February 22, 2016. Auiric and Kurtág.By any count this should’ve been the week of George Frideric Handel, who was born on 23rd of February in 1685, but we’ve written about him many times (here and here, for example), so today we’ll mark his anniversary by playing the aria Ombra mai fu from his opera Xerxes. The magnificent Cecilia Bartoli is accompanied by Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini conducting.
There are several other composers of note who have their birthdays around this date.One of them is the French composer and member of Les Six, Georges Auric.Auric was born in Lodève, a small town in the southwestern part of France, on February 15th of 1899.His family moved to the nearby Montpellier, where Auric attended the conservatory.He studied piano and was introduced to the music of Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky.He also discovered the music of Satie, which later would become such an influence both on him and his friends.In 1913 his family moved Paris and Georges enter the Conservatory, where he studied with Florant Schmitt and Albert Roussel.When Georges was just 15, he got acquainted with many of the Parisian luminaries: Stravinsky, Apollinaire, Cocteau, Braque and Picasso.At the Conservatory, he met Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Germaine Tailleferre, all of whom eventually became associated with Les Six.(The group was the brain-child of Eric Satie, who wanted to organize musicians opposed to the music of Wagner and rebelled against the Impressionists.Satie came up with the idea after a concert in a private studio in Montparnasse in 1917.For that amazing concert, the walls were covered with pictures by Picasso, Matisse, Léger and Modigliani.The music that was performed was by Erik Satie himself, Honegger, Auric and Louis Durey).In the 1924, Serge Diagilev asked Auric to remake his incidental music to Molière’s comedy Les Fâcheux into a ballet.The ballet was successful and several other commissions followed, some from Diagilev, others from Ida Rubinstein.He also wrote music for several movies, including 1952 “Moulin Rouge,” with the song “Where is my heart,” which made it to no. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1953.But Auric remained a serious, probing composer throughout his career; in the 1960s and 1970s he even tried out serialism. Auric died on July 23rd of 1983.Here’s his Sonatine from 1922.It’s performed by the pianist Daniel Blumenthal.
We’d also like to mention another 20th century composer, the Hungarian György Kurtág, who was born on February 19th of 1926 in Lugoj, Banat.These days most of the historical Banat lies in Romania, but prior to 1918 Banat was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; many inhabitants were Hungarian-speakers.It also had a large Jewish population; Kurtág is half-Jewish.He spoke Hungarian at home and Romanian at school.As a child, he studied the piano on and off, first with his mother, then with professional teachers.After WWII, in 1946, the 20-year old Kurtág moved to Budapest and continued taking piano lessons, eventually entering the Franz Liszt Music Academy.There he met György Ligeti and they became friends for life.After the Hungarian revolution of 1956, Kurtág moved to Paris. There he studied with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud.He returned to Hungary in 1959 and stayed there for the duration of the Communist regime – the only Hungarian composer of international renown to do so (Ligeti, for example, fled to Vienna right after the failed revolution and stayed in the West for the rest of his life).Kurtág resumed traveling only after the fall of communism in 1989, moving first to Berlin (he was the composer in residence for the Berlin Philharmonic in the mid-90s), then Vienna, the Netherlands and Paris, where he worked with Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain.These days Kurtág and his wife live in Bordeaux.Here are Kurtág’s Eight duos for violin and cimbalom.Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the violinist, Viktor Kopatchinsky plays the cimbalom.
Auiric and Kurtág, 2016
February 22, 2016. Auiric and Kurtág. By any count this should’ve been the week of George Frideric Handel, who was born on 23rd of February in 1685, but we’ve written about him many times (here and here, for example), so today we’ll mark his anniversary by playing the aria Ombra mai fu from his opera Xerxes. The magnificent Cecilia Bartoli is accompanied by Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini conducting.
We’d also like to mention another 20th century composer, the Hungarian György Kurtág, who was born on February 19th of 1926 in Lugoj, Banat. These days most of the historical Banat lies in Romania, but prior to 1918 Banat was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; many inhabitants were Hungarian-speakers. It also had a large Jewish population; Kurtág is half-Jewish. He spoke Hungarian at home and Romanian at school. As a child, he studied the piano on and off, first with his mother, then with professional teachers. After WWII, in 1946, the 20-year old Kurtág moved to Budapest and continued taking piano lessons, eventually entering the Franz Liszt Music Academy. There he met György Ligeti and they became friends for life. After the Hungarian revolution of 1956, Kurtág moved to Paris. There he studied with Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud. He returned to Hungary in 1959 and stayed there for the duration of the Communist regime – the only Hungarian composer of international renown to do so (Ligeti, for example, fled to Vienna right after the failed revolution and stayed in the West for the rest of his life). Kurtág resumed traveling only after the fall of communism in 1989, moving first to Berlin (he was the composer in residence for the Berlin Philharmonic in the mid-90s), then Vienna, the Netherlands and Paris, where he worked with Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain. These days Kurtág and his wife live in Bordeaux. Here are Kurtág’s Eight duos for violin and cimbalom. Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the violinist, Viktor Kopatchinsky plays the cimbalom.