This Week in Classical Music: November 22, 2021.  Catching up.  Last week, as we were railing against the woke approach to classical music, we missed several interesting dates.  So this time we’ll cover two weeks rather than one.  Several important composers had anniversaries during this period.  Paul Hindemith was born on November 16^th of 1895 in Hanau, near Frankfurt.  Last year we celebrated his 125^th anniversary.   Here’s his Trauermusik (Funderal music), written on an exceedingly short notice.  The story of this piece is very unusual.  On January 19^th of 1936, Hindemith, who was a brilliant violist, traveled to London to solo in his own viola concerto; the concert was to take place two days later at Queen’s Hall.  On the 20^th King George V died and the concert was cancelled.  Still, Adrian Boult, who was to conduct the concert, wanted to play something appropriate and have Hindemith involved.  They discussed the program and eventually decided that Hindemith should write music for the occasion.  Hindemith agreed, and in six hours wrote a piece for the viola and string orchestra.  Later that very evening, on January 21^st, it was played, with Hindemith soloing, and broadcast live from the BBC studio!  It is also noteworthy that Hindemith wrote a piece to commemorate the monarch of the United Kingdom, an enemy of Nazi Germany, and did so while he was under a lot of pressure from the regime.

Other composers born during this period: Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the unhappy but very talented eldest son of Johann Sebastian, on November 22^nd of 1710; Benjamin Britten, probably the greatest British composer of the 20^th century, on November 22, 1913; Manuel de Falla, one of the most important of all Spanish composers of the 20^th century, on November 23^rd of 1876.  Also, three Russian composers of different epochs, Alfred Schnittke in the late 20^th century (b. 11/24/1934),Sergei Taneyevwho lived a century earlier (b. 11/25/1856); and Anton Rubinstein (b. 11/28/1829), the founder of the St.-Petersburg Conservatory, the first in Russia.  Last but not least, the composer who establish the Baroque tradition in French music, the Italian Jean-Baptiste Lully.

As for instrumentalists and singers, here are several that we’d like to mention.  Daniel Barenboim turned 79 on November 15^th (read more about him and the cellist Natalia Gutman here).  Jorge Bolet was born on the same day in 1914 in Havana, Cuba.  A great virtuoso, he lived in the US most of his life.  Not as well known or recorded as some of his contemporaries, he was a wonderful interpreter of the works of Liszt and other Romantics.  Another American piano virtuoso, Earl Wild, was also born this week, on November 26^th of 1915.  That’s not all: Ignacy Jan Paderewski, one of the most famous pianists of all time, also a composer and a diplomat, was born on November 18^th of 1860; Wilhelm Kempff, one of the best German pianists famous for his interpretation of the music of Beethoven and Schubert, was born on November 25^th of 1895; and Yakov Zak, a noted Soviet pianist, was born in Odessa on November 20^th of 1913.

We can’t mention everybody, but we can’t miss Alfredo Kraus, a great musician and one of the best bel canto tenors of the mid-20^th century; he was born on the Canary Islands on November 24^th of 1927.

This Week in Classical Music: November 15, 2021.  On Diversity.  Those of you who sometimes read our weekly entries know that our musical interests are pretty broad.  We’ve written about composers going to back to the 15^th century, from John Dunstaple, Guillaume Dufay and Antoine Busnois to Josquin des Prez and the greats of the High Renaissance, Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria and Lasso.  On the other hand, we’ve written about many contemporary composers, such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen  György Kurtág, Luciano Berio and, we suspect to the chagrin of some, presented examples of their music.  We’ve also written about some contemporary American composers; Jennifer Higdon, Shulamit Ran, Libby Larsen, Augusta Read Thomas and others.  We’ve promoted festivals of contemporary music, such as Chicago’s Ear Taxi.  At the same time, the bulk of our posts are about the core of what we know as classical music, from Bach to Mahler, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, the core acknowledged as such by both the public and music critics.   We’ve also avoided some of the music we don’t like, the music we find shallow, secondary, lacking inventiveness and spark.  We won’t present the list, but many of these names belong to the official canon. 

We are very much for playing different music, and that’s why we found the article by the San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman titled “Diversify the world of classical music? Some key players are digging in their heels” (here) so appalling.  Kosman is a professional classical music critic and has been writing for the Chronicle since 1988.  We’re not familiar with his oeuvre but we’re certain that he had written many good articles, otherwise he would not have stayed in this position so long.  But in this piece, he poses the question “how long can an artistic culture survive and thrive on the work of the same circumscribed set of a dozen or so dead white European men” and argues that in order to survive, it should promote music based on the color (not white) and gender (not male) of the composer.  He’s not interested in the quality of music, he’s interested in the racial and gender origin of it!  We find this contention offensive and absurd.  Also absurd is the notion that the classical music being presented on concert stages was composed by “a dozen or so” white males.  Yes, the vast majority of composers active during the period from the early ages to about mid-20^th century was white and male (this is no longer the case today).  The “dozen or so” is a red herring: there were many hundreds of them and hundreds are being performed; our music library lists the names of more than 800 composers and in our entries we’ve mentioned more than 200.

In the course of the article Kosman has a bone to pick with the cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, who lead the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.  Kosman is especially ticked by the notion, expressed by Finckel that “[t]here is more variety and diversity in a single string quartet of Haydn than you can find in about a hundred works of other composers.”  Let’s step back for a second.  Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is a premier concert organization, and if you look at their 2021/2022 schedule, you’ll find that they present music from dozens of countries and all eras, from Purcell, Bach and other Baroque composers to Schoenberg, Britten, Frank Bridge, Jean Françaix, Shostakovich, Erwin Schulhoff and many more 20^th century composers, while also including the music of living ones.  Not that it is important per se, but among the composers are Sofia Gubaidulina, Anna Clyne and Joan Tower, all three women and very much alive.  Some of the composers are not well known, for example, the American Mana-Zucca or the French Louise Farrenc.  This is a tremendously broad and diverse list, and it should be applauded.  As for the idea that one Haydn’s quartet has more variety and diversity than hundreds of works by other composers, we may quibble with that, but that Beethoven’s quartets fit the bill, that goes without saying.

We were hoping that the paroxysm of wokeness requiring that everything, including classical music, is evaluated based on color and gender are behind us.  Kosman’s article tells us that it’s clearly not the case.  We hope that the vast majority of our listeners agree with our position, not Kosman’s.  If you have strong feelings about the subject, send us a note.

This Week in Classical Music: November 8, 2021.  Lhévinne and more.  François Couperin, known as Couperin Le Grand because he was the greatest of many musicians in the Couperin family, and because he was one of the greatest French composers of the Baroque era, was born in Paris on November 10^th of 1668.  We’ve written about him many times, for example here.  And here is the 25^th Order (or Suite), from Book IV of his Pieces for the Harpsichord.   The five sections of the Order are titled: La visionnaire, La misterieuse, La MonflambertI, La muse victorieuse, and Les ombres errantes.

Alexander Borodin, a chemist and fine composer, was born on November 12^th of 1833.  Here’s one of our entries on him.

Two years ago, we published an entry on two instrumentalists born that week; their anniversaries fall on this week as well.  Read here about the pianist Daniel Barenboim and the cellist Natalia Gutman.

Josef Lhévinne, one of the greatest pianists of his generation, was born on December 13^th of 1874 in the city of Oryol, Russia.  Only Joseph Hofmann and Sergei Rachmaninov could be compared two him in virtuosity.  Lhévinne graduated from the Moscow Conservatory the same year as Rachmaninov and Scriabin with the Gold Medal in the piano, ahead of both.  In 1895 he received the first prize at the Anton Rubinstein piano competition in Berlin.  In 1898 Lhévinne married his classmate, Rosina Bessie, who, as Rosina Lhévinne became famous as the teacher of Van Clyburn, James Levine, John Browning, Misha Dichter, and scores of other extremely successful pianists.  For a while Josef taught at the Tbilis and then the Moscow conservatories.   Josef and Rosina moved to Berlin in 1907; they often performed together, and both became known as excellent piano teachers.  Even though Josef was a well-known person, he and Rosina were Russian citizens living in Germany.  Once WWI started, they were interned as enemy citizens and Josef was banned from performing.  In addition, after the 1917 Revolution they lost all of their savings they had left in Russia.  Once the war was over, the Lhévinnes moved to the US.  In 1924 Josef and Rosina joined the staff of the new Juilliard Graduate School.  A retiring, and not ambitious person, Josef Lhévinne had a distinguished but rather small performance career; he also left few recordings.  Here are two of Chopin’s etudes: op. 10, no 11 and op. 25, no. 6.  They were recorded in 1935.

Also this week: Leonid Kogan, a wonderful Soviet violinist, was born on November 14^th of 1924.  Here’s an excerpt from the Grove Dictionary of Music’s article about him: “After David Oistrakh, Kogan was considered the foremost Soviet violinist, and one of the most accomplished instrumentalists of the day. Kogan’s approach, however, was more objective, less emotional than Oistrakh’s. His tone was leaner, his vibrato tighter, his temperament cooler and more controlled. His intonation was pure and his technical mastery absolute.”  Very well put.  Here Kogan plays Fritz Kreisler’s Caprice Viennois, Op. 2.  The recording was made in New York in 1958.

This Week in Classical Music: October 31, 2021.  Tarquinia Molza.  Tarquinia Molza by all accounts was one of the most extraordinary women of the late Renaissance, a virtuosa, a courtier and intellectual.  She was born in Modena on November 1^st of 1542.  Her grandfather, Francesco Maria Molza, was one of the best-known poets of his generation (but also a libertine, who abandoned his family and died of syphilis).  Tarquinia married young, as almost everybody at that time, and was widowed by the age of 36.  She was famous as a singer: Francesco Patrizi, a writer, philosopher, and a very good friend of Molza’s gave a detailed description of her performances in his book L'amorosa filosofia.  Patrizi, who taught Molza the Greek language (she also knew Hebrew and Latin), even featured her in his philosophical treaties, disguised as Diotima, a character from Plato’s famous Symposium.  When singing, Molza usually accompanied herself on the viola bastarda, a viol, similar to the viola da gamba and traditionally used in virtuosic performances.  She also played the harpsichord and the lute.  Somewhere around 1583 she moved to the Este court of Ferrara, where she became a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess, Margherita Gonzaga-Este.  She knew many poets, philosophers, and musicians, who flocked to the Este court, and continued her friendship with Torquato Tasso whom she knew from her days in Modena.  Tasso dedicated one of his dialogues to Molza.

In Ferrara, Molza was involved with the court’s concerto delle donne, by all accounts an extraordinary group of female singers (you can read more about this remarkable ensemble here).  It seems that she didn’t sing with them but rather acted as a teacher and advisor.  In Ferrara Molza had an affair with Giaches De Wert, one of the many talented composers patronized by the Este court.  As a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess, she was considered nobility, while De Wert, though a well-known composer, was of a servant class.  Such a misalliance was unacceptable, and in 1589, when discovered, Molza was banned from Ferrara.  She eventually moved to Rome; in 1600 the Roman Senate bestowed on her an honorary citizenship.  Monza died in Modena on August 8^th of 1617.

Many of the best composers of the Renaissance spent some time (and sometimes a long time) in Ferrara, from Guillaume Dufay to Jacob Obrecht, Josquin des Prez and on.  During Molza’s time, Luzzasco Luzzaschi was the Duke’s favorite composer but he wasn’t the only one.  Giovan Leonardo Primavera composed madrigals based on Molza’s poetry.  Here’s one of his madrigals, Nasce La Gioja Mia, performed by The Tallis Scholars.

This Week in Classical Music: October 24, 2021.  Bernard Haitink.  Although it was bound to happen sooner rather than later – he was 92 after all, and slowing down, yet the news of Bernard Haitink’s death was a sad one.  Haitink, an unassuming man and great conductor, died in his home in London.  We were lucky to have heard him live many times, as, in the role of Principal Conductor, he led the Chicago Symphony for four years, from 2006 to 2010.  One memory is indelible, that of Mahler’s Symphony no. 6, in 2007.  Rarely did the Chicago Symphony play as beautifully, and rarely was the music presented with such poignancy and completeness.  He was offered the position of Music Director at Chicago but refused: his explanation back then was that he was too old, though we suspect that he just didn’t want to deal with the financial and social obligations that come with the title; he wanted to make music.

 Bernard Haitink was born in Amsterdam on March 4^th of 1929.  As a child he studied the violin but never played on a level that satisfied him.  In 1954-55 he took several conducting courses, and it became apparent that that was his true calling.  In 1957 he became Principal Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.  In 1956 he was invited as a replacement for an ailing conductor to lead a performance of Cherubini’s Requiem with the Concertgebouw.  In a very telling episode, he first refused, saying that he wasn’t ready ready, even though he had already conducted the piece; fortunately, at the last moment he changed his mind.  The performance went very well, several engagements followed and in 1961 he was made the Principal Conductor of the Concertgebouw, the youngest ever.  He shared this position with the eminent German conductor Eugen Jochum till the latter retired in 1964, and then, on his own, till 1988.  At the same time, since 1964, he was the Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic.  He widely traveled with both orchestras, performing in the US and around the world.  While in England, he was also the Music Director of the Glyndebourne Festival (from 1978 to 1988) and the Royal Covent Garden Opera (from 1987 to 2002).  From 2002 to 2006 he was the Principal Conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle and Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony.

Haitink’s discography is extensive: he recorded all symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Debussy and Ravel’s symphonic pieces and many more, but Mahler and Bruckner constituted the core of his repertory.

In his obituary, the New York Time quoted their former chief music critic Harold Schonberg who said that Haitink was “not one of the glamour boys on the podium… He does not dance, he does not patronize the best tailor on the Continent.”  It seems what Schonberg was implying that Haitink was the opposite of Herbert von Karajan.  We’ll miss Bernard Haitink dearly.

Here’s the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony no. 6, which he recorded live in 2007 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

This Week in Classical Music: October 17, 2021.  The Italians.  Three Italian composers were born this week: the Renaissance-era Luca Marenzio, who was born on October 18^th of 1553, Baldassare Galuppi, born on the same day but a century and a half later, on October 18^th of 1706, and Luciano Berio, one of the most interesting composers of the second half of the 20^th century, on October 24^th of 1925.  Take a look at the entry about Marenzio here, Galuppi – here, and one of our takes on Berio here.  It is said that Galuppi was the most successful and richest composer of the mid-18^th century.  His fame and money came mostly from his operas – he wrote more than 100 of them (we think that his sacred music is of much higher quality).  He was called the father of comic operas (he wasn’t the first one to write opera buffa, but his were more popular), but practically none of them are staged these days.  The comic opera Il filosofo di campagna, based on the libretto by Carlo Goldoni, was extremely popular throughout Europe.  Here’s the cheerful overture.  Francesco Piva leads the Italian group Intermusicale Ensemble.

Franz Liszt was also born this week, on October 22^nd of 1811.  Staying with the Italian theme, here is Sonetto 47 del Petrarca, from Années de pèlerinage: Italie.  Lazar Berman recorded it in 1977.

Finally, the great Jewish-Hungarian-American conductor, Georg Solti was born (as György Stern) on October 21^st of 1912.  His first significant position was that of the music director at the Bavarian State Opera; he was then hired at the Frankfurt Opera and, in 1961, became the music director of the Covent Garden Opera.  Only later did he develop his career as a symphony conductor.  Solti recorded 45 complete operas, and even though his Wagner recordings are most famous (his recording of Der Ring des Nibelungen was voted the greatest recording ever made, twice: once by the Gramophone magazine in 1999, and the second time by professional music critics in a poll conducted by the BBC, in 2011) some of his Italian operas are also extremely good.  Here is Io vengo a domandar grazia mia Regina, from Act II of Don Carlo.  Carlo Bergonzi is Don Carlo, Renata Tebaldi – Elizabeth.  Sir Georg Solti conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.