Little musical gems

APRIL 2020

Each day during the lockdown in France, I decided to publish a short musical anecdote, an assortment of musical tales relating to recordings that hold either a personal resonance or is a particular favourite. Some you may know, others perhaps not. Either way I hope you enjoy discovering or rediscovering these works.

Little musical gems #122

Monteverdi often composed music of emotional intensity and strove to create unprecedented passion and dramatic contrast in his works. Poppea was composed in 1642 and the performance took place at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the Carnival season in 1643.

This work was rightly regarded as one of the pivotal and milestones in operatic history and the first known opera which Monteverdi was inspired by actual historical events to publish it, rather than drawing on mythology. It takes its cue from Roman history: the relationship between the Roman aristocrat Sabina Poppea and Emperor Nero and relies heavily on the decidedly human failings that drove them. It was not only becoming the driving force behind a new and unique form of entertainment, but Monteverdi also took opera in a whole new direction.

The plot gave Monteverdi a long-awaited opportunity to demonstrate the developments and changes in characters and the libretto (composed by Gian Francesco Busenello), promoted Monteverdi’s adoption of Marinist musical techniques and idiom. He rose to meet the challenge with every devices and subtlety in his artistic armoury. Ground basses, balanced forms, key themes, arioso-recitatives, vocal embellishments, contrasting ritornels – these and many more are deployed with all the art of a mature musician intent on raising opera to a new level of emotional experience.

The seeping of blood as the tragedy ensues makes a powerful point and above all, the Shakespearean quality of Monteverdi’s imagination, that was unparalleled in opera before Mozart.

Nero and Poppea were treasured to one another, and sing one of the most beautiful and intimate of all Monteverdi’s duets for they were clear that his music itself is the treasure and shining brilliantly through no matter what arrangement, orchestration, or adaption might be foisted upon it.

This aria sung here by Sonya Yoncheva (Poppea) and Kate Lindsay (Nero) is one of the most seductive interpretations where the two voices contain a richness and variety that lends to the drama of this dangerous liaison.

Little musical gems #121

Earlier this month, we lost the greatest jazz composer since Thelonious Monk. Observing the outpouring of tributes that followed demonstrates just how influential Wayne Shorter was to every generation of not only jazz, but also pop, world and classical music artists.

Shorter led a musical life that spanned a panoply of styles and configurations, all suffused in his own idiosyncratic melding of sounds and sensibilities which seemed to reach from the heat-center of the earth to the infinite expanses of the cosmos. He was simply, “beyond category” not only for his unique instrumental style and compositions but for his perspectival brilliance.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on August 25, 1933, Shorter had his first great jazz epiphany as a teenager seeing Lester Young when he was 15 years old. The whole scene impressed him so much that at 16, he decided to pick up the clarinet.

Switching to tenor saxophone, Shorter formed a teenage band in Newark called The Jazz Informers. While still in high school, Shorter participated in several cutting contests on Newark’s jazz scene, including one memorable encounter with sax great Sonny Stitt. He attended college at New York University while also soaking up the Manhattan jazz scene by frequenting popular nightspots like Birdland and Cafe Bohemia. Wayne worked his way through college by playing with the Nat Phipps orchestra.

Upon graduation and just as he was beginning making his mark, Shorter was drafted into the US army. During the two years of service, he practised assiduously and played for weekend sessions. Recruited on his release by the trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, he was soon poached by Blakey to become a member of the Jazz Messengers. Four years with Blakey gave Shorter a significant presence on the jazz scene, resulting in a series of well-received albums under his own name for the Blue Note label.

It was no surprise when, in 1964, he accepted an invitation to join Davis’s quintet. After Coltrane’s departure four years earlier, the trumpeter had hired and fired a succession of saxophonists before finding the voice he really needed alongside his own. Shorter’s sensibility was perfectly attuned to the riddles with which Davis shook his sidemen out of established patterns of thought. When he was asked, “Wayne, do you get tired of playing music that sounds like music?”, Shorter understood.

Although regarded throughout his career as a nurturer more than a leader, Shorter said he believed from his earliest days as a player that music was an act of personal assertion and investment in one’s inner being. “Jazz for me,” he said, “is, ‘Do you have the guts to do it ?’ ”

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Nicholas Snowman who died tragically on March 2 of this year. He enjoyed reading these musical vignettes.

Little musical gems #120

Franz who ? Franz Schreker was a child of the fin de siècle and as such, his lush, expressive and sonorous music corresponded entirely to the indulgent attitude to life of the time.

He was born in Monaco in 1878. With the sudden death of his father in 1888, the family to Vienna, where his musical journey began. It was the city of Brahms and Bruckner, and was one of the most important, if not the most important, music centre in Europe. Everyone was dancing to the waltz sounds of a certain Johann Strauss.

During Schreker’s studies at the Vienna conservatory, Alexander Zemlinsky and Gustav Mahler became influential musical figures in Vienna, and a new generation of composers formed around Arnold Schoenberg. They all knew each other, met in the city's coffee houses and discussed the new cultural ideas. With the premiere of his opera Der ferne Klang in 1912, Franz Schreker rose to become one of the leading composers of his time.

His subsequent stage works, Die Gezeichneten (1915) and Der Schätzgräber(1918), made him the most frequently performed opera composer of his day, even ahead of Richard Strauss. Again and again he emphasised that he drew inspiration from the subconscious – entirely in accordance with the new insights of Freudian psychoanalysis. Dreams, illusions, and the sensuous but simultaneously destructive play between man and woman determined the subjects of his operas.

During this particularly productive period of his career, Schreker continued to concentrate on opera but also gave plenty of thought to his instrumental music. In fact, it was during the mid-1910s that he wrote what is probably his most famous work, the Chamber Symphony.

Schreker’s work is now overshadowed by many pieces with the same name, such as the famous examples by Schoenberg. However, it is by no means inferior to any of the more renowned works that surround it. Lushly orchestrated despite its minimal instrumentation and full of incredibly compelling moments throughout its 24 minutes, Schreker’s Chamber Symphony is a forgotten masterpiece of the 20th century.

For years, Schreker’s music faced restrictions as a result of Nazi ideology, and suppression of his works rendered him virtually forgotten in music history. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, revivals of his operas generated new interest, and since that time performances of his instrumental and operatic music have been steadily increasing.

Little musical gems #119

St. Valentine's Day is around the corner. It is time for "Fêtes Galantes".

For the English, "Fêtes Galantes" is one of those glorious French phrases that sounds so wonderful but is nigh on impossible to translate. It originates from Watteau’s first picture for the Academie des Beaux Arts 'L'Embarquement pour Cythère', depicting this imagined mythological land where courtship parties take place and where humans supposedly lived in leisurely harmony with nature. His painting shows charming bucolic scenes with a hint of theatricality, with a group of lovers seemingly departing for the island of Cythera. Cythera was the birthplace of Venus and the lovers departing for her island is taken as emblematic of the transience of love. It is the land of amusement by flirting, dancing and celebrating

Debussy frequently drew inspiration from contemporary sources, but for “L'Isle Joyeuse”, he turned to the past, specifically to this painting by Watteau. L’Isle joyeuse is surely his happiest, his most overtly exuberant and thrilling work. Debussy successfully reproduces through music the spirit of the fêtes galantes displaying obvious affinity between his tonal-schemes in “half-tints of pearl-gray mists, violet twilights and sunshine the hue of pale primroses” and the atmospheric colour of Watteau’s canvases.

In the original piano version (Molinari, with Debussy's approval, made an orchestral arrangement), the sound seems to give us the idea that the performer is one of the characters in the painting - at first seeming superficial, but then conveying a deeper sensibility. Each listener can make the character himself or herself. There’s dancing, there’s a pause for thought, there’s the joy in being on the Isle of Love. Details from Debussy’s own life - at the time of composing this work, he too was escaping to an island with his new found love Emma Bardac - are also surely responsible for inspiring this spirited music.

L’isle joyeuse is a spectacular work for the piano, themes are tossed about in a rush of increasing gaiety and gradually building exhilaration, slipping easily between tonal centres in a bright tonal world brimming with melodic major thirds, augmented chords and whole tone scales. After a bustling march builds up to a sonorous fanfare of triumph, the lyrical second theme reaches its apotheosis in an explosion of orchestral thunder that issues into a luminous vibration of shimmering tremolos, to end the piece with a plunge from the top to the very bottom of the keyboard.

Its proud creator wrote to his publisher: “This piece seems to embrace every possible manner of treating the piano, combining as it does strength with grace, if I may presume to say so.”

Little musical gems #118 

The German word « Sternstunde » literally translated as «hour of the stars», in musical terms equates to a concert that reaches celestial heights of brilliance and revelation. It's hard to describe what it feels like to hear one of these cosmically powerful performances, but you know one when you hear it and I recall Claudio Abbado achieved it during a performance with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Mahler’s second Symphony.

Abbado epitomised elegance, and in his youth he had the charisma and style of a Fellini or Antonioni star driving an Alfa Romeo convertible through the streets of Swinging Sixties Rome. That he would become an important conductor was never in doubt. But what made him so great ?

Born into a family of musicians and academics in Milan in 1933, Abbado studied composition, piano and conducting in Milan. Following graduation, he won a conducting competition in America, and made important debuts in Vienna and La Scala. But Abbado shunned the limelight and honed his musicianship by teaching chamber music in Parma for three years. After this self-imposed isolation, his career took off, and he quickly became one of the most important musical presences in the world. He was in charge of the opera of La Scala in Milan for nearly two decades, from 1968-86, was with the London Symphony Orchestra from 1979 until 1988, and after a stint with the Vienna Staatsoper, came his nomination succeeding Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Abbado had a special connection with Mahler. It was with Mahler's Second Symphony that Abbado made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1965 and the same Symphony was the climax of his inaugural programmes with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which he founded in 2003.

Abbado talked of the choral finale of the Second Symphony - Mahler's coruscating vision of spiritual rebirth - as a metaphor for his own musical experience. Among Mahler's text for that movement are the lines : What was created, must pass away - what passed away, must rise ! - Cease to tremble ! - Prepare yourself ! - Prepare yourself to live !

Abbado saw this as meaning that music is both destroyed and redeemed by its temporality it exists and is extinguished in a moment, but has the endless possibility of being created anew in time. But in the context of Abbado's journey through illness (he was diagnosed with stomach cancer), it's impossible not to hear the personal resonance : it was his own rebirth he was celebrating in those performances, in the company of the players he handpicked to play in the Lucerne Festival Orchestra's first concerts.

As to what makes him so great ? During an interview he once said « My grandfather used to take me for walks in the mountains, and he didn't say very much. I learned from him to listen to silence. And for me, listening is the most important thing: to listen to each other, to listen to what people say, to listen to music ».

Little musical gems #117

It’s a chime that we recognise instantly. Constructed simply of four notes - G sharp, F sharp, E and B - this sequence known as the « Westminster Quarters » is struck in various permutations to mark the quarter hours on Big Ben, the clock in Elizabeth Tower at the Houses of Parliament.

The Quarters had actually originated, not in London, but as a peal written in 1793 for St. Mary the Great, the university church in Cambridge. It is not known who composed the chime, though it is often attributed to William Crotch, an undergraduate at the time. Others suggest in the initial four-note motif an echo of the aria ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ from Handle’s Messiah, but the link is not conclusive.

By the time the French musician Louis Vierne arrived in England for a short recital tour in January 1924, he was already a well-known figure. Titular organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris since 1900, Vierne was also a celebrated composer, with four organ symphonies and a host of other works to his credit.

One of the recitals Vierne played in England was at Westminster Cathedral in London, where a new organ was being built in stages. Its designer, Henry Willis III, was at the concert and at one point he apparently hummed a tune to Vierne. The tune in question was the Westminster Quarters and as a reponse, the organist masterfully weaved and improvisation on the tune.

There is no precise record of how Vierne expanded on the Quarters theme at his Westminster Cathedral concert, but its potential clearly interested him, and three years after the 1924 recital, Vierne returned to the Quarters again, in a swirlingly flamboyant work entitled « Carillon de Westminster ».

It is a relatively short piece, but includes a large variety of colour and incident into its six-minute span. Vierne gradually builds an imposing edifice of sound from the four basic Westminster Quartiers motifs (including, for some reason, a slightly misquoted second « quarter »), drawing on the massive tonal and technical resources of the French symphonic organ tradition.

Vierne dedicated the published score ‘to my friend Henry Willis, organ builder in London’, and played it at the inauguration of the restored Notre-Dame organ in 1932.

One day this organ will once again be heard, and with it who knows, perhaps this piece !

Little musical gems #116

“A happy smile lit up the face of every listener, caused by the musical excitement of the wonderful waltz rhythms”. The reviewer’s comments refer to a « special concert » performed by the Vienna Philharmonic in the famous Golden Hall of the city’s Musikverein on the morning of 31st December 1939, a Sunday.

Announced as a « New Year’s Eve Concert », the event switched to 1st January in 1941, generating an unbroken run of over 80 Vienna New Year concerts which continues to the present.

The music of the Vienna New Year’s Concert is dominated by the Strauss family - Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II, Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss. It occasionally includes other composers, for example, in 2009, the fourth movement of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony was performed to mark the 200th anniversary of his death.

The encores usually begin with a fast polka, followed by Strauss II’s The Blue Danube and Strauss I’s Radetsky March, during which the audience claps along under the direction of the conductor. Dance is also incorporated into the musical offerings as pairs of ballet dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet usually appear in the second part of the program, adding an elegant touch to the concert.

Originating around the World War period, the Vienna New Year’s Concert was initially conceived for the local Austrians as a source of hope for a better future. Nowadays, it encourages millions of music lovers around the world by bringing joy and optimism for the New Year ahead. However, the formative phase of the New Year’s Concert - the Nazi era - went unexamined in Austria and abroad until the past decade. Today, those years are extensively documented on the Philharmonic’s website.

International music history in particular can make an important contribution to a critical assessment of Austria’s role in National Socialism, World War II and the Holocaust. Josef Krips, who conducted the January 1st 1946, concert noted succinctly: “I began 1946 with the first New Year’s Concert in peacetime.”

In 1980, Lorin Maazel became the first non-Austrian conductor of the concert and became one of the most frequently appeared conductors in this major event. In 2005, Lorin Maazel omitted the Radetzky March to pay tribute to the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The practice of choosing a different conductor every year began in 1987, after seven consecutive appearances by Maazel. Members of the VPO vote for the conductor of the following year and the result is usually announced at the end of each year’s New Year Concert. The 2024 Concert will as announced be conducted by Christian Thielmann.

Happy New Year to you all and I look forward to sharing more Little Musical Gems in 2023 !

Little musical gems #115

In light of Christmas approaching, I thought it would be appropriate to contemplate the beauty and meaning in an ancient Christmas text, O magnum mysterium. The origin of this Nativity poem is in itself a great mystery. It is not a biblical text. The poem was incorporated in mediaeval times into the Divine Office as the fourth of the nine Responsories for Matins on Christmas Day. This dates back to one of three periods of major reform of Catholic liturgy : either those of Pope Gregory VII in the eleventh century or less possibly the Carolingian reforms of the eighth-ninth centuries or even as far back as those of Pope Gregory I.

O magnum mysterium has an associated plainchant melody, and has been sung in this form since the middle ages. However, the text has appealed to many composers over the years. Some of the earliest settings were published in the mid 1500s.

Many of the most notable composers of the renaissance period include William Byrd, Jacob Clemens non Papa, Cristóbal de Morales, Palestrina and Tomás Luis de Victoria. Victoria went on to publish a mass based on his motet in 1592.

I adore Byrd’s account. It is delivered in glorious choral counterpoint. A warm, subtle blend of ethereal voices with deep, resonant harmonies that relay the text :

O great mystery,

and wonderful sacrament,

that animals should see the new-born Lord,

lying in a manger!

Blessed is the Virgin whose womb

was worthy to bear

Christ the Lord.

Alleluia!

He evokes the mystery and wonderment of the nativity story. It’s music which seems poised somewhere between terror and exultation and the voices imitate one another, gradually unfolding in soaring waves of sound.

A searing intensity characterizes this performance by conductor John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir. We hear a powerful, almost lamenting quality of the rising and falling tenor line just before the final, serene resolution.

Season’s greeting to all !

Little musical gems #114

Repertoire to dazzle your friends with – and play “guess the composer !“

Nikolai Kapustin has remained largely obscure until recent decades, thanks to Marc-André Hamelin’s recordings in the early 2000s. Since then, his works have continued to charm listeners and pianists, especially the younger generation. Known for his energetic and virtuosic music, Kapustin amalgamated the harmonic language of jazz music with forms from classical music, creating surprising synergy.

Classically trained in both piano and composition, Kapustin was bitten by the jazz bug but could never improvise with the ease of his idols. Considering this, composition seemed a natural step forward for him and furthermore he was far too interested in the jazz style to consider competing with his peers such as Richter, Gilels and Oborin for a place among the top Soviet classical pianists.

During the course of the 1950s, Kapustin began acquiring a reputation as a jazz pianist, arranger and composer, devoting himself almost exclusively to piano and developing a style that fuses classical approach to form with jazz approach to harmony and rhythm, characterised by an unparalleled richness and zest all his own. Kapustin created jazz piano music teeming with energetic spontaneity and bristling with the kind of creative immediacy one associates with improvisation (although the music is fully and meticulously written out).

In 1961 he formed a jazz quintet, played with Juri Saulsky’s band in Moscow, and toured extensively in Russia and abroad with Oleg Lundstrom’s Jazz Orchestra. There is a rare video clip of Kapustin playing piano with the Lundstrom band on the Russian TV program Goluboj ogonek in 1964.

Kapustin was eagerly seizing on all the new music that was beginning to come in from America – Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans. By the time the wall came down it was not so much a question of Russia suddenly being flooded with jazz in real time but of the western world suddenly discovering him.

In terms of their stylistic breadth, formidable technical challenges and audacious invention, the Eight Concert Études (1984) hold their own against the celebrated benchmarks in the genre, from Liszt and Lyapunov to Godowsky’s re-worked Chopin. The Five Études in Different Intervals (1992) begins with a madcap study in minor seconds recalling the bouncy demeanor of Zez Confrey’s Kitten on the Keys and ends with an octave study to end all octave studies. Throughout, Kapustin’s bottomless well of thematic resoursefulness works overtime and Hamelin’s technical prowess and his exceptional affinity with jazz fuse to create one of the most sparkling, infectiously foot-tapping interpretations you could wish to hear.

Little musical gems #113

There are very few recordings that exist of this baker’s dozen of miniatures. Evocatively titled and often sounding deceptively simple, they come from a similar impulse to that of Schumann’s Kinderszenen or Grieg’s Lyric Pieces.

Letters to his friends indicate that Dvořák composed them to be performed together as a collection and they work well this way, not just because they tell an extended story but because each fits into the sonic context of what comes before.

The Poetic Tone Pictures were written in 1889 and comprise 13 vignettes. Despite their relative obscurity, they are significant as they show the composer’s willingness to diverge from more conventional forms (like his symphonies) to explore a more scenic and atmospheric world of sound. The opening “Twilight Way” is under 5 minutes but contains an amplitude of variety, including some unexpected twists and turns. The way Andsnes (who incidentally is one of my favourite living pianists), plays, evokes reflections of the setting sun on the water and lets us appreciate Dvořák’s lovely harmonic color changes.

Ranging in mood from profound to playful, the other movements include evocations of magic and mystery (“The Old Castle”), rustic dances (“Furiant” and “Peasant Ballad”), and a solemn reminiscence (“At a Hero’s Grave”).

Dvořák said : “Regrettably, precious few pianists will have the courage to play them all one after another, but only thus can the listener form the right picture of what I had in mind.” When he first approached the cycle, for a competition at the age of twelve, Andsnes himself only performed selections, and it was not until the recent pandemic lockdowns that he delved deeper into the Poetic Tone Pictures and committed to performing and recording the set in its entirety.

Let us appreciate Twilight Way in this ethereal interpretation by Andsnes.

Little musical gems #112

Schubert’s electrifying musical account of Goethe’s poem about a father with an ailing child in his arms, racing towards help but being thwarted by the illusions of the Erlkönig has always generated dramatic performances.

The singer has to project 4 different voices (the narrator, the father, the child, and the Erlkönig), conveying the worry of the father, the fretting of the child, and the temptations of the Erlkönig. But it’s the piano that established the urgency through its first pounding entrance. When we finally draw up, it’s that final, fatal pause before the last two words, ‘war todt’ that shines a light on the futility of the journey.

Interesting then to read that it is the contention of the American composer George Crumb that Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s poem was an inspiration to the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s poem “Song of the Rider, 1860,” which Crumb used in two of his works, Madrigals, Book II (1965), where he just set 4 lines, and in Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death (1968) where he set García Lorca’s entire poem.

Much like Erlkönig, Crumb’s version starts at a dead run with the instructions: ‘breathlessly, with relentlessly driving rhythm!’. The work, for baritone, electric instruments, and percussion, carries the motion of the black horse through the wild, hammered rhythms played on lujon, crotales, drums, mallet instruments, and electric harpsichord.

Crumb’s music is far removed from Schubert, but with the help of the horse, we can see how Crumb’s madrigal set only 4 lines of the orginal poem because of the basis of his longer and more dramatic setting.

Little musical gems #111

I often write about lesser known works and artists for these « Little Musical Gems », but in attending a concert recently of the complete Bach Cello Suites, I shall break the trend, and discuss this well known work, but perhaps conclude with an interpretation you might not have considered.

Bach wrote six beautiful suites for solo cello. The cello is probably the closest instrument to the human voice in terms of range and pitch. The sound of solo cello is compelling and the sonic architecture of Bach makes it even more special.

These suites may have been lost to the dustbin of history, had Pablo Casals not discovered them in a Barcelona music store. He had to transcribe it in order to adapt for the modern cello - Bach wrote it for a five or six string instrument. Casals felt it was a spiritual experience playing these six suites, which he did most of his life first thing after morning coffee. He truly opened the book for all cellists who followed him, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for all the great versions that came after him.

Interestingly, Bach didn’t indicate tempo markings, so the cellists are able to choose their own phrasing and time. No two versions, fortunately, of these suites are alike. Einstein once commented on the perfection of nature reflected in the symmetry of a chambered nautilus. I would add to this the symmetry of Bach, is honoured and celebrated by many terrific recordings that are available. Those who love this repertoire, has I am sure, one preferred version of this timeless work. For me I leave you with this powerful interpretation from the great, late Janos Starker.

Little musical gems #110

I’ve particularly enjoyed reflecting on this week’s « Little Musical Gem » and discovering the music of Carlos Chávez. I stumbled upon him whilst making research on a contemporary of his, Aaron Copland.

Carlos Chávez is revered as one of the most influential composers, conductors, and music educators in Mexican history. His family often visited regions where the rich culture of indigenous peoples deeply influenced him. After the Mexican Revolution, Chávez became one of the first composers to create Mexican nationalist music inspired by the Aztecs. He excelled as a conductor, leading Mexico’s top orchestras as well as ensembles around the world.

As a composer, Chávez is often associated with Copland. Both composers worked to create a distinct musical sound world that spoke to their home countries at a time when Europe was seen as the only serious and legitimate contributor to classical music. They wrote each other regularly, and when Chávez sent Copland a letter in 1931 expressing his annoyance at “self-important” and “prima donna” attitudes in Europe, Copland responded by saying, “All you wrote about music in America awoke a responsive echo in my heart. I am through with Europe, Carlos, and I believe as you do, that our salvation must come from ourselves.”

Where Copland embraced a populist Americana sound, Chávez was a Modernist, and composer Belá Bartók might be a more apt comparison for his musical styling than Copland. Just as Bartók collected and immersed himself in the folk music of his native Hungary, Chávez absorbed native Mexican music in his youth to such an extent that his own compositional voice was thoroughly imbued with its essence, which he fused with modernist techniques, such as Stravinsky or Schoenberg.

But Chávez was not simply a “Mexican composer” – other works may sound more closely related to Shostakovich, Britten, or Prokofiev. Or he can sound like no one else, as in his impressive Piano Concerto. Sadly no recording exists of Claudio Arrau, who premiered the concerto at a performance in Mexico in 1943, but I leave you with this recording to discover the work yourselves.

Little musical gems #109

It’s hard to imagine but the first Parisian retrospective devoted to the Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980), is currently showing at the Musée d’Art Moderne (MAM).

Kokoschka emerged out of the Art Nouveau movement in Vienna but his energetic and spontaneous painting style reveals the influence of Van Gogh and the Berlin art scene on his work rather than the more decorative style of his Viennese compatriots Kustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

In 1920, the Viennese art historian Karl Swoboda sponsored concerts at his home and of those present was Kokoschka himself. As he listened, he drew 20 chalk portraits of two women in the audience, one of whom was Kamilla Swoboda, wife of Karl. In 1921, 10 of the images were issued as a portfolio called Variationen über ein Thema.

We are faced with a conundrum – Kokoschka has given us the listener’s reactions but to music that we can no longer hear. We can only imagine what music was actually played at the concert in 1920.

In 1928, the composer Hans Erick Apostel answered this problem with « Variationen über ein Thema von O. Kokoschka ». He sent them to the artist, who thanked him and who told him that the work ‘had received well-deserved applause.’

Apostel took the implied music and the psychological effect this had on the women in the images and worked backward to create the music that he thought they were listening to. He wrote, for the unheard concert, music that combined both the tonal language of pure Viennese classicism with a heightened expressionist style. We have Viennese tonality with chromaticism, classical pianism with explorations of the various registers of the piano, and get, in the end, a very modernist work.

It is, as always, up to the listener and art viewer to decide if Apostel captured Kokoshka’s intentions. In any case, when you see the portraits, the listeners in the images seem to have all been particularly attentive, listening with cocked head and often in pensive positions.

Little musical gems #108 

During her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II garnered many contributions from some of the best classical composers of our age.

Traditionally, the British monarchy has employed a composer known as Master of the Queen's (or King's) Music since 1626, a position equal to the Poet Laureate and although the Queen reigned over vast swathes of the Commonwealth, her early years were marked by musical contributions from British composers.

Orb and Sceptre by William Walton, composed in the style of coronation marches, was commissioned for Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne in 1952. Walton didn't hold the post Master of Queen/King's music, but he was the go-to composer for these marches, having also composed Crown Imperial for the coronation of the Queen's father, George VI.

Other British composers also contributed to the new monarch's reign, the most significant being a collection called A Garland for the Queen. The collection was inspired by a 1601 publication of madrigals called The Triumphs of Oriana, which celebrates the reign of Elizabeth I. A notable song from this book is Dance, Clarion Air by Michael Tippett.

Since her accession in 1952, there has been four composers to the post of Masters of Queen's music : Sir Arthur Bliss, Malcolm Williamson, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Judith Weir.

Maxwell Davies dedicated his Symphony No. 9 to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. It was premiered on June 9, 2012. He also oversaw the publication of the Choirbook for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, a collection of 44 contemporary choral anthems. Maxwell Davies's contribution, Advent Calendar, was based on a poem by Rowan Williams, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time.

So as we turn a page in British history, I leave you with this interpretation of Advent Calendar.

Little musical gems #107 

Hello to everyone after the summer break for this new season of "Little Musical Gems".

During the car journey back from our holiday getaway, the series "Un été avec Jankélévitch" was playing on the airwaves. I have always been intrigued by his philosophies on music. Readers are graced to his interdisciplinary prose of unbound originality, at once intellectually stimulating and asthetically alluring.

Jankélévitch is one of the few twentieth century scholars who contributed to the field of philopsophy and music with equal zeal. He was a talented pianist, a sensitive listener and a virtuosic intellectual polymath. In his 1949 monograph on Debussy, Jankélévitch begins by drawing the distinction between the mystery and the secret of the composer’s music. Debussy is a core staple in my repertoire, and it is true, the more one learns about Debussy, the more the enigma grows.

Debussy’s compositional inspirations often come from nature : La mer, Le vent dans la plaine, Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir (Baudelaire), Brouillards, to name a few, and also this work that resounded with Jankélévitch "Des pas sur la neige" from his first book of Préludes.

This piece is a study in suspended time. A certain forlornness, even despondency becomes apparent, although not altogether without hope. The title translates as ‘footsteps on the snow’, not ‘in the snow’. What a sublime poetic image of treading ever so carefully…

I leave with you this wonderfully ethereal interpretation by Michelangeli.

Little musical gems #106

Summer is here and in this last post before taking a seasonal break,I shall let you discover this work that concertgoers at Symphony Hall in 1948 in Boston listened as Eleanor Steber sang for them of summer evenings:

It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street…

The words are James Agee’s, excerpts from a portrait of his boyhood in Knoxville and set to music by Samuel Barber. They are poignant words that spoke convincingly to Steber and Barber both of their own upbringings in small-town America.

Steber had commissioned the work for soprano and orchestra a year earlier, and when Barber showed her the finished score she was thrilled beyond imagining. She wrote in her memoir that “It was Sam’s discerning eye and ear which enabled him to cut and lift bits of Agee’s text faultlessly and set them to unforgettable music.”

Barber’s own father was dying at this time, and the composer was overwhelmed by the similarity of his and Agee’s childhood memories and fears. He wrote this rhapsody for soprano and orchestra in three weeks.

Steber was a fearless singer, as adept in Mozart, Verdi and Strauss as she was in Rodgers, Gershwin and Kern. At the Met she sang 427 performances of 34 roles, including the leads in Met premieres of Arabella, Die Entfűhrung aus dem Serail, and Wozzeck. She appeared there often and long enough to be taken for granted by Met audiences, but her many recordings attest to the versatility and beauty of her singing.

Her home town of Wheeling, West Virginia, is only a few hundred miles from Knoxville, and Steber was close enough in age to both Agee and Barber to understand and share their memories of the joys and terrors of a small town American childhood. She sang the 1948 premiere of “Knoxville” with Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra; this recording was made two years later, with William Strickland and the Dumbarton Oaks Chamber Orchestra. A truly exquisite orchestral lieder with the most sincere pathos imaginable.

I wish you all a wonderful summer and look forawrd to returning in September for more "Little Musical Gems".

Little musical gems #105 

A recent visit to Rome reminded me of Ottorino Respighi. A composer that falls into that unenviable category whose reputation rests unduly on a particular work, or group of compositions. In his case it is the so-called ‘Roman Trilogy’ with which he is perennially associated, three separately conceived orchestral pieces penned between 1916-1928, his prime creative period.

The popularity of the Trilogy has often been attributed to Respighi’s undeniable brilliance as an orchestrator, his ability to conjure a kaleidosocopic range of crowd-pleasing colours and impressions from his instrumental palette. Closer inspection however, and more sensitive interpretations of it, reveal a composer of refined sensibilities, capable of exquisite delicacy of expression, a man deeply interested in and temperamentally attuned to both the music of the past and the immense richness of his nation’s historical and artistic heritage.

Respighi had in fact already been writing impressively for more modest forces earlier in his career. Shortly after Fountains of Rome he had produced the first of what would become three suites for smaller orchestra of Ancient Airs and Dances, elegant pieces based on lute music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

These compositions are symptomatic of Respighi’s deep and abiding interest in the (mainly Italian) music of bygone eras. Inspired by his studies with Torchi and Martucci at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, he was an ‘early music’ specialist avant la lettre, and wearing his musicological hat an indefatigable editor of at that time little-known composers such as Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Tartini and Vitali. He also produced transcriptions of works by Marcello, Boccherini, Pergolesi, and Cimarosa.

Little musical gems #104

Rossini can name claim to at least ten dishes dedicated to him. If he had not been the composer he was, perhaps he might have been a famous chef or food critic !

In his biography of the composer, Stendhal wrote that the aria of Tancredi, "Di Tanti Palpiti," known throughout Europe, was not only the most popular opera aria of its time, but was familiarly refered to as the "rice aria" because Rossini composed it while waiting for his risotto to cook in Venice one day.

One of the greatest Rossini interpreters, in her prime, Marilyn Horne was a star singer, singing with Pavarotti and Sutherland, Sills and Domingo, under the batons of Bernstein, Karajan and dozens more.

Horne had significant influence as a singer, in part due to her choice of repertory but she is also remembered for her range of music repertoire, starting out as a young singer in Los Angeles, when she hobnobbed with Stravinsky (whose “Oedipus Rex” was the vehicle of her La Scala debut in 1969) through to the voice-over for Dorothy Dandridge in the film of “Carmen Jones.”

Some of the works she championed, like Handel operas, have become opera-house staples to a degree no one could have imagined as late as in 1984, when she got the Metropolitan Opera to put on “Rinaldo,” the first Handel opera the company had ever staged.

Rossini was another, even greater, calling card. Horne seems born to sing this repertoire: her combination of agility and dramatic heft yield thrilling results and she is noted for the seamless quality and exceptional range and flexibility of her voice, especially in coloratura roles where Horne had her greatest successes in such “trouser roles” as Rossini’s Tancredi and Handel’s Rinaldo. Because of her ability to sing roles that had been originally written for the castrati (who had both an upper range and great vocal power), Horne was known for resurrecting seldom-performed operas. Horne’s efforts were rewarded in 1982, when she was awarded the first Golden Plaque of the Rossini Foundation, honouring her as “the greatest Rossini singer in the world.”

Little musical gems #103 

One man’s gimmick is another man’s innovation : Kodály fundamentally altered the cello’s tuning to achieve the effect of his solo sonata, a characteristically veering work that has many champions in the cello world. This is truly a cellist’s cello piece.

In 1915, when Kodály wrote a substantial Sonata for Solo Cello, Bartók commented : "This is not a mere imitation of Bach's polyphonic style". That was praise in several ways. His friend's sonata had nothing to do with what was old and German, but rather it was contemporary and Hungarian. And it was new.

With this Sonata Kodály was one of the first composers to enrich the repertoire for solo cello, since the Bach Solo Suites for cello composed two hundred years earlier.

Had Starker left us with no other performance on vinyl, then his interpretation of the Kodály sonata stands out for its impetuous, impassioned sweep in the outer movements and the vocal quality of the central Adagio’s long, sustained lower-register passages.

He was one of the most accomplished and proficient cellists of modern times, and among all of the various compositions that he performed and recorded over his long career, the Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello must take pride of place.

Starker performed this work for the composer in 1939 when he was just 15 years old, first privately and then in concert in Budapest. Starker was the first to record it (at 78 rpm), in Paris in 1948, and he received the Grand Prix du Disque award for that recording. When the two met shortly before Kodály's death in 1967, the composer told Starker "If you correct the ritard in the third movement, it will be the Bible performance".

Little musical gems #102

Clair de Lune, the third movement of Suite Bergamasque, is one of Debussy’s best loved works. Its origins are complex and fascinating, combining influences from poetry, the music of the Baroque period and Impressionism.

The title comes from a poem of the same name, published in 1869, by the Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. Debussy had already set this poem for voice and piano twice before, along with 18 other Verlaine poems. The poem speaks of “au calme clair de lune triste et beau” (the still moonlight sad and lovely). It also describes “charmante masques et bergamasques”, which may have inspired the name of the whole suite.

Suite Bergamasque is one of a number of works by Debussy and his French contemporaries that paid homage to the “style ancien”, which referred to the French Baroque period in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Referencing this style was popular after the mid-19th century.

The stillness and meditative calm of these lines are evoked with great beauty at the opening of the piece.

The vagaries of the breeze waft gently in the following passage with the instruction “tempo rubato”, a musical term allowing the performer to speed up and slow down the music at their discretion. This builds to an intense moment perhaps recalling a later passage in the poem:

« Where the vague mist conjured up some vast

Despairing milky ghost With the voice of teals crying As they called to each other, beating their wings ».

Clair de Lune is treasured for its ethereal beauty and sense of mystery. In the immortal words of Debussy himself :

« We should be constantly reminding ourselves that the beauty of a work of art is something that will always remain mysterious; that is to say one can never find out exactly “how it is done”. At all costs let us preserve this element of magic peculiar to music. By its very nature music is more likely to contain something of the magical than any other art ».

Little musical gems #101

Franz Liszt once said, “Mournful and grand is the destiny of an artist.” Could he have been referring to the seemingly large proportion of artists that suffered from some sort of mental disorder ?

Sergei Rachmaninov was one. He dealt with depression his whole life, but not only did he manage to overcome these difficult moments, his management of it fueled his composing.

After the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony, Rachmaninov was plunged into a depression that lasted three years. He suffered insomnia and loss of confidence which halted any creativity. In desperation and on the advice of his aunt, he sought help from Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a hypnotherapist who also employed cognitive therapy techniques.

Rachmaninov recalled that at the end of each session, Dahl would place him in a trance and thus “you will begin to write your concerto…the concerto will be of excellent quality” were the mantras he heard ringing in his ears.

As the treatment progressed, Rachmaninov noticed his depression lift and he began work on a piece that would seal his reputation : the second piano concerto. The work is dedicated to Dr Dahl.

Among the many recordings I admire, I find John Ogden’s performance has a poetic vision of exquisite sensibility and compelling narrative.

Ogden was no stranger to the turmoils of psychiatric problems, the bouts of violence that would explode as a result of the cocktail of drugs that he was taking. His playing would be unpredictable - I recall Ruggerio Ricci recounting such incidents with Ogden whilst he was touring with him - but when he was on form, there was the transcendence of his playing, performances that could inspire and change the lives of musicians and audiences who heard him. This is why Ogden is a unique figure in the pantheon of 20th century pianists.

Little musical gems #100

As much of my musical identity is linked with Steinway pianos, it seemed appropriate to write my 100th « Little musical Gem » with an extraordinary tale about how Steinway kept music alive with their Victory Verticals.

Pianos dropping from the skies ? It is almost like a scene from a cartoon, yet this is precisely what happened with the Steinways that were built specifically for troops in World War II.

During the war, the U.S. government essentially shut down the production of musical instruments in order to divert vital resources such as iron, copper, brass, and other materials to the war effort. Yet the government also determined that the war effort should include entertainment that could lift soldiers’ spirits. Music was deemed to be such a powerful morale boost and played an important role in this front providing soldiers with hours of entertainment, enrichement and outreach.

However, the pianos needed to be adapted to withstand the trying conditions out in the field, including being packed into a crate and dropped out of a plane. An estimated 2,500 pianos were dropped to American soldiers fighting the war in three continents.

Myra Hess a name we associate as one of the heroic wartime pianists recorded very little Chopin but this interpretation of the Nocturne evokes nostalgia and warmth like no other. Enjoy and thank you for continuing to read and listen to these little musical gems.

Little musical gems #99

Olivier Messiaen was a towering figure in 20th century European music. His highly personal musical language drew heavily on the natural world, the music of Eastern cultures and, above all, his devout Catholicism. A talented pianist, Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1919 at a remarkably early age, and in 1927 joined Marcel Dupré’s organ class. In 1931 he was appointed Organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité (La Trinité) in Paris, where he would remain for more than sixty years, until his death.

Composed in 1939, Les Corps glorieux represents one of these aforementioned distinct style in Messiaen’s music. A successor to the composer’s Christmas cycle for organ, La Nativité du Seigneur (1935), Les Corps glorieux concerns resurrection. It develops textures, harmonic modes and Hindu rhythms similar to those in La Nativité, but its movements are more rigorously interlinked. For many years Messiaen considered it his favourite work - perhaps a summation of his first compositional period.

Les Corps glorieux was completed in late August 1939, shortly before Messiaen was called up for military service at the outbreak of the Second World War. Captured in June 1940, he was transported to the Görlitz prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia. The enforced separation from the organ loft stimulated Messiaen’s interest in birdsong which, significantly, he incorporated into the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, composed in the camp. He later stated “It is an instinctive passion. Birdsong is also my refuge.” In his weekly organ improvisations at La Trinité he began experimenting with more abstract music, incorporating birdsong and mathematical procedures and this can be heard in the opening of Les Corps glorieux with a flowing single-voiced (monodic) movement - Subtilité des Corps glorieux - reflecting the suppleness of resurrected bodies. Messiaen’s first monody, it is an elaboration of the opening phrases of the plainsong Salve Regina, applying rhythmic additions and chromatic alterations, and is played on the organ’s diverse and luminous cornet registers. Elements of the theme reappear in the final movement.

Rather amusingly, Messiaen always vehemently denied that there was any jazz influence in his music; it is most likely that he never heard any jazz, other than to satisfy an academic curiosity. Detractors of his music labeled this movement especially as jazz-inspired to provoke the composer. In fact, the main source for the rhythmic expansions and contractions stem from his very early days at the Paris Conservatoire where he was introduced to Greek rhythms by one of his composition professors, Maurice Emmanuel.

The joy and brightness of the resurrected is demonstrated in “Joie et Clarté” by the unashamed use of jazzy harmonies. An improvisatory solo trumpet melody dominates the movement - it alternates with the reflective sections, but concludes with an exuberant flourish.

Little musical gems #98

The piano piece “Für Alina” is one of the most petit, yet one of the most significant works in all of Arvo Pärt’s output. It was conceived in February 1976, the first work in a number of years, with which Pärt emerged from a prolonged creative crisis - it is also his first piece to be written in the tintinnabuli style (like the sound of a bell) a term coined by Pärt himself to describe his minimalist and meditative compositions.

In musical analysis, it is defined as the application of various inversions of a certain chord. Also, it is a word which evokes the pealing of bells, the bells’ complex but rich sonorous mass of overtones, the gradual unfolding of patterns implicit in the sound itself, and the idea of a sound that is simultaneously static and in flux.

Pärt goes further to say : Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers – in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity.

The emotions evoked in this work come from the introspective dimension and the call that emerges from it. The performer must have faith to let the music speak for himself.

One of the most hypnotic performances I have heard comes from the sublime Sergei Babayan. He has often been dubbed “the magician of the piano sound”, not only because of his incomparable touch, consummate phrasing or breathtaking virtuosity. Rather, it is his carefully wrought and highly sensitive interpretations of any and all music from Rameau to Pärt.

The meditative focus and rare stillness of his artistry prompted the Hamburger Abendblatt to liken him to “one of those Japanese calligraphers who contemplate the white page before them in silence until, at the exact right moment, their brush makes its instinctive, perfect sweep across the paper”. Babayan himself has observed that making music should be open to surprises and spontaneous insights, allowing unexpected emotions to emerge and subtle shadings to evolve naturally.

In this interpretation of Für Alina, he seems to recreate in music that he expresses in words.

Little musical gems #97

One of the aspects I have enjoyed about writing these musical vignettes has been to discover artists I would otherwise never have thought to explore.

Today’s “Little Musical Gem” is a good example of this.

Hazel Scott was a pioneering jazz pianist. She even hosted her own tv show, but when she stood up against racial segregation and stereotyping, the industry blacklisted her – and her name was all but erased from the history books.

Throughout the mid-20th century, Hazel Scott was the toast of the New York jazz and popular music scene. She was a phenomenally gifted pianist and improviser, known for ‘jazzing up’ classic works by Bach and Mozart and had the most high-profile fans you could wish for, from Frank Sinatra to Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday.

Hazel was beguiling to watch onstage. One of the great images of her legacy today is the ‘double piano’ trick – Scott would sit on a single stool with a piano either side and play both instruments simultaneously

By 1945 she was one of the most well paid musicians of the time, fame followed her, but importantly, she also used her incredible influence to help make the arts a richer, more inclusive place. So what happened for her to disappear into almost oblivion ?

While on the set of The Heat’s On (1943), Hazel noticed that for a scene in which wives were waving their husbands off to war, the black actresses had been dressed in grubby aprons. Hazel kicked up a fuss, left the film and wouldn’t come back until the costumes were changed. After three days, the director gave in, and Hazel returned. The aprons were replaced by floral dresses.

But Hazel’s strike had cost the studio and by 1945, the whole industry knew about it. Hollywood pulled the plug on any new offers and even her concert dates suddenly became very limited.

In Europe her music was starting to make a reappearance and in 1957, she left New York to settle in Paris. She recorded new albums and had a second wave of success. She appeared in French film ‘Le désordre et la nuit’ (1958).

However her popularity never matched the one she has tasted in New York in 1967, Hazel decided to return home and settle. By this time however, the Civil Rights Movement had led to new legislation ending racial segregation and protecting black citizens. Scott went back to playing in New York nightclub, but by then, rock n’ roll was the new jazz and jazz artists in the US were struggling.

The erasure of Hazel Scott’s name from the jazz catalogue is tragic but fortunately for us, there are still a few videos available in which she treats us with her musical interpretations.

Little musical gems #96

On watching this video, you will I am sure, immediately recognise the melody. For many it is a tune associated with Christmas. It has been used in films, advertisements and even as a track arranged by the group Pink Martini - but it is in fact originally an Ukrainian folksong.

Written by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovich and titled “Shchedryk,” the haunting four-note melody was a song written as a winter well-wishing song. The song tells the tale of a swallow flying into a household to proclaim the plentiful year that the family will have. The song’s title is derived from the Ukrainian word “shchedryj,” which means “bountiful.”

The full composition was first performed in Ukraine on the eve of January 13th 1916. Although this date is 12 days after New Year’s Day on the Gregorian calendar, Shchedryk's premiere was not a belated New Year’s celebration because whilst the Gregorian calendar is the most used calendar internationally, Orthodox Churches in Ukraine continue to use to Julian calendar. According to the Julian calendar, January 13th was considered New Year's Eve in the year 1916.

The swallow is a herald of spring coming, referring perhaps to its pre-Christian origins. The original lyrics describe the swallow calling out to the master of the home and telling him about all the wealth that he will possess, healthy livestock, money and a beautiful wife.

Sung in the original language, it brings even more shivers down your spine and as we watch in desperate helplessness of the current events in Ukraine, let us listen and spare a thought for the victims of this war.

Little musical gems #95

FEBRUARY 2022

I had already intended to write about Barbara Hannigan for this week’s “Little Musical Gem” when I stumbled accross today’s Sunday Times article with the title "Is there anything Barbara Hannigan can't do ?"

Hannigan is totally “the real deal”, someone who is truly deserving of all her accolades. She has the ability to combine a gorgeous voice, musicality, intellect, mixed in with unbridled fearlessness.

Who else could pull off a performance of Ligeti's "Mysteries of Macabre" in the way that she does but her ? Sir Simon Rattle is, incidentally, an excellent wing man in this performance but it is Hannigan who steals the show.

Hannigan's repertoire is extensive and varied, ranging from the celebrated works of Mozart to 20th century Stravinsky, and when it comes to tackling new repertoire, she is second to none. She has premiered over 80 works, many of them written specifically for her.

But her talents do not stop there. Recently, Hannigan has started to perform in concert as both soprano and conductor and and to top it all off, she is devoted to mentoring young artists through her acclaimed work with Equilibrium Young Artists, a programme conceived to help musicians at the cusp of their own careers. Hannigan is ready, not just to inspire but to share her experience and her approach with other musicians. RESPECT !

Enjoy the magic of Barbara Hannigan.

Little musical gems #94

FEBRUARY 2022

When all thoughts turn to love, and lovers express their affection with greetings and gifts, it must be Valentine’s Day. That very special day for lovers falls annually on February 14, because it is named after a Christian martyr by that name. I guess, there are actually a number of Christian martyrs named Valentine, and they all have their own sad stories. But the one I like involves the Saint sitting in prison and restoring the sight of the blind daughter of his jailer. Just before his execution, he supposedly wrote her a letter signed “Your Valentine.”

Shakespeare said "If music be the food of love...play on !" so how could we imagine a Valentine’s Day without the soundtrack to accompany the romance ?

Schumann most certainly had a gift for pouring his feelings into his music, and his Romance in F-sharp is perhaps one of my preferred but which is the soundtrack to your heart ?

Little musical gems #93

JANUARY 2022

Prepare yourself for some Baroque grooves this week but beware, this tune will whirl in your mind for hours !

Jean-Philippe Rameau made his reputation as a harpsichordist and theorist, and then at age 50 he did something that sent his career (and life) in an entirely new direction - he wrote an opera.

Hyppolyte et Aracia may have been a commercial failure, but at this point Rameau had been bitten by the bug. Over the rest of his life he wrote 20 more operas, in the process becoming France’s leading opera composer.

If Rameau’s first opera was a failure, his second was a striking success. “Les Indes galantes”, produced in Paris on August 23, 1735, was an opéra-ballet, a form that combined singing and dancing. That title has been variously translated as “The Amorous Indies” or “The Courtly Indies,” and in its final form Les Indes galantes consisted of a Prologue and four entrées (essentially they are like acts), each of which has an individual name, is set in an exotic foreign location and tells a different love story.

Featuring Rameau’s powerful music, spectacular settings and lavish sets, Les Indes galantes proved a great success: it was given 64 times in Paris in the two years after its premiere.

The opera is rarely staged today, but many have felt that Rameau’s music is too good to lose. French composer Paul Dukas was the first (1925) to draw a suite of orchestral excerpts from Les Indes galantes, and since then conductors have felt free to assemble their suites of excerpts.

Little musical gems #92

JANUARY 2022

When a story is as heartwarming as this, how could I resist sharing it with you this week ?

Ruth Slenczynska has just celebrated her 97th birthday and signed a new record deal nearly 60 years since her first deal with Decca. The album entitled « My Life in Music » applauds her remarkable life and performing career which began as a child prodigy in the 1920s and continues nine decades later.

Ruth Slenczynska was Rachmaninoff’s last pupil and the album contains pieces by her fellow student and friend Samuel Barber, Chopin (whose music she played at the memorial service for another friend, Vladimir Horowitz, and which has run like a thread throughout her career), Debussy, Grieg and Bach.

For me, Slenczynska has a most human quality when she plays. That rare gift of being able to astonish you with a virtuoso technique and move you with the beauty of her phrasing.

Slenczynska was friends with Shura Cherkassky and Jorge Bolet and her pianism is one of the last living links to that golden era.

Born in 1925 in Sacramento to Polish parents, Slenczynska made her debut aged four, appeared on television for the first time the next year and, at six, gave her European debut in Berlin. As a child, she was taught by some of the century's piano legends including, E. Petri, Alfred Cortot and Josef Hoffman. Still an active performer, Slenczynska played at the 2021 Chopin International Festival in New York.

Watch and listen to this video in which she talks about Rachmaninoff and interprets his works.

Little musical gems #91

JANUARY 2022

A New Year and a new « little musical gem ». Many of you have kindly expressed how much you enjoy reading these musical anecdotes so I shall continue posting fortnightly starting with this evening, music marking Epiphany.

As with many festivals in France the French mark the feast of the Epiphany with nourishment. Whereas Christmas Eve is all about oysters and foie gras, January 6th is all about the Galette des Rois (King’s Cake).

But the pleasure brought by a galette des roisisn’t merely due to its delicious taste – it’s also the anticipation of wondering whether you will be the lucky one to discover la fève, a tiny charm, buried inside one of the slices. If you are, you’re “king for a day” and take your place in a 700-year old French tradition.

The history of the Galette des Rois dates back to the 14th-century. Traditionally, it’s served on January 6th – the 12th day of Christmas – to celebrate the Epiphany, a religious feast day commemorating the arrival of the Three Kings to the manger where Jesus was born. Today, it’s eaten throughout the month of January and is simply a festive way to celebrate the new year with family and friends, regardless of religious background.

Gustav Holst’s unaccompanied Nunc dimittis, was written in 1915 and remained in manuscript form until 1979 when a published edition appeared, revised by the composer’s daughter, Imogen Holst. For soprano and tenor soloists and unaccompanied eight-part choir, the piece was written for Richard Terry, then organist of Westminster Cathedral. It was first performed liturgically on Easter Sunday, 1915, after which it was totally forgotten. The first performance of the revised version was given by the BBC Singers under Stephen Wilkinson on 11 June 1974 in Framlington Church.

Holst was passionate about the music of Byrd and Palestrina, which is clearly shown here in the modal writing, and the way the male and female voices of the choir answer each other antiphonally as, for example, at the words ‘Lumen ad revelationem gentium’.

The words of this liturgical piece are in Latin rather than the well-known Thomas Cranmer translation from The Book of Common Prayer. This reflects it use for the late-night service Compline in the Roman Catholic Book of Hours.

Little musical gems #90

DECEMBER 2021

In my last “Little Musical Gem” before a break for the festive season, let us listen to this rather unknown composition by Arnold Schoenberg appropriately entitled « Weihnachtsmusik »

Those who usually cover their ears at the mention of this composer’s dissonant modernist scores have nothing to fear from this beautiful arrangement of a classic carol by Praetorius. He even weaves Silent Night in as a countermelody at one point.

Schoenberg takes a break from stark serialism for the more convivial pleasures of Christmas. It was a long-standing tradition, it seems, in the composer’s household for the family to make music together, particularly during the Christmas period. In 1921, the year when he was well on the way to formulating his system of composition with 12 notes, the great man decided to take time off from these rigours by composing a work with a specifically festive theme. The result was the enchanting « Weihnachtsmusik » for two violins, cello, harmonium and piano.

In stark contrast to the tortured chromaticism of the « Fünf Stücke für Klavier », which he was writing during this period, Weihnachtsmusik is conceived in the key of C major. It is essentially a somewhat idiosyncratic fantasia on Christmas carols which opens with a beautiful harmonisation of the Praetorius carol « Es ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen » and the aforementioned Silent Night.

Indeed, the way in which he manages to combine these two melodies later on in the work in contrapuntal dialogue is ingenious and deeply affecting.

Little musical gems #89

DECEMBER 2021

The tune of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” was derived from a 15th-century French processional chant for burials. The text for the song originated in the eighth century O Antiphons. The most popular version of this hymn came from the Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861.

The modern text is appropriate for the Advent season, discussing the coming of Christ while recognizing the longing that is present in the season (juxtaposed with “Joy to the World” or “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”)–congruous with the minor key of the song.

For those looking for hidden meaning in the text, the second word of each verse of the Latin O Antiphons, when read backwards reads “ero cras” – which means “Tomorrow, I will be there.”

Little musical gems #88

NOVEMBER 2021

The celebration of music’s patron saint, St. Cecilia, has provided an occasion for composers from Purcell to Britten to celebrate their art. Ever since the Restoration, the English have taken the lead in celebrating November 22, the feast day of the ‘”harmonious Saint,” and Henry Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate, was his third ode written for that occasion.

It was to become the most popular of Purcell’s works in the 18th century, as Tudway attests :
There is in this Te Deum such a glorious representation, of ye Heavenly Choirs, of cherubins, & Seraphins, falling down before ye Throne & singing Holy, Holy, Holy &c As hath not be Equall’d by any Foreigner, or Other… This most beautifull, & sublime representation, I dare challenge, all ye Orators, Poets, Painters &c of any Age whatsoever, to form so lively an Idea, of choirs of Angels singing, & paying their Adorations.

Whether or not Purcell had written this work in anticipation of the opening of Wren’s new St. Paul’s Cathedral, as Tudway claims, its festive opulence was to be heard there many times after its consecration in 1710. Purcell, however, never was to hear it there, as he died on St. Cecilia’s Eve, 21 November 1695. The signed and dated manuscript for this masterpiece now resides in the rare book collection of the Stanford Library.

Little musical gems #87

NOVEMBER 2021

Today I return to a great favourite with the Goldberg Variations, but not in a version you might expect, because when we transfer this composition to brass instruments, the sound changes entirely and become more like a Gabrieli work for San Marco !

Written, as related by Bach’s biographer Johann Forkel, for the ill and often sleepless Count Kaiserling, who wished for some night music that was both smooth and lively enough to engage his attention during his insomniac periods, Bach produced his variation set for the Count and it was published in 1741.

Both Bach’s composition and Glenn Gould’s famous 1955 recording still makes a great impression. Before Gould recorded it at the age of 22, it was less prolific in the repertoire and Bach was by many viewed as a bit old-fashioned. The young Canadian turned all this around. He managed to portray Bach in a reformed way, producing fine nuances in phrasing and making the many layers in Bach’s music more transparent than anyone before him. Thus plunging both himself and Bach (back) onto the international music scene.

With this version for brass, the challenge to both performers and arrangers is to render Bach’s keyboard-specific textures with results that are technically plausible and musically convincing.

The slower variations acquire an attractive ceremonial dimension in this medium, benefiting from a brass player’s ability to change dynamics on a single note (which you cannot naturally achieve on piano or harpsichord). The double keyboard cross-handed variations are deployed to splendid antiphonal effect although the neccesarily slower tempos weaken Bach’s original bravura intentions. The Canadian Brass achieve a blend that’s akin to the dark smoothness of aged Scotch whisky, purring out rounded legato lines in which no breath seems to transpire.

Little musical gems #86

NOVEMBER 2021

Josef Haydn is perceived at times as a paradoxical figure ; a truly innovative composer who maintained what might have been seen as an archaic notion of loyalty and service, remaining in the employ of four different Prince Esterhazys for 48 years ! Yet it was the life that Haydn carefully chose and one which offered him a great many advantages. Nor should it obscure his towering genius.

It was Haydn who developed the modern symphony from the genial but unsubstantial three-movement style galant. It was Haydn who invented the string quartet. When the impresario Johann Peter Salomon attempted to recruit both Haydn and Mozart to London in 1790, it was the sixty-year old Haydn who accepted the offer and went on to compose some of his greatest works during his six years in London. It was the seventy-year old Haydn who revived an art form dormant since the days of Handel, the oratorio, and created one of the most stunningly original works in The Creation. And it was Haydn more than anyone else who developed the concert mass as a musical form.

In 1796, when Haydn was composing this first of his six late masses, Europe was in turmoil. Napoleon's army was winning one battle after another in Italy and now threatened the entire continent. In August, the government in Vienna ordered its troops to be mobilized and prepared for war.

While Haydn seldom expressed political views, his title for this mass, « Missa in tempore belli » (Mass in Time of War), as well as its music reflect a sense of foreboding as Austria and its allies were about to face Napoleon.

The famous timpani solo near the beginning of the Agnus Dei creates a tone of apprehension, "as if one heard the enemy approaching in the distance," as one of Haydn's associates remarked. This passage, which was imitated by Beethoven in the Agnus Dei of his Missa Solemnis, gives the Mass in Time of War its popular nickname, the Paukenmesse, or Timpani Mass. The timpani solo is followed by terrifying trumpet fanfares, and military music then leads into an unusually forceful and urgent setting of "dona nobis pacem" ("grant us peace").

This recording is from a performance given by Leonard Bernstein on January 19 1973, on the eve of the second term inauguration of President Richard Nixon. Entitled “Concert for Peace” a performance of Haydn’s "Mass in Time of War" was held at the identical hour in which the inaugural concert was being played at the The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Little musical gems #85

NOVEMBER 2021

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades is a perfect example of great literature that's further enlightened when set to first class music.

The opera is based on a groundbreaking story by Alexander Pushkin. In it, he wrote that "two obsessions can no more exist in the same mind than two bodies can exist in the same space." Any doubt that unfolds from this statement, or think that it’s just best to read the story — then have a listen to Tchaikovsky's bleak, operatic version of the tale, and then think again.

Pushkin's unfortunate hero is Hermann, who seems to have a dysfunctional soul. He observes the social lives of his friends, but stays to himself and won't participate. When a beautiful woman (Liza) offers him love and companionship, he brutally exploits her for personal gain. Pushkin's Hermann was certainly not created to draw laughs and yet his ultimate fate seems like a natural byproduct of his flawed personality.

Tchaikovsky's take on this story is every bit as grim as the original — and maybe grimmer, thanks to an extra layer of sentiment. Tchaikovsky also fills Pushkin's protagonists with fire and tension, as they struggle against, and are consumed by, Fate, the same menacing theme that overshadows the Pathétique Symphony, but this time in the notes.

Liza burns with desire for Herman, but the latter is gradually devoured by his passion for gambling, obsessed with a magic formula that will bring him fortune. In this race against the clock, where the music swells with rage as the hero's pathology deepens, Tchaikovsky introduces the audience to the court of Catherine the Great. While elegantly depicting Russian aristocracy, he devotes his finest skills to the terrible figure of the Countess, the infamous Queen of Spades. But that love gets tangled up with obsessive greed and, in a way, the opera becomes even more tragic than Pushkin's story.

Little musical gems #84

OCTOBER 2021

The most memorable performance I attended of Haitink was at a BBC Prom in 2009. Haitink had just led the London Symphony Orchestra through the first three movements of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and then the music melted in the generosity of the embrace that followed. “He held 5,000 people mesmerised” were the words of one critic.

The key of D flat is often warm and poetic. I can still feel the ambiance Haitink drew that evening from the orchestra’s strings near the start of Mahler’s concluding Adagio. The resolve and serenity Haitink found in that movement sang with empathy and it seemed to sing the truth.

In a career that spanned over six decades, Haitink carved his own identity. He was not the literalism of Toscanini, nor the uncanny subjectivity of Furtwängler and certainly not the eccentricities of Mengelberg ; the conductor he grew up hearing at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, where he was himself chief conductor from 1961 to 1988.

What Haitink had was a sound. Players often spoke of an “unmistakable ability to change the sound of an orchestra with his mere presence,” an ability that even the musicians who adored him could hardly explain. The sound imbued weight and gravity that was never portentous or heavy.

His association with Mahler and Bruckner are well known but he also excelled in the French repertoire with his characteristic careful seriousness of purpose that drew clarity and beguiling transparency.

In the third movement of Debussy’s Nocturnes, Haitink paints an ethereal world of Sirènes with the orchestra faithfully executing the outer world Haitink conveys through his baton.

Little musical gems #83

OCTOBER 2021

The violin concerto is one of the most extensive of the musical genres, so is not surprising, when considering the large number of compositions from which to choose, that only a few have been included in what is considered the standard violin concerto repertoire.

It is in the Romantic period, however, that the violin concerto rises above simply being a composition that features the violin to being a true showpiece for the virtuoso artist. The concertos of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Bruch are among the best-known examples of the genre but there are also many works from the Romantic period that have fallen into relative obscurity.

The violin concertos of Glazunov, Vieuxtemps, and Goldmark are among the concertos which were popular in their day but have been eclipsed by their more popular counterparts. Another such work, popular in its day but now relatively unknown, is the Violin Concerto in E minor, by the Russian violinist and composer, Jules Conus.

Premiered in Moscow in 1898, the Conus violin concerto was long popular in Russia and was championed by such violinists as Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz. It was performed a number of times in the early part of the twentieth century, but, like the concertos of Vieuxtemps, it has become primarily a vehicle for teaching.

This recording by Heifetz demonstrates his prowess as a violinist and the the tonal qualities of the cantabile playing are especially beguiling. He revived this concerto during his time but despite many artists listing the Conus concerto in their repertoire, it still remains rarely programmed.

Little musical gems #82

OCTOBER 2021

Hearing Spem in Alium is an overwhelming experience : forty voices circling between heaven and earth. Tallis’ Spem in Alium is a one-off masterpiece that stands out in musical history like Beethoven’s 9th or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Although it was by no means the only piece written for 40 parts in the high Renaissance, and was perhaps inspired by a piece for these forces presented in England by the Italian composer Striggio, it takes a totally different approach to those continental composers who wrote occasionally for massed forces.

Tallis gives every single line its own individual personality, and the counterpoint is driven right through the piece with astonishing complexity. The effect is one of shifting kaleidoscopic colour, a feeling not just of looking up at the stars on a clear night but of being able to get closer to them, surrounded by light and activity.

There seems most certainly to be a connection to the Dukes of Norfolk, Catholic recusants, though scholars argue over whether it is a piece written during the reign of Mary (often associated with the biblical figure of Judith, the source of the text), or whether it was an answer to the virtuosic challenge of Striggio in the 1570s. It is certainly a piece which rings out the insistent argument of Catholic Tallis, that God’s people should seek his mercy.

The idea that someone 500 years ago could have written a motet for 40 individual voices to be performed in really grand cathedrals is quite overwhelming.

Little musical gems #81

OCTOBER 2021

On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson performed one of the most significant concerts in American history.

Anderson was originally scheduled to perform in Washington D.C.'s Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution enforced segregationist policies of the day and refused to allow her to hold her concert at the location. Instead, Howard University and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Anderson to hold the concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This concert, which became an iconic moment in the fight for civil rights, was performed before an audience of more than 75,000 people and broadcast by radio to countless more.

Anderson concluded this legendary concert with an arrangement of the spiritual, 'My Soul Is Anchored in the Lord' written for her by her friend, the composer Florence Price.

Although this premiere brought instant recognition and fame to Florence Beatrice Price, success as a composer was not easily gained and despite breaking many barriers in the field of classical music throughout her career, Price's music was largely overlooked on the concert stage for over half a century.

Price's musical style reflects both the European classical tradition of the late Romantic era of her formal musical training, as well as the traditional and popular music of her African-American heritage. The rhythms and harmonies of popular music, blues, jazz, and folk tunes make their way into her compositions. Devoutly religious, she also made much use of the sacred musical styles of spirituals, gospel music and hymns.

The Mississippi River Suite replicates a boat cruising down the Mississippi River and experiencing life along its banks. The opening section, like Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, depicts the awakening of dawn, but in this case, along river banks. Section 2 introduces a Native American theme scored for Indian drum, timpani, marimba, and other percussion instruments. In section 3, four Negro spirituals Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Stand Still, Jordan, Go Down, Moses and Deep River and original work by Price are mixed with traditional tunes of the day, River Song, Lalotte, and Steamboat Bill. The suite concludes with a layering of the melodies, alternately stacked one upon the other, with the spiritual Deep River the most dominant of all.

Little musical gems #80

SEPTEMBER 2021

I was too young at the time to realize that it was the great Tatiana Nikolayeva who was performing and speaking in front of me #entertainment and would only understand later the significance of this encounter.

Nikolayeva was one of the great pianists of the twentieth century. She had a wonderfully warm tone reminiscent of Shura Cherkassky, and this was coupled with a piercing intelligence and a delightful generosity of spirit.

Her great love of music was transmitted in every performance she gave, and her recitals were always greeted with enthusiasm by her army of ardent admirers.

One of the greatest Bach players of her generation, an undisputed authority on the music of Shostakovich and a musician of the highest capabilities. Nikolayeva’s repeetoire ranged from Bach to Bartók but
Shostakovich's cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues always held a special place in her vast repertoire. She inspired and premiered the work in Leningrad in 1952 and it was also the piece she performed when she died in concert in San Francisco in 1993.

The lifelong friendship between the composer and the performer started when the 26-year-old Nikolayeva won first prize at the 1950 Bach Piano competition organized in Leipzig for the bicentennial of the German composer's death. As a member of the jury, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was immensely impressed by her playing and inspired by the experience, he returned to Moscow to compose his own set of Preludes and Fugues in 1950/51.

In the preludes there is in each one a sense of experimentation, of compressing a single idea into a few pages of music to see where it will go. Each one has a “message.”

Watch Nikolayeva as she performs and reminisces about Shostakovich.

Little musical gems #79

SEPTEMBER 2021

In France she was, and still is, a legend. Alongside Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens, she was one of the pillars of chanson française in the 1960s, as well as the first woman singer to perform her own material. Yet, she is barely known outside of her native country.

Dressed in black, she performed on the biggest stages in Paris, playing the piano and singing. Barbara possessed remarkable breath control, for her voice seemed to float on a minimum of the air required by mortal men, and her lips hardly moved.

Her music and lyrics are never intellectualised: they speak directly to and from the heart, expressing feelings of desolation, but also of hope and humour. Barbara was beloved in France due to her melancholy musical style, her pathos as a suffering artist, and her unique non-conforming attitudes.

« A little cantata » by Barbara is a biographical feat. In just under two minutes of song, we find almost half of the themes of Barbara's repertoire : the notion of memories, the past, loss, the pain of absence ... the song is structured on the economy of a few piano notes which proves Barbara's evocative genius.

Listen to this delectable interpretation with Ivry Gitlis and you will be seduced.

Little musical gems #78

SEPTEMBER 2021

Despite the war, concentration camps, police harassment and physical injury, Cziffra - a battered survivor of war-torn Europe - went on to become one of the 20th century’s greatest keyboard artists, displaying fingerwork and musical insight that still attract hundreds of thousands of admirers. The range of his recorded repertoire – Couperin, Rameau, Bach, Scarlatti, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Ravel, Bartòk – is impressive.

Videos and remastered DVD recordings of his performances reveal a joy rarely seen. He smiles serenely and his eyes sparkle as his huge hands attack, tease and caress the keyboard. Pieces such as La Campanella, Islamay, Le Grand Galop Chromatique, and his own transcription of Flight of the Bumblebee are exhilarating in their reckless abandon. He made a virtue of being, as he put it, “far away from the rigors of intellectual and musicological correctness”.

Cziffra’s career won him superstar status in France, Italy and Japan. Critical opinion always remained split among the experts, with purists faulting him for interpretive flights of fancy and for his unbridled enthusiasm. “By playing the great virtuoso pieces of the Romantic repertory in my own manner,” Cziffra wrote in his memoir, “I divided the profession. I became its Antichrist due to my improvisations, which multiplied the difficulties ten times over.”

Indeed, his ample use of rubato and variable tempi might not be considered as conforming to traditional tastes, but I have always maintained that “one is not taught how to play well but how to become a part of one’s instrument until the soul of the interpreter, visible to all, becomes the messenger of music”.

Here is a wholly individual and breathtaking interpretation of Rameau.

Little musical gems #77

SEPTEMBER 2021

« La rentrée », there is no real translation for this expression in English, other than « it’s back to school time» after the summer break.

For my rentrée, I shall resume writing these weekly musical anecdotes, starting with Jean-Michel Damase. Why him ? Because during the summer, I was invited to prepare for a recording this autumn of his piano and trumpet concerto with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Not knowing anything about this composer, I set about making my research and discovered a neglected catalogue of works and couldn’t help think how wonderful that this project of a French composer’s music is championed by British musicians.

Damase started his career as one of the most promising French composers of his generation, but ended up apparently spending his career more or less at the fringes of the serious music scene. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Damase paid no heed to the avant-garde trends of the time - his music is steadfastly tonal and melodic. He stands in the tradition of Poulenc and Françaix, two composers whom he hugely admired.

The 1952 Symphonie is an early work written when Damase was 24 years old. The first movement is a captivating journey from darkness to light opening with a shadowy, ominous, chromatic theme in the woodwinds which eventually gives way to a gloriously simple, “rolling” theme in the violins, accompanied by an undulating horn figure. These “dark” and “light” episodes keep interrupting each other and a little more than halfway through the movement, it seems like darkness is going to prevail. The music builds to a grinding, dissonant climax when out of nowhere the horns burst through the texture with a glorious, major key version of the opening chromatic theme.

I leave you to discover this movement in which the last few minutes reveal one of the most gloriously uplifting finales with a warm sunset glow that comes to rest on a c major chord. 

Little musical gems #76

JULY 2021

My last post for these little musical anecdotes before the summer break is dedicated to Julius Katchen, the pianist renowned for his assured, big pianism and his daring recordings of Brahms – but who tragically died aged 42.

In many respects, his full-bodied pianism contrasted with the more literally orientated, anti-sensual approach generally favoured by his contemporaries. At the same time, his erudition extended beyond music, from his youthful studies in philosophy and English literature to his avid and canny pursuit of fine Japanese netsuke.

Katchen’s traversal of Brahms’s complete solo piano works may have been the most meaningful and fulfilling. He nearly always managed to reconcile this composer’s intellectual and structural rigour with the music’s underlying lyrical impulses and sometimes underrated pockets of humour. In Brahms, Katchen’s propensity for daring was a double-edged sword, as cogently borne out in the second Concerto in B flat. His muted restraint in the slow movement’s long chains of trills defines the untranslatable Spanish word duende. Conversely, in the finale, at the coda’s outset, listen to Katchen start the right-hand octaves at a deliberate trot, while he slyly speeds up to a devilish sprint towards the finish. It’s not what Brahms wrote, yet it works, and one could imagine the composer winking in approval.

The pianist’s vivacious and crisp Prokofiev Third from his last recording session belies any notion of terminal illness (he was to die from cancer in April 1969). As the famous music critic Distler once wrote, « The Argerich version smokes. But Katchen’s inhales ! ».

Katchen made the pioneering recording of Ned Rorem’s Second Piano Sonata, which for many years was the sole interpretation available on disc. The composer admired the interpretation as well as his friend’s prodigious capacity for both work and play: ‘I remember him going on tour without his music,’ recalled Rorem. ‘But not because it was all photographed in his brain: it was photographed in his fingers.’

Little musical gems #75

JULY 2021

Les trois Gymnopédies, and instantly we cry out Erik Satie, but the man, like his music, remains something of a mystery. "Mr Precursor", as Debussy liked to call him, he led the way with his surrealistic scores and repetitive music. Ravel and Stravinsky also cited Satie as an important influence, and his currency with the leading artists and poets of his day was high.

From 1899 to 1911, Satie lived on his earnings as a cabaret pianist at the Chat Noir, but detested the job. However, it brought him into contact with the leading figures of the Belle Epoque period : Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, Patrice Contamine and Guy de Maupassant. This music also left a lasting mark on Satie's musical personality.

Embryons desséchés (Desiccated embryos) is a neo-classical work but what strikes the modern listener first is actually its proto-minimalist qualities. The opening of the first movement is pure Philip Glass !

This work finds Satie engaging in a bit of musical biology, with each movement named for an obscure marine organism.

The first entitled d'Holothurie (Sea cucumber), the second d'Edriophthalma (a type of crustaceon), quotes the third movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 and the last Podophthalma (another type of crustaceon) is a sort of hunting song.

With titles like these, one also gets the feeling the composer is testing the limits of his own absurd sense of humour.

Little musical gems #74

JUNE 2021

A visit to the Louvre today made me reflect on inspiration and transmission from the great masters. Without Haydn, where would the inspiration have stemmed from for Mozart or Beethoven ?

Haydn realized the full bounty of his exploration with Op. 20, six masterpieces conceived as an integrated set immediately regarded as a towering achievement, the very first crucial landmark in the history of the string quartet. The cover of the first printed edition featured an illustration of the sun and they have been known as the "Sun" quartets ever since. This burst of creative effort might well be regarded as the most important in the history of the string quartet.

The set of six quartets, Op. 20, finds the composer delving deeper, intensifying the music's emotional expression and adding layers of complexity not found in his previous quartets. (Beethoven made a copy of one of the Op. 20 quartets during his student days in Vienna.) This is the moment when the string quartet leaves the traces of its lighter origins behind and becomes a full-fledged genre of serious instrumental music to rank alongside the classical symphony. As the great musicologist Donald Tovey put it, "With Op. 20 the historical development of Haydn's quartets reaches its goal; and further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next."

The second quartet in C major is perhaps the finest of the set, a diamond among its fellow precious jewels. Every movement, possibly offers something to admire. Throughout this quartet, the cello is finally emancipated from its humble role as a keeper of the base line to become a fully independent voice in a four-part texture.

The cello sings the first theme of the opening movement in its higher register initiating a brief three-part fugato for a sonata exposition that is uniquely and strikingly contrapuntal. As if a signature of the quartet, the cello renews its featured role at least three times more: the first solo theme in the second movement, the lead in the minuet's trio, and an equal voice in the elaborate fugal finale.

Little musical gems #73

JUNE 2021

Every now and again, I stumble across artists that I have never heard of, but am absolutely enchanted to discover. This is the case with Bella Bellow, Togo’s best loved musician. Although she died in 1973 at the tender age of 27, she continues to influence the country and its musicians, even today. The Bella Bellow choir in Togo is made up of 100 young women dedicated to keeping her songs alive.

Bella Bellow’s voice is sublime, akin to the early Miriam Makeba. She had a rather extraordinary life. Her talent was discovered when she was at school, and at 21 she was invited to perform at the Festival of Black Arts (Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres, 1966) in Dakar - an event of great cultural significance which made her a household name across West Africa, where she went on tour.

She also performed in Brazil and Paris and was poised to become an international superstar when she was tragically killed in a car accident. The songbird of Togo and my choice ahead of « la fête de la musique » tomorrow, listen to her in this extract and discover her talent for yourselves.

Little musical gems #72

JUNE 2021

Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915), whose music is perhaps the least known of any great Russian composer from this period. Although a brilliant pianist, he opted for a career as a composer and teacher and soon became a professor at the Conservatory. Among his many students were Gliere, Rachmaninov, Gretchaninov, Scriabin and Medtner. In Russian concert halls, one always finds a bust of Taneyev alongside those of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms and Tchaikovsky. The fame of this outstanding composer unfortunately has not spread beyond his homeland.

The Piano Quintet in g minor was composed in 1910-11. It is a colossal chamber music work. The massive opening movement, which by itself lasts more than 20 minutes, begins with a very lengthy, pensive and slow introduction, Mesto, which while melancholic also gives off air of mystery, a feeling that something is impending. The character of main part of the movement, Allegro, is by turns vigorous, resolute and lyrical, but overall the mood remains dark. The second movement, Presto, is a march-like scherzo. The sparkling percussive nature of the rhythms is very impressive. The trio section could not present a great contrast with its slow, almost languid, lovely, lyrical melody. In the third movement, a Largo which is essentially a passacaglia with variations, Taneyev demonstrates why he was universally regarded as one of the great musical architects of all time. The main theme is a tragic tone poem which is supported by a never varying ostinato in the cello. Above it, Taneyev produces a constantly changing set of images and emotional contrasts. The huge finale, Allegro vivace, is filled with dramatic tension from its opening measures to its thrilling conclusion.

Superlatives do not do justice to this masterpiece from the Romantic Russian chamber music literature. It is an extraordinary work by any standard.

Pletnev and his dream-team string colleagues are passionate advocates in this recording of the piano quintet.

Little musical gems #71

JUNE 2021

There has been much conjecture about the relationship between Erich and Carlos Kleiber. Erich, the famous but strict father, and Carlos who conducted from his father’s scores and only performed works that Erich Kleiber had also conducted. So what do then we know about the music making of this older, other great Kleiber ?

Despite his early enthusiasm for twentieth century music, Erich Kleiber is best remembered for minutely rehearsed and finely balanced interpretations of Beethoven, Mahler, and Bruckner. Even when in Berlin, where much of the Classical and Romantic repertory was familiar to the performers, he usually called five rehearsals before a concert. A perfectionist by nature, he insisted on complete faithfulness to the score. In his words, "[t]here are only two enemies of good performance: one is routine and the other improvisation."

Kleiber's recorded performances are confined mainly to the last 10 years of his life when under contract to Decca. His Beethoven Fifth Symphony has been called the finest recorded interpretation of this much-recorded work. Carlos, also made an equally celebrated recording of the same work in 1975. Nevertheless, Erich Kleiber was never satisfied with his own interpretation of Beethoven's Third « Eroica » Symphony, and would not allow Decca to release it. After his death, a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra became available on CD, as did the Rosenkavalier he recorded in 1954.

Decades later, Erich Kleiber's Eroica has not been surpassed and rarely equalled.

Little musical gems #70

MAY 2021

There are musical myths, and then there's Carlos Kleiber. His is considered as the greatest conductor of all time. He was a musical genius who knew the entire orchestral and operatic repertoire but only had a tiny selection of pieces he ever played in public; he was one of the funniest, most communicative musicians who ever lived, but never gave an interview; he was tormented by the ghost of his father, the great conductor Erich Kleiber.

His letters reveal on how listening to Duke Ellington gave him the clue about how to conduct Beethoven's Coriolan Overture: "The Duke and I whipped a downbeat sans upbeat out of nowhere for the start and similar 'starts', making it sound like running into a wall at 60mph with a Rolls-Royce, OK?"

Above all, Kleiber worked and he worked hard. The clue to the supposedly mystical power of Kleiber's conducting proves not so elusive after all. You need only to watch Kleiber conduct a Strauss waltz from one of the two New Year's Day concerts he conducted with the Vienna Philharmonic, Die Libelle, which is a miniature masterclass in virtually all you need to know about great conducting; about the poetic, alchemical connection between gesture and sound.

Little musical gems #69

MAY 2021

The legendary pianist and "enfant terrible" of classical music, when Frederic Gulda kicked off modern jazz classics like ‘A Night in Tunisia’ and ‘Bernie’s Tune’, his persona as a classical musician who had recently recorded Beethoven with Karl Böhm and Chopin with Adrian Boult apparently counted for very little.

From the 1950s onwards, Gulda cultivated a professional interest in jazz, writing songs and free improvisation or open music improvisations. He also recorded as a vocalist under the pseudonym "Albert Golowin", fooling music critics for years until it was realized that Gulda and Golowin were the same person. He played instrumental pieces, at times combining jazz, free music, and classical music in his concerts.

‘I am the most important creative Viennese musician of the second half of our century,’ was Gulda’s own stark assessment – delivered in a letter to a doubting critic – of his qualities as pianist, jazz improviser and composer.

Self-confidence was never a problem with Gulda as it was demonstrated in the famous live recording that was cut in 1956 at Birdland. Gulda playing immaculate jazz time, his ear cocked towards the keyboard style of Bud Powell – delivering more than convincingly on his high opinion of himself.

Little musical gems #68

MAY 2021

This relatively unknown Baroque Czech composer was almost lost to the modern audience after stacks of his work were destroyed when Dresden was bombed during the Second World War. Thankfully there were plenty more works left to unearth and, when they were, it was clear that Zelenka was a remarkably adventurous composer for his day, experimenting with progressive harmonies and earning plaudits from the likes of J.S. Bach.

To those with pre-conceived ideas of how 18th century music should sound, much of Zelenka's music will seem timeless and unrestricted – maybe even “utopian” or “experimental”. Yet in developing his sophisticated musical language – one of powerful expressivity and genuine spiritual depth – he was greatly inspired by the Italian masters of the 1500s and 1600s such as Palestrina and Frescobaldi. As a result of his strong individuality within the Baroque tradition, Zelenka's music holds many surprises.

Zelenka wrote instrumental music, a great amount of vocal music in various forms, and also religious music for the “stage” (oratorios). During Zelenka's final years, much of his music was inspired by Italian opera, which became fashionable in Dresden about fifteen years before he died.

Little musical gems #67

MAY 2021

In a career that lasted nearly five decades, Christa Ludwig (1928-2021), made singing sound easy. When you listen to Ludwig it sounds like effortless pure music, and that is the byproduct of an exemplary technique. There's a tremendous amount to be learned from that alone.

For singing in German, you could do no better than to listen to Ludwig, who managed to sing the German art songs with tremendous nuance and feeling. This was where Ludwig excelled, especially the music of Gustav Mahler. His set of symphonic songs called Das Lied von Der Erde ("The Song of the Earth") was a Ludwig specialty. The final song, 'Der Abschied,' which means 'the farewell,' will totally pull at the heartstrings. It is truly some of the greatest music ever written, and she does it full justice.

At the end of her long career, she habitually named three conductors from whom she had learned everything she needed to know about music : Karl Böhm for discovering her artistry, Herbert von Karajan for beauty of sound and legato, and Leonard Bernstein for the expressive quality and joy of music.

She named three cypress trees in her garden after them. When she retired, in 1994, she passed that wisdom along to her students.

Little musical gems #66

MAY 2021

Jean-Philippe Rameau was a direct contemporary of Bach and Handel, and has been acclaimed, alongside François Couperin, as one of the most important French composers of his age. Little is known about his early years. The first event for which he won fame was the publication of a Treatise on Harmony in 1722.

He was strongly criticised at first for his revolutionary use of harmony, and later for being an establishment composer, out of touch with the new developments in Italian Opera. By the end of the 18th century his music was largely forgotten, and it remained in obscurity until the early twentieth century when it was rediscovered.

The Ballet suite takes its first dance from the opera Platée, which is the story of an ugly water nymph who imagines that Jupiter is in love with her. It was first performed in 1745 in Versailles. The other two dances are from the opera-ballet Les Fêtes d'Hébé, first performed in Paris in 1739. Both these dances take their names from musical instruments: the musette which a bagpipe and the tambourine which is a small drum. Rameau cleverly imitates both instruments creating lively and characterful dances.

Little musical gems #65

APRIL 2021

It seemed an unlikely marriage : Menuhin the prodigy classical violinist, and Grappelli the jazz violinist and pianist of enormous French chic. Their personal chemistry however blended so well that they conceived interest and explored the thought of recording music together.

Menuhin become a Grappelli fan when a mutual friend gave him a collection of Grappelli records. He was amazed and full of admiration for this way of playing the violin, which he had never heard before, calling it an improvisatory technique yet at the same time a remarkable violinistic technique as well. Something so spontaneous.

It was stimulating and an adventure for Menuhin as his record of Eastern and Western music with the sitarist Ravi Shankar had been. He had never played to a rhythm band, as he does in the recordings with Grappelli. It was a tremendous realisation that the soloist or improviser did not have to worry about the rhythm himself. As he himself declared :

« In other words, he can do what he jolly well wants to, provided he doesn’t stray too far away. The rhythm is like the pillars of the building on which you can put on any type of rooms. They will support it. It gives the player very great latitude. »

Little musical gems #64

APRIL 2021

She would be dubbed the “Queen of the Cello” and was to be celebrated for her voluminous, molten-gold tone.

Zara Nelsova was, already at the age of twelve, a great cellist, but seeking improvement long past her precocious talent, she went on to study with the three greatest cellists of the day : Piatigorsky, Feuermann and Casals.

Nelsova’s humility in seeking out further guidance was coupled with confidence and assertiveness, qualities that stood her in good stead both musically and professionally. Audiences were wowed by her tone, technique, and forthright music-making, her fast, intense vibrato and colourful gowns.

She gave the Hindemith and Shostakovich sonatas their British premieres, performed the Walton Concerto with Walton conducting, and made the first recording of the Barber Concerto, Barber conducting. Her biggest fan among composers, though, was Ernest Bloch, who went so far as to say “Zara Nelsova is my music.” It was at Nelsova’s urging that Bloch wrote his Cello Suites, and she recorded Schelomo under his baton.

Interestingly, Nelsova’s own favored recording was not the one with Bloch, but a subsequent recording with Ansermet and the London Philharmonic : a gloriously expressive and spontaneous performance.

Little musical gems #63

APRIL 2021

Magda Tagliaferro, born in Brazil, to French parents, was one the few female pianists who made her mark on the classical music scene in the first half of the 20th century. Her artistic path is paved with some of the biggest names. Fauré and Cortot were important influences and she soon belonged to the illustrious circle around the Comtesse Edmond de Polignac, one of the most important patrons of the 20th century, whose salon hosted a veritable Who's Who of Paris. This included icons such as Proust, as well as the elite of the music scene.

A strikingly beautiful woman with fire-red hair, Tagliaferro brought vitality and excitement to her interpretations. Her repertoire was wide, but she was at her best in the music of Schumann and that of French and Spanish composers. As early as 1913 she was playing « Goyescas » which Enrique Granados had introduced to Paris only two years previously, and Manuel de Falla made an arrangement for piano of a dance from his « La vida breve » for her.

Tagliaferro wrote, ‘My life has all been Love, in the widest sense of the word. Everything I have created within or around me has been created with Love. Which is better? To love or to be loved? Never one to be satisfied, I have always needed both!’

Little musical gems #62

APRIL 2021

The “Easter Suite” has remained one of the least known compositions by Oscar Peterson, even though virtually all sources mention it as one of his major works.

It was commissioned by the South Bank Show, a flagship arts programme in the UK and broadcast on Good Friday, April 24th, 1984.

Unlike the sacred music of Ellington, Brubeck and Guaraldi, Peterson’s “Easter Suite” is a purely instrumental work. Peterson tells the Resurrection story as a series of contrasting scenes. While specific quotes are clearly delineated in the music, the movements work well equally as stand-alone pieces. Yet, by placing himself in the spiritual context of this suite, the active listener can hear the wind through the olive trees in “The Garden of Gethsemane” and visualize the Roman soldiers in “The Trial”. As with the best Peterson Trio performances, there is a great deal of interaction between the three voices, and the interplay is an important part of Peterson’s composition. On “The Denial”, the piano is in direct contrast with the drums as the two throw accusations and denials back and forth.

While there are several moments of Peterson’s exuberance (particularly in the closing “He Has Risen”) he never loses the reverential focus of the total piece.

Little musical gems #61

MARCH 2021

Tomorrow is the 88th day of the year and with 88 playing keys, it is of course, World Piano Day !

Mentors, teachers, pedagogues, we all have someone who inspired us in the learning process. As a student, I learnt the most from those who encouraged pupils to unlock their unique musical personality and equally equipping them with a solid technical foundation. Heinrich Neuhaus demonstrated this better than any other. His list of former pupils (Richter, Gilels and Lupu among many others) reads like a Who’s Who in the pantheon of piano greats. I had the fortune of learning from Lev Naumov, also a Neuheus protégé.

Neuhaus was, strictly speaking, self-taught, and his first solo recitals took place in Germany and Italy while studying under Godowsky. He returned to Russia at the outbreak of the First World War. In 1922 he began teaching at the Moscow Conservatoire and helped to create in 1932 the famous Moscow Central Music School.

Seldom have artistic gifts been so closely matched by the qualities of selfless devotion, deep humanity, true culture and a great capacity for bestowing and winning friendship between him and his students.

Thanks to the archive accessible today, we can listen and be inspired again by Neuhaus’ teachings.

Little musical gems #60

MARCH 2021

One of the many remarkable things about Petrucciani was not so much the fact that when he played he overcame his handicaps, but that one was not aware of their existence. He could do anything and despite his diminutive size, Petrucciani’s hands were large and powerful. Digging into mid-tempo blues, he swung with unrelenting energy, traces of Bud Powell and Oscar Peterson drifting through his lines, colored by his own tendency to string familiar riffs together in the fashion of instant compositions. His ballads were lyrical blends of melody and harmony, true to the originals but always articulated with his irresistibly rhythmic touch.

Bill Evans was a major influence on the first part of his career but he also retained his love of the works of Bach, Debussy, Ravel, Mozart and Bartok. He brought layers of joy and intensity in virtually every piece. From the brisk swing of the Gershwins’ “Summertime” and the suave intensity of Rodgers & Hart’s “My Funny Valentine” to the high-gear whirl through Charlie Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce,” the music overflows with joyful, vivacious, subtly witty improvising.

Little musical gems #59

MARCH 2021

To those who know and love the finest in the world of song, the names of Pierre Bernac and Francis Poulenc are as inseparable as they were in their lives and their art. By coincidence, the two men were almost precisely the same age: Poulenc was born on Jan. 5, 1899, Bernac five days later.

Bernac’s art was rare in his or any time, and his genius led directly to the writing of the greatest songs of the quarter of a century in which he regularly sang.

The first time the two musicians performed together, and it was the first of many hundreds of concerts they would give during the next quarter of a century, was in 1934 at the Salzburg festival.

Poulenc's great cycle, "Tel jour, telle nuit," has been compared to Schubert's "Winterreise" and Schumann's "dichterliebe," and the comparison is justified. Poulenc, the brilliant, witty, polished pianist-composer, attributed the inspiration for these moving songs to have come from, "from accompanying Bernac in the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Faure, Debussy, Ravel, etc"

The substantial character is clear from the fact that Poulenc, at his death early in 1963, left well over 100 songs, about 90 of which were written especially for Bernac to sing in their joint concerts.

Little musical gems #58

MARCH 2021

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day and of all the trail-blazing women who have inspired and influenced me, Katharine Hepburn remains my all time female icon.

Over the course of her 62-year career in film, Hepburn portrayed an array of comedic and dramatic characters who were sometimes witty, often independent, and never, ever dull. Hepburn was especially well-known for her unapologetic attitude and her proclivity for wearing trousers whenever possible. Her character and her intelligence were never simple or superficial and she was just as captivating offscreen as she was on.

« Song of Love » is the highly fictional and a rather sacharrine account of the relationship between Clara Wieck, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms and the film was mediocre by Hepburn’s standards ; especially when we consider her role in films such as The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib or The African Queen, to name a few. But a little known fact is that Hepburn trained intensively with a pianist so that she could be filmed playing the piano for the movie. The soundtrack for the film was recorded by Rubinstein but there is one scene where Hepburn herself plays Träumerei. Rubinstein was impressed ! It’s work I adore and often play myself.

Little musical gems #57

MARCH 2021

Handel was a truly cosmopolitan musician, and an international sensation in the 1700s. He achieved his greatest success in London writing Italian opera. During the 1720s and '30s, the string of operatic hits he wrote for the city's theatres made him one of Europe's most successful composers. And when London's audiences tired of Italian opera, he maintained his popularity with English oratorios and orchestral music. But all that changed when he died in 1759.

For nearly 150 years after Handel's death, all but a small number of his works fell into obscurity. Some of his orchestral pieces stayed popular along with the oratorios, such as « Messiah », but most of his music, including virtually all of his operas, were ignored until a long-overdue Handel revival early in the 20th century.

Rodelinda is one such recent revival. The distant source of Rodelinda’s plot is the « Gesta Longobardorum » by the 8th century historian Paul the Deacon. More immediately, librettist Nicola Haym, drew on a 1710 libretto by Antonio Salvi, itself based on Corneille’s « Pertharite, Roi des Lombards ». Salvi, we are told, improved on Corneille. Haym and Handel certainly improved on Salvi, and the result was one of the best-shaped librettos Handel ever set.

Little musical gems #56

FEBRUARY 2021

These attractive piano works of Tchaikovsky appeared in a musical journal in 1876 and were, confusingly given the collective title of the Seasons when in reality they are a musical depiction of each month of the year. They were commissioned by the editor of the journal, Nikolay Matveyevich Bernard and each piece was given an accompanying verse.

January starts with Pushkin. It is not entirely clear what input Tchaikovsky had but the titles were certainly Bernard’s, as the composer’s letter of 24 November 1875 accepting the commission attests.

Whoever it was, matched it with sensitivity, and Tchaikovsky didn’t appear to oppose the idea, because in January he even built Tatyana’s letter scene around it while composing his operatic masterpiece Eugene Onegin.

The majority of the pieces are intimate. February is an example of the more extrovert exceptions. It bears the highly appropriate title of ‘Carnival’.

The cycle draws to an end with November, entitled ‘Troika’, a movement Rachmaninov loved to play, and finally December, a verse from Vasily Zhukovsky describing girls taking off their slippers at the gate, in line with a local fortune-telling tradition. For this Tchaikovsky composes one of his most unassuming, yet engaging, waltzes.

Little musical gems #55

FEBRUARY 2021

Among the numerous myths surrounding the origins of St Valentine as the patron saint of romance, the anecdote I find the most amusing involves the Saint sitting in prison and restoring the sight of the blind daughter of his jailer. Just before his execution, he supposedly wrote her a letter signed «Your Valentine »

Today surely cannot be without a soundtrack to accompany the romance ?

Schumann grew up in a world of literature and poetry, and he kept falling in love at the drop of a pin. After a good many relationships, he fell in love with the daughter of his landlord, the much younger Clara Wieck. Mr. Wieck was a respected piano teacher, and he witnessed a great many of Schumann’s affairs.

We can’t really blame him for not wanting his young daughter, a highly promising pianist, to have anything to do with the philandering composer. But the couple did fall in love, and even a lawsuit brought by her father was unable to stop this union of hearts and minds. Schumann certainly had a gift for pouring his feelings into his music, and his Romance in F-sharp is one that epitomizes his love for his beloved Clara.

Little musical gems #54

FEBRUARY 2021

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s career was surely unique, as he sang and recorded more vocal music than any who came before. Many of these songs he recorded several times over : for instance, he made no fewer than eight recordings of Schubert's Winterreise.

This truly incredible output was the result of an inquiring mind, an insatiable desire to tackle any and every song he could find, and to be a proselytiser for the art of lieder and singing in general, all these underlined by an instinctive wish to achieve perfection in his craft. More than that, he was an inspiration to the vast number of singers who have followed his example in this field, and made the singing of lieder a common experience. He also created an audience for this kind of music-making.

Fischer-Dieskau had a full, firm and resonant baritone, which could be honed down to the most delicate mezza voce. It was used with the utmost care in managing and projecting the text. He recorded all the songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Hugo Wolf and Strauss but it is the Meyerbeer I shall invite you to explore. This is one of Fischer-Dieskau’s least known yet most riveting recitals; a vocal tour de force. from 1974 that found the prolific baritone at the height of his Protean.

Little musical gems #53

JANUARY 2021

Happy 265th Birthday, Mozart !

It’s tempting to relegate much of Mozart’s Salzburg church music to the “nice to know it’s there” category, and then never explore any of it beyond. His relations to the church were troubled and unlike Bach he lived in a milieu where the profoundest ideas of the time were not practiced in church. At the same time there are remarkable, unforgettably profound church works. His last Salzburg liturgical work, the Vesperae solennes de Confessore, is a masterpiece and a precursor of the two great unfinished religious works of his Vienna period, the Mass in C Minor and the Requiem.

The work was intended for the special celebration of an undisclosed saint's day and the text consists of five Psalms and the Magnificat canticle that concludes every Vespers service. Just before the final dazzling Magnificat is an inward and luscious Laudate Dominum for soprano and chorus, a work beautiful enough for a place in any of his operas but somehow breathing an inward spiritual air perfectly appropriate to a church service. After his discovery of Bach and Handel, Mozart would delve more deeply into the possibilities of liturgical counterpoint, but this wonderful work is an important monument on that particular journey.

Little musical gems #52

JANUARY 2021

Kandinsky believed that music could be brought to the canvas in the way it can be brought to paper in the form of notes and ultimately to melodious sound that captures almost any living being.

This is not an original idea as the Pythagorans were probably the first to blur the boundaries between the musical and the visual when they claimed that, “the eyes are made for astronomy, the ears for harmony, and these are sister sciences.”

Kandinsky’s theory is that Abstract art creates a new inner world that, when viewed from the outside, has nothing to do with reality. It follows the general laws of the cosmic world.

However, it was in Vienna where Kandinsky developed his most unique friendship with the composer Arnold Schoenberg. When he heard one of his concerts, Kandinsky discovered that he had encountered a brother-in-arms. Promptly, the two men departed on a long and often highly critical friendship that would break the barriers between music and painting.

Kandinsky along with Schoenberg associatively linked pictorial sequences and consciously sought to place the elements of color-form, text, space-sound, and movement on an equal level. They limit themselves to lyrical passages. Therefore, the word is used in places as pure sound.

Little musical gems #51

JANUARY 2021

« The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe that it is possible »

Words by Lewis Carroll that ring so true and inspire. Carroll was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, one of his most well known works, has inspired many composers, including Chick Corea, to capture through music this bizarre kaleidoscope of fantasy and logic through the crazy lens of nonsense culminauting to a unique and marvellous dreamworld.

Corea is a revered giant of jazz piano and has been a musical presence since the 1960s, drawing on a multitude of inspirations. In 1968 he revolutionised the language of the trio with his album “Now he sings, now he sobs”. After discovering the electric keyboard while playing in Miles Davis' band, he explored this new sound with his legendary group Return Forever, fusing jazz, rock and Brazilian music. Corea's playing is recognisable from the first notes.

The Mad Hatterwould displays Corea’s eclectic jazz samplers from the late Seventies. The theme is inspired by Alice, and by giving the pieces themes (for example, “Tweedle Dum mournfully recalls the beauty of his distant past”), Corea channels a wider window into the music than might otherwise have been.

Little musical gems #50

JANUARY 2021

Although Poulenc saw himself as primarily a composer of religious music, it was not until 1936, following his return to Catholicism, that he produced his first sacred work. A steady stream of religious pieces then flowed. The first large-scale choral work, the Stabat Mater appeared in 1950, and the Gloria in 1959. Both employ the same forces - chorus, soprano solo and large orchestra - and both enjoyed immediate acclaim. They have remained firm favourites with performers and audiences ever since.

Poulenc’s very distinctive style relies principally on strong musical contrasts. The harmony moves between Stravinsky like dissonance and sensuous chord progressions, vigorous counterpoint and alternating lyrical melodic writing, dynamics frequently ranging from a hushed piano to an emphatic forte within the space of a bar or two. Poulenc skilfully uses this colourful musical palette to express a wide range of emotions.

Poulenc’s sense of humour and love of life shine through all his music, however solemn the text might be. One of his friends said of him, ‘There is in him something of the monk and the street urchin.’ The Gloria brilliantly expresses these characteristics, with its captivating mixture of solemnity and mischievous exuberance.

Little musical gems #49

JANUARY 2021

Some facts in the indomitable musical life of Rosalyn Tureck : she was born in Chicago and she made her Carnegie Hall debut as a teenager in 1932 playing not the piano, but the theremin !

Unusually for the time, she was already a habitué of the clavichord, harpsichord and other keyboard instruments. Her career as a young virtuoso encompassed the conventional repertoires of Liszt, Beethoven and Brahms – all played with an unconventionally brilliant combination of clarity as well as fiery intensity – but she was also an advocate of new music, even putting on the first US concert of electronic and tape music in 1952.

All that changed because of an epiphany she experienced playing Bach. This Damascene moment inspired a complete reconstruction of her pianistic technique when it came to playing Bach's music.

Tureck's ambitious idea was the complete independence of her 10 fingers, not just in terms of which note they were playing, but in loudness, articulation, touch and expression. What she was striving for was complete crystalline clarity of line in Bach's densest polyphony. That's a bold idea now, but in the 1940s, it was nothing short of a revolution. Unastonishingly, Tureck left a profound influence on the young Glenn Gould.

Little musical gems #48

DECEMBER 2020

In this last post before the Christmas break, a visit to Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols.

Inspired by the work of the poet W H Auden, Britten set set off in 1939 for America but was sorely disappointed to find that the country have “all the faults of Europe and none of the attractions” and so, in 1942, he embarked on his return to England. En route, he stopped in Nova Scotia, where he came upon The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, a collection of medieval texts. These later became what we know as A Ceremony of Carols.

Britten had been studying the harp with a view to writing a concerto for the instrument. A Ceremony of Carols is already masterful and entirely idiomatic and this composition won him a lasting place as a musical genius.

It is worth knowing something about writing for the harp in order to appreciate more fully Britten’s handling of it. It is steeped in history and indeed mythology. Afterall, Apollo, the god of music himself, was a harpist !

The double-action pedal harp was invented in 1810 by Sébastien Érard. It has seven pedals and in the basic position, all the strings are flats. The first pedal position tightens all the strings to naturals and the second position to sharps. Endless combinations are thus attainable !

Little musical gems #47

DECEMBER 2020

Sacred “songs of the people” from medieval Italy, in performances where the mixture of earthiness and fine control have the power to touch you somewhere deep down. This is music at its most haunting and evocative from an album that has practically disappeared from circulation.

Many ancient chant recordings depend upon complexly woven, fairly sophisticated material to solicit interest from classical listeners. Acantus has done something more daring in finding simpler, stronger music and presenting it with appropriate immediacy and vigor. The music ranges from two parts to six, some accompanied, some a cappella. But it’s the distinctive vocal style–open, forward, and somewhat reedy in tone–that will immediately capture your attention.

It is an earthy imagining of the spirituality of long-ago Italian commoners. Acantus adapts a very personal approach by starting from the modern remnants of orally-passed folk tradition to work backward to ancient text and score, resulting in a timeless and literally yield of more with less.

Little musical gems #46

DECEMBER 2020

Today I revisit one of my favourite but sometimes overlooked composer, Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915). Over a period of roughly 20 years, Scriabin’s musical language evolved from a late-Romantic idiom largely indebted to Chopin to a highly chromatic and atonal language derived from his signature Mystic Chord.

In seeking to connect to the mystical truth beyond the physical world, Scriabin created a musical world all of his own. Those who heard Scriabin play fell under the enchantment of his tone colors, his imaginative pedaling and the sincerity of his sentiment.

The early Preludes reveal a whole new approach to the instrument, and takes the form of a musical diary which reflected Scriabin's experiences and emotions during his travels abroad, while never quite abandoning his natural affinity towards his homeland. Tracing Scriabin ́s musical footsteps in his visits to cities like Paris, Amsterdam, Heidelberg, Witznaw or Kiev – he left a note at the end of every Prelude stating where it was composed.

The « Travel Preludes » are like a spiritual journey of the composer, a point of departure towards a communion with the forces of nature and the ecstasy which Scriabin sought for the whole of his life.

Little musical gems #45

NOVEMBER 2020

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) is a veritable treasure. His music is bite-sized, well adapted for either piano or harpsichord and features the lightness of the Italian Baroque, peeks into the Classical style, all topped with some Spanish flair from his music master positions in Seville and Madrid.

During the last 6 years of his life he transferred his keyboard skills to paper in the form of some two hundred suites which he called sonatas. A single three or four minute Scarlatti sonata can traverse a wide range of emotions and the music is full of odd surprises, like gestures that seem less than idiomatic for the instrument or advanced harmonies and dissonances.

Of the many modern interpretations available for listening, few match the effervescence of Horowitz. Mikhail Pletnev certainly belongs in this elite company. As an interpreter, Pletnev has a reputation for willfulness and eccentricity, but eccentricity and Scarlatti also seem to go hand in hand, resulting in some simply gorgeous sounding, meticulously controlled piano playing, bursting at the seams with spirited dynamism and the most playful musicality you can imagine.

Little musical gems #44

NOVEMBER 2020

Since the years following his death in 1992, the reputation of tango titan, Astor Piazzolla, has never been so strong.

Assorted live and studio recordings of the Argentine bandoneon player’s own music have been released, as well as recordings by those paying homage to his passionate artistry. We are all familiar with the various arrangements available of Oblivion and Liberatango but how about Gidon Kremer as the main protagonist in an interpretation of Fuga y Misterio ?

Kremer has championned Piazzolla for over twenty years and indeed the music was even considered as being too “popular” at the time.

With the Kremerata Baltica, it is a strong ensemble affair, as Kremer manages to imbue Piazzolla’s music with proper degrees of intellect and a heaving heart. Together with his restless, nervous temperament and wiry tone, he gives the music an extra psychological tension, as well as some eccentric flights of improvisation. He rises to the challenges of idiomatic purity. A persuasive case for Piazzolla’s claim to “serious” music respectability, from the ground up.

The composer once said that the “tango was always for the ear rather than the feet.” I suggest how about both ?

Little musical gems #43

NOVEMBER 2020

November 4th marked the anniversary Mendelssohn’s death.

Mendelssohn’s artistic imagination was by no means limited to the world of music, expressing from an early age, his ideas in drawings and watercolors reflecting remarkable levels of accomplishment and expertise. His sense of visual structure was compelling and his proclivity for gracefully nuanced renderings of line and details compares favorably with that of most artists of his time.

He drew many sketches of his journey through England and Scotland. We need only to hear his Hebrides to give you an idea of what he was seeing and how such beauty inspired him to write the piece.

The double concerto in D minor was written when Mendelssohn was merely fourteen years old. It remained unpublished during his lifetime and it wasn't until 1999 when a critical edition of the piece was available. The second movement begins with a beautiful melody, foreshadowing the style of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" written six years later.

The orchestral tutti begins followed by the soloists, both treating and ornamenting the main theme in their own way. The orchestra returns at the end with the primary theme and the soloists close the movement peacefully.

Little musical gems #42

NOVEMBER 2020

Leontyne Price’s debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore ignited a 42minute ovation and one of the longest in the Met's history. The critic Harold Schonberg wrote: "Her voice was dusky and rich in its lower tones, perfectly even in its transitions from one register to another, and flawlessly pure and velvety at the top."

Price was already by the time of her Met debut, an internationally heralded singer and an experienced, refined musician and artist. But more than anything, it was the sheer beauty of her voice that excited her listeners. Vibrant, glowing, yet never metallic in tone, her vocal production seemed effortless, free, and soaring, with plentiful volume and an amazing dynamic control. The timbre of her voice was so unique, personal, and immediately identifiable - she sounded like no one else.

It is impossible to speak of Price’s career without noting that she was the first African American superstar singer. The rise of her Met career coincided with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and she was proud to be a part of it. Along with her exceptional artistic achievements, it remains part of her remarkable legacy.

Little musical gems #41

OCTOBER 2020

His mother named him Samson, for strength, and Pascal, for mind and just as he lived his brief life on the edge, French pianist Samson François brought unbridled passion, big technique, and a restless, creative mind to everything he played.

The pianist’s volatile Chopin recalls the polyphonic angle and heroic ardor of his teacher Cortot, while his granitic sculpting of the Bach-Busoni sports Germanic sturdiness. His Debussy and Fauré are lusciously shaded yet full of backbone, while the Toccatas of Schumann and Prokofiev fall just short of Horowitz’s diabolical brilliance. It is however in the relentless drive of François’ stupefying 1947 “Scarbo”, that hails surely as one of the greatest piano recordings ever made.

Ravel composed these three pieces for piano in 1908, basing them on poems by Aloysius Bertrand. They make a shrewdly balanced triptych, at its centre is the static evocation of Le Gibet, bleak and unforgiving. Before it comes Ondine, the seductive water nymph, afterwards there is the nightmarish diablerie of Scarbo.

François himself said "never play simply to play well" and, in a remark clearly inspired by his jazz influences, "It must be that there is never the impression of being obliged to play the next note."

Little musical gems #40

OCTOBER 2020

The image of sipping wine while listening to classical music is a cliché we often find on screen but the association of Orpheus and Bacchus is very deferential. The senses awaken and the taste buds are heightened by the aural perceptions.

During a recent wine tasting experience in Burgundy, when I tasted one of the wines presented by Armand Heitz, my initial reaction was Schubert but ultimately, it is the Adagio from Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata whirling in my head whilst recalling the wonderful aromas and tastes of this wine.

The Sonata was instantly popular, breaking many traditional sonata form modes of its day. It also provided a notable early example of Beethoven’s experimentation with the dramatic potential of the key of C minor, which he would later choose for his well-known Symphony No. 5.

The second movement of the Pathétique Sonata is Beethoven at his most sublimely lyrical. However many times you may have heard this movement, you cannot help being seduced by the melody. We enter the realm of Ab major, fleshed with feeling and replete with ethereal expression.

The movement is achingly intimate yet with a majestic overtone. Much like this wine by Armand Heitz.

I’ll leave you to decide which pairings you associate in your own Orpheus and Bacchus experience...

Little musical gems #39

OCTOBER 2020

Janáček composed his piano music before he found fame late in life with operas such as ‘Káťa Kabanová’ and ‘The Makropulos Case’. Epigrammatic but obsessive, these intimate pieces speak of the composer’s passions and frustrations. Also like his later works they are loaded with drama and big ideas.

The first book in ‘On An Overgrown Path’ is notable for its poetic titles which find expression in music of apparent folk-like innocence and sudden passions, reaching a powerful climax in the violent contrasts of the first book’s final piece, ‘The Barn-Owl has not flown away’. This is music of heartbreak and desolation no less moving than the great scenes of love and abandonment composed for his operatic heroines.

´Good Night’ is an intimate and tender portrait of leave taking. It is constructed by the layering of three motives : a short restless ostinato, a simple lyrical tune and an accompanimental tenor and bass line. Initially, the piece feels sparse and hollow, but it takes on a very rich texture, full of emotional nuances as Janáček layers and develops the motives.

Good Night is one of the first pieces in
which Janáček employs an ostinato as a kontras element, which goes on to become one of his signature compositional traits.

Little musical gems #38

OCTOBER 2020

Liszt described him as “the most poetic musician who ever lived.” Berlioz, Dvořák and Bruckner were among those influenced by his orchestral writing. As for the German Lieder writing tradition, he took it to a whole new plane. The composer is of course Schubert.

Schubert was able to exploit his immense gifts to develop further the musical language he had inherited from Beethoven and he could write and produce with apparent ease the art of combining masterful melodic and harmonic invention. Only a fraction of his music was published in his lifetime, and it was only after his death that the greatness of his achievement was recognised internationally.

One of the reasons for his expansion of songwriting was the discovery of Goethe in 1814. His setting of “Gretchen am Spinnrade”, from Faust, was perhaps his first great song. It was quickly followed by others such as Erlkönig and Heidenröslein.

We often associate male interpreters of his song cycles but let us not ignore the wonderful interpretations by the female voice. A different timbre, yes, but the enduring qualities of Schubert permeates.

Little musical gems #37

OCTOBER 2020

It is one of the most heart-stopping pieces in the classical literature. “The Lark Ascending” by Vaughan Williams is all of art in one place: nature, music, poetry, imagery and imagination. It starts with the darkest, richest sounds a violin can make, then rises to an airy lightness. You are lifted immediately out of the space you are in and as the final notes returns you to a descent, you are still you are soaring.

The timing of this composition, during a difficult time in a country's history possibly demonstrates that it is not simply a piece to relax to.

A haunting ‘pastoral romance’ for solo violin and orchestra, this work has become a symbol of the calm before the storm, perhaps of the summer countryside in the last days of peace before thousands of young men were sent away to their unknown fate during WW1.

The Lark Ascending was composed as a response to George Meredith's poem of the same name and the composer copied its lines describing the bird's "silver chain of sound" on the fly-leaf of his score.

« ‘Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows to lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.»It is one of the most heart-stopping pieces in the classical literature. “The Lark Ascending” by Vaughan Williams is all of art in one place: nature, music, poetry, imagery and imagination. It starts with the darkest, richest sounds a violin can make, then rises to an airy lightness. You are lifted immediately out of the space you are in and as the final notes returns you to a descent, you are still you are soaring.

The timing of this composition, during a difficult time in a country's history possibly demonstrates that it is not simply a piece to relax to.

A haunting ‘pastoral romance’ for solo violin and orchestra, this work has become a symbol of the calm before the storm, perhaps of the summer countryside in the last days of peace before thousands of young men were sent away to their unknown fate during WW1.

The Lark Ascending was composed as a response to George Meredith's poem of the same name and the composer copied its lines describing the bird's "silver chain of sound" on the fly-leaf of his score.

« ‘Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows to lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.»

Little musical gems #36

SEPTEMBER 2020

Thelonious Monk was one of the prime creators of modern jazz. Palo Alto, a new release of a previously unissued concert recording by him embodies some of the paradoxes and majestic artistry of his radically influential career.

Though musicians had long been aware of his powerfully original ideas, it wasn’t until 1957 at the Five Spot bar, in NYC that his central place in modern artistic life became widely acknowledged.

By the time this recording was made, many of the musicians closest to Monk—Davis, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins—had changed their playing significantly, moving ahead into the wilder waters of jazz modernity. Monk spoke ill of the avant-garde. Also, in the mid-sixties, he began to endure the effects of bipolar disorder, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. His activity dwindled in the ‘70’s and he gave his final concerts in 1976. He died in 1982 but his artistry is woven into the very core of jazz history.

His compositions continue to be widely played and their performances have a strange, singular, and powerful effect. Their ideas and melodies are inseparable from his unique and instantly distinctive way of playing the piano.

Little musical gems #35

SEPTEMBER 2020

Claude Debussy and Maurice Maeterlinck are linked in creating the seminal French masterwork of the 20th century music, Pelléas et Mélisande. Debussy read Maeterlinck’s new play shortly after it was published in 1892, and that afternoon, sitting in a small Paris theatre, he found his ideal operatic subject, one that would free him to create a new kind of musical theatre - and “release dramatic music from the heavy yoke under which it has lived for so long,” as he later said.

Since it’s premier, Pelleas has divided opinion. However it was quickly recognized as a score that could be attacked and even rejected, but not overlooked. Paul Dukas, an influential critic as well as a composer called Pelléas a masterpiece: “each
bar exactly corresponded to the scene it portrayed and to the feelings it expressed.”

Pelléas et Mélisande stands apart from the music of its day. Debussy’s language in Pelléas is not only more refined, subtle, and delicate than anything else being written at the time, but it also is quieter, particularly at some of its most powerful moments. Several moments in each act hovers on the verge of silence. This lends not only to the drama themselves, but also help concentrate the emotions of the music they surround.

Little musical gems #34

AUGUST 2020

Utter the name Sofronitsky and it is akin to talking about a legend almost unknown in the west. Richter called him a God, and Gilels said he was the best among pianists.

Sofronitsky would have had undoubtedly a far more prominent career if he had been able to leave Russia and play in the West. As it is, we are thankful for the recordings of his studio and live performances that have survived from Russia. He was a pianist who could excel in the music of many major composers, particularly Schubert, Schumann and Liszt, and was perhaps the greatest interpreter of Scriabin in the twentieth century. Being married to the composer’s daughter, this gave Sofronitsky a greater intellectual and emotional connection to Scriabin's works.

His presentation of Scriabin is far different from those of Richter and Horowitz. Sofronitsky understands Scriabin in a very romantic way, almost Byronian. Sometimes it sounds like the music of solitude, sometimes like in « Vers la Flame » you can feel the mephistophelic smell.

His is the beauty of the sound, full of harmonics, the extraordinary pianissimi, the personal use of the rubato, and the steamy quality of his romantic performance, beautifully translated in this interpretation of the Valse by Scriabin.

Little musical gems #33

AUGUST 2020

The name Erika Morini does not immediately spring to mind when we think of violinists of yesteryear, yet her New York début at the age of seventeen in 1921 was one of the musical sensations of the year. Shortly after this concert, Morini was presented with the Guadagnini violin of the American violinist Maud Powell, who had died the previous year. Powell had specified in her will that the violin was to go to the “next great female violinist.”

Unlike many violinists of her generation, she didn’t suffer in the shadow of Heifetz, who was a contemporary at the time. Perhaps it helped that their playing had almost nothing in common. Morini played stylishly without relying on vibrato and slides. Her vibrato tended to simmer, though it could become affectingly intense in lyric passages. Her timing was nothing short of brilliant.

Morini was warmly admired by her greatest peers. Kreisler stated that she played his compositions better than he did. When it came to Viennese repertoire, Morini was indeed hard to surpass, as her recordings attest. Her “Caprice Viennois” is a masterpiece of musical storytelling, her “Schön Rosmarin” of idiomatic shaping. Here she is with a work that is often identified with Heifetz, but wholly Morini.

Little musical gems #32

AUGUST 2020

Annie Fischer's love of music and her enthusiasm for life were reflected in her playing. She communicated great physical, emotional and spiritual energy, warmth and generosity. Someone once said I reminded him of her when I performed. I took that as an enormous and undeserved compliment !

Fischer was also a player of immense honesty. It is surprising and exciting to hear such intense power emanating from her small, elegant frame. In Beethoven and Schumann, above all, her work was unmatchable. Her interpretation of Beethoven was an ideal fusion of the intellectual and the humane.

The balance she maintained between form and content, while keeping a seemingly effortless freedom of expression, was reminiscent of Furtwangler whilst her command of Beethoven's thought process was comparable to Schnabel's. Her playing of Schumann sounded so fresh, tender and spontaneous, almost improvised. She made his music seem newly discovered.

Fischer hated recording but made some outstanding discs of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. Her last London recital was in 1992 when she concluded a programme at the Royal Festival Hall with what was hailed as a magisterial account of the Fugue from the "Hammerklavier" Sonata played as an encore.

Little musical gems #31

AUGUST 2020

Degas was raised in a highly cultivated family and was interested in music long before he picked up a brush. As we well know, he was a regular patron of the Paris Opéra, befriending many of the orchestra members. He closely followed the new music of the time with influences coming from listening to and watching the music, choirs, and operas of Handel, Bizet, Gluck, Mozart, Offenbach, Rossini and Verdi, among others. However it was only Maybeer’s Robert le Diable, that he ever translated onto canvas.

Robert le Diable is regarded as one of the first grand operas at the Paris Opéra. A musical milestone and a definitive statement in the 19th-century development of French grand opéra from the tragédie lyrique of Lully, Rameau, Gluck and Spontini. The fascinating story reveals a complex imagery and symbolism that touches on the deepest intuitions of human experience and personal development, and exercises an archetypal unconscious appeal akin to the nature of fairy tales.

Very few recordings exist of this work but there has been a recent resurgence of interest in this opera. Here is Beverley Sills in an aria from Act IV. Sills, after retiring from singing in 1980, became the general manager of the New York City Opera.

Little musical gems #30

AUGUST 2020

The “selfie” of its day, Rembrandt, from the beginning of his artistic career to just before his death, created between 80 and 90 self-portraits in paintings, etchings, and drawings. Whilst we may not fully know why, no doubt one aspect was for Rembrandt to get to know himself better, to become a better artist, and to sell his work.

Composers do the same with reworking compositions and Bruckner was a prime example of this. He endlessly reworked his compositions resulting in several versions and the expression “The Bruckner problem” was coined referring to the difficulties and complications resulting from the numerous contrasting versions and editions that exist for most of the symphonies.

Today’s extract is the Mass in F minor. Bruckner was a devoutly religious man and composed numerous sacred works. This work was clearly meant for concert, rather than liturgical performance and is the only one of the three in which he set the Gloria and the Credo to music.

Celibidache was highly attached to Bruckner’s music during the course of his long, distinguished but controversial career. What is interesting in this video is the organic development between rehearsal and performance, much like the reworking of portraits and compositions.

Little musical gems #29

JULY 2020

Ginette Neveu, Yehudi Menuhin, Christian Ferras, Arthur Grumiaux, Ida Haendel ; a violinists gallery of Who’s Who all had Georges Enescu in common. Enescu was a consumate musician and regarded one of the greatest musicians in Romanian history ; he was a composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, and teacher.

His influence as a pedagogue is attributed to his philosophy of nurturing ideas and spirit which he cultivated in his own compositions and performances and indeed a young Ravi Shankar recalled in the 1960s how Enescu, had developed a deep interest in Oriental music. Around the same time, Enescu took the young Yehudi Menuhin to the Colonial Exhibition in Paris, where he introduced him to the Gamelan Orchestra from Indonesia.

We hear some of these influences in the third Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 25. It is a chamber-music composition written in 1926. The score, published in 1933, is dedicated to the memory of the violinist Franz Kneisel. It is one of the composer's most popular and at the same time most critically respected works.

Little musical gems #28

JULY 2020

During an era dominated by male violinists, Polish born Ida Haendel, who died earlier this week, was, after the death of Ginette Niveau, the sole woman among the great violin soloists in the years following the second world war, and a role model to many.

Her playing style was renowned for the combination of classical rigour and romantic warmth – the mix of “ice and fire … simply mind-blowing” as one reviewer found in a recording of the Sibelius concerto. Sibelius himself said after a radio broadcast of his concerto : “You played it masterfully in every respect ... I congratulate myself that my concerto has found an interpreter of your rare standard.”

Haendel greatly admired the stars of the silver screen and emulated many of them in trimming a few years off her age in her autobiography. But even with a birth year of 1923 rather than 1928, her early achievements were impressive : she won the Huberman prize for young Polish performers in 1933, and came seventh in the inaugural Wieniawski competition in Warsaw in 1935.

Haendel was a true individual in every musical sense of the term. For those and other qualities, her art will forever be celebrated wherever there are listeners who know what quality violin playing is all about.

Little musical gems #27

JULY 2020

Fleischer was born in 1928 and studied with Schnabel, one of the golden age greats. A little personal follow on here because one of my professors, Maria Curcio, also studied with Schnabel, and his philosophy left a lasting impression. Fleischer tragically developed focal dystonia, a neurological movement disorder which left him unable to play with his right hand for 30 years. He was forced to focus on teaching and conducting, as well as performing the repertoire for left hand alone which he did masterfully but interrupted his performing career.

After decades of unsuccessful therapies, Botox injections began to restore the use of Fleisher’s right hand in the early ‘90s. Successful performances of Mozart concertos gradually led to 2004’s acclaimed Two Hands, his first solo recording in more than 40 years; the album also lent its title to an Oscar–nominated documentary on his recovery. A solo album, The Journey, came in 2006, followed by an album of Mozart concertos. I remember hearing him at the Wigmore Hall in London playing this Mozart Sonata. A moving experience, if ever there was one from an inspiring master.

Little musical gems #26

JUNE 2020

Schumann is music's quintessential Romantic, always ardent, always striving for the ideal. His literary sensitivity and introspective nature led him to imbue nearly everything he wrote with personality and also demonstrate the multiple sides of his own personality. Nearly all of his piano music is referential, attempting to embody emotions aroused by literature or to characterize interactions in some ongoing novel or lyric poem of the mind.

This interpretation of Schumann’s Fantasie by Richter adds a certain tension, a certain magic to Richter’s bipolar playing. An interpretation of the Fantasie with which to ride the torrents of emotion.

Little musical gems #25

JUNE 2020

« When my old mother taught me to sing,
Strange that she often had tears in her eyes.
And now I also weep,
When I teach Gypsy children to
Play and sing »

Words of Heyduk with the musical crafting by Dvorak. These songs exist in a nebulous space. As the singer experiences a familiar rite from a different vantage point, the mind wanders from childhood memories to projections of the future. The passage of time and the passing down of a cultural tradition intertwine. Confusion leads to clarity. Rounding off the Czech connection, here is Magdalena Kozena with her mellifluous voice.

Little musical gems #24

JUNE 2020

Ligeti, is considered as one of the most important avant garde composers in the latter half of the 20th century. A passing encounter with him, during one of his last visits to London before his death, will remain etched in my mind, but it was this encounter that opened for me the door into a fascinating exploration of his musical world and mind.

The Etudes have become almost a core in the piano repertoire and Aimard (who was Ligeti’s favourite interpreter of this music) takes you on a revelatory journey into the inner workings of one of Ligeti’s most immediate yet complex, virtuosically dazzling yet emotionally dark pieces.

Little musical gems #23

JUNE 2020

Wagner in a nutshell. This is exactly what Liszt invited his audience to experience through his transcriptions of Wagner operas. It was a medium in which Liszt excelled and it also provided a way to hear the music through the eyes and ears of another composer. Liszt and Wagner had a strained relationship (Liszt’s daughter was Wagner’s second wife), but the Hungarian did approve of Wagner’s music and was an important benefactor in the composer’s career.

Aldo Ciccolini, the Italian pianist with a French soul, was famed for his pearly translucent tone and nimble fingerwork. This video captures all the finest aspects of his playing during his later years : impressive technical facility and the tonal warmth that emanates in this magisterial performance of the Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde.

Little musical gems #22

MAY 2020

Every pianist relishes the opportunity to perform certain wishlist works and for me the Ravel “Michelangeli” was included. By the end of the 1920s, Ravel was already an established composer and wanted to write a showpiece that he could take on a world tour.

The slow second movement is one of the most poignant and beautiful pieces of music ever written. It begins with a long melody for solo piano that has an almost improvised quality. Of course appearances are often deceiving because despite the apparent spontaneity, Ravel confessed: “That flowing phrase ! How I worked over it bar by bar ! It nearly killed me!”

Little musical gems #21

MAY 2020

My last offering in this series is the magnificent Beethoven Waldstein Sonata, with a particular emphasis on the third movement. This movement encapsulates for me the sentiments of the uncertain new way of life ahead of us but also the notion of hope and opening to new horizons. In this 1989 recording by Pollini, he communicates through the piano and his touch by the waves of trills to draw a picture of the magical rays that gently shakes away the slumber and announces the miracle of the sunshine and a new dawn.

Little musical gems #20

MAY 2020

« Liebesleid » is one of Kreisler’s most popular and beloved compositions and he would often perform it himself as an encore. He would appear on stage impeccably groomed with hair to match and was the ambassador par excellence to his Viennese roots of glittering balls. His playing complemented his sartorial elegance and like many violinists of his generation, he had a distinct sound that was immediately recognizable.

Little musical gems #19

MAY 2020

Ruggiero Ricci arguably possessed the best left hand violin technique. Here is the Barber Concerto in a nod to Brahms perhaps because Barber also opens the second movement with an oboe solo and like the Brahms.

Little musical gems #18

APRIL 2020

Brahms violin concerto is Romanticism at its best. Anne-Sophie Mutter’s recording might not be an obvious choice, after all she does often divide opinions with her interpretations, but this live recording with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic for me is truly memorable.

Little musical gems #17

APRIL 2020

Maria Callas was one of the most outstanding sopranos of the 20th century. Almost half a decade since her death, Callas’ voice continues to capture and enchant people. Callas made several roles really her own, the most iconic include Medea, Violetta, Leonora, Norma and of course Tosca. When we hear her in “vissi d’arte”, it’s hard separate where the acting stops and her reality begins.

Little musical gems #16

APRIL 2020

My “Madeleine de Proust” is «Metamorphosen» by Richard Strauss. This study for 23 solo strings, was commissioned by Paul Sacher and first performed by him with the Collegium Musicum Zürich in 1946.

Little musical gems #15

APRIL 2020

In 1964 Chagall completed perhaps his greatest musically-inspired work : the ceiling of the Palais Garnier Opéra. An homage to 14 major composers of opera and lyrical music, it is a known fact that Chagall would regularly listen to Mozart’s opera « The Magic Flute » as he composed his own masterpiece. It seems appropriate therefore for the enchanting realm of this opera to influence the enchanting realm of the artist and his palette of colours.

Little musical gems #14

APRIL 2020

Rachmaninoff ranked among the finest pianists of his time and was famed for possessing a clean and virtuosic technique. This is evident in his playing of the Élégie op. 3 no.1 where his prowess of the left hand technique serves as the backbone for a melody that is fluid and depicts exactly, what is according to Rachmaninoff, our emotions that are in a constant movement.

Little musical gems #13

APRIL 2020

The central aria in “Samson and Delilah” by Camille Saint-Saëns is the dramatic core of the opera and is poignant not only due to the feelings expressed, but also because it heralds the fatal destiny.

Little musical gems #12

APRIL 2020

Shostakovich was seventeen and in love when he composed the first of his two piano trios. Lesser known than his second but we can already hear that Shostakovich was a gifted, skillful and original composer with his trademark lyrical melodies interspersed by acerbic harmonies, sudden contrasts of pace and energy, the glimpse of hope with despair, the lovely with the grotesque, the real with the surreal.

Little musical gems #11

APRIL 2020

The beauty of listening to music comes also in discovering new interpretations and I invite you to explore this recording of the Schubert Fantasy by the great Richter and Benjamin Britten. An unlikely duo, but it just so naturally works. Richter and Britten’s friendship was underpinned by this spontaneous playing of the work during Richter’s first visit to Aldeburgh.

Little musical gems #10

APRIL 2020

The last scene of Act 2 of Mozarts’ Marriage of Figaro is a twenty minute tour de force, starting with a duo, which then develops into a trio, but then follows not only as a quartet, quintet or sextet but finishes almost unbelievably, with a septet in which there are seven different characters on stage simultaneously, each with different lyrics to different melodies and rhythms.

Little musical gems #9

APRIL 2020

It may be strange of times, but with people quarantined and human activity minimised, this lockdown has brought a certain beauty and so here is a nod to Earth with a movement from Vivaldi Four Seasons to end the week.

Little musical gems #8

APRIL 2020

Here is an extract from one of my favourite ballets, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, sumptuously produced by « le ballet de l’Opera de Paris » and choreographed by Noureev. What might Shakespeare have thought about this musical adaptation to his famous play ?

Little musical gems #7

APRIL 2020

Here is a performance of the Brahms second piano concerto, in what I think is for me, an unrivaled interpretation by the great Claudio Arrau.

Little musical gems #6

APRIL 2020

Late Brahms piano works are introspective, concentrated and distilled poetic statements, especially relevant considering the loneliness and detachment we know Brahms to have struggled with in his last years. 

Little musical gems #5

APRIL 2020

Liszt does not immediately spring to mind when we think of his discography but for me, this interpretation demonstrates the sensitivity that is so abundant in Murray Perahia playing.

Little musical gems #4

APRIL 2020

"Im Abendrot" is from Strauss' Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra and apart from one other short piece, these were indeed his swan songs. He died eight months before they received their premiere performance.

Little musical gems #3

APRIL 2020

There have been many covers of “Somewhere over the rainbow” from the haunting interpretation by Eva Cassidy to the popular Kamakawiwoʻole release, but for the me, the voice of Judy Garland is the most timeless version.

Little musical gems #2

APRIL 2020

Victoria de los Ángeles was the first Spanish-born operatic singers to record the complete opera Carmen, having done so in 1958 in a recording conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, using the recitatives added by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's death.

Little musical gems #1

APRIL 2020

The incredible Dame Myra Hess performed over 2000 lunchtime concerts during the Blitz to lift the morale of Londoners by sharing music making