Chopin - Piano Concerto No. 1 In E Minor

The natural gifts of any musician need to be formed around a solid technique. The very few who are extremely gifted in composition also need plenty of room to develop their personal voice. Chopin was one of the few that was born with genius, and he also had the good fortune of having as his first professional piano teacher a man that understood his pupil's gift straight away. Wojciech Żywny was a Czech pianist, violinist and teacher that guided Chopin through the basics of music and piano practice but also gave the young boy plenty of opportunity to learn for himself and develop his already unique talents according to his own desires.  The boy soon passed the teacher in skill and knowledge as he absorbed everything rapidly.

Chopin studied at home until he was thirteen and then entered the Warsaw Lyceum, but he continued to study piano under Zywny until 1826. Chopin never forgot his first teacher and was ever grateful for not only what he had taught him, but what he didn't teach him.  In 1826 Chopin began a three year course of study with Józef Elsner, another teacher that recognized Chopin's gifts and allowed him to develop in his own way.  With the guidance and teaching of these two selfless men, Chopin was acknowledged as the best pianist in Warsaw by the time he was 15 and developed into who many musicians think is the greatest piano composer that ever lived.

Under Elsner's tutelage, Chopin composed two piano concertos when he was about 20 years old. The concerto in E minor was actually the second one written but it was the first one published, hence the designation as Concerto No. 1.  Chopin had already made his brilliant debut in Vienna in 1829 only three weeks after graduating from the Warsaw Conservatory when he premiered his Piano Concerto No.2   in Warsaw later that same year, and the premiere of  Piano Concerto No.1 in 1830 in Warsaw during a farewell concert.

The star of both Chopin's concertos is quite naturally the piano.  Despite a long-held tradition that Chopin was not much of a composer for the orchestra, keeping in mind Chopin's spot-lighting the piano, the orchestration is neither too much nor too little. Chopin has the orchestra support the piano where it needs it, gently accompany it when it needs it, and be silent altogether when it doesn't need it.  The concertos, like any work of genius, are best judged within the confines of their own content and technique. Chopin was not trying to be formally perfect or heaven-storming like Beethoven. He was trying to express himself as best he could within his own genius. And in that task he was completely successful.

The first concerto is in three movements:

I. Allegro maestoso - Chopin always used the confines of sonata form in his own unique way. He has been criticized for his lack of skill in using the form, but he more than makes up for it by his sheer imagination and creativity. He uses unexpected modulations in this first movement and while this goes against 'classic' sonata form, it does make for interesting listening.   

II. Romance - Larghetto -  Chopin himself explained this movement in a letter to a friend:

“The Adagio of my new concerto is in E major. It is not meant to create a powerful effect; it is rather a Romance, calm and melancholy, giving the impression of someone looking gently towards a spot that calls to mind a thousand happy memories. It is a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening.”

III. Rondo - Vivace - This movement is a tuneful Polish dance set in the traditional rondo form.

Chopin is one of the most original and unique composers that ever lived. That needs to be taken into consideration when listening to the piano concertos. His two piano teachers recognized his genius and did all they could to allow that genius to develop in its own way. The music that Chopin wrote serves as proof that his teachers knew what they were doing.

Mendelssohn - String Symphony No. 10 In B Minor

Felix Mendelssohn's natural musical abilities were recognized early.  He began piano lessons with his mother at age six, and learned so quickly that he had his first public appearance at age nine. Felix began composition and counterpoint lessons with the esteemed teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin about 1819. His teacher was an advocate of the J.S. Bach tradition and gave his student a thorough grounding in the works of the older master and other composers of the Baroque and Classical eras.

Mendelssohn's earliest surviving compositions date from 1820, and in 1821 he composed the first six of what was to become a total of twelve symphonies for strings. These were written as composition exercises for his teacher, and the completed the set in 1823 when he was 14 years old. The string symphonies were thought lost for many years but they turned up in a library in Berlin after World War Two. These dozen string symphonies quickly led to Mendelssohn's early masterpieces the String Octet written at age sixteen and the Overture To A Midsummer Night's Dream written a year later.

Carl Zelter

The first six string symphonies are written in 3 movements with the later ones in 4 movements with the exception of No. 10 In B Minor which has one movement, and No. 11 In F Major which has 5 movements. No. 10 In B Minor may have had at least two more movements but they are lost.  The work was written when Mendelssohn was 14 years old. There are three tempo designations in the work:

Adagio -  A slow introduction begins this work with a nod to the music of J.S. Bach in feeling if not in construction. Towards the end the music lightens in mood and pays homage to Haydn and Mozart.

Allegro -  The beginning of the movement proper is a sudden shift in tempo and mood that reflects C.P.E. Bach's empfindsamer Stil with the first theme in early Haydn's Sturm und Drang style. The second theme has a rapid and busy quality that became a trademark of Mendelssohn's style. A third section adds additional material that leads up to the traditional repeat of the exposition. The development section repeats the two themes in various guises with few real surprises but a deftness in handling the material that is amazing for a composer of but 14 years.  The recapitulation begins with the first theme, and after a short section of transition the second theme returns in the home key of B minor.

Piu presto - The music increases in tempo and rushes breathlessly in a short coda that ends the work.

Shostakovich - Piano Trio No. 2 In E Minor Opus 67

Dmitri Shostakovich was refining his technique and losing some of his more radical avant garde style before the official denouncement of 1936, but  the denouncement forced him to try and write works that would curry public and more importantly Stalin's favor.  It was a life or death situation for the composer, and he knew it.

The 5th Symphony was written and titled An artist's creative response to just criticism. The work was a great success officially and with the public and Shostakovich had at least temporarily dodged the literal bullet, even though he put some subtle hints in the work that suggest it wasn't as heartfelt a rehabilitation as it appeared on the surface.  But Shostakovich had learned his lesson well. Stalin and his cronies were not men to be crossed, so Shostakovich wrote music to please Stalin, (all the while inserting subtle nose-thumbing) along with music that he wrote to please himself. He called these "works for the drawer", compositions that he could experiment with out of the public view. Many of these compositions remained in his desk drawer until the death of Stalin.

Shostakovich and Sollertinsky

Shostakovich was one of the great composers of string quartets of the 20th century, as he wrote 15 of them. They stand far and away as the form that he wrote most of his chamber music in.  He wrote the 2nd Piano Trio in 1944 during World War Two when he was 38 years old.  Shostakovich had come to international attention with the writing of his 7th Symphony earlier in the war, and as the 7th Symphony has been called a requiem for the 25 million Russians who perished in the war,  the 2nd Piano Trio can also be thought of as a requiem; this time for his good friend Ivan Sollertinsky, a critic and musicologist that suddenly died of a heart attack.

  The trio is in 4 movements:

I. Andante -  The work begins with the solo cello playing a theme in high, eerie harmonics. The violin enters, and the piano enters as all three instruments participate in a fugue that acts as an introduction to the rest of the movement.  Part of the fugue theme is incorporated into the first theme of the movement proper. Other themes are presented and the tempo varies as Shostakovich develops them all in the spirit of a folk tune, but with an edge. The movement ends quietly.

II. Allegro con brio -  The scherzo has Shostakovich sarcastically thumbing his nose as notes are repeated and tossed back and forth between the three instruments. The music never settles into anything more than a frenzied dance, and soon ends.

III. Largo -  The piano begins the movement with heavy chords. The violin enters with a sad theme as the piano chords continue to plod underneath. The cello enters and sings the lament as the violin plays a counter melody. This music is in the form of a chaconne, a set of variations over a ground bass played by the piano. The music remains slow and mournful throughout the movement, and ends with a quiet whimper from the strings.

IV. Allegretto -  The last movement begins with a Shostakovian dance tune, a theme that has the feeling of Jewish folk music,  first heard in the pizzicati violin, and then in the piano while both strings play pizzicato. The material of the march is developed at length. The theme from the first movement introduction returns, the dance music interrupts at length until the chords from the third movement chaconne appear out of nowhere. The Jewish dance tune briefly returns, slowly played in the strings, and the movement quietly ends in E major with the strings playing pizzicato over a piano chord.

Liszt - Fantasy On Motifs From Beethoven's Ruins Of Athens

Liszt was a tireless champion of Beethoven and his music. He was the first pianist to play the late piano sonatas, he gave a series of concerts where all the proceeds went to the cost to erect the Beethoven commemorative statue in Beethoven's birthplace of Bonn. Liszt did this with many other composers besides Beethoven.  His arrangements of other composers works runs the spectrum of literal transcriptions such as the Beethoven symphonies and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, to the 'paraphrases'  other composers operas where he would use a tune or a theme from the work as the basis of his original thoughts.  The ruins Of Athens Fantasy on the incidental music that Beethoven wrote for the play of the same name by playwright August von Kotzebue.  Beethoven's work was written in 1811 in Pest, Hungary for the dedication of a new theater there.

Beethoven's original music was comprised of eleven musical numbers interspersed throughout the play.  Liszt uses three of these numbers for his fantasy. Liszt wrote three versions of this fantasy, for piano solo, for two pianos, and for piano and orchestra. It is the version for piano and orchestra that is heard on the video.

Liszt begins the fantasy with an introduction that uses material from a March and Chorus section from the original music. The introduction is for orchestra only, and is brief. The second part begins with the solo piano loudly making an entrance and the theme of the first part is replaced by the whirling dervish music of the original. After the initial statement of this theme, the orchestra joins the piano. The third part is the Turkish March taken from the original. It is slowly introduced by piano and various instruments before it is given full voice. There is a short return of the preceding themes, and the work ends.

Liszt was one of the best sight-readers ever known. He could take a piece of music he had never seen and play it perfectly, in tempo, at sight. He could reduce orchestral scores to the essence of the music and play the most complicated music from sight. It was also said that the only time Liszt could play a piece of music and be faithful to what was printed on the page was the first time. After that, he began to change things in the score to suit him, at least with the new composers of the time. He was forever tinkering with other composer's music as well as his own. This musical tinkering no doubt lead to his many transcriptions, and lead to things like the Ruins Of Athens Fantasy.  But it also must be remembered that piano versions of great works were sometimes what made the work well known. The expense of an orchestra has always been great, no less so in Liszt's time,  and to be able to hear a new orchestral work was a luxury many listeners did not have. Liszt himself made Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique more well known when he would play his piano solo version of it in recital.  As it had been many years since Beethoven's original music had been heard, Liszt no doubt wanted to expose the listener to what he considered some of the best parts of it.  Liszt was a man inspired by other composers music in many ways. The use of another composer's tunes can be a sign of respect, and with Liszt's known regard for Beethoven's music, he no doubt meant it as such.

Mozart - Fantasia In D Minor For Piano

For any piece of music, there is only so much that can be notated on the page. It is of course the same way with language in a stage play. Stage direction can take it only so far, and to merely recite the words without the proper inflection or emotion would make for a pretty boring evening at the theater or concert hall. Of course that's where the skill, art and experience of the interpreter or performer of a piece comes into play. Within the directions given by the author or composer there exists an interpretive leeway that can make or break a performance.

There has been a slow and steady trend in music by composers to be very specific as to their intentions. Whether this is an all together good thing or not depends on the music in question and of course the listener's taste. But the music of history could be very sparse as to performing directions. Even the most basic tempo directions can be very sparse in the music of Bach. And here is one of the mysteries of Mozart's Fantasia in D Minor; It has very little performing directions outside of tempo indications, and the last ten bars are missing. Mozart evidently never got around to writing out the ending of the work or to notate more detailed dynamics or phrasing. Scholars believe that someone else besides Mozart wrote the last few bars of the work. 

The piece has three unbarred cadenzas, numerous fermatas, and changes tempo often. The name Fantasia does mean a certain amount of freedom in performance, and with the lack of direction in the piece it assures a variety of performances will happen. And they have. But to the player that is also a scholar, there are indications as to a proper performance by the time period it was written in, the composer who wrote it, and the traditions of the time.

The circumstances that have made freedom of expression so prevalent for this piece have also added to the degree of difficulty of it. If the performer doesn't have the ability to blend the sections into a whole, the seams can be heard and it becomes a string of loosely connected musical ideas that no matter how attractive some of them may be by themselves, the overall piece will suffer from sectionalization. The notes themselves are not difficult. Bringing them together and making music with them is. But that can be said for many of Mozart's works. But this particular piece is somewhat of an enigma, and remains an interpretive challenge for any pianist who chooses to tackle it.

For a more in depth analysis of the piece, I recommend the essay: W. A. Mozart: Fantasia in D minor for Piano - Paradoxes of Style and Interpretation or Fantasies about the Fantasia;by Sophia Gorlin. The essay can be found at her website.

Mozart

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Beethoven - Symphony No. 1 In C Major Opus 21

Beethoven approached the composition of his first symphony with caution, as the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn were still in the ears of music lovers, and he knew that much would be expected of his first effort in the form.  The earliest documented evidence of when Beethoven began to compose his 1st Symphony dates from 1795.  Beethoven completed its composition and it was first performed in April of 1800 in Vienna. 

Beethoven kept within the traditions of the two older masters, but also included his own style to the mix. The1st Symphony shows Beethoven's already strong penchant for the unusual. With extremes of dynamics, strong accents on and off the beat and harmonic peculiarities, Beethoven kept his contemporary audiences guessing. As the years progressed Beethoven continued to evolve and grow as a composer. In the 1st Symphony Beethoven pays homage to symphonic tradition while at the same time announcing to Vienna, the city of both Mozart and Haydn, that he had arrived.

I. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio –  Beethoven begins his debut symphony in tonal ambiguity. No doubt the experienced listener of his time expected something much different than what Beethoven gives them; an introduction that begins with a chord progression in the wrong key. The twelve-bar introduction leads to the first theme of the movement in the home key of C major. The second theme is in the expected key of G major, but Beethoven also throws in snippets of other themes in the exposition before he sticks with tradition and repeats the exposition. The development deals with the first theme. The recapitulation repeats the exposition with the obligatory key change of the second theme. The coda harks back to the first theme and rounds off the movement with repeated C major chords.

II. Andante cantabile con moto -  Written in F major, the second movement is also in sonata form. The first theme is played by the violins and repeated by the other strings contrapuntally. The second theme is a little lighter in feeling. After the development section deals with two themes, the recapitulation plays the music of the beginning of the movement with a few differences.  A coda develops the first theme slightly, after which the woodwinds have a short dialog with the strings and the movement ends.

III. Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace - Although Beethoven calls this movement a minuet, the material and the tempo show this to be a scherzo. Beethoven uses passages of scales, syncopations and sudden changes in dynamics in this movement that doesn't have much in the way of genuine thematic material. But he makes good use of short motives and accents to convey a sense of rapidity and wit.

IV. Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace - In another surprise, Beethoven begins with a loud G played across the instruments of the orchestra, which is followed by snippets of a scale climbing upward in a slow adagio. This all is by way of an introduction to this finale which is also in sonata form. The scale passages end on a fermata and the first theme of the movement bursts onto the scene. The second theme by contrast is a dancing theme.  The finale emulates many of Haydn's rapid and witty symphony finales but is underlined by Beethoven's style (what some of the time would call excesses) of dynamic, rhythmic and harmonic variety. 

Haydn - Keyboard Concerto No. 11 In D Major

Over his long life Joseph Haydn composed over 1,000 works in all genres. One of the smallest outputs in any genre was the solo concerto, of which there are less than fifty.  His concertos for keyboard contain some of his most popular music, but many are somewhat of a mystery. For one thing, there is disagreement as to how many he wrote, from eleven to as many as twenty five are attributed to him. But there is no question about the Keyboard Concerto In D Major. It has been one of Haydn's most popular pieces since its premiere in Paris in 1784, the success of which caused it to be published shortly after.

Most of the Haydn concertos can be played on harpsichord, organ or piano. Haydn wrote the work at a time where the piano had not yet beat out the harpsichord as the keyboard of choice for concertos, and Haydn himself would rename concertos he originally wrote for harpsichord as being playable by either instrument. This was a way to encourage performances of the works, which in turn led to better music sales, something publishers as well as composers were interested in.

The concerto is scored for pairs of oboes and horns (the first concerto he composed with wind instruments included) as well as the usual compliment of strings.  Modern performances are usually with the piano as the solo instrument. It is in three movements:

I. Vivace - The first movement is in sonata form and as usual practice for the era the orchestra introduces the themes of the movement before the soloist enters. When the soloist enters, the themes are not only played again but are elaborated on. Thus the second part of the exposition is longer than the first part. The development section concentrates on the first theme. The recapitulation repeats the first theme and gives a brief reference to other material from the exposition. Room for a cadenza by the soloist is provided, after which the movement is brought to a close by the orchestra.

II. Un poco adagio -  The strings of the orchestra begins the second movement, the soloist soon enters with a melancholy theme. The strings offer up a subtle accompaniment to the keyboard's aria. There is a cadenza for the soloist, and the strings with woodwinds gently end the movement.

III. Rondo all'Ungarese - Allegro assai -  The movement for which this concerto is most famous, as well as being some of Haydn's most recognizable music. Although the tempo indication calls it Hungarian, Haydn uses a Croation dance tune (there's still; plenty of disagreement about what was the actual area of origin of the tune) as the theme of the rondo. As music of any type of exotic feel (exotic being defined as any music with origins east of Vienna) was a fad at the time, it didn't much matter the source of the theme, but how it was used. It wasn't the first time Haydn used a folk tune in a composition, but it is one of his most successful. After a few repeats of the rondo alternating with episodes of other material, the orchestra and soloist take turns in repeating a fragment of the rondo theme and the movement comes to a close.