Programming - February 2015

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Monthly Theme

Our monthly arc for February is “Double Double”, where I will program music for two performers, or “twofers”. On my monthly contributionon Hubub, I will also link to past posts from our many series that fit the mold.

• February 6 – “Piano, Piano” – works for two pianists in two piano or piano four hands format. Works by Bartok, Fauré, Arensky and Schuibert. http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2015/02/piano-piano.html
• February 13 – “Aria, Aria” – Duets from opera and elsewhere. Works by Lehar, Wagner and Meyerbeer. http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2015/02/aria-aria.html
• February 20 – “Vivaldi, Vivaldi, Part One” – The first of two montages of double concertos by the Red Priest, including well-known concertos for two mandolins and two trumpets.  http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2015/02/vivaldi-vivaldi-part-1.html
• February 27 – “Vivaldi, Vivaldi, Part Two” – In this second installment, a complete set of concertos for flute and violin featuring Isaac Stern, Jean-Pierre Rampal and the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. http://itywltmt.blogspot.com/2015/02/vivaldi-vivaldi-part-2.html

Pierre’s Tuesday Blog

• February 3 – The Podcast Vault. Our September 2012 podcast features two Mozart double concertos, and Mendelssohn’s concerto for piano and violin. The podcast will be streaming on  our Pod-O-Matic Channel until February 28. http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/1801-mozart-mozart-mendelssohn.html
• February 10 – Vinyl’s Revenge. The two Brahms piano concertos, performed by Daniel Barenboim and the New-York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta.  http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/1802-brahms-brahms.html
• February 17 – Once Upon the Internet. Mozart sonatas for violin and piano, featuring violinist Walter Barylli http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/1828-mozart-mozart-barylli-badura.html
• February 24 – La Chroinique du DIsque. This month, recordings by Percy Graunger, Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony,  and violinist Michael Rabin.  http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/1832-la-chronique-du-disque.html

Once or Twice a Fortnight

This month, I plan a “tandem” post of my Duests montage and a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni. 

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Felix Mendelssohn: Concertos

No. 183 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast183

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To conclude our Mad for Mendelssohn series of podcasts, we will take a look at Mendelssohn’s concertos.

According to Robert Poliquin’s Mendelssohn’s works page, Felix Mendelssohn composed eight concertos, for solo piano, violin and combinations thereof. In addition to the E Minor violin concerto (featured in a recent Tuesday Blog), we can add the two piano concertos (opp. 25 and 40) as part of the “mature” works in the genre by Mendelssohn. There are, however, at least five concertos composed in 1823 and 1824, and three of those are for two soloists: his concerto for piano and violin (featured in a 2012 podcast that I plan to bring back as part of our “Double, Double” series next month) and two concertos for two pianos, in addition to a pair of concertos for solo piano and solo violin.. All these concertos were composed around the same time he penned his twelve string symphonies.

The violin concerto in D Minor from 1823 is probably the best-known of the “early” Mendelssohn concertos. Mendelssohn wrote this violin concerto for Eduard Rietz, a friend and teacher who later served as concertmaster for Mendelssohn's legendary performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion, which has been thought to have resurrected Bach in the public image. Eclipsed by the more famous E Minor concerto, the work was long forgotten until Yehudi Menuhin was shown the manuscript of the concerto in the spring of 1951 by Albi Rosenthal, an amateur violinist and rare books dealer. Menuhin instantly developed an interest in the concerto and bought the rights to it from members of the Mendelssohn family residing in Switzerland. Menuhin edited the concerto for performance and had it published.

On 4 February 1952, Menuhin introduced the concerto to a Carnegie Hall audience with a "string Band", conducting the concerto from the violin – this was the first time Menuhin had directed an orchestra in New York.

The violin concerto is performed on our podcast by German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann.

It is at age 23 that the “mature” Mendelssohn write his op. 25  piano concerto, a good decade after his early attempts discussed earlier. He had reservations about his ability to produce a concerto that was more than just pyrotechnic bravura. Indeed, the first concerto is filled with Mendelssohn's trademark mercurial filigree and brisk, busy passages, but he also achieves a wonderful sense of stillness and serenity in the central Andante that contrasts beautifully with the outer movements. The Second Concerto came about some five years later and already Mendelssohn's growth as a composer can be heard with the concerto's more serious, refined, and less showy nature.

The performances I retained for the podcast feature the Korean-Canadian pianist Lucille Chung in a Radio-Canada/Richelieu recording from 2000 which was nominated for a local Quebec Classical Music award (Prix Opus). 

I think you will love this music too!

Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte

No. 182 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast182

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What are “Songs Without Words”? The title says it all, or does it… In Felix Mendelssohn’s own words:

What the music I love expresses to me, is not thought too indefinite to put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.
(Felix Mendelssohn's own italics)

We all have spent too much time in dental offices or in elevators, listening to piped-in music, with its fair share of “instrumental renditions” of well-known songs. Franz Liszt made quite a few “piano transcriptions” of songs, most notably by Franz Schubert, which do justice to the songs without the words. Mendelssohn’s vision of the Lieder ohne Worte clearly isn’t one of music written in anticipation of somebody adding words to them – they are, as they stand – complete as they are, as the music conveys the entire moment, atmosphere,  or emotion of the moment.

The eight volumes of Songs Without Words, each consisting of six "songs", were written between 1829 and 1845 so at various points throughout Mendelssohn's life. The works were part of the Romantic tradition of writing short lyrical pieces for the piano, although the specific concept of "Song Without Words" was new. Mendelssohn's sister Fanny wrote a number of similar pieces (though not so entitled) and, according to some music historians, she may have helped inspire the concept.

In a post from last Fall on operatic transcriptions for the piano, we discussed that before radio and recordings were available, the only way to enjoy music was, well, to play it. The piano became increasingly popular in Europe during the early nineteenth century, when it became a standard item in many middle-class households. Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words are within the grasp of pianists of various abilities and this undoubtedly contributed to their popularity.

Today’s montage does not provide all 48 pieces, but cuts a swath through the eight volumes, and features a number of pianists. In addition to Felix’s pieces, I added one of Fanny’s lieder for piano.

To complete the post, here is a “complete” set of all the songs from YouTube, performed by pianist Daniel Barenboim:

I think you will love this music too.

Felix Mendelssohn: Lobgesang

No. 181 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast181

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The third in our series of “Mad for Mendelssohn” podcasts considers two works that have in common the “number 2”.

The first work is an early “string symphony” – one of 12 composed as student works between the years of 1821 and 1823 by the teenage Mendelssohn. Within two years of completing the twelth of these works, Mendelssohn composed his Octet and the Midsummer Nights Dream overture, launching his mature phase as a composer.

I retained the second symphony for the podcast – all twelve were assembled in the following YouTube playlist (performed by Concerto Köln and the Northern Chamber Orchestra)

The bulk of today’s podcast is dedicated to an ambitious work – Mendelssohn’s Second symphony. The 'Lobgesang' (or 'Hymn of Praise') was commissioned by the city of Leipzig from its Kapellmeister Mendelssohn to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing in 1840, and has elements of the symphony, cantata and oratorio. The composer's description of the work was "A Symphony-Cantata on Words of the Holy Bible, for Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra". It requires two sopranos and a tenor as soloists, along with a chorus and orchestra. It lasts almost twice as long as any of Mendelssohn's other four symphonies.

At the opposite pole from Beethoven’s Ninth, we have here a symphonic miniature in three movements, intended to act as the overture to the sung part of the work, which is twice as long. Thus this splendid ‘Symphony-Cantata’ expands into a sweeping vocal and choral epic.

(Text here)

The performance I retained for this week’s podcast is one by the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, wguch likely was involved in the work’s première.

The orchestra's origins can be traced to 1743, when a society called the Grosses Concert began performing in private homes, and later at a local tavern. In 1780, because of complaints about concert conditions and audience behavior in the tavern, the mayor and city council of Leipzig offered to renovate one story of the building used by textile merchants for the orchestra's use – thus Gewandhaus (Cloth or Textile Hall).

In 1835, Felix Mendelssohn became the orchestra's music director, with the traditional title of Gewandhauskapellmeister, and held the position with only one year's interruption until his death in 1847. Mendelssohn concentrated on developing the musical life of Leipzig, working with the orchestra, the opera house, the Choir of St. Thomas Church, and the city's other choral and musical institutions. Mendelssohn's concerts included, in addition to many of his own works, three series of "historical concerts" and a number of works by his contemporaries. Mendelssohn also revived interest in Franz Schubert. Robert Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's 9th Symphony and sent it to Mendelssohn, who promptly premiered it in Leipzig on 21 March 1839, more than a decade after Schubert's death.

The post of Gewandhauskapellmeister was held between 1970 and 1996 by Kurt Masur (who is today one of the orchestra’s two laureate conductors) leads today’s performance.

I think you will love this music too.