This Week in Classical Music: February 5, 2024.  Berg, Part I, Early Years.  Alban Berg, a seminal German composer of the first half of the 20^th century, was born in Vienna on February 9^th of 1885.  Berg, with Anton Webern, was a favorite pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and was one of the first composers to write atonal and 12-tonal music.  While Schoenberg was often cerebral, even in his more expressive works and Webern a much stricter follower of the technique in his succinct, perfectly formed pieces, Berg’s music was more lyrical and Romantic, even as he abandoned the tonal format.  Berg’s background was very different from his Jewish teacher’s: his Viennese family was well-off, at least while his father was alive (he died when Alban was 15), they lived in the center of the city (Schoenbergs lived in Leopoldstadt, a poor Jewish neighborhood).  Berg was a poor student: he had to repeat the 6^th and the 7^th grades.  Even though Alban was interested in music from an early age and wrote many songs, he clearly wasn’t suited for studies in a formal environment and lacked the required qualifications, so, instead of going to a conservatory he became an unpaid civil servant trainee.  In 1904, without any previous musical education, he became Schoenberg’s student.  By that time Schoenberg, who was struggling financially and took students to support himself, had already written Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) and a symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande.  Both had a fluid tonal canvass as Schoenberg was already researching the atonal idiom, but it would be another three years till he’d write his Quartet no. 2, his first truly atonal piece; all these developments took place while Berg was his student.  Berg studied with Schoenberg till 1911, first the counterpoint and music theory, and later composition.  During that time he sketched several piano sonatas and later completed one of them, published as his op. 1.  That was a big departure, as before joining Schoenberg all he could write were songs.   

We should note that the pre-WWI years in Vienna were a period of tremendous cultural development; despite the overall antisemitism of the Austrian society, many of the leading figures were Jewish, and sexuality was explored deeply for the first time.  In music, it was Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, Egon Wellesz, Ernst Toch, and of course, Webern and Berg, with many younger composers to follow.  Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil and Stefan Zweig were important novelists and playwrights (Frank Wedekind, their German contemporary, was the source for Berg’s opera Lulu).  The painter Gustav Klimt was Berg’s friend, and so was the architect Adolf Loos.  And we shouldn’t forget Sigmund Freud, who was not just a psychoanalyst famous around Vienna but a leading cultural figure.   

A characteristic episode happened in March of 1913 when Schoenberg conducted what became known as the Skandalkonzert ("scandal concert") in Vienna’s Musikverein.  Here’s the program: Webern: Six Pieces for Orchestra; Zemlinsky: Four Orchestral Songs on poems by Maeterlinck; Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1; Berg: Two of the Five Orchestral Songs on Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg.  Mahler's Kindertotenlieder was supposed to be performed at the end, but during the performance of Berg’s songs fighting began and the concert was cut short.   The Viennese public’s response could be expected, if not necessarily in its physical form (after all, their favorite music was Strauss’s waltzes), but how many American presenters would dare to program such a concert in our time, more than 100 years later?  We can listen to Berg’s songs that were performed during the concert, no. 2 of op. 4 here and no. 3 here.  The soprano is Renée Flemming; Claudio Abbado leads the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. 

We’ll continue with Berg and his two masterpieces, operas Wozzeck and Lulu, next week. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 29, 2024.  Schubert, Mendelssohn and more.  What an exceptional week: Franz Schubert was born on January 31^st of 1797, and February 3^rd is the anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn, born 12 years later, in 1809.  We just celebrated Mozart’s birthday; he died very young, at 35.  Schubert’s life was even shorter: he was 31 when he passed away, and Mendelssohn – only 38.  All three could’ve lived twice as long, and our culture would’ve been so much richer.  Schubert is one of our perennial favorites (tastes and predilections change, Schubert stays) and we’ve written many entries about him (here and here, for example), including longer articles on his song cycles.  There are hundreds of his pieces in our library – he remains one of the most often performed composers.  His life was not eventful, his music was sublime, so here’s one of his songs: An die Musik, that is, To Music that Schubert composed in March of 1817 (he was twenty).  Nothing can be simpler and more beautiful.  We could not select a favorite recording, there are too many excellent ones, so we present three, all sung by the Germans: soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with the great pianist, Edwin Sicher, released in 1958 (here); the 1967 recording made by the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Roger Moore (here); and Fritz Wunderlich, an amazing tenor who also died at 35, accompanied by Hubert Giesen in a 1967 recording (here).  You can decide for yourself which one you like better. 

As for Mendelssohn, his most famous “songs” were not vocal butfor piano solo:Songs without Words.  Still, he also composed “real” songs – not as many as Schubert, of course, who wrote about 600 – and some of them are wonderful.  Here, for example, is Gruss (Greeting), a song from his op. 19a on a poem by Henrich Heine.  It’s performed by the Irish tenor Robin Tritschler, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau.  When he wrote his songs op. 19a, Mendelssohn wasn’t much older than Schubert of An die Musik: he started the cycle at the age of 21.  

Three Italian composers were also born this week: Alessandro Marcello, on February 1^st of 1673, Luigi Dallapiccola, on February 3^rd of 1904, and Luigi Nono, on January 29^th of 1924.  We’ve never written about Dallapiccola even though he was a very interesting composer; we’ll do it next week. 

Also, yesterday was Arthur Rubinstein’s birthday (he was born in 1887, 137 years ago, but his ever-popular recordings evidence that he was one of the greatest pianists of the 20^th century).  Two wonderful singers were also born this week, the Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi on February 1^st of 1922, and the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling, one of the few non-Italians who could sing Italian operas as well as the best of the locals, on February 5^th of 1911. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 22, 2024.  Mozart.  The main event of this week is Mozart’s birthday, on January 27^th.  Wolfgang Amadeus was born in 1756 in Salzburg.  One of the greatest composers in history, he excelled in practically every genre of classical music.  His operas are of the highest order (just think of the Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, the Marriage of Figaro, or Così fan tutte, but then there are several operas, though not as popular, such as La clemenza di Tito, The Abduction from the Seraglio, or Idomeneo, that would make any other composer proud).  His symphonies are the pinnacle of the orchestral music of the Classical period, and so are his piano concertos.  His violin concertos were written when he was very young (the last one, no. 5, “Turkish” was completed when Mozart was 19) but were already very good.  He wrote many piano sonatas that predate Beethoven’s, and wonderful violin sonatas (he was a virtuoso performer of both instruments).  And then there is his chamber music: trios, quartets for all combinations of instruments, not just the strings, quintets, and much more.  He did all that in just 35 years.  In addition to the “standard” piano and violin concertos, Mozart wrote concertos for many different wind instruments: the horn (four of them), bassoon, flute, oboe, and clarinet.  His Clarinet concerto in A major, K. 622 is marvelous.  It’s a late piece, late, of course, in Mozart’s terms – he was 35 in 1791 when it was completed, less than two months before his death of still unknown causes (one thing we know for sure is that he has not been poisoned by Antonio Salieri): Mozart was already quite ill while working on the concerto.  The concerto was written for Anton Stadler, a virtuoso clarinetist and a close friend of Mozart’s (they had known each other since 1781) for whom he also wrote his Clarinet Quintet.  Stadler invented the so-called basset clarinet, a version of the instrument that allows the performer to reach lower notes, and that was the instrument for which Mozart wrote the concerto.  We’ll hear it performed by a talented German clarinetist Sabine Meyer with the Staatskapelle Dresden under the direction of Hans Vonk.

Muzio Clementi, who competed as a keyboard player and composer with Mozart at the court of Emperor Josef II, was born on January 23^rd of 1752.  He, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutoslawski, the pianists Josef Hofmann, John Ogdon and Arthur Rubinstein, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré and Wilhelm Furtwängler, a great conductor, all of whom were born this week, will have to wait for another time.

This Week in Classical Music: January 15, 2024.  Schein and much more.  Several composers were born this week: Niccolò Piccinni (b. 1/16/1728), a nearly forgotten Italian composer who was famous in his day for his Neapolitan opera buffa; Cesar Cui (b. 1/18/1835), a Russian composer of French descent (his father entered Russia with Napoleon) and a member of the Mighty Five; Emmanuel Chabrier (b. 1/18/1841), a mostly self-taught French composer, whose España is his best-known symphonic work but who also wrote some very nice songs; Ernest Chausson (b. 1/20/1855), another Frenchman, who wrote the Poème for the violin and orchestra which entered the repertoire of all virtuoso violinists; Walter Piston (b. 1/20/1894), a prolific and prominent American composer of the 20^th century who often used Schoenberg’s 12-note method; Alexander Tcherepnin (b. 1/20/1899), a Russian composer who was born into a prominent musical family (his father, Nikolai Tcherepnin was a noted composer and cultural figure), left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, settled in France, moved to the US after WII and had several symphonies premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and, finally, another Frenchman, Henri Duparc (b. 1/21/1848), best known for his art songs.  None of these composers were what is usually called “great” but all were talented and some of their works are very interesting.  Listen, for example, to Alexander Tcherepnin’s 10 Bagatelles, op. 5 in a version for piano and orchestra (here).  Margrit Weber is at the piano, Ferenc Fricsay conducts the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.  Or, in a very different way, here’s Duparc’s fine song, L'invitation au Voyage.  Jessye Norman is accompanied by Dalton Baldwin.

One composer, also born this week, interests us more than all the above, even though his name is almost forgotten- Johann Hermann Schein.  Schein, a good friend of the better-known Heinrich Schütz, was one of the most important German composers of the pre-Bach era.  He was born on January 20^th of 1586 (99 years before Bach) in Grünhain, a small town in Saxony.  As a boy, he moved to Dresden where he joined the Elector’s boys’ choir; there he also received thorough music instruction.  In his twenties, on the elector’s scholarship, he studied law and liberal arts at the University of Leipzig.  He published his first collection of madrigals and dances, titled Venus Kräntzlein, in 1609.  Starting in 1613 he occupied several kapellmeister positions, starting in smaller cities, till 1616, when he was called to Leipzig.  He passed the audition and was accepted as the Thomaskantor, the most senior position in the city and the one Bach would assume 107 years later.  Like Bach a century later, he was responsible for the music at two main churches, Thomaskirche and the Nicolaikirche, and for teaching students at the Thomasschule.  Schein held the position of Thomaskantor for the rest of his life, which, unfortunately, was short: in his later years, he suffered from tuberculosis and other maladies and died at the age of 44 (Heinrich Schütz visited him on his deathbed).

Here's Schein’s motet, Drei schöne Ding sind (Three beautiful things), performed by the Ensemble Vocal Européen under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe.  And here’s another motet, Ist nicht Ephraim mein teurer Sohn (Isn't Ephraim my dear son?), performed by the same musicians.

This Week in Classical Music: January 8, 2024.  Catching up.  Last week we simply wished you a happy New Year, so this week we’ll try to make up for it and cover the first two weeks of the year.  January 5^th should be officially named Piano Day, as on this day three great pianists were born: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, in 1920, Alfred Brendel, in 1930, and Maurizio Pollini, in 1942.  Pollini still performs, but we stopped attending his concerts some years ago: he’s now just a shadow of his great self.  This doesn’t diminish his prodigious talent that he brilliantly displayed for decades with virtuosity and incisive repertoire, which, unique to a pianist of his stature, included the music of many modern composers.  (In comparison, the repertoire of his compatriot, the perfectionist Michelangeli, was very narrow). 

Two prominent Soviet cellists were born during these two weeks, Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, on January 6^th of 1908, and Daniil Shafran, on January 13^th of 1923.  Knushevitsky is not well known outside of Russia but in his day, he was considered one of the very best (in the rank-obsessed Soviet Union, he was the third best cellist, after Rostropovich and Shafran; had he not drunk, he might have been number one).  In 1940, Knushevitsky, David Oistrakh and Lev Oborin organized a very successful trio; they performed worldwide to great acclaim.  Knushevitsky and Oistrakh also played together in one of the incarnations of the Beethoven quartet.  Knushevitsky died at the age of 55 from a heart attack, alcoholism probably contributing to his early death.  Here’s the famous second movement from Schubert’s Piano Trio no. 2, which Stanley Kubrick used so effectively in his Barry Lindon.  It’s performed by David Oistrakh, violin, Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, cello, and Lev Oborin, piano.  The recording was made in 1947.  You can also find the complete Triohere.  And here, from 1950, is Sviatoslav Knushevitsky’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations.  Alexander Gauk leads the Great Radio Orchestra.  As for Shafran, you can read more about him in one of our earlier entries. 

Another Russia-born string player has an anniversary this week: Nathan Milstein, one of the greatest violinists of the 20^th century.  Odessa, where Milstein was born on January 13^th of 1904, was back then part of the Russian empire.  Now, spelled Odesa, it is in free Ukraine, being bombed by Russia almost daily.  Speaking of Russia, Aleksander Scriabin was born on January 6^th of 1872 in Moscow.  His early piano pieces were charming imitations of Chopin’s but later he developed a musical language all his own, with a very fluid tonality, if not quite atonal.  His grandiosity, both personal and musical, and his attempts to synthesize music and color didn’t age well (especially in his orchestral output), but his piano music is still played very often and is of the highest quality. 

Among other anniversaries: Francis Poulenc’s 125^th was celebrated on January 7^th (he was born in 1899).  Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, who died tragically young, aged 26, from tuberculosis, but left us a tremendous Stabat Mater and a brilliant intermezzo La serva padrona (Sonya Yoncheva is great as Serpina in this production), was born in a small town of Jesi, Italy, on January 4^th of 1710. 

This Week in Classical Music: January 1, 2021.  Happy New Year!