June 18, 2018.  Marcello, Rozhdestvensky, Levine.  Benedetto Marcello, a gifted Italian composer of the late Baroque, was born on June 24^th of 1686 in Brescia.  We’d like to get to his interesting Requiem in the Venetian Manner, but for now we’ll direct you to our earlier entry about Benedetto and his brother Alessandro, as we have more urgent topics.

First, some sad news: Gennady Rozhdestvensky, one of the best Soviet conductors, died on June 16^th in Moscow.  Rozhdestvensky was born on May 4^th of 1931 into a musical family: his father was the noted conductor Nikolai Anosov, his mother – a singer, Natalia Rozhdestvenskaya.   Gennady studied the piano with Elena Gnesina and Lev Oborin and, later, conducting with his father.  He was only 20 when he found himself on the podium of the Bolshoi conducting Sleeping Beauty. From 1961 to 1974 Rozhdestvensky was the music director of the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra.  He was also the music director of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra.  From 1974 to 1985 he was the music director of the experimental Moscow Chamber Music Theater, where he supervised performances of the old Baroque and Classical operas, and also productions of modern operas rarely if ever heard in Russia, like Stravinsky’s The Rake Progress and Shostakovich’s The Nose.  Contemporary composers were of special interest to Rozhdestvensky: he often performed works that, if not banned, then were clearly not favored by the Soviet music establishment: Stravinsky, Poulenc, Orff, and the Soviet nonconformist composers like Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke.  Rozhdestvensky was also a raconteur: very often, before conducting a piece, he would turn toward the audience and deliver a witty introduction.  Nobody else did it back then, which probably was a good thing, as few had his knowledge, sense of humor and storytelling skills. 

June 11, 2018.  Gounod at 200.  Charles Gounod was born on June 18^th of 1818 in Paris.  Though we know him as an opera composer who influenced George Bizet, Jules Massenet and Camille Saint-Saëns, the young Gounod started with writing church music.  After graduating from the Paris Conservatory, where he took classes from Fromental Halévy and winning the Prix de Rome, he spent time in Italy studying the music of Palestrina.  There he composed a Mass and a Requiem; upon returning to Paris he enrolled in a seminary.  In 1848, though, he pivoted and got involved with opera.  He was friends with the famous mezzo Pauline Viardot, one of the most respected singers of her time; through her he got a commission from the Paris Opéra.  It was quite a coup for an unknown composer.  (Viardot lived a long life: she died in 1910 at the age of 88.  Very popular, she knew practically “everybody” worth knowing – composers, writers, painters.  She had famous lovers, including the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, who eventually settled in the Viardo household.  Pauline had a sister, Maria Malibran, also a singer and one of the greatest mezzos of the 19^th century at that.  Malbran’s voice range stretched from contralto to high soprano.  She excelled in the operas of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti.  Malibran’s life was much shorter: she fell from a horse and died at the age of 28).

June 4, 2018. Schumann, Albinoni, Argerich, Mravinsky.  Robert Schumann, one of the greatest Romantic composers, was born on June 8^th of 1810.  We celebrate him often, and we’ve published several longer articles about Schumann’s wonderful song cycles, such as Dichterliebe (here and here), and Frauenliebe und -leben (here).  So today we’ll just play some of his music.  Here’s Schumann’s Kinderszenen, recorded by Martha Argerich in 1983.  More about Ms. Argerich below.

Tomaso Albinoni is best remembered today for “Albinoni’s Adagio.”  The problem is that at best this music is based on some fragment composed by Albinoni, but it likely has nothing to do with him at all: that is, at least, what Remo Giazotto, an Italian musicologist who “discovered” the piece, was claiming at the end of his life.  But this controversy aside, Albinoni, who was born on June 8^th of 1671, was a fine, if not necessarily a major, Baroque composer.  A Venetian, Albinoni was, unlike so many of his colleagues, quite well-to-do: his father was a wealthy merchant.  During his lifetime, Albinoni was known for his operas.  He wrote at least 50 of them; Albinoni himself claimed that he composed more than 80.  His first opera, Zenobia, was produced in Venice in 1694; his last, Artamene, almost half a century later, in 1741.  Most of the scores were lost during the firebombing of Dresden at the end of WWI.  Practically none of his operas are staged these days.  His oboe concertos, on the other hand, are still very popular.  Here, for example, is Albinoni’s Concerto for oboe and strings in D minor Op. 9, no. 2.  Ensemble Il Fondamento is directed by the oboe soloist, Paul Dombrecht.  

May 28, 2018.  Six composer and two pianists.  Six composers were born this week: Isaac Albéniz and Erich Wolfgang Korngold on May 29^th, the former in 1860, the latter in 1897.  Marin Marais, the Frenchman – on May 31^st of 1656, Georg Muffat – on June 1^st of 1653.  We didn’t mention Muffat’s nationality, as it’s hard to determine: he was born to a Scottish father and French mother in the Dutchy of Savoy, which back then was an independent state with Turin as its capital but now is part of France.  He studied in Paris for six years and then moved to Alsace, which, formerly part of the Holy Roman Empire, was conquered by the French King Louis XIII in 1639.  Even though under the formal control of France, most of Alsace was independent, German-speaking and Lutheran.  Later in his life, Muffat lived in Vienna, Prague, Salzburg and Italy.   He spent the last 20 years of his life in Passau, Bavaria.  We could call Muffat a Savoyard, a Frenchman or even a German, as some encyclopedias do.  Here’s his Concerto Grosso in G minor “Dulce Somnium” (Sweet Sleep), written by Muffat in 1701.  While in Rome, Muffat studied with Arcangelo Corelli, one of the early developers of the Concerto Grosso form.  It was practically unknown in the German lands till Muffat’s time.  The performers in this recording are the ensemble Musica Aeterna Bratislava under the direction of Peter Zajíček.

Also on June 1^st we celebrate the birthday of Mikhail Glinka, the first truly original Russian composer.  Glinka was born in 1804; at that time the Russian music scene, quite lively in St-Petersburg, was dominated by the Italians and Italian-influenced composers.  Two operas by Glinka, A Life for the Tsar (called Ivan Susanin during the Soviet period) and Ruslan and Lyudmila, changed it all.  Here’s the famous Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila.  The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra is led by its principal conductor of 50 years, Evgeny Mravinsky.  And finally, Sir Edward Elgar was born on June 2^nd of 1857.  As we confessed some years ago, we’re not as much in love with Sir Edward’s music as the British public seems to be.  Still, without a doubt Jacqueline du Pré’s performance of Elgar’s Cello concerto is a masterpiece, both in terms of music itself and the interpretation.  We’ll write more about it on Elgar’s next birthday.

May 21, 2018.  Nilsson and Wagner.  Four days ago, on May 17^th, the music world celebrated the 100^th anniversary of Birgit Nilsson, the great Wagnerian soprano.  And tomorrow, May 22^nd, is the 205^th anniversary of the composer himself.  Nilsson was born Märta Birgit Svensson in a tiny village of Västra Karup in the southwestern part of Sweden.  She started singing early, sung in the local church choir and later was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm (she didn’t appreciate her voice teachers and considered herself to be self-taught).  She debuted at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1946 and in a short time developed a large repertoire, singing in Italian, Russian and German operas, all in Swedish.  In 1953 she performed, for the first time, at the Vienna Opera.  The next year she sung her first Wagner role, that of Elsa in Lohengrin, at Bayreuth, and the first Brünnhilde, her future calling card role, in the complete Ring cycle at the Bavarian State Opera.  Bayreuth became one of her favorite places, she sung there till 1970.  In addition to Brünnhilde, her roles there included Sieglinde in Die Walküre and Isolde.  By the end of the 1950s she had sung, to great acclaim, at Covent Garden, the San-Francisco Opera, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera.  Other major opera houses followed – Chicago, Paris, Berlin.  She established herself as the finest Wagnerian soprano of the generation, able to carry the mantel of Kirsten Flagstad.  Her tone was pure, the sound brilliant, even from the top to the bottom of the register; the size of her voice was enormous.  Listen, for example, to her astounding Liebestod from Tristan un Isolde, recorded at the Bayreuth Festival in 1966.  Karl Böhm conducts the Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival (here).

May 14, 2018.  Monteverdi, Curzon, François.   On May 15th of last year we celebrated the 450^th anniversary of the great Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.  We’ve also written about him on many previous occasions, for example here and here.  Even though he’s famous as the “father of the opera,” Monteverdi worked in practically all musical genres popular at the end of the 16^th – early 17^th centuries.  He wrote sacred music (vespers and motets), but his madrigals are especially beautiful.  The seventh book of madrigals (altogether he wrote nine “books” or collections) was written in Venice, where Monteverdi moved in 1613 after a long and highly productive period at the Mantuan court.  In Venice he held a prestigious position of the maestro di cappella at San Marco.  The seventh book was published in 1619 and contains 28 madrigals.  Within the book, the music varies significantly.  Compare, for example, Ohimè dov'è il mio ben, dov'è il mio core? (Alas! Where is my beloved, where is my heart?) with its beautiful duet of two sopranos (here), with Sinfonia – Tempro la cetra (I tune my lyre), which opens the book (here) orChiome d’oro (Golden hair), here.   Monteverdi continued composing for many years, publishing two more books of madrigals and several operas, most of them lost.  He died in 1643 at the ripe age of 76.

Two prominent pianists were born on May 18^th: Clifford Curzon in 1907 and Samson François in 1924.  Curzon, one of the finest British pianists of the 20^th century, was born Clifford Siegenberg; his Jewish father changed the family name at the outbreak of the Great War.  Clifford studied at the Royal Academy of Music and in 1928 went to Berlin to study with Arthur Schnabel.  He also studied with Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska.  Curzon’s career flourished in the 1930s, when he toured Europe and the United States.  The war affected Curzon as it did so many musicians, but he resumed concert playing at the end of the war.  In 1952, together with Joseph Szigeti, William Primrose and Pierre Fournier he formed a highly successful Edinburgh Festival Piano Quartet.  Curzon suffered from stage fright and almost always played from the score.  He was also highly critical of his own studio recordings.  Here, for example, is a recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos No. 20, K. 466 made in 1970, with the English Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Benjamin Britten.  Curzon didn’t approve of it and it was issued only after his death in 1982.