

Apollo (1928) [Guide # 298]

(*) Le baiser de la fée (“Divertimento”, 1934 rev. 1949) [Guide # 239]

Agon (1953-54) [Guide # 298]

(*) Ballet suite

Listener Guide # 297 – Happy Birthday Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky found recordings a practical and useful tool in preserving his thoughts on the interpretation of his music. As a conductor of his own music, he recorded primarily for Columbia Records, beginning in 1928 with a performance of the original suite from The Firebird and concluding in 1967 with the 1945 suite from the same ballet. Stravinsky told The Firebird was the first piece he ever conducted publicly – at a Red Cross fundraiser in Switzerland (where he emigrated after WW I) and that he felt quite intimidated by the experience. (ITYWLTMT Montage #75 – 12 October 2012)

Listener Guide # 298 – Stravinsky & Balanchine

Although Stravinsky wrote only four scores for ballets by George Balanchine, the two artists had a long and mutually fruitful working relationship. Even as a young ballet student at the Imperial Theater School in Petersburg, Georgi Balanchivadze was immediately drawn to Stravinsky's vibrant music. By the time of his death in 1983, he had choreographed many of the composer's most important works. The powerful pulse of Stravinsky's music flowed relentlessly forward, begging to be placed into physical motion, to be visualized, to be danced. (ITYWLTMT Montage #310 – 30 April 2019)

George Gershwin’s Works for Piano and Orchestra

The last two Listener Guides complete the set of works for Piano and Orchestra bby George Gershwin. Missing from the list is a setting of Rialto Ripples for piano and orchestra, making that an incomplete – thus “odd” – collection.

Rhapsody in Blue, for piano and jazz orchestra (1924) [Guide # 299]

Piano Concerto in F (1925) [Guide # 118]

Second Rhapsody ('Rhapsody in Rivets') (1931) [Guide # 300]

Variations on 'I Got Rhythm' (1934) [Guide # 80]

Listener Guide # 299 – In Memoriam: George Gershwin

George Gershwin left us on July 11, 1937, two months shy of his 40th birthday. One can only speculate as to what great things Gershwin could have done had he lived 40 more years. He’d only spent a few years working in Hollywood, and had already one major opera under his belt. There probably would have been more films, possibly more music for the concert hall or the opera house…. (ITYWLTMT Montage # 79 - 9 Nov 2012)

Listener Guide # 300 – A Second or Two

Gershwin's Second Rhapsody stems from the time he turned his activities towards Hollywood and film. Originally designed as a "rhapsody in rivets", it is reminiscent of the skyscrapers of his native New-York. The work follows in many ways the same format as the Rhapsody in Blue, though without the same emphasis on jazz and blues. (ITYWLTMT Podcast # 90  - 1 Feb 2013)