February 12, 2018.  Four solid talents.  Three early-music composers were born this week: Francesco Cavalli, one of the pioneers of opera, on February 14^th of 1602; Michael Praetorius, an immensely prolific German composer of the Protestant church music, most likely on February 15^th of 1571; and Arcangelo Corelli,  on February 17^th of 1653.  It so happens that we wrote about all three of them last year.  Four lesser composer were also born this week -- Fernando Sor, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Georges Auric and Henri  Vieuxtemps.  Fernando Sor, a Catalan guitarist and composer, was born on February 13^th of 1778 in Barcelona.  He moved around Europe quite a bit, first living in Paris, then in London, and then moving to Moscow, where he stayed for four years.  He returned to Paris and lived there for the rest of his life (he died in 1839).  Sor was considered the foremost guitar virtuoso of his time; even though he wrote music in many genres, he is known today for his guitar compositions.  Here’s one of his most popular pieces, Variations on a Theme by Mozart.  It’s performed by the Spanish guitarist Rafael Serrallet.

Alexander Dargomyzhsky, born on February 14^th of 1813, was an interesting Russian composer who lived in the period between Mikhail Glinka and the generation of the Mighty Five.  Dargomyzhsky met Glinka at the age of 22; they became friends, played piano four hands and studied scores together.  Encouraged by Glinka, he wrote an opera, Esmeralda, which had to wait its premier for eight years and then disappeared from the stage.  Disappointed, Dargomyzhsky went to Europe – Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Vienna – where he met many major composers and musicians.  After two years of travels he returned to Russia to start working on the opera Rusalka.  That one also had to wait – it was premiered only in 1856.  His best-known opera, The Stone Guest, was left unfinished; it was completed by César Cui and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.  Dargomyzhsky wrote a number of lovely songs; here’s one of them, Molitva (The prayer) and here’s another, V tverdi nebesnoy (In heavenly firmament).  Both are sung by the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, accompanied on the piano by her famous husband, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.  The recording was made in 1991 when Vishnevskaya was 65 and beyond her prime.  Even if her voice isn’t as solid as it was at her prime, the phrasing is beautiful. 

February 5, 2018.  Berg and two pianists.  Alban Berg, one of the most influential composers of the 20^th century, was born on February 9^th of 1885.  A year ago, we posted a detailed entry about him, so this time we’ll just play some of his music.  Berg wrote the Lyric Suite in 1925/26 using the 12-tone technique following his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg’s theories, and dedicated it to Alexander von Zemlinsky.  Here is the first movement of the Suite, Allegretto gioviale, and here – the second, Andante amoroso, lyrical indeed, despite its 12-tone origin.  They are performed by the Alban Berg Quartett.

As no other significant composers were born this week (unless you’re fond of the music of Gretry), we’ll turn to the instrumentalists.   A week ago was the birthday of Arthur Rubinstein, one of the greatest pianists of the 20^th century.  Rubinstein life is legendary, both musically and socially; he dominated the music scene for more than 80 years.  A small blurb would never do it justice, so we’ll have to start today and continue at a later date.  Rubinstein was born on January 28^th of 1887 in Łódź, in the part of Poland that back then belonged to the Russian Empire.  His Jewish parents owned a small textile factory.  Rubinstein was a child prodigy if ever there was one: at the age of three he was taken to Berlin to play for Joseph Joachim, the famous violinist and Brahms’s collaborator, who listen to him and declared that the boy may become a great musician.  He played his first concert in Łódź at the age of seven, and made his Berlin debut in 1900, playing Mozart’s Piano concerto no. 23, Saint-Saëns’s Piano concerto no. 2 and pieces by Schumann and Chopin (Joahim conducted the orchestra).  He started playing regular concerts in Poland and Germany, and in 1904 moved to Paris.  There, he became friends with many musicians: the violinist Jacques Thibaud, composers Maurice Ravel, Paul Dukas and another Pole, Karol Szymanowski.   Two years later, in 1906, he made his American debut at the Carnegie Hall, playing with the Philadelphia orchestra.  (He would play his last Carnegie Hall concert 70 years later, at the age of 89).   

January 29, 2018.  From Palestrina to Nono.  This week covers an incredible 450 year span of European classical music, from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose first compositions were published in 1554 to Luigi Nono, who died in 1990 and composed till his very last years.  Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn were also born this week, Schubert on January 31^st of 1797, and Mendelssohn – on February 3^rd of 1809.  We’ve written about both many times and of course will come back to them in the future.

We celebrate Palestrina this week even though we don’t know for sure what year he was born: letters and records from Palestrina’s life suggest that he was born sometime between February 3, 1525 and February 2, 1526 but these February dates provide us with a good excuse to commemorate the great Italian composer this week.  Palestrina’s life is rather well documented; we know that he started his training at the great basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, that he was later appointed to the Capella Giulia at Saint Peter and sometime later to the more prestigious Cappella Sistina.  In 1561 he succeeded Orlando di Lasso as maestro di cappella at San Giovanni in Laterano.  Funds were lacking, and the capella never reached the level sought by Palestrina; in 1566 he quit.  After serving for several years at his alma mater, Santa Maria Maggiore, and then, for a brief period, at the employ of Cardinal Ipolitto d’Este, at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, he eventually returned to the Vatican’s Capella Giulia and stayed there till the end of his life.  His fame grew across Italy and Europe; he was considered “the very first musician in the world” by a person close to Alfonso II d'Este - the Duke of Ferrara, who would know, since theDuke’s court was a major center of cultural life of Italy.  Palestrina died in 1594 in Rome.  He was widely published during his lifetime and admired by the popes for whom he worked, and other patrons of art:  Philipp II of Spain, the Gonzagas and d’Este.   Palestrina left a huge legacy: 104 masses, more than 300 motets, 140 secular madrigals and more.   We have several of his works in our library but here’s other example, a motet Dies sanctificatus.

January 22, 2018.  Mozart in Vienna, early years.  s birthday is this week – he was born on January 27^th in 1756.  Last year we wrote about his life and music during the period around 1781, when the 25-year-old Mozart finally left Salzburg and settled in Vienna.  He first stayed at Singerstrasse 7, not far from Stephansplatz.  Later in 1781 he moved in with the family of  the Webers.  Mozart met the Webers in 1777, while they still lived in Mannheim.  The Webers had four daughters, Aloysia, Josepha, Constanze and Sofie.  Both Aloysia and Josepha were fine singers; some years later Josepha would premier the role of the Queen of Night in The Magic Flute.  Mozart promptly fell in love with Aloysia, but had to leave Mannheim after a short stay as his father Leopold wanted him to go to Paris.  Several months later Mozart met Aloysia again, this time in Munich, where she was singing at the Court Theater.  Unfortunately, by then Aloysia’s feeling had changed, she even pretended not to recognize Mozart.  According to Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, Mozart’s biographer and the husband of Mozart’s widow, Constanze, Mozart’s reaction was swift: he sat at the piano and sung, “The one who doesn’t want me could kiss my ass” (Mozart wasn’t shy of using scatological terms).

While living with the Webers in Vienna, Mozart fell in love with Constanze, the third daughter.  They married on August 4^th of 1782 (papa Leopold consented to the marriage only grudgingly).  In the following years, till his death in 1791, he and Constanza moved a dozen times but all of their addresses were within the city’s central First District. 

January 8, 2017.  Three pianists.  Three great pianists of the last century were born last week, and by remarkable coincidence all three were born on the same day, January 5^th: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in 1920, Alfred Brendel in 1931, and Maurizio Pollini – in 1942.  So very different as performers (even their repertoires have little in common), all three were cerebral musicians who did not wear their hearts on the sleeve.  Their playing is faithful to the score and emotions come from the composer, not the artifice. 

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was born in Brescia, northern Italy.  Though he started studying the violin (at the age of three), he switched to the piano soon after.  He was accepted at the Milan Conservatory at ten and graduated at the age of 14.  He was not very successful at the Ysaÿe International Festival in 1938, where he took 7^th place (Emil Gilels was the winner) but a year later he won the Geneva Piano competition.  There, the perfection of his playing already apparent, and he was called “the new Liszt.”  In 1940 he played a sensational debut concert in Rome.  During WWII he served in the Italian air force but resumed his career soon after the war’s end.  He debuted in London in 1946 and in the US – in 1948.  In the 1950s he stopped concertizing for a while, concentrating on teaching, and formed his own International Pianists’ Academy.  Maurizio Pollini and Martha Argerich were his students.  Michelangeli resumed playing concerts in 1960, even though he was known to cancel almost as many concerts as he played.  Michelangeli’s repertoire was very small for a pianist of his standing, especially compared to pianists like Sviatoslav Richter, but the crystalline perfection of his playing was incomparable.  Michelangeli died in Lugano on June 12th of 1995.  Here’s Chopin’s Ballade no. 1 in his 1972 recording.