December 7, 2015.This is another unusually bountiful week.Monday the 7th is the birthday of Pietro Mascagni, the composer of Cavalleria Rusticana, one of the two greatest verismo operas.Mascagni was born in 1863 and wrote Cavalleria in 1890.It was premiered earlier than Verdi’s Falstaff, which was staged in 1893.Hard to imagine that Mascagni died in August of 1945: as wonderful as it is, his music belonged to a bygone era.Another Italian, Bernardo Pasquini, one of the most important keyboard composers of the late 17th – early 18th century, was also born on this day, in 1637.Here’s his delightful “Toccata del cucco“ (the Cuckoo toccata), which Ottorino Respighi used practically verbatim in his orchestral suite Gli Uccelli (The Birds).Here, though, it’s played the way Pasquini intended, on a harpsichord.It’s performed by Lorenzo Ghielmi.The following day (the 8th) we have four anniversaries with all four composers coming from the different countries: Jean Sibelius, the great Finnish composer who was born in 1865. Manuel Ponce, probably the best known Mexican composer (Ponce was born in 1882), a very interesting Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, who was born in 1890, and finally, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish descent (he was known in the Soviet Union as Moisey Weinberg).
Weinberg was born in 1919 in Warsaw and fled to the Soviet Union at the outbreak of t WWII when the Germans attacked Poland (his parents and sister perished during the Holocaust).Weinberg wrote twenty-two symphonies and more than 20 quartets, but his music was practically ignored in the Soviet Union, even though many considered him the third most important composer in the country after Prokofiev and Shostakovich.That changed somewhat with the revival of his opera “The Passenger.” The opera tells a story of a German couple on a cruise.The woman seems to recognize a fellow passenger and in a moment of shock, reveals to her husband that she worked as a guard in a concentration camp where the other passenger was an inmate. The harrowing story of the life in the camp is recounted on a lower deck of the ship.A Polish play by Zofia Posmysz, herself a concentration camp survivor, which served as the basis for the opera libretto, was also used by the talented Polish director Andrzej Munk for the screenplay of his 1963 film, “Passenger.”Weinberg’s opera was scheduled for a premiere in 1968 in the Bolshoi Theater but was canceled by the Soviet authorities at the last moment.The first concert performance took place in 2006 in Moscow; the opera was then properly staged in Europe in 2010 and in the US in 2014 (it had its very successful Chicago premier at the Lyric Opera earlier this year).Here’s Weinberg’s instrumental piece, his piano sonata no. 3, op. 31.It’s performed by Murray McLachlan.
What we had so far is plenty already, but there are more anniversaries this week: the Spanish composer Joaquin Turina was born on the 9th, in 1882; César Franck – on the 10th of December, in 1822.The same day is the birthday of one of our favorite composers, Olivier Messiaen.Another Frenchman of immense talent, Hector Berlioz was born on December 11th of 1803.And finally, on the same day in 1908 Elliott Carter was born in Manhattan.Carter died in 2012, one month short of his 104th birthday.He wrote his last composition three months earlier.Carter is a seminal American composer and we’ll dedicate an entry to him alone sometime later.Right now, though, here’s his String Quartet No.5.It’s a difficult piece but very much worth the effort.It’s performed live by the Pacifica Quartet.
The week of December 7, 2015
December 7, 2015. This is another unusually bountiful week. Monday the 7th is the birthday of Pietro Mascagni, the composer of Cavalleria Rusticana, one of the two greatest verismo operas. Mascagni was born in 1863 and wrote Cavalleria in 1890. It was premiered earlier than Verdi’s Falstaff, which was staged in 1893. Hard to imagine that Mascagni died in August of 1945: as wonderful as it is, his music belonged to a bygone era. Another Italian, Bernardo Pasquini, one of the most important keyboard composers of the late 17th – early 18th century, was also born on this day, in 1637. Here’s his delightful “Toccata del cucco“ (the Cuckoo toccata), which Ottorino Respighi used practically verbatim in his orchestral suite Gli Uccelli (The Birds). Here, though, it’s played the way Pasquini intended, on a harpsichord. It’s performed by Lorenzo Ghielmi. The following day (the 8th) we have four anniversaries with all four composers coming from the different countries: Jean Sibelius, the great Finnish composer who was born in 1865. Manuel Ponce, probably the best known Mexican composer (Ponce was born in 1882), a very interesting Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, who was born in 1890, and finally, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish descent (he was known in the Soviet Union as Moisey Weinberg).
What we had so far is plenty already, but there are more anniversaries this week: the Spanish composer Joaquin Turina was born on the 9th, in 1882; César Franck – on the 10th of December, in 1822. The same day is the birthday of one of our favorite composers, Olivier Messiaen. Another Frenchman of immense talent, Hector Berlioz was born on December 11th of 1803. And finally, on the same day in 1908 Elliott Carter was born in Manhattan. Carter died in 2012, one month short of his 104th birthday. He wrote his last composition three months earlier. Carter is a seminal American composer and we’ll dedicate an entry to him alone sometime later. Right now, though, here’s his String Quartet No.5. It’s a difficult piece but very much worth the effort. It’s performed live by the Pacifica Quartet.