Saint-Saëns - Cello Concerto No. 1

Camille Saint-Saëns lived a long life,  (1835 - 1921) long enough to grow from his early years as a musical innovator to a musical conservative. His First Cello concerto was written in 1872 when he was still an innovator that took his lead from the 'modern' composers Liszt and Wagner.

The concerto is written in cyclic form in one continuous movement, but it has three main sections. Unlike other concertos, this one does not have an orchestral exposition before  the entrance of the soloist. Instead, there is one loud chord from the orchestra, then the cello is heard. Throughout the first section, themes are heard in the orchestra, the soloist, sometimes played against each other, sometimes played with each other. The first section is in sonata form sort of, but a rather loose sonata form with very little development of the themes. The first section segues into the second section. The second section is short and in the tempo of a minuet that segues into the third section which recapitulates some of the themes from the first section and then introduces new material before the ending.

The Cello Concerto No. 1 is very technically demanding for the soloist. Saint-Saëns exploits the extreme ranges of the instrument but all the while keeps the balance between soloist and orchestra such that the cello can always be heard. It is a virtuoso work written by a virtuoso composer for a virtuoso cellist, and one of the few cello concertos that have managed to remain in the repertoire.

Haydn - Symphony No. 92 ' Oxford '

Symphony 92 by Joseph Haydn is known by the subtitle of 'Oxford' because Haydn conducted the symphony when he was given an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1791.  But Haydn had no time to complete the symphony he meant to play at the ceremony, so he played another which was originally written in 1789 and performed for a Paris concert.  Haydn was 58 years old and this was his first trip outside the Austrian Empire.

Haydn wrote 106 symphonies, his first in 1759 and the last in 1795.  His last 12 were written for two visits to London that Haydn made. His first trip in 1791-1792 saw the English greeting him enthusiastically and Haydn wrote six symphonies and other music that was very popular. By the time he left London in 1792 he was even more famous than when he had arrived.  This prompted him to make another trip to England in 1794-1795, write six more very popular symphonies to even greater acclaim.

In London Haydn had the opportunity to work with and write for a large orchestra. He was used to writing for the small chamber orchestra of his patron the Esterhazy family.  Haydn took full advantage of the opportunity and wrote arguably his most forward-looking symphonies for his London visits.

Symphony 92 was a precursor of the London Symphonies (numbers 93-104). It was also an extension of his expanding of the form that was seen with the six Paris Symphonies (numbers 82-87).  From its slow introduction that leads to the jaunty tunes of the first movement to the giddy last movement, Symphony 92 shows the expertise of a master of the orchestra.

Paderewski - Symphony in B Minor 'Polonia'

Ignancy Paderewski (1860 - 1941) was a Polish pianist, composer, and politician. He was one of the first 'superstars'  of classical music that was popular with a wide audience of listeners of various tastes.  He made his debut in Vienna in 1887. He was a student of the famous piano teacher Theodor Leschetizky.

By the time of World War One he was internationally famous. During the war he helped organize the Polish National Committee. In 1919 the newly formed independent state of Poland appointed Paderewski Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. As such he attended the Paris Peace Conference and signed the Treaty of Versailles.  He resigned his posts at the end of 1919 and began concertizing again.

He gave more than 1500 recitals in the U.S. alone, and traveled the world over giving concerts. He made so much money that he had his own lavish private passenger car to travel by rail when he was in the United States, and people would meet his train when he came to town.  Many times he would play long past the end of the 'official' concert as he would play encore after encore as the audience desired.

He was also a great philanthropist and donated to many different charities. He was a very popular man because of his charismatic personality and charm as well as his musical talent.  He was a great orator, and was fluent in seven languages.

How Paderewski found the time to compose is a wonder.  He was not a man that let grass grow under his feet and just his concert schedule alone was enough to exhaust most people. But compose he did, with many pieces forsolo piano, a piano concerto, an opera, cantata, and a few works for orchestra including the Symphony in B minor subtitled ' Polonia'.

The symphony is in three movements with each one being like a tone poem. Paderewski subtitled the work 'Polonia', the Italian word for Poland and  the inspiration for the work came from his love for his homeland.  As such, it is a very subjective piece,  with parts of brilliant tonal color along with stretches of  quiet meditation. The structure of the symphony is very loose, and it plays more like a rhapsody than a typical symphony, but it is well worth listening to despite the occasional wandering. Paderewski was an intelligent and creative composer with a very real gift for orchestration.

I. Adagio maestoso. Allegro vivace e molto appassionato - The first movement begins with brooding music that leads to a flurry of passionate themes. One of the motifs that appears is a 'motif of violence', a dark and forbidding motif played by of all things four saurrusophones and percussion. This motif appears in all three movements and serves to aid as a unifying factor in a symphony that stretches symphonic form. The end of the movement turns solemn as an organ mournfully  plays a chord progression that leads the final cadence of the movement. The entire symphony has been describedas a program symphony with the first movement representing Poland's glorious past.

II. Andante con moto - Paderewski wrote his  symphony between 1903-1908. This movement represents the Poland of 1907 that was under Russian rule. Poland was a hotbed of revolutionary activity during the first attempted Russian Revolution of 1905.  Poland felt the repercussions from their revolutionary activity by being brutally domionated by The Empire.  The music flows from lyricism and resignation to recurrences of the dark motif of violence.

III. Vivace -  This movement represents Paderewski's hope of a bright and happy future for Poland as the motif of violence is finally defeated. There is a melody in this finale that is based on the Polish anthem 'Poland has not perished yet'.

Paderewski sketched a scherzo movement for this symphony but it was not completed. The symphony lasts well over an hour when played in full, with most performances being cut, especially the final movement. The performance in the link below is a version with cuts to the finale.

Tchaikovsky - Marche Slav

An artist is above all a human being, perhaps a human being to the nth degree. Tchaikovsky was such a human. His music can be passionate, emotional, sometimes completely over the top. He is a composer that was emotionally very vulnerable, and his great 'secret' of homosexuality made him all the more vulnerable emotionally and in other ways as well. Indeed, modern scholarship has refuted the 'official' cause of his death to drinking unboiled water during a cholera epidemic,  to suicide ordered by a 'court of honor'  because of his homosexual encounter with a member of the nobility.  That the court of honor would have exposed his secret was probably more than Tchaikovsky could have handled.

When Tchaikovsky's politics are considered, it makes for an interesting comparison with his outlook on his art. Politically, he was an ultra-conservative that was even against the freeing of the serfs in 1861, and was adamantly pro-Czar in his sympathies. His music and compositions were far from conservative, were progressive and in some instances revolutionary. But as with all human beings, Tchaikovsky could be an enigma on occasion.  Adamant about his outlook on his art, just as adamant on his outlook on politics and society, even if they are polar opposites.

Perhaps that is why such an emotional, heart-on-his-sleeve composer such as Tchaikovsky could write a piece such as the 1812 Overture and Marche Slav.  Both are patriotic pieces, and both even share some musical material. Marche Slav was commissioned by the Russian Music Society for a Red Cross benefit for Serbian soldiers that were fighting in a war against The Ottoman Empire.  Russia was an ally of Serbia and eventually did enter the war on the side of the Serbs.  Tchaikovsky wrote it using Serbian tunes and the Russian National Anthem of the time,  'God Save The Czar'. The Russian anthem is used to depict whe n the Russians entered the war and 'rescued' the Serbs.

Make no mistake, this music is a potboiler no matter how it's looked at. A piece of patriotism, written for money by a great composer to help pay the bills, but also because Tchaikovsky perhaps looked at it as a 'patriotic' thing to do. But all of that is no matter, in the final analysis. I've liked this piece from the first time I heard it, and after over thirty years of music listening, I still like it.  All of that probably says more about my taste in music than anything,  but I also think it shows that a great composer can catch your ear even when they write a potboiler.

 

Dukas - La Péri

Musically, France in the time of Paul Dukas ( 1865 - 1935) was of two camps, conservative and progressive. Dukas was not a member of either, but was admired by both sides, a feat that says much about the man himself.

He was a composer, critic and member of the faculty at the Paris conservatory.  He was severely self-critical as a composer and destroyed much of his work.  The music he published is of a very high quality, with his best known work being the symphonic poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice , very popular even before Walt Disney included it in his film Fantasia.   There is also a symphony, an overture, a piano sonata and other pieces for solo piano, one opera, and a ballet La Péri .  Dukas was well-known as a teacher of composition later in his life, and for his knowledge of historical music and its forms.

La Péri was written in 1911 and was commissioned by  the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev.  The fanfare for brass that opens the work was composed at a later date and was inserted at the beginning of the work because the original tone poem begins very quietly and Dukas was concerned that the audience would miss it.  Dukas called the piece a 'dance poem in one scene', and it is his last published work.  The original scenic and costume designs for the ballet were by Leon Bakst an example of his design for the costume for Iskender is shown below.

The story of the ballet comes from an ancient Persian legend. A prince named Iskender travels to the end of the world in search of the flower of immortality. He finds a péri  (a fallen angel) that has fallen asleep with a lotus flower in her hand.  He steals the flower, the péri wakes up and proceeds to dance and through her dance takes back the lotus. The prince feels as if his life were over, as the péri and the lotus fade away. The lotus flower was indeed the flower of immortality and without it the prince slowly dies.

Dukas was a fellow student of Debussy and admired his music.  La Péri shows that Dukas knew Debussy's music very well, for it is somewhat impressionistic like Debussy's, but in Dukas' own personal style.

Dittersdorf - Double Bass Concerto In E Major

Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739 - 1799) was an Austrian composer and violinist who was an important composer in the classical era. He was a court composer, and as such was quite prolific. He wrote 120 symphonies, 18 violin concertos, as well as many other works. He was an opera composer as well, and wrote 45 of them. His most popular work in his lifetime was the opera Doktor und Apotheker (Doctor and Apothecary) that premiered in Vienna in 1786 and was a tremendous success.  He knew Haydn and Mozart, and played string quartets along with them and his student Vanhal. Dittersdorf played 1st violin, Haydn 2^nd violin, Mozart viola and Vanhal cello.

Dittersdorf held various music positions with his longest tenure being 24 years at the court of Johannesberg (which is currently in the Czech Republic.)  To entice him to stay at court, he was given a noble title. His original surname was Ditters; his noble name became Ditters von Dittersdorf.

There was a small (and brief) school of double bass virtuoso playing in Vienna in the late 18th century, with the Italian bass virtuoso Domineco Dragonetti being the most famous of them. Dittersdorf no doubt wrote his two double bass concertos with this school of playing in mind.  The double bass is not usually thought of as a solo instrument because of the problems of balancing solo double bass and orchestra.  

The double bass of von Dittersdorf's time was not the instrument known today. It had three strings and was gradually replaced by the 4-string and five-string double bass. The 3-string bass had bottom E as the lowest note, while the modern bass could reach the C below that, thus increasing the bass range in the orchestra.  But there were instances of the 3-stringed double bass persisting because some thought the tone was better.

The concerto is sometimes transposed to D major, and is scored for 2 flutes, 2 horns, strings, and double bass solo. It is in the traditional three movements:

I. Allegro moderato- The orchestra plays the first theme and plays a section that connects to the entrance of the soloist playing the theme.  A section theme not heard initially enters and is played in flageolet tones, the old term for harmonics, high in the register of the bass. Both themes are developed in a short section of development before the recapitulation begins. Both themes are repeated and lead up to a cadenza where the soloist plays double stops and shows how the double bass can be an agile and expressive instrument in its own right. The movement then comes to an end in the syncopated rhythm in the strings that was heard at the beginning.

II. Adagio - The voice of the bass can seem tubby and thick even in the hands of a good player. It is the nature of the bass’s tone, and it gives a certain kind of charm to the gentle song the bass sings in this slow movement.  The soloist plays quite high in the register without using harmonics in the movement and cadenza, and it comes to a close. 

III. Allegro - The rondo theme is first heard in the orchestra, and the soloist then plays a short bridge to the repeat of the theme. The first episode has again shows the agility of the bass as it plays rapid arpeggios.  Short parts of the theme are heard and followed by the bass playing short episodes in harmonics, arpeggios, even combining the two with arpeggios in harmonics.  The final bars quicken the tempo and a final allegro statement of the theme ends the concerto. 

Alkan - Comme Le Vent (Like The Wind)

By contemporary accounts of those that heard him play, Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813 - 1888) had a technique equal to Liszt.  In fact, Liszt himself said Alkan had the finest technique he had ever seen. Even after Alkan became a recluse in 1848, on the odd occasion when he would play in public he retained his technique and amazed those who heard him.

Just why he became a recluse in 1848 is not certain. Before then he was seen regularly in public, was friends and neighbor to Chopin, knew Liszt and Anton Rubinstein, and played in the fashionable parlors and salons of Paris. But in 1848 he began to be seen less and less, gave up his appointment as the organist at the Paris Jewish Temple and stayed in his apartment, rarely admitting visitors or going out. He was passed over as the head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory in 1848, which disappointed him greatly.  After 1848, he continued his life-long study of the Talmud and he went on composing. Late in his life he gave a series of concerts at the Erard piano company studios where he played not only some of his own compositions, but those of his favorite composers.

Most of Alkan's compositional output was for the piano. He did write some chamber music, two very short pieces for piano and orchestra, and an orchestral symphony that is lost. Like Chopin, he wrote etudes in all the major and minor keys for piano.  His Opus 35 consisted of 12 major key etudes, and Opus 39 were the minor key etudes.  Comme Le Vent ( Like The Wind) is the first etude in the book of minor key etudes. It's 20 pages long, and like the title implies, should be played like the wind. The metronome marking is eighth note = 160, the piece is in the rare time signature of 2/16, and most of the piece consists of triplet 32nd notes in the right hand. The piece is a virtual perpetuum mobile as the pace doesn't slacken for the 4 and a half minutes it takes to play it:

It is a real test of a pianist's endurance and control. It is a fitting beginning to a set of pieces that Ronald Smith, a pianist that had a great deal to do with the revival of Alkan's music, called 'Alkan's Frankenstein's monster'.  The twelve etudes that comprise the volume include a Concerto for solo piano in 3 movements, a symphony for solo piano in 4 movements, an overture, set of variations, and the rest of the pieces of the set.