July 23, 2012.  Enrique Granados was born on July 27, 1867 in a Catalan town of Lleida (or Lerida, as it’s known in Spanish).  As a young man he studied piano in Barcelona with Joan Baptista Pujol, one of the most important Catalan pianists and teachers of that time (Isaac Albéniz was also Pujol’s student).  When Granados was twenty he went to study music in Paris; in  Spain in the late 19^th century, one had to go to Paris to make  a name in classical music.  Alas, he was rejected by the Paris Conservatory.  Instead, Granados began his studies with Charles de Bériot, a Conservatory professor, among whose students were Maurice Ravel and Ricardo Viñes.  Viñes, who like Granados hailed from Lleida and also studied with Pujol, became famous as an interpreter of the music of Ravel, Granados, Albeniz, and other contemporary composers.

Granados returned to Barcelona in 1889, after just two years in Paris.  He played concerts and composed: his opera Maria del Carmen was well received.  In 1911 he wrote and premiered what was to become his most popular composition, the piano suite Goyescas.  It’s comprised of two "books," each containing three pieces.  Book 1: Los Requiebros (The Complimets); Coloquio en la Reja (Conversation at the Grille); El Fandango del Candil (The Oil Lamp Fandango).  Book 2: Quejas o la Maja y el Ruiseñor (Complaints or the Maiden and the Nightingale); El Amor y la Muerte: Balada (Love and Death: a Ballad); and Epílogo: Serenata del Espectro (Epilogue: Specter's Serenade).  Even though the suite was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya, there are no direct links between individual pieces and specific paintings.  Goyescas became very successful, and Granados wrote an opera on the same subject.

In 1915, in the midst of the Great War, Granados, accompanied by his wife, went to New York where his opera Goyescas had a successful premier..  Granados also played a number of concerts, both piano recitals and accompanying his friend, the great cellist Pablo Casals.  On their way back Europe, Granados and his wife traveled to England first, and then took a ferry, the Sussex, for Dieppe, France.  As they were crossing the Channel, the Sussex was attacked by a German submarine and a torpedo broke the ship in two.  The story goes that Granados made it to the lifeboat but without his wife.  When he saw her flailing in the water, he jumped in and attempted to save her.  They both drowned.

We’ll hear three excerpts from Goyescas.  First, the Chinese pianist Jie Chen plays Los Requiebros, from Book I (here).  Then the South Korean pianist Yoonjung Han plays El amor y la muerte, from the second book (here).   Finally, the Spanish pianist Gabriel Escudero plays Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor, also from the second book (here).

July 16, 2012.  From recent uploads: three pianists.   Sofya Melikyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia in 1978. There she started piano studies at the age of five.  In 1994 Ms. Melikyan moved to Spain and continued her musical education in the Royal Conservatory of Madrid, as a student of Joaquin Soriano.  She graduated in 1999 with the Highest Honor Prize. Subsequently she studied with Galina Egiazarova in Madrid and Brigitte Engerer in Paris (who unfortunately died on June 29th of this year of cancer, at the age of 59).  In 2003 she completed the post-graduate program at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and later studied at the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky.  Ms. Melikyan has been awarded First Prizes at the Marisa Montiel International Piano Competition in Linares, and the Ibiza International Piano Competition. She has also received top and special prizes at the 15th Jose Iturbi and Maria Canals International Competitions in Spain.  An avid chamber musician, Ms. Melikyan is a member of the New York-based Sima Piano Trio, an ensemble that is quickly becoming one of the leading young trios of its generation.  Here is Sofya’s performance of Robert Schumann’s Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. 82.

Alexander Osminin is a young Russian pianist.  He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he was a student in the class of Eliso Virsaladze.  He continued his postgraduate studies with Ms. Virsaladze.  Alexander played many recitals in Russia and in Europe.  The highlight of his recent tour was the concert in Salle Cortot in Paris.  He played several concerts in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the New Russia orchestra of Yuri Bashmet, performing concertos by Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, and Ravel.  Alexander was successful in several international piano competitions: Concorso Pianistico Europeo "Luciano Gante" (First prize), Sviatoslav Richter International Piano Competition, and several other.  Here he is playing Chopin’s Etude Op. 10, No. 5 in G-flat Major, and here – Romance in F-sharp Major, Op. 28, No. 2 by Robert Schumann.

English pianist Sam Armstrong has performed across Europe, Asia and North America as a recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral soloist.  He played in the Royal Festival and Wigmore Halls in London, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and made his New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in January 2009, as winner of the Nadia Reisenberg Recital Award. His performances have been broadcast on BBC Radio, French Television, Radio Suisse-Romande and WQXR New York.  Sam has been a top prizewinner in several competitions including the Beethoven Society of Europe Competition in London (2003) and the Porto International Piano Competition in Portugal (2004).  Sam recently completed his studies at Mannes College of Music in New York where for four years he was the only student of renowned pianist Richard Goode. Upon graduation he was awarded the Newton Swift Piano Award. He previously studied in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music, and he also worked with John O’Conor in Dublin. Here is Sam’s performance of Alban Berg’s Piano sonata op. 1.

July 9, 2012.  The Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was born on this day in 1879 in Bologna, Italy.  At the end of the 19^th century, music in Italy, one of the main European centers two- three hundred years earlier, was pretty much limited to opera.  While it’s true that Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti in the first half of the 19^th century, and Verdi’s in its second half brought the art of opera to new heights, orchestral and instrumental music, on the other hand, pretty much languished.  Ottorino’s father, a piano teacher, taught him to play piano and violin.  Respighi continued his studies at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, and upon graduating, went to Russia: the Imperial Mariinsky Theater was staging a season of Italian operas, and Respighi was hired as the principal violist in the orchestra.  While in Saint Petersburg, he studied compositions with Rimsky-Korsakov.  Upon returning to Italy he settled in his hometown, composing and concertizing across Italy, but in 1913 was invited to teach composition at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome.  He stayed there for the rest of his life.  In 1916 he composed Fontane di Roma, a symphonic poem, which eventually became the first part of the “Roman trilogy,” his most famous set of compositions.  The second part, Pini di Roma, was written in 1924, and Feste Romane (Roman festivals) – in 1926.

As many of his colleagues (Alfredo Casella comes to mind) Respighi was interested in the old Italian music.  He published editions of music of Monteverdi, Vivaldi, and Marcello.  Unlike Casella, though, Respighi stayed away from politics and was never enamored with Fascism.  He died on April 18, 1936 of the same heart disease that had killed Gustav Mahler 25 years earlier. 

Fontane di Roma consists of four parts, each one “describing” a particular fountain during different hours of the day.  The first part is called "La fontana di Valle Giulia all'alba," the fountain of Valle Giulia at dawn (Valle Giulia is an area in Rome not far from Villa Borghese).

The second movement is called "La fontana del Tritone al mattino" (The Triton Fountain in the Morning).  The famous fountain, in the center of Piazza Barberini, was created by the great sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1642. 

The third movement is called "La fontana di Trevi al meriggio" (The Trevi Fountain at noon).   Probably the most popular of all Roman fountains, it was completed in 1762, but a fountain has existed on that spot from at least 1453.   Even during Roman times water flowed there: it was a terminal point of an aqueduct.

The last, fourth movement is called "La fontana di Villa Medici al tramonto" (The Villa Medici fountain at sunset).  There are many fountains in the gardens of Villa Medici.  Most likely Respighi had in mind the one in front of the villa.  The villa, which is adjacent to Villa Borgese, sits on top of the Pincio hill.  Overlooking the fountain, there’s a wonderful view of Rome, even though it’s now partly obscured by  trees.

You can listen to Fontane di Roma here.  It’s performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Lorin Maazel conducting (courtesy of YouTube).

July 2, 2012.  Gustav Mahler.  The great Austrian composer was born on July 7, 1860.  We mark his birthday every year, and every time it reminds us how inadequately he is represented in our library.  Mahler, uniquely among modern composers, wrote almost exclusively for the orchestra.  He completed nine symphonies, and published several song cycles for voice and orchestra: Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), Rückert-Lieder, Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), and Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), which in reality is a full-blown symphony (Mahler himself described it as “a Symphony for Tenor and Alto (or Baritone) Voice and Orchestra”).  Superstitiously attempting to escape the “curse of the Ninth symphony” (he was thinking of Beethoven, Schubert, and Anton Bruckner, for whom ninth symphonies were their last), Mahler didn’t number his ninth, but gave it a name.  In the end, as we know, this “trick” didn’t work: Mahler went on to write an “official” Ninth symphony, and died while working on the Tenth.

In our library, we have a great number of composers wonderfully represented by very talented instrumentalists.  With American orchestras, however, the story is very different.  Most of them have very strict labor rules and do not allow streaming of their recordings, even those that are not commercial.  We have recordings of several of Mahler’s symphonies, and although these can provide the listener with a glimpse of his genius, they don’t present it on the level his music deserves.  We’d really like to play some of Mahler’s music during the week marking his birthday, so we turned to YouTube as a source.  Here’s Adagio, the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony.  Mahler subtitled is Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend – very slow and even reluctant.  Leonard Bernstein, who is conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, takes these directions quite literally: it’s one of the slowest performances on record and runs almost 30 minutes, about five minutes longer than an average performance of this movement; it’s incredible nine minutes slower than Pierre Boulez’s Grammy-winning account.  Some critics think that it’s self-indulgent but others believe it to be one of the best recordings of this heartbreaking work ever made.

The picture of Mahler above was made in 1907, two years before he started working on the Ninth Symphony and three years before his death on May 18, 1910, of incurable heart disease.

June 25, 2012.  On Italian Baroque.  Recently, while contemplating some pictures of Rome, we were struck, yet again, by the incongruity of terms we use to describe art.   This, of course, is part of a much larger problem, one with which this site struggles often when attempting to "describe" music and performances.  The way we try to deal with this issue here is by avoiding it whenever possible: we let our users listen to the music instead of talking about it.  Still, the problem remains and manifests itself not only when we attempt the impossible, as in "describing" music, but even in much more mundane areas, such as when we try to classify historical art periods.  The term "Baroque" is case in point.  The Baroque architecture of Rome has its origins in the late 16^th – early 17^th century (Carlo Maderno designed Santa Susanna around 1603), and reached its glorious zenith with the works of Francesco Borromini, Pietro Cortona and Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the mid-1600s.  When we think "Rome" – the façade of Saint Peter’s, the two iconic churches off Piazza Venezia, Santa Maria di Loreto and Santissimo Nome di Maria al Foro Traiano, the interior of the Gesù, the Trevi fountain – all of it is Baroque.  But the music that played in Santa Susanna was not "Baroque" in our understanding of the term.  Most likely it was written by composers of the Roman school, like Palestrina and the Spaniard, Tomás Luis de Victoria.  Another Roman, Gregorio Allegri, composed his famous Miserere in the1630s (it would not have been sung at Santa Susanna anyway, as it was composed specifically for use in the Sistine Chapel).  And as much as we like Palestrina and Victoria, it’s clear that music as art did notdevelop to the heights it had reached in its visual forms till much later, and it didn’t happen in Rome.  Lully, and later Rameau and Couperin in France, Purcell in England, and later still Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Bach and Handel brought it to the canonical level which we habitually allot to the great painter and architects of Italy.

The church in the picture above is Sant'Andrea della Valle, on what is now Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome.  It was designed mainly by Carlo Maderno in 1608 and completed later.  Here is an example of the music that could be heard in this church during that time.  It’s a motet by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Sicut cervus desiderat, (“As the deer thirsts for the waters, so my soul longs for Thee, O God”).  It’s performed by the Westminster Cathedral Choir (courtesy of YouTube).

June 24, 2012.  Today is the birthday of a dear friend of Classical Connect, Lev Solomonovich Ruzer: he turns 90! A physicist by profession who successfully transitioned from running a research lab in the Soviet Union to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he’s also an amateur pianist.  He started piano lessons in his teens,continued playing while at Moscow University, and he still plays piano every day!  We suspect that music is what supports his amazing vitality and joie de vivre.  On this wonderful day we join his family in wishing him great health, lots of love and more music to enjoy.

We could probably record a Classical Connect rendition of Happy Birthday, but we suspect Lev Solomonovich would not be impressed.  Here, instead, is the Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero playing her own improvisation on the traditional tune.  She does a much better job with it.