April 30, 2018.  Alessandro Scarlatti and Marcel Dupré.  We love Alessandro Scarlatti: he was аcomposer of great talent and these days is clearly underappreciated.  Yes, things are changing, and baroque opera is being staged more often.  And of course, the great Cecilia Bartoli did much to popularize some of his music, as well as the new generation of counter-tenors, Philippe Jaroussky among them.  Still, we’d like to hear much more of Alessandro’s music, instead of the standard ration dispersed by the classical music radio stations.  Alessandro Scarlatti was born in Palermo, on May 2^nd of 1660.  Here’s what we wrote about him a year ago, so let’s just listen to a couple of his pieces.  In addition to operas, Scarlatti wrote a number of oratorios.  Musicologists view these oratorios as a substitute for opera; most of Scarlatti’s oratorios were composed in Rome where the Pope was strongly opposed to opera performances.  We’ll hear two excerpts from the oratorio Il Sedecia, re di Gerusalemme.  It was written in Rome in 1705.  Scarlatti was living in Rome since 1702.  It was his second visit to the city (he first arrived in Rome at the age of 12 with his family and stayed there for 10 years before moving to Naples).  Even though he was under the patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni, Scarlatti wasn’t employed by him directly; instead, he would serve, usually for a short time before being fired, as maestro di cappella at different churches.   Eventually Ottoboni made the unhappy Scarlatti one of his “ministers,” but even that didn’t last long as a year later Ottoboni replaced him with Arcangelo Corelli.  Operas, Scarlatti’s favorite genre, were virtually prohibited by Pope Clement XI.  Scarlatti wrote five operas for Ferdinando de' Medici, then the Grand Prince of Florence but that relationship also ended rather soon, as Ferdinando decided that he likes Giacomo Antonio Perti’s operas better.

April 23, 2018.  Prokofiev.   Sergei Prokofiev was born on this day in 1891.  Two years ago we celebrated his 125^th anniversary and last year we again wrote about him in some detail, so today we’ll focus on some of Prokofiev’s music, especially the piece that so far has been missing from our library.  Piano sonata no. 5 is unusual in two respects: it’s the only sonata written outside  of Russia, and it’s also the only sonata to have two opus numbers.  The first version, op. 38, was composed in 1923.  After spending two not very successful years in the US, Prokofiev returned to Europe in 1920.  By 1922 he settled in the town of Ettal in the Bavarian Alps (Ettal is a place where the mad King Ludwig II, Wagner’s benefactor, built one of his folly palaces).  During that time Prokofiev spent much of his time working on the opera The Fiery Angel, which he had started working on in 1919 and wouldn’t finish till 1927 (the opera was never staged during Prokofiev’s lifetime; the first concert performance took place in 1953 in Paris, the theatrical premier took place in La Fenice, Venice, in 1955).  While in Ettal, Prokofiev, a virtuoso pianist, toured many countries, thus earning a living.  Also in Ettal, in October of 1923, Prokofiev married the Spanish singer Lina Llubera.  Soon after they moved to Paris, and it was there that Prokofiev played the Sonata no. 5 for the first time.  The reception was lukewarm, which Prokofiev acknowledged himself.  But clearly, he thought better of the music than most listeners and music critics, as he returned to the Sonata in 1952.  It’s difficult to imagine more different circumstances: in 1923 Prokofiev, 32 years old and full of energy was free, traveling around Europe, working with Diaghilev, arguing with Stravinsky, about to be married for the first time – and in 1952, only 61 but very ill, he was living in the suburbs of Moscow, suffering official prosecution for “formalism,” with many of his works officially banned, and Lina, his first wife, was arrested and in the Gulag. 

April 16, 2018. .  Nikolai Myaskovsky, a Russian composer, was born this week, on April 20^th of 1881.  Prolific (he wrote 27 symphonies), he was widely performed during his lifetime in the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, in Europe and the US.  He was often criticized by the Soviet music establishment and almost as often awarded state prizes; these days he’s mostly forgotten.  Myaskovsky deserves to be written about, but today we’ll focus on Tomás Luis de Victoria, one of the great composers of the Renaissance, for whom we never have a fixed date as we don’t know when hewas born. 

A younger contemporary of Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso, Victoria was born in 1548 in a small town of Sanchidrián near Ávila‎.  His mother was from a converso, that is from a family of Spanish Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism.  Victoria went to school in Ávila, sang as a choirboy in the local cathedral and probably learned there to play the organ.  The cathedral of Ávila was one of Spain’s musical centers, and Victoria’s teachers were prominent composers and musicians. Some speculate that while in Ávila, he met Antonio de Cabezón, the famous blind composer, second in fame only to Cristóbal de Morales.  Somewhere around 1563, once his voice had broken, Victoria was sent to Rome, to the Collegio Germanico, a preeminent Catholic school known for its excellent music education.  While at the Collegio, Victoria probably met Palestrina, who at the time was maestro di cappella at the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, and likely became his pupil.  In 1569 Victoria became a singer and the organist at Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli, the Spanish national church in Rome.  Such was his reputation that a couple years later he was invited to teach music at the Collegio Germanico and eventually was appointed maestro di cappella.  In 1574, he was ordained a priest.  A year later he was appointed maestro di capella at Sant'Apollinare alle Terme, the church of the Collegium.  By then Victoria was already a widely known and well-published composer. 

April 9, 2018.  Two singers.  Franco Corelli’s birthday was yesterday: he was born on April 8^th of 1921.  One of the greatest tenors of the mid-20^th century, he, together with Giuseppe Di Stefano and Mario Del Monaco, brought the level of tenor singing to heights which seem unreachable today.  Add to it two supreme sopranos, Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, the great baritone Tito Gobbi, the mezzo Giulietta Simionato, the base Cesare Siepi – all of them at the top of their form in the mid-1950s.  What a glorious era!  Corelli may not have had the most beautiful voice, but the power, clarity, phenomenal breath control and sheer excitement he generated were incomparable.  Listen, for example, to this 1955 recording of Cavaradossi’s aria E lucevan le stele from Puccini’s Tosca.  One may quibble with the interpretations, with the notes he holds a bit too long – just because he can! – but it’s singing at the very highest level.  Or a small sample from the legendary performance of the same opera in the Teatro Regio di Parma on January 21, 1967.  Tosca is Virginia Gordoni, Scarpia – Attilio d'Orazi, but it’s Corelli’s 12 seconds of A-sharp in Vittoria, Vittoria at the very end of this two-minute excerpt that brought the theater down.  We cut out the ensuing pandemonium (the word “ovation” isn’t strong enough) because it just wouldn’t stop; one couldn’t hear anything anyway, even though the orchestra continued to play (here).  Corelli was born in a provincial city of Ancona, his family wasn’t musical, and Franco entered the Pesaro conservatory almost by chance.  Even there, he mostly taught himself, following the technique of Mario del Monaco and listening to the old recordings of Caruso, Gigli and Lauri-Volpi.  Corelli started singing professionally in 1951; in 1953, in the Rome Opera, he sung Pollione in Bellini's Norma with Maria Callas in the title role.  Callas was taken by Corelli’s voice, and in the following years the two sung together on many occasions, especially at La Scala. 

April 3, 2018.  Haydn, Pogorelich.  We’d like to come back to Joseph Haydn, whom we mentioned, rather perfunctorily, last week.  As we were looking for a sample of Richter’s recording of a Haydn sonata (Richter made several and played Haydn often) we came across one made by Ivo Pogorelich in 1991.   It was a recording of a wonderful Piano Sonata no. 30 in D major, Hoboken XVI:19, composed in 1767.  Pogorelich, born in Belgrade, is one of the most unusual pianists of his generation.  His career began with a scandal: in 1980 the jury of the Chopin International Competition eliminated him after the second round.  Martha Argerich resigned in protest (she was not the only one to object, so did Nikita Magaloff and Paul Badura-Skoda, although they didn’t quit).  The publicity generated by the Warsaw scandal helped Pogorelich’s career.  While some of his interpretations were eccentric, they were not outlandish, on top of which he had a flawless technique.  In 1981 Pogorelich was invited to the Carnegie Hall (he played there many times; his 1992 performance of Balakirev’s Islamey became legendary).  That same year, 1981, he debuted in London, and a year later he was signed by Deutsche Grammophon.  Pogorelich had studied  in the Soviet Union since 1976; the year of the Chopin Competition he married his teacher, Alisa Kezheradze, 21 years his senior.  Little is known about Kezheradze.  When she met Pogorelich, she was married to a Soviet functionary, living in a large apartment in the center of Moscow.  She taught piano at the Music department of the Pedagogic Institute (Vladimir Genis, a Russian-German composer and pianist who studied there, remembers Kezheradze as “the only bright spot in that theater of the absurd, … striking, slim, of indeterminate age, with a face of a Georgian princess.” 

March 26, 2018.  Richter and Haydn.  Last week we started writing about the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, and made it all the way to 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.  Richter, 26 years old, joined many other musicians who continued to perform during the war, often on the front line.  In January 1943 he premiered Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata no. 7, one of the three so-called “War Sonatas” (sonatas sixth through eighth).  Richter already new Prokofiev: they met over Prokofiev’s Sonata no. 6.  Premiered by the composer, the sonata became part of Richter’s repertoire; he played it on his first “official” Moscow concert in 1940.  And even though he didn’t premier Prokofiev’s Eighth (Emil Gilels did), he played it at the Third All-Union competition in 1945, which Richter won (Victor Merzhanov shared the first prize with him).  Here’s a live recording of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata no. 7 from 1958.

In 1943 Richter met Nina Dorliak, a fine opera and chamber singer.  Nina was born into a prominent family: her father was a deputy to the Czar’s finance minister; her mother in her youth was a lady-in-waiting to dowager Empress Maria, later she became a well-known singer herself.  Considering such legacy, it’s a miracle that Nina was not arrested during the Great Purge.  Dorliak and Richter became good friends and played many concerts together.  In 1945 Richter, most likely a closeted homosexual (he never talked about it), proposed to Nina.  They married in 1945 and stayed together to the end of his life.