June 26, 2017.  Beethoven, Symphony No. 7.  Below is the article by Joseph DuBose on Beethoven’s Symphony no.7.  As always with Beethoven’s symphonies, our problem was in selecting a recording to illustrate it: there are myriads in existence, many of superb quality.  We chose a remastered live recording made by Carlos Kleiber with the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra in 1976.  You can listen to it here.  ♫

Symphony No. 7 in A major

Beethoven completed the Symphony No. 7 in 1812. Four years separated it from the “Pastoral”—the longest span between any of the symphonies thus far. Yet, that interval does not mark a period of lesser creativity in Beethoven’s career. Many important works appeared during that time, including two string quartets (opp. 74 and 95), the music for “Egmont,” “King Stephen,” and the “Ruins of Athens,” the Choral Fantasia, and the F-sharp minor and “Les Adieux” piano sonatas.

Beethoven’s style continued to advance during this period. With each decisive step he brought music closer to embodying the deepest expressions of the human soul. Thus far, his music had embodied the grand, the lofty, the profound, and, quite remarkably, was largely uninfluenced by the day-to-day events of the composer's life. What Beethoven had not yet explored, at least in his symphonies, was humor. Beethoven had always indulged in coarse jokes, puns, and nicknames, but in his later years, his humor became even more pronounced. He even had a special word for his unique, off-putting behavior: aufgeknöptf, or “unbuttoned.” In one such instance of this behavior, Beethoven, when visiting his friend Breuning, would, if having just come in from the rain, take off his hat and dash water off it in all possible directions, without the slightest regard for what furniture or people may have been nearby. Another example involved his brother. When Johann left a card for Beethoven that read, “Johann van Beethoven, Landed proprietor,” Beethoven quickly responded with his own: “Ludwig van Beethoven, Brain proprietor.” Though brief glimpses of this rough humor can be found as early as the Second Symphony, Beethoven had not yet allowed it an outlet in his music until the composition of the A major Symphony.

June 19, 2017.  A Stamitz and a Bach.  Johann Stamitz was born on this day in 1717 in a small town of Německý Brod (German Ford in the Czech) in Moravia, then part of the Austrian Empire.   He studied in the Jesuit Gymnasium in Jihlava known across Europe for its high quality of musical education.  He then studied at Prague University and then, it’s assumed, embarked on a career of a violin virtuoso.  Sometime around 1741 Stamitz was hired by the Mannheim court of the Elector of Palatinate.  At the time, the court had an excellent orchestra.  In June of 1742 he played at a concert and, according to the advertisement, was to perform on the violin, viola d’amore, cello and double bass.  His rise was very quick: a year later he became the first violinist of the court orchestra, in 1745 – the Konzertmeister and in 1750 – director of instrumental music.  As such he was responsible for both composing and performing music for the court.  Under the leadership of Stamitz the orchestra improved even further, both technically and musically, becoming the most renowned orchestra in Europe.  In 1754, Stamiz went to Paris and stayed there for a year.  He performed, to great acclaim, in private residences of the nobility and also at the Concert Spirituel at the Tuileries Palace, the first ever public concert series.  Stamiz returned to Mannheim in the fall of 1755.  Two years later, on March 27^th of 1757, he died at the age of 39.  Johann Stamitz, had two composer sons who became as well known as their father, and is mostly famous for his symphonies (he wrote 58 of them) and his orchestral trios.  Here is his Pastorale Symphony.  Virtuosi di Praga are conducted by Oldřich Vlček.

June 12, 2017.  Stravinsky, Pleyel.  Igor Stravinsky, one of the most influential composers of the 20^th century, was born on June 17^th of 1882 in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov) outside of Saint Petersburg.  For years, as we celebrated Stravinsky, we were traversing his life in its amazing transmutations.   We’ve mentioned it before, but one can think of only one other artist who could change his creative styles so drastically and succeeded so enormously in every one of them – and that’s Picasso.  Last year we wrote about one of Stravinsky’s most successful neoclassical pieces, his ballet Apollo.  Apollo was composed early in 1928.  Stravinsky was living in France and leading, at least on a personal level, a double life: while still married to Catherine (Katya) Nosenko, mother of his four children, he had since 1921 been carrying on an affair with Vera de Bosset, then the wife of the painter Sergei Sudeikin (Vera would leave Sudeikin a year later).  Stravinsky bought a house in Anglet just outside of Biarritz and moved his family there.  When not visiting Anglet, he lived in Paris with Vera.   Katya knew about the affair but didn’t do anything about it.  Stravinsky stayed married to Katya for the remainder of her life; the last years were very unhappy.  Some years earlier Katya had contracted tuberculosis, which had developed slowly, but in 1938 she infected both Igor and their daughter Lyudmila.  Lyudmila died in 1930 at the age of 30, Catherine – three months later, in March of 1939.  Igor spent several months in a hospital but recovered.

June 5, 2017.  The Cliburn and the IMF.  The 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is entering its final round: the six finalists will be announced later today.  Every lover of classical music in this country is aware of the Cliburn, the premier piano competition organized by the late Van Cliburn in 1962, four years after he won the first Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow.  Many of the Cliburn winner and even participants who didn’t get top prizes went on to develop great careers: Nikolai Petrov, Radu Lupu, Rudolf Buchbinder, Cristina Oriz, Vladimir Viardo, Barry Douglas, Olga Kern, Aleksey Sultanov, to name just a few.  While the Cliburn is known worldwide, the International Music Foundation, a Chicago organization that presents high-quality music performances by emerging artists and supports music education in the area, isn’t well known even in its home city.  And yet, Chicagoans can listen live to some of the best young pianists who are today performing in Fort Worth: the flagship program of the IMF is the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, and many of its “alumni” went on to participate in and win major music competitions.  This year, three such musicians, Daniel Hsu, Georgy Tchaidze and Rachel Kudo played at the Cliburn.  All three made it to the quarterfinals, while Hsu and Tchaidze went a step further, to the semifinals.  Today we’ll find out if they make it into the final round.  The 19-year-old Daniel Hsu is a native of San-Francisco.  At the age of 10 he was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Garry Graffman and Eleanor Sokoloff.  He was named a Gilmore Young Artist in 2016 and a year later played a concert at Carnegie Hall.  In the preliminary round of the Cliburn, Daniel played Beethoven’s 31^st piano sonata.  Earlier this year, he played the same sonata at the Dame Myra Hess concert; you can listen to it here.  In the quarterfinals, he played Bach’s Chaconne from the violin Partita in d minor, BWV 1004, arranged for the piano by Ferruccio Busoni.  You can listen to it in a live recording, here.

Georgy Tchaidze was born in Saint Petersburg and studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Sergey Dorensky.  He then moved to Berlin where he continued his studies with Klaus Hellwig at the Berlin University of the Arts.  Georgy is a winner of several international competitions and performed across Europe, North America and China.  Here he’s collaborating with the German-Korean violinist Clara-Jumi Kang in Johannes Brahms’s Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op. 78 in G Major.

May 29, 2017.  A different Les Six.  No less than six noted composers were born this week.  None of them arrived at the pinnacle of their profession, but all six are very interesting in one way or another.  Chronologically, the composers are: Georg Muffat, Marin Marais, Mikhail Glinka, Edward Elgar, Isaac Albéniz and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.  Muffat and Marais were born just three years apart: Muffat on June 1^st of 1653 and Marais – on May 31^st of 1656.  They even had the same teacher, Jean-Baptiste Lully.  In all other respects, their lives and their music were very different.  Muffat, of Scottish and French descent, led a peripatetic life.  Born in the Duchy of Savoy, he studied in Paris, then worked in Alsace before settling in Vienna.  From there he traveled to Prague and, eventually, Salzburg.  There he worked for the archbishop, as Mozart would 100 years later.  After a ten year stay in Salzburg he went to Rome where he met Arcangelo Corelli and many other famous musicians of the day.  He returned to Salzburg two years later but didn’t stay long.  He moved to Augsburg, Bavaria, and later – to Passau, where he lived the remaining years of his life.  He died in Passau, 50 years of age, on February 23^rd of 1704.  Marais, on the other hand, was born in Paris and died in Paris.  He went to the choir school of St Germain-l'Auxerrois, one of the best music schools in Paris.  He studied the viol with several teachers, one of whom was the famous player Sainte-Colombe (it’s said that Marais surpassed him after six months of study).  He was invited to play at the orchestra of the Opera, where Lully was the music director.