This Week in Classical Music: March 30, 2020.  Haydn and Busoni.  Franz Joseph Haydn was born on March 31^st of 1732.  We love him and think he’s been somewhat under-appreciated lately.  In the time of the coronavirus, what can be better than some of the most optimistic, humorous and at the same time sophisticated music ever written?  Here, for example, is Haydn’s Symphony no. 70.  It was premiered on December 18th, 1779.  Haydn was then employed by Prince Nikolaus Esterházy and worked most of the time at his immense Esterháza palace in what is now Hungary, not far from the Austrian border.  The prince decided to build an opera house on his estate and Haydn composed a symphony to commemorate the event.  In this recording Christopher Hogwood is leading The Academy of Ancient Music.

Last week we wrote about the pianist Egon Petri, who was a close friend of the pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni.  April 1^st is Busoni’s birthday; he was born in 1866.  An Italian by birth (he was from Empoli, Tuscany), Busoni spent most of his life outside of Italy.  He lived twenty formative years, from 1893 to 1913, in Berlin and returned to the city after the Great War years that he spent in Switzerland.  Busoni was probably the most famous and influential pianist of the late-19^th to early-20^th century, though he thought of himself as a composer first.  The pianist John Ogdon was a big proponent of Busoni’s music, though we tend to agree with Alfred Brendel who called his piano concerto “overwritten” – and we think much of Busoni’s music is.  On the other hand, his transcriptions of Bach’s works are standard in the piano repertory, and for good reason.

Another pianist/composer, probably as famous a pianist and a much better composer -- Sergei Rachmaninov – was also born this week, and, like Busoni, on April 1^st, but seven years later, in 1973.  Like Busoni, Rachmaninov spent much of his life away from his motherland, except that Busoni left Italy on his own volition whereas Rachmaninov was practically forced to emigrate from Russia after the October Revolution of 1917.  Here’s an early Edison recording from April 23, 1919.  Rachmaninov plays his own Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3, No. 2. 

April 1^st is rich on birthdays: a wonderful pianist, Dinu Lipatti, was born on that day in 1917.  We wrote about him here.

Let’s not forget the conductors: Christian Thielemann, the Chief Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Music Director of the Bayreuth Festival (who is also known for a number of controversial remarks) was born on that same day, April 1^st, in 1959.   Herbert von Karajan, born on April 5^th of 1908, was one of Thielemann mentors.  Also, the great conductor and music figure, Pierre Monteux, was born on April 4^th of 1875.

We have to end on sad news: we’ve learned that the great Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki died yesterday, April 29^th of 2020 in his home in Kraków, Poland after a long illness.  He was 86.

This Week in Classical Music: March 23, 2020.  Schreker and Petri.  Two 20^th century composers were born this week: Béla Bartók, one of the most interesting composers of the first half of the century, and Pierre Boulez, who influenced many during the second half of it.  Bartók was born March 25^th of 1881, Boulez – on March 26^th of 1925.  Another composer, now almost forgotten but at his time quite famous, Franz Schreker, was born on this day in 1878 in Monaco, where his father, an itinerant court photographer – a profession possible only in the late 19^th century – was working at the time.  Schreker, an Austrian, became prominent in Vienna as an opera composer: one music critic even compared him with Wagner; at the peak of his career, in early 1920s, he was one of the most celebrated composers in German-language lands.  Things changed dramatically in the late 1920s:  two of his operas premiers were unsuccessful, then the financial crisis put pressure on all opera houses, later the right-wingers and the Nazis forced cancellations of many performances of his music (Schreker’s father, the court photographer, happened to be Jewish), and when the Nazis came to power Schreker was forced to resign all his positions.  In December of 1933 he suffered a stroke and died in Berlin on March 21^st of 1934, two days before his 56^th birthday.  Here’s his Kammersymphonie composed during WWI, in 1916.  It’s performed live by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra with Edo de Waart conducting.

The German pianist Egon Petri was also born on this day, in 1881 in Hanover.  As a child he studied violin and the piano, and later the organ and the horn.  It was the classes with Ferruccio Busoni that convinced young Petri that the piano was his instrument.  Petri later worked as Busoni’s assistant and generally considered himself his disciple rather than his student.  Under Busoni’s influence Petri immersed himself into Bach’s music, not only performing it but also editing, with Busoni, the 25-volume edition of Bach’s clavier compositions.  In 1923 he became the first foreign musician to tour the Soviet Union; his success there was tremendous.  In the late 1920s Petri moved to Zakopane, Poland, where he established a music school.  He escaped when Germany invaded Poland at the beginning of WWII and eventually settled in the US.  He taught at Cornell first, and then settled in California where he became famous as a pedagogue.  Petri refused to play in Germany and never did.  He died in Berkeley on May 27^th of 1962.  Here is a 1942 recording of Petri playing four of Bach’s chorale preludes, arranged for the piano by Busoni.

This Week in Classical Music: March 16, 2020.  Bach at the time of pandemic.  We’ll celebrate Johann Sebastian Bach’s 335^th birthday this week: he was born in Eisenach on March 21^st of 1685.  Celebrations will be limited to classical music radio stations and Internet, as most physical venues around the country are closed due to the coronavirus epidemic.  We all are surprised and perplexed by the speed with which the illness caused by the virus spreads around the world, but it wouldn’t be an unusual event for Bach: epidemics were regular in 18^th century Germany, as they were in the rest of Europe and the world.  In 1708-09 an epidemic of influenza hit Germany; who knows, maybe it was caused by a virus similar to Covid-19.  Another flu epidemic happened in 1712 and yet another – in 1742.  And in 1709-12 Germany was touched by a plague which hit the hardest in the northern countries of Europe, killing 300,000 to 400,000 people.  As we know, Bach’s family wasn’t spared: he fathered 20 children, of which only 10 lived into adulthood.  Death was often on Bach’s mind, but as a deeply religious person he was thinking of it more as salvation from the corrupt and sinful life on Earth, rather than an ultimate tragedy we think it is in our more secular age.  Here’s Bach Cantata BWV 8, Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? (Dearest God, when will I die?), composed in Leipzig in 1724.  It’s performed by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner in Santiago de Compostela, Spain in year 2000, where they were making their “Bach Cantata Pilgrimage Recordings.”  You can read the poignant text of the cantata on the Bach Cantatas website.

Two Russian composers were also born this week: the supremely talented Modest Mussorgsky, born on March 21^st of 1839, who died of alcoholism at the age of 42, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, born on March 18^th of 1844.  They were friends (Mussorgsky was the best man at Rimsky’s wedding ceremony).  Rimsky was one of the composers who edited and complete some of the works Mussorgsky left unfinished, including his opera Khovanschina.  He also created a version of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece Boris Godunov; this was the version performed in the Soviet Union for years.  Mussorgsky’s own revised version of 1872 is typically performed in Europe and the US and lately the Bolshoi was also staging this version.

This Week in Classical Music: March 9, 2020.  The problem with Telemann.  Georg Philipp Telemann, born in Magdeburg on March 14^th of 1681, was one of the most prolific composers of his time, and probably of any time.  If we consider his instrumental output, here’s what we see in Grove: “125 orchestral suites, 125 concertos (for one to four soloists or without soloists), several dozen other orchestral works and sonatas in five to seven parts, nearly 40 quartets, 130 trios, 87 solos, 80 works for one to four instruments without bass and 145 pieces for keyboard (excluding two collections containing 50 minuets apiece).”  But that’s just a small part of his output: church music constituted the bulk of it, and here the numbers are eye-popping: Telemann wrote more than 1700 cantatas!  He also wrote several dozen operas.  This creates a problem of vast proportions: how can we practically assess Telemann’s output, how can we compare the quality of different pieces, establish a “hierarchy” which may not be totally proper but could be useful in education and promotion of his music?  Mozart wrote 41 symphonies, not all of them are equal but public perception is clear about the last three: they are considered his crowning achievement.  Same is true with practically all other classical composers.  But who would help us with Telemann?  Was there a person who’ve heard, or at least read all of his music?  Probably not.  That makes listening to Telemann a rather frustrating experience, as what we hear (and what is being performed) is practically random.  And Telemann was an uneven composer: some of his pieces are clearly rather mediocre, but some are absolutely superb.  Philipp Spitta, the German music historian and musicologist who wrote a magisterial biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, held Telemann in low esteem and compared, unfavorably, some of his cantatas to those of Bach.  Albert Schwetzer seconded Spitta in his own biography of Bach.  Now we know that some of those “Bach” cantatas were actually written by Telemann.  So how many more gems are we missing?  Here, for example, is one of them, in this case one of Telemann’s Darmstadt Overtures (in D Major).  The Cologne Chamber Orchestra is conducted by Helmut Müller-Brühl.

We’d also like to note the German conductor Hans Knappertsbusch, who was born on March 12^th of 1888.  Knappertsbusch was a leading interpreter of the music of Wagner.  Politically a conservative, he nonetheless never joined the Nazi party, even though he was pressured into it and his contract with the Munich Opera was revoked (but later restored).  He had many minor run-ins with the Nazis; what saved him was his popularity both with the German public and internationally.  In 1944 he was included in the expanded Gottbegnadeten-Liste ("God-gifted list" or "Important Artist Exempt List") of the artists considered by the Nazis to be critically important to German culture.  On that list were also Herbert von Karajan, Karl Böhm, Eugen Jochum and Wilhelm Furtwängler, although Furtwängler was later removed from the list.  After the war Knappertsbusch lived in Munich; he conducted the first season of the reopened Bayreuth Festival from 1951 and continued conducting there for several years to great acclaim.  He died in Munich on October 25^th of 1965.

This Week in Classical Music: March 2, 2020.  Composers and conductors.  Seven talented composers were born this week.  The oldest (and one of our favorites) is Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza; he was born in Venosa on March 8th, 1566.  Many of us know the extraordinary story of Gesualdo killing his wife and her lover whom he found in flagrante in his home, Palazzo di Sangro in Naples.  His music is not as well known, which is a unfortunate, as Gesualdo had an enormous talent.  He spent two years in Ferrara, then a major musical center, meeting with and listening to the music of the best Italian composers of the time (while there, he also married the Duke’s niece, Leonora d'Este).  And while in Ferrara, he published the first four books of madrigals (eventually he’d publish two more).  Luzzasco Luzzaschi was one of the Ferrarese composers who probably affected Gesualdo the most.  He returned to the Gesualdo castle at the end of 1595 and remain there, secluded most of the time, for the rest of his life.  Existing accounts of his moods and “melancholy” suggest that he was clinically depressed, which didn’t prevent him from composing both religious and secular music.  Here’s Gesualdo’s sacred vocal piece for five voices, Tribulationem et dolorem inveni, composed in 1603.  It was recorded in 1992 by Oxford Camerata, Jeremy Summerly conducting.

Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4^th of 1678 in Venice, more than a century after Gesualdo.  By then the Baroque style was all the rage.  Famous during his lifetime (his influence on Bach, who made a number of transcriptions of Vivaldi’s works, is well known), Vivaldi was almost forgotten by mid-18^th century and rediscovered only in the 20^th century.  His Four Seasons remain (excessively) popular, but thanks in large part to Cecilia Bartoli, we’re now familiar with his operas too.  Out of almost 500 instrumental concertos (many for the violin) some are very good, other are routine.  Here’s an example of Vivaldi’s church music, Sileant Zephyri from his motet Filiae maestae Jerusalem performed by Philippe Jaroussky and his Ensemble Artaserse.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the fifth child of Johann Sebastian, was also born this week, on March 8^th of 1714 in Weimar.  While his father loved Vivaldi’s music, Carl Philipp Emanuel, like most German composers of his generation, was quite critical of him.  And here are other composers also born this week: Maurice Ravel, Bedřich Smetana, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Kurt Weill.

Bernard Haitink will celebrate his 91^st birthday on March 4^th, and the late Lorin Maazel would’ve been 90 on March 6^th.

This Week in Classical Music: February 24, 2020.  Chopin and his interpreters.  Next Sunday, March 1^st is Frédéric Chopin’s 210^th birthday.  We’ve been writing about the great composer practically every year but not about some of the famous interpreters of his music.  Last week we promised to get back to Benno Moiseiwitsch, who was born in Odessa on February 22^nd of 1890.  At the age of nine he won the Anton Rubinstein Prize (not to be confused with the Arthur Rubinstein competition, held in Tel Aviv since 1974) and five years later, in 1904, moved to Berlin to study with Theodor Leschetizky.  He stayed in Berlin for four years after which his family moved to England.  He played his London debut concert in 1909.  After WWI Moiseiwitsch engaged in many tours in the US and Europe and for a while taught at the Curtis Institute, where Josef Hofmann was the director.  In 1937 he took British citizenship.  Rachmaninov used to say that Moiseiwitsch plays his music better than he, Rachmaninov, did.  Here’s Benno Moiseiwitsch playing Chopin’s Scherzo No. 3 in C sharp minor Op. 39.  This recording was made in 1949.  And here he’s playing Chopin’s Nocturne in E Op. 62 No. 2.  This one was made later, in 1958, when Moiseiwitsch was 68.  Benno Moiseiwitsch died in London on April 9^th of 1963.

Myra Hess and Lazar Berman were also born this week.   Hess is just three days younger than Moiseiwitsch: she was born on February 25^th of 1890.  Moiseiwitsch moved to London as a teenager, Hess, also Jewish, was born there.  Hess is better known for her interpretations of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and of course, for the courageous free concerts she gave in London during WWII while the Germans were bombing the city, but she also played Chopin.  Here’s a wonderful, unhurried 1949 live recording of Myra Hess playing Chopin Fantasie in F minor Op. 49.

The Russian-Jewish pianist Lazar Berman would be 90 on February 26^th: he was born in Leningrad (now St-Petersburg) on that day in 1930.  Berman was a tremendous virtuoso and a great Lisztian but his repertoire was broad and of course Chopin was part of it.  Here, from 1973, his recording of Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat major op.53, "Héroique."