November 26, 2018.  Lully, Donizetti, Callas.   Jean-Baptiste Lully was born this week, on November 28^th of 1632.  He’s the first of the great French Baroque composers – Couperin and Rameau followed, each a generation younger.  When Lully was accepted at the court of Louis XIV, first as a dancer, then as composer, French music was in a temporary decline.  The Italians were way ahead, developing the new Baroque style: Monteverdi, the “father” of the opera, was one of the very first to cross the line between Renaissance and Baroque; Girolamo Frescobaldi adapted the new style to his music for the clavier; Giacomo Carissimi, Tarquinio Merula and Salamone Rossi were among the early adopters.  Francesco Cavalli and Antonio Cesti followed Monteverdi in the development of opera.  There were many more – Italy was bursting with musical talent.  The French just couldn’t compare – that’s till Lully, an Italian who took French citizenship once the King gave him the most important music position in the realm, that of the surintendant de la musique de la chambre du roi, the superintendent – the manager and organizer – of music in the King’s chambers.  And at the court, Lully was really in charge of everything music-related.  He had two composers working for him, supervised several ensembles, including the famous Twenty-Four Violins of the King, and other musicians.  He also composed.  In 1664 he met Molière, with whom he created several comédies-ballets.  Most of them were premiered at the court and then played in Paris theaters.  Lully even became known in Italy: the Grand Duke of Tuscany asked him to write several dances in the “fashionable style.”  All this work brought Lully a lot of money, and in 1670 be built himself a splendid house on the corner of rue Sainte-Anne and rue des Petits Champs (the house was so expensive that he still had to borrow 11,000 livres from Molière).  The building still exists.  Here’s a short Prelude to Psyché, a play by Molière.  William Christie conducts Les Arts Florissants.

November 19, 2018.  Three 20^th century composers.  Benjamin Britten was born on November 22^nd of 1913 in Lowestoft, the easternmost town in the UK.  The greatest British composer of the 20^th century, he was also the leading opera composer of his time, having written such classics as Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, and The Turn of the Screw.  Britten received his first musical lessons from his mother; he then continued taking lessons at Lowestoft and later – at the Royal College of Music in London.  In 1934, while Britten was still studying at the Royal College, he had his first composition, the Sinfonietta, Op. 1, performed in public (by then he had written many pieces he would later dismiss as juvenilia).  After graduating, he worked for the BBC movie unit and wrote music for theater and radio.  London was (and is) one of Europe’s music centers; Britten went to many concerts and fell in love with the music of Mahler (Das Lied von der Erde in particular); Berg (especially Wozzeck) and Stravinsky also left a big impression (he even wanted to study with Berg but that never worked out).  In 1937 Britten met the young tenor, Peter Pears, who became a personal and professional partner for the rest of his life (Pears outlived Britten by 10 years).  In April of 1939 Britten and Pierce sailed to America; both were pacifists and felt uncomfortable in Europe, also several of their friends, like W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, had moved to the US.  As WWII began, they decided to return to Britain, but the British Embassy persuaded them to stay on as “cultural ambassadors.”  Still, in 1942 they returned, and Britten started working on the opera Peter Grimes, which he completed in 1944.  It premiered in 1945 at Sadler's Wells Opera, now English National Opera, London’s second (after the Covent Garden) opera house.  Here are Four Sea Interludes from "Peter Grimes", with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Peter Grimes was both a critical and popular success, and it established Britten as a foremost British composer. This is Bernstein’s last recording, made live in Tangelwood on August 19^th of 1990.  Bernstein died in New York a month and a half later. 

November 12, 2018.  Borodin.  Russian composer Alexander Borodin was born on this day in 1833.   He was the illegitimate son of a Georgian Prince Luka Gedianov and his mistress, Avdotya Antonova.  Alexander was registered as a son of one of Gedianov’s serfs, Porfiry Borodin, a common practice in those days.  Borodin was thus officially born a serf, so the prince had to formally free him, which he did when Alexander was seven.  The prince also arranged Avdotya’s marriage to a retired army physician who died two years later.  Alexander was educated by private tutors at home; when he was 13, his mother took on a boarder, Mikhail Shchiglev, and the boys became good friends. Both liked music and took piano lessons.  Around that time Alexander started composing, and even had three pieces published to good reviews.   He never thought of becoming a professional musician – he was interested in chemistry and at the age of 17 entered the St Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy.  Soon after graduating, he was sent to Heidelberg for advanced studies (the famous Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev lived there at the time).  In Heidelberg he found a thriving musical community and played regularly in cello duets and quartets.  He continued composing, mostly for himself.  Borodin’s scientific research brought him to many European cities; these travels broadened his musical horizons as well: in Mannheim, for example, he became acquainted with the music of Wagner, for the first time listening to Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.  While in Heidelberg, he met a 29-year-old Russian pianist, Yekaterina Protopopova.  They fell in love and Borodin proposed.  Protopopova was ill with tuberculosis, and doctors suggested that she go to Pisa, Italy.  Borodin went with her and arranged for some scientific work in the city in order to stay with his fiancée.  A year later, in 1862, they returned to St.-Petersburg where Borodin received a position at the Medical-Surgical Academy and married.  They stayed together for the rest of his life: Borodin was first to die, at the age of 53. 

While working, very successfully, as a research chemist and publishing scientific papers, Borodin met Mily Balakirev and through him César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky and the young Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.  Balakirev encouraged Borodin to compose, which he did, starting on a symphony, eventually Symphony no. 1.  It took Borodin six year to complete, his main preoccupation still being chemistry.  Balakirev premiered the symphony in 1869; while the public liked it, many critics did not. 

November 5, 2018.  Couperin and much more.  François Couperin, Couperin le Grand, one of the greatest French composers of the end of the 17^th – early 18^th century, was born in Paris on November 10^th of 1668.  The most important French composer between Lully and Rameau, he was featured on these pages many times, for example here.  We know him mostly as a composer for the harpsichord and the organ, but Couperin wasn’t confined to keyboard instruments.  In 1714 he wrote the three Leçons de ténèbres (literally, Lessons of Darkness), vocal settings for the Tenebrae service, held during the three days preceding Easter.  During the traditional Catholic service candles are extinguished, and the service ends in total darkness.  The text is from the biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah.  Many composers set the Ténèbres to music, especially during the Renaissance era, for example, Palestrina, Thomas Tallis and, famously, Orlando di Lasso.  Couperin’s setting is among the best.  Here is the third Leçon for two sopranos; it’s performed by Montserrat Figueras and Maria Cristina Kiehr, Jordi Savall conducts Le Concert Des Nation.

Walter Gieseking, a French-German pianist, was also born this week, on November 5^th of 1895.  Gieseking was born in Lyon; his father was a well-known German doctor.  He began playing the piano at the age of four and didn’t receive any formal training till he entered the Hamburg Conservatory at the age of 16.  When he was 20, still in Hamburg, he performed a cycle of almost all Beethoven sonatas; it was extremely well received.  He then performed several very successful concerts in Berlin; his playing of the music of Debussy and Ravel was especially noted.  While some of his compatriots emigrated, Gieseking stayed in Germany during the Nazi period; Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein both accused him of being a Nazi collaborator.  After the war, he was practically banned from performing in the US but continued playing in the more forgiving Europe.  He eventually was cleared of cultural collaboration and returned to the US.  He was known is an outstanding performer of the music of Debussy and Ravel.  Here’s the 1953 recording Gieseking made in London of Debussy’s Image, Book I.  Gieseking died in London on October 26^th of 1956.  At the time he was in London, recording the full cycle of Beethoven’s sonatas.  He was in the process of recording Sonata no. 15, Op. 28 (“Pastoral”) when he suddenly fell ill.  By then, the first three movements had been already recorded; it was never finished.  This incomplete recording was issued by HMV.

October 29, 2018.  John Dunstaple.  Vincenzo Bellini was born this week, on November 3^rd of 1801 (here’s the final scene from La Pirata, with Maria Callas and the Philharmonia orchestra conducted by Nicola Rescigno).  Also, two wonderful conductors: Eugen Jochum, on November 1^st of 1902, and Giuseppe Sinopoli, on November 2^nd of 1946.  Jochum, one of the most interesting interpreters of the music of Bruckner, was a long-time conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic, which he directed during the Nazi era (Jochum never joined the Nazi party or any other Nazi organizations).  After the war he became the founding music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.  He also had long-term relationships with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and other major orchestras.  Here’s the first movement of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 6.  Jochum conducts “his” Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.  

The Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli was only 54 when he died of a heart attack while conducting Aida at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin.  He was best known as an opera conductor, having worked at the Bayreuth, the Metropolitan opera and most opera houses if Europe.  He led the Staatskapelle Dresden for almost 10 years.  Like Johum, Sinopoli made several interesting recordings of Bruckner; he was also an insightful Mahlerian.  Here Sinopoli is conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Robert Schumann’s Manfred Overture, Op. 115.  

October 22, 2018.  Liszt, Berio, Bizet, Paganini, Scarlatti.  What a wonderful group!  All born this week – that’s why they appear together in this entry – but how different, as if to demonstrate to us, yet again, the enormous breadth of the European musical tradition.  Here we have Domenico Scarlatti, a great representative of the Baroque clavichord tradition; Niccolò Paganini, a famous violinist and gifted composer, Franz Liszt, a Romantic composer and legendary pianist: he wrote some of the most exquisite music for the piano (a successor to the harpsichord, Scarlatti’s instrument); Georges Bizet, the French opera composer (Scarlatti’s father, Alessandro, who also wrote operas, wouldn’t have recognized the genre); and finally, Luciano Berio, another Italian, and one of the most interesting composers of the second half of the 20^th century.  We’ve written about all of them before, so we’ll present each of them with a piece of music.

Domenico Scarlatti was born on October 26^th of 1685, a prodigious year that also gave us Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.  Scarlatti wrote 555 keyboard sonatas.  Here’s one of them Sonata in B minor, K. 27, L. 449, performed by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

While Scarlatti composed mostly for the harpsichord, Niccolò Paganini (born on October 27^th of 1782) wrote much of his music for his favorite instrument, the violin.  Here’s the devilishly difficult Caprice No. 3 in octave double stops.  It’s performed by Augustin Hadelich, a young Italian violinist of German descent, who won a Grammy in 2016.

Franz Liszt, born on October 22nd of 1811, was for the piano what Paganini was for the violin, and more (he really was a much better composer).  In 1838, Liszt wrote Grandes études de Paganini, S.140, a set of six etudes after Paganini’s works; five of the etudes are based on Paganini’s Caprises and one, on the themes from his violin concertos.   In 1851 Liszt published a revised version, S. 141, which was, while still formidable, not as demanding technically as the almost unplayable original version.  The second one is the version that’s usually played in concerts, but Nikolai Petrov, a wonderful Soviet pianist, made a live recording of the first version.  Here’s La Chasse,Étude No. 5 in E major.