Poulenc: Aubade, concerto choregraphique for piano and 18 instruments

Youtube has four very decent recordings of this piece (possibly more, but these were my highlights)

Claire-Marie Le Guay with Christophe Mangou and the Orchestre Nationale d'lle de France. I like this one because aside from being very well executed, it's a video and you can see (sort of) the unusual instrumentation and the configuration, which is one that Poulenc includes himself in the score of the piece.
Sviatoslav Richter
Pascal Roge
Jacques Fevrier

I. Toccata (Lento e pesante - Molto animato)
II. Récitatif: Les compagnes de Diane (Larghetto)
III. Rondeau (Allegro) - Entrée de Diane (Piu mosso)
IV. Toilette de Diane (Presto)
V. Récitatif: Introduction à la Variation de Diane (Larghetto)
VI. Andante: Variation de Diane (Andante con moto - Animer - Emporté)
VII. Allegro feroce: Désespoir de Diane
VIII. Conclusion: Adieux et depart de Diane (Adagio - Più mosso)

Poulenc's 1929 Aubade was written for and financed by the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noailles, the latter of who was one of 20th-century Paris's most forward-thinking and visible arts patrons. Its unusual instrumentation - it is one of a fairly exclusive group of orchestral concert pieces that does not include violins - is a result of the ensemble that was budgeted for the fete given the evening of the premiere at the Noailles' mansion on June 18th, 1929.
Poulenc was a master of compositional balance, toeing the line between levity and depth, clarity and richness. This piece, now known more or less as Poulenc's first piano concerto, was originally conceived as ballet music and was premiered with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska (George Balanchine choreographed the public premiere some months later). It chronicles the story of the Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt and of chastity. The action of the ballet depicts her anguished struggle with her fate-decreed bonds of abstinence; its name refers to a Middle Age piece played or sung outdoors at dawn, and references the fact that the plot here begins at daybreak and ends at dawn one day later. While the Aubade has since become exclusively a concert piece - in fact, Poulenc cautions performers and audiences not to overcredit the programmatic aspect of this piece - it is still evident that Diana's plight of solitude informs the character and emotional shape of this piece.
The Aubade opens with a stark brass fanfare, and the first of the eight short segments (which are performed without pause) consists mostly of a frenzied solo piano cadenza channeling Diana's distress and loneliness, at odds with her eternal chastity. The orchestra's reentrance signals the awakening of Diana's companions, and the music is at first grim and foreboding but then slides into a graceful rondo, with the piano stating each subject and theme before ceding it to the orchestra. Diana's entrance at the Piu mosso is marked by a brightening of timbres and quickening of pace. The third segment, marked Presto, is a merry, quick and lively depiction of the companions as they dress Diana for her day, and its pert ending marks the conclusion of the first half of the piece.
The following Recitatif is more solemn, beginning with dissonant flourishes from the bassoons and oboes, and marked by firm dotted rhythms. Diana is handed a hunting bow, upon which she proceeds to dance alone in a lovely but resigned Andante introduced by solo clarinet and flute. The end of this dance is marked by a pale oscillation in the flutes, a foreshadowing of the ending. The penultimate movement, Diana's despair, is a furious and fierce outburst. It is over as suddenly as it began, however, and in the end succumbs to bleakness and loneliness. The clarinets give a flurry of protest, but in the end, a lonely solo cello line leads us to the austere coda, which features a stern brass statement overlain by a seemingly neverending series of A-minor oscillations in the upper winds and solo piano. Eventually these, too, recede into the unelaborate ending of a single low A piano strike.

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26 in C Major - I. Andante - Allegro

The first movement is featured here, though hopefully sometime I will find the time to do the rest of it. Program notes for ICSO 3/3

Can't go wrong with Argerich.

Prokofiev's third and most enduringly popular piano concerto was premiered in 1921 (though sketches of the second movement date as far back as 1913). The bulk of the composition was completed during the summer of that year, which he spent in Brittany, France. He premiered it himself that December with Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Vital and witty, this three-movement concerto is a pillar of the
twentieth-century piano repertoire.

The first movement opens with a quiet and lyrical clarinet solo, which the strings also quote. The introspective mood does not last long, however, as the strings rush forward with sixteenth notes to begin the Allegro, and the piano bursts forward with the main subject, a lively chattering theme. A slower, more wistful theme is articulated first by the oboe over pizzicato strings, which the piano develops before accelerating into a series of cascading triplets which crescendos into a grand restatement of the Andante theme, now given fully and expressively by the entire orchestra. The music segues into a long, discursive development of this theme. Then, with four quietly expectant chords intoned by the winds, the Allegro is brought back with a vengeance. The recapitulation features abrupt, jagged tempo changes that highlight each returning theme. The recapitulation of second theme winds down gradually, as if out of steam. But just before the listener catches his breath, the piano enters for the final flourish, a continuous run of sixteenths which drives forward inexorably to a thrilling close.

Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major

this has been my absolute favorite piano concerto for at least a year now, and i'm not sure anything will change that too soon. it is being performed here next week, and so i have written program notes for it. they are necessarily brief because of the nature of the concert, which involves a lot of selections, but actually halfway through writing them i just turned on the capslock and wrote, I FUCKING LOVE THIS CONCERTO AND YOU SHOULD JUST LISTEN TO IT BEFORE I RUIN IT WITH PALTRY WORDS. and that's how i feel. but this is my best effort at it.

and this is the only recording anyone in need of a recording should watch:

he gets a real grace and elegance and effortlessness, and all while looking like it takes no effort at all. of course, just for shock value, the recording of bernstein conducting this WHILE AT THE PIANO is also worth a gander. argerich also has a beautiful rendition.

One of two piano concerti Ravel composed, this dazzling jazz-influenced work premiered to long-lasting success in 1932, with Marguerite Long at the piano and Ravel himself conducting. Though it sparkles pianistically, its color and character derive in equal part from Ravel's distinctive use of the orchestra, which is as vital in this work as in any of his exclusively orchestral compositions.

The first movement opens with a single whip crack and a sprightly first subject presented by the winds above a light accompaniment and scintillating flourishes in the piano. Gradually the entire orchestra joins in the theme, until the piano emerges with a rhapsodic discourse, punctuated by blues figures from the winds; the second theme ascends, lyrical and more introverted, is introduced quietly by the piano. Syncopated accents characterize the motorlike return of opening material, and the exposition concludes with a flourishing cadenza that brings back material from the opening. The dreamlike development is a thoughtful extension upon the first theme, featuring string harmonics, a harp solo, and massive colorful outbursts from the orchestra. The second theme's development crests into the same motor of sixteenths which incessantly drives us forward to the boisterous, brassy descending scale that concludes the movement.

The transcendent second movement spotlights one of Ravel's most ethereal strokes of lyrical genius, and one of his most hard-won. The first subject, presented initially only by the solo piano, exists serenely for several minutes, until a solo flute breaks the reverie and allows the rest of the orchestra to enter. The second subject is darker and accompanied by dissonant rising chords in brass and winds, but retains the stately loveliness imparted by the incessant waltz-like chords in the solo piano. After a brief and lushly dissonant zenith, the first theme is brought back by an extended English horn solo, around which the piano flows gently and continually to a glowing close.

The third movement is a moto perpetuo, a tour de force by both soloist and orchestra. It opens with four explosive chords which recur throughout the movement, and features difficult solos for almost all the wind and brass instruments. The movement switches between a sixteenth-note running motor and a galloping triplet figure, and ends abruptly, with the same four chords that open the movement.

Cage: Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra

i won't pretend to understand most of this piece, but i would like to talk a bit about the setup and things that are involved in performing it, since we did so just the other week here at school.

this piece is three movements (without break) in 21 minutes, and involves a highly prepared piano along with a bunch of fairly nonconventional percussion. since i wasn't involved in the piano preparation, i'm just going to list the objects that are needed here and move on to a discussion of the other performance setups.

objects needed for the piano: 8 screws, 40 bolts (including headless, black, stove and furniture bolts, bolts in thin rubber casing, 1 bolt with weather stripping etc.), 4 short strips of rubber (or 8 wedges carved from soft rubber erasers), 4 rubber bolts, 1 US penny, 1 strip of felt, 11 strips of soft plastic (wire insulation), and a plastic bridge.

this list is courtesy of Tzenka Dianova, from "John Cage's Prepared Piano: the Nuts and Bolts"

the most problematic item above is the plastic bridge, which is not well described (or even really described at all. the idea is that the bridge rests on the sounding board and produces microtones. the suggestion in this book is a plastic ruler which was trimmed to fit under the indicated strings.

the piece is described as a kind of a middle ground between written out music and cage's "chance" music. he uses a technique called "gamut" which is where he creates and (geometrically) moves across rectangular charts of notes, chords and sonoroties to derive his music. in the first movement, the orchestra music uses one of these charts while the piano is improvisatory and like "free composition,"; in the second, a different chart is created for the piano part, and in the third, both piano and orchestra use the same chart. 

below is a recording from youtube.

the piece calls for a number of very unconventional percussion implements, among them a metal slinky suspended from a height and flicked with a fingernail. you can hear this at about 8:08. obviously because of the nature of the instrument it has to be amplified.

another electronic aspect is the boom box/radio which is supposed to be "set to a local station" and played at certain points in the score (usually for no more than one or two seconds). this introduces another element of chance and can result in some spectacularly awkward moments in the performance. (i think 3:29 is one of these, as is 8:46.)

the piece is scored also for an electric "buzzer" which should be audible at just after 8:00, although i can't seem to discern it in this recording (it should be pretty much corresponding with the thunder sheet sound). i think for this we just used a buzzer button amplified.

other unusual implements include a metal garbage can (2:17), various types of maracas and shakers, thunder sheet, and a "water gong," which is a gong that is struck and then lowered/raised into a tub of water, which bends and alters the pitch. there are also a number of points at which one of the percussion people has to go in and scrub some sort of metal apparatus along the piano strings as the piano player plays (orchestral - there is another pianist who plays both a prepared piano as well as a celest, in addition to the concerto soloist)  (5:43 is one example of this sound, as is about 6:03); we also amplified this. piano strings can take a lot of abuse, as long as the soundboard isn't messed with too much.

the piece is so spare that we decided to perform it with most of the lights dimmed and stand lights for all the performers. it gave it a sort of eerie and surreal feel. this piece is quite difficult to get into - the only thing i catch on to really is the d minor chord that opens the piece :P

but it's good to keep an open mind. enjoy!

if you would like to see a nice video of this piece being performed, there is a video of the IC chamber orchestra performing it here. i think both the buzzer and the slinky are much more successful in this performance, you can hear both in close proximity from about 22:53 to 23:00. in particular our slinky sounded less like metal rattling and much more like a toy gun :)

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 - III. Allegro giocoso, ma no troppo vivace

there are some words that simply carry more heft when you see them in a tempo marking, and "giocoso" is definitely one of them. this is the only movement which is actually inclined towards virtuosic display.

milstein video for your viewing pleasure.

this is pretty standard rondo form, or sonata-rondo form if you prefer. A section those jolly double stops at the opening; this will be the refrain.

0:58 B section - crazy arpeggios, slurred, spiccato, followed by ascending octaves. this first time it hints the entire time at A major, though it never actually resolves into it. the refrain of the A section comes at 2:12.

2:27 transition begins to a C section which starts proper at about 2:48. this is more lyrical, though no less technical for it. this section starts to feel a bit developmental; the lyrical theme is taken into several key areas, revving up around 3:30 and dovetailing into the ascending octaves from the B section right at 3:43. this a bit of a recap; the B section is now in a different key and cadences in D.

an F-sharp minor statement of the A section brings us up to speed for a lead-up to a cadenza section which includes thrilling ascending chords and octave leaps.

5:18 is a remarkable section - completely new material, fresh and songlike, very much Bach-inspired. this only lasts a short while though, before a series of trills ramps it up again and brings it to the dominant chord needed to set up a short cadenza full of arpeggios.

6:31 the final statement of the main theme except now in a galloping 6/8. this adds a romping quality which is broken briefly by a section of virtuosic play on the latter half of that theme, only to return to the triplet rhythms and loud orchestral tutti descending arpeggios leading us to the wrong place a couple times (note the weird e-flat major chord at 7:15) allowing for just a bit more play on the original theme before a final declamatory statement of brilliance in the 6/8 rhythm, which sets off the coda at 7:28. from there on the movement seems to wind down before finally throwing the last surprise, three triumphant chords to finish.

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 - II. Adagio

sarasate famously refused to play this concerto because he did not want to stand idly by while the oboe played the "only tune" in the second movement. but what a tune! and it's not as if the violin doesn't get to play it.

heifetz/reiner.
soloist enters at 2:14 with a variation on the oboe's melody. it is a simple melody, and the violin part merely adds endless ornamentations onto it.
a shift at around 3:08 has us landing in the faraway key of g-flat major. this is the beginning of a development which is really more like a rhapsodic interlude; a passionate outburst at 3:50 brings out a whole new melody which is angst-filled and reaches new heights of melancholy which are explored in the rest of this middle section. this middle section is characterized by seemingly aimless meandering by the violin part alternating with returns of the passion demonstrated at 3:50. the violin part gets ever higher until the shimmering high d at 5:13. after reaching this apex, all holds still for just a moment, and then violin begins a set of downward octaves which is actually the recap: you can hear the oboe playing an abbreviated version of the exposition melody as the violin descends.
he winds up this melody to a more passionate climax this time: building it up beginning around 6:08, he uses the horn to nudge the violin up to ever-higher heights, until it ends on a high C and, after holding the harmony almost unbearably, has no choice but to wind down.

the coda is short and quiet, but listen to the diminished d chord that pops out of nowhere at 7:47 to intensify the final V7-I cadence.

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 - I. Allegro non troppo

ok for me blogging this piece is a monumental task because of the status it claims in my personal musical tastes. i am quite sorely tempted to merely post up several different recordings from youtube and compare them as a violinist, but as i will be learning it this summer from a conductor's perspective, i shall try to take a more musicological tack on it.

brahms wrote very few concerti: two piano, one violin, and one violin/cello. unfortunately he never got around to writing the cello concerto which we brahms aficionados will always long for. but this violin concerto, written in 1878, is definitely one of the greatest of the greatest.

it's very difficult and (despite lots of input from his friend joachim) not especially violinistic, and most folks attribute this to the fact that he was a pianist by nature and perhaps not as capable of writing idiomatic stuff as, say, wieniawski (who actually called this concerto "unplayable." his violin concerti are ridiculously difficult as well, but very much in the violin idiom). but the counterargument goes that he wasn't trying to produce a virtuoso showpiece (which IS what wieniawski specialized in), but rather a symphonic concerto, which is supported by the fact that originally he had wanted there to be a fourth movement (a scherzo as third movement). apparently his original two middle movements both "fell through," but he instead "substituted a feeble adagio," what we know of as his second movement. anyway, when you remember this "symphonic" characterization, think of his second piano concerto, which he completed three years later in 1881.

there is absolutely no doubt that there are at least ten fantastic recordings by the best violinists on youtube, so pick your favorite. this is milstein/jochum, 1975, totally stunning, not often heard.

the fact that this concerto was in so many ways an homage to beethoven is evidenced mainly in this first movement, with the long, long orchestral introduction which actually goes quite a ways into developmental material before circling back and allowing the violin to enter, at around 2:37.
the first subject, the rising third followed by the falling triad, is moved around until finally the violin is able to play it with the full songfulness it deserves, at 4:05. even then, the violin continues winding its way up and down arpeggios, sixths, thirds, around and over the actual melody in a very brahmsian way.
one program note writer says that there are two "markers" which provide some structural decipherability: one is the descending woodwind fourths at 6:10, which herald the entrance of the more feminine, lovely second subject. this is given in a major/minor, with the transformative modulation being quite subtle and under the radar - actually for a while the second subject sounds like it is still in d. the second subject includes a very typical brahms hemiola at 6:59, followed by a very mournful descent into a reflective lament which seems to bring the music to a standstill.
this is abruptly interrupted by the second "marker," the more aggressive, dramatic chords at 7:49. this brings the music back to its original turbulent opening (of the violin solo), and concludes the exposition, in the dominant key.

the development is all over the tonal map as usual. it opens with a bit of new material - dark, mournful chords, which soon evolve into flighty series of halfsteps, followed by aggressive trills and a very dramatic section in which wide intervals are split all over the fingerboard. an orchestral crescendo builds into a huge d major cadence at 1:32 of the second vid. this is the recap, though it doesn't act like one; actually you can hear the horns trumpeting the main theme behind all the strings' arpeggiating sixteenths. but it dovetails into material exactly from the exposition, 1:56 being analogous to 4:44 of the first vid, except now in d minor. he goes on to state the rest of the first theme as well as all of the second in the correct key, leading us up to the cadenza spot.

the coda after the cadenza is one of my favorite two minutes in all of music. it starts off dreamily, allowing the orchestra to just sneak back in hovering after the cadenza, but as the harmonic and dynamic intensity increase and the violin's arpeggios get up into the stratosphere there are some truly sublime moments, especially the one that finally brings it over the edge into a celebratory set of chords (that is incidentally probably the most difficult section in the entire movement outside the cadenza...)

enjoy!

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58: III. Rondo (Vivace)

orchestra is less to my liking in this movement in this recording - not quite light enough.

quiet c major opening, but nevertheless full of energy: this is the G major theme for the last movement. it features the rhythm quarter (eighth rest) sixteenth-sixteenth | quarter, and opens in C major for a while before correcting to the G major tonic.

1:12 - B section, in a lovely pastoral D major. features lots of great arpeggios and acrobatic playing.
2:27 - the piano leads us with some scales right back into the A theme.
3:13 - piano takes the bombastic part of the A theme in a completely different direction, ending in E-flat major. (later B-flat minor, F minor, etc etc) one can think of this section as a sort of development.
4:37 - the development leads to material from the B section, this time in G major.
5:51 - we start diverging from the original B section material. eventually we get to a big F-sharp diminished 7, acting as a vii to G.
6:28 - the G acts as a dominant to C, putting us back at the A theme.

the last part of this movement is quite unique: starting at 7:00 we have a normal F#dim chord, which switches enharmonically and becomes a Gb Major chord, putting us more or less as far away from the tonic as we can get. now we're on a sequence around the circle of fifths, leaving us in the perfect position for cadenza.

9:28 after the cadenza we spring into a super fast coda, led into by strings with D-A alternating eighths. from there on it's a straight shot to the end!

very fun concerto.

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58: II. Andante con moto

this movement is one of the strangest second movements i can think of. it is sort of slow, but not at all in the same manner of usual slow movements.

E minor.

a solemn, declarative almost marchlike orchestral introduction by unison strings only, which leaves it sort of groundless and uncertain (the thing that keeps it from becoming a march). rather, this movement takes on the tone of a sort of recitative. the orchestra does a sort of rhythm thing at certain intervals, and the piano enters mournfully, alone, and spends the entire movement playing "against" the sternness of the strings. it's fascinating to listen to because it's so counterintuitive, the way the piano stays so calm against the austerity of the strings. gradually the strings phase out and leave the piano to soliloquize and lament on his own. 2:31.
the piano's monologue goes on for a while and eventually rises to a full cry, with dissonant intervals and an ongoing trill which heightens the tension (3:30). (imho arrau does this pretty magnificently.) eventually, this dies, though, replaced by an unmeasured, sad scale which eventually dies into a cadence in e minor. upon the cadence the orchestra reenters with its former dotted rhythm, and together they come to a quiet, sad agreement, with the piano sounding a strange afterthought on a high G before closing on e minor.

the e minor chord doesn't linger too long, though - it dovetails right into the third movement attacca, which begins with a quiet c major chord (using the E as the transition point).

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58: I. Allegro moderato

the reason i got hung up on publishing this concerto was because on the day i decided to do it i started by browsing youtube videos to see which one i would like to post. this turned out to be a mistake, as i didn't find any that i truly loved and hence had no incentive to actually post. but i just found this arrau recording, and even though it's not a video, i'm posting it because i like it.

klemperer, philharmonia.
1/2/2/2 2/2/0/0 timp str

this was composed in 1807, and premiered in a private living-room concert with the coriolan overture and symphony 4 (op. 60). the public premiere didn't come until 1808, and was beethoven's last appearance as a solo pianist. it was also the premiere of symphonies 5 and 6, and the choral fantasy. (yea, what a ridiculous concert that must have been.)

in my experience, this is the beethoven piano concerto that music snobs like to like (at the expense of the more extroverted, jollier and altogether more exciting emperor concerto, no. 5). alone among the five, it has a really unique grace, poise, and gentleness about it. one of the best things is the very opening - solo piano, all alone, with the chorded theme. this is made even more astonishing by the entrance of the orchestra in B Major, which sort of relocates the key to B instead of acting as the III chord.

the entrance of the piano right after the introduction is one of my favorite moments, especially 3:12.

this movement comes in pretty standard sonata form. after the orchestral introduction you have exposition until 

about 6:45, with a second theme in D Major at 4:40. this second theme goes on for a while, circling around the fifths, and finally ending up in material from the first theme (instead of a D Major cadence like we expect) at 6:45. after bringing back the first theme material in the dominant key, we end up 7:38 with a mysterious repeated F, which somehow leads us into a development featuring falling minor chords, leaving us rather unsure of what key we are in. after falling down a huge sequence, we end up with a long section which serves as the dominant to C# Minor. though we start expecting this cadence for a while it doesn't come for a while, and when it does it is pp. this is my other favorite movement of the piece (9:15).

C#minor turns, stepwise, into D#dim, and then cadences neatly in E major. here we are on the ride back to the theme, with a long section serving as the dominant to tonic G major! the moment before the capitulation, the horns come in with a terrific call to announce the arrival of the tonic. then the first theme comes back, not at all introverted this time, but mighty and glorious.

this goes on as expected until 0:40, with the Bb7 chord and cadence in a faraway key - Eb major. it turns out that this is a sort of neapolitan to D, which continues to retransition to state the second theme, but this time in the correct key of G Major.

the rest is more or less as we expect. the second theme finishes in G, and we are led to a cadenza, which finishes on a quiet trill with the reentrance of the orchestra on the main theme.

i think arrau captures the grace for me in a way that most of the recordings on youtube don't, but feel free to make suggestions - there are lots of wonderful recordings of this piece.

Brahms Symphony/Concerti Keys

1. Cm, EM, AbM, Cm/M (Cm Op. 68)
2. DM, BM, GM, DM (DM Op. 73)
3. FM, CM, Cm, FM (FM Op. 90)
4. Em, EM, CM, Em (Em Op. 98)
1876-85


Tragic Overture: Dm (Op. 81)
Academic Festival: CM (Op. 80)

PC 1: Dm (Op. 15)
PC 2: BbM (Op. 83)
VC: DM (Op. 77)
Double Concerto: Am (Op. 102)

yea this is cheating a little.

Hummel: Piano Concerto No. 5 in A-flat Major - I. Allegro moderato

hummel is the perfect example of a composer whom we know was great yet have a hard time remembering anything specific about. he epitomizes the importance of historical context and what it does to our memory. sometimes i've heard my friends ask questions like, why do no tchaiks and brahmses exist today - that music is still perfectly good and nobody would mind if more of it was written. and sometimes i wish too that more things in the veins of past composers would continue to be written (ok maybe just more brahms). but the truth is if anyone tries to write this stuff now, they merely consign themselves to hummel's fate, which is to be remembered mostly as "beethoven's contemporary" who wrote music that sounded more or less entirely like early beethoven.

but of course i am not giving hummel himself enough credit: he was extremely popular when he died (1837 - almost ten years after beethoven's death). he fit in great with the culture of the times - wealthy patronage, lovely, graceful, "clementi-style" classical era music. this isn't to say that he just played it safe all the time either - just that his pioneering techniques in composition and performance (he was a well-known pianist) were presented early in his career, and by the eve of his life he found his influence had faded in the face of romanticism.
this piano concerto really sparkles. i can only find one professional recording that seems *ever* to have been made, but fortunately it is a good one. it is even harder to find program notes on this piece, which nobody seems to play. but hummel's piano concerti in general were studied by several generations of the greatest piano-composers - liszt, schumann, mendelssohn, and chopin, to name a few. he never composed a symphony.

this is an expansive movement, almost 15 minutes (to the second movement's 6). it contains so many characteristics of the classical piano concerto that they almost don't seem to be worth going through.

orchestral tutti which introduces all the themes, the first one an e-flat fanfare-like theme and the second at 1:09, a tinge of mellow minor followed by a more playful section with some light graceful notes.

notice orchestration: the strings definitely play the most prominent role, as they were wont to do in early classical music, with winds providing orchestration. (remember, for instance, in bach's orchestra, where basically the only time the very few winds play are for extended solos.)

piano enters at 2:54 with harmonically active material which propels it through the entire exposition. 5:24 is a play on the second theme which was outlined by the orchestra in the introduction.
okay, i think this concerto explains itself rather well. (also, because i can't find any information on it, your guess about all the material is definitely just as good as mine). but do take my word for it that this is a fantastic classical piano concerto.

Balakirev: Piano Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. posth. - I. Allegro non troppo

for today's triple post due to my crazy laziness this weekend, three of the russian five (the loser on this one will be, unfortunately, mr. cui, who is so difficult to find music by that it almost seems amazing to me that we even remember that there were the russian five instead of four. maybe someday in the future i will make up for this).

balakirev is almost certainly the next least well-known after cesar cui, perhaps except among pianists. the majority of his repertoire was written for solo piano, and his career was as a mentor (to many composers that we do know rather more well, like rimsky), solo pianist, and musical intellectual. he did a lot to develop the state of musical perception in the public sphere and most of his works have a flair for the nationalistic. his primary influences were tchaikovsky, chopin, and glinka, and he was the only professional musician of the russian five, so he had to be, more or less, their PR man.

this concerto was begun in 1861, but not finished or published until after his death. the first movement was finished by 1862, but he stopped writing it. he picked it up again in 1906 and had not finished the last movement by 1910 when he died. the last movement was written mostly by his friend sergei liapunov, via sketches and directions from balakirev.

here we have what i'm pretty sure is the only recording on youtube... malcolm binns with conductor david lloyd-jones and the english northern philharmonia.


this work is written in basically sonata form. its key is said to refer to that of beethoven eroica, as well as schumann rhenish (also sounds a lot to me like the beginning of beethoven emperor). more or less all of balakirev's music was quite consciously to develop a language of nationalistic music, in a rather all-encompassing way that perhaps is better applied to him than it is for sibelius and grieg, other composers who are often just called "nationalistic." 
the first subject is a folksy motif introduced by an orchestra tutti. the piano comes in at 0:50, with a continuation of that idea, and includes lots of pianistic flourishes. somewhere along the way about 3 minutes in we get hints of themes in g-flat major. development begins at about 4:40.
in sound and development this sounds to me quite a bit like tchaikovsky pc, but dale points out that the orchestration is generally a bit less pristine than it is in tchaikovsky, and that the use of folk material as main melodies a lot more for granted.
the first video ends basically just as the recap is beginning.

it's interesting that this concerto should fall so far out of the limelight when it seems to have much of the pizazz necessary for piano concerti to succeed. give it a listen and see if you think history has been unfair to it.

Chausson: Poème, for violin and orchestra, Op.25

welcome to month 2 of music blob 365. i totally forgot about this yesterday for some reason, i guess it was because i left the apartment at 8:30 and didn't come back until after 11. ok anyway that is material for the other blog.

chausson was born in 1855 and died in 1899 apparently as the result of a freak accident involving his bicycle and a brick wall (no joke). a trained lawyer, his heart wasn't really in the law so he composed, but never really took off, though he was a big member of the artistic community at this point, playing host to such luminaries as debussy, franck, mallarme, turgenev, and monet. it was cool how back then all the artists in paris just associated naturally with each other.
he wrote only 39 opuses, influenced by wagner, franck, and his teacher, massenet. this composition was written in 1896 during the last years of his life, a period in which he was influenced by russian literature/symbolism. this was one of only three orchestral works he published, the others being a symphony in b minor and a "poem of love and the sea," a song cycle for voice and orchestra. this piece was requested by his friend eugene ysaye.

okay frustratingly enough i actually can't get blogger's youtube search to return part 2 to either of these great recordings, so just go here for the second part of oistrakh's and here for the second part of menuhin's. there are actually plenty of wonderful recordings of this on youtube. browse at your leisure.

there is some talk of a real life tale of thwarted love which is said to have inspired this work, but it's really not programmatic at all, so i will avoid talking about it.
the work is tempo'ed "lento e misterioso," and revolves centrally around the development of several recurring themes. one, a dark and moody meditation, is played right at the beginning by the solo violin, then echoed in chorale by the orchestra.
the cadenza right at the beginning is absurdly difficult. it's one melody line with accompaniment which is quite difficult to accomplish without interrupting the continuity. oistrakh does this superbly, managing the double lines without neglecting the lengths of notes, distinguishing between quarters and eighths.
then with a series of ascending scales and trills the orchestra enters, and we sense that we are off finally. there is a flighty theme with murmuring triplet accompaniment and lots of augmented small intervals, giving us a sense of harmony that sort of slithers around. (one description of chausson's overall style is that he sort of splits the difference between debussy-style impressionism and juicy romanticism.) at 5:26 we hear for the first time a hemiola/triplet based melody which recurs many many times in both the violin and orchestra parts.
the amazing thing about this piece (and most difficult to make work, as a musician) is the way the line just keeps going. it isn't all one "phrase," but there never seems to be a great conclusion, all the way from the orchestral entrance until the big outcry of passion/ridiculously hard scale (and it doesn't really stop there either).

the subsequent passage is some technically gnarly stuff which basically sends the orchestra off on a grand reprise of the opening theme, so this is sort of like a recap. the violin enters mid-phrase, and we are guided around an altered version of the first couple minutes after the first orchestral entrance. eventually the violin settles into a dark series of ascending trills, which gives us a shadowed ending that seems as if it is about to end in e flat minor, only to turn a page and give us a major chord instead.

Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 - I. Allegro molto moderato

grieg was 24 years old when he wrote this in 1868 in denmark on holiday. it was premiered april the following year, and has gone on to be probably his most well-loved work, certainly of the "large-scale" ones (really, i can only name like... three other pieces by grieg...)

the following statement about grieg is really very true:
Grieg's national identity-his embodiment of the Norwegian spirit in music-is so much stressed in discussions of his work that his purely musical affinities tend to be overlooked.
the analysis goes on to argue that the dominant musical personality in grieg's life was schumann, and that this is especially evident in the first movements of their respective piano concertos (schumann's was completed in 1845). wiki cites as an example the "single powerful orchestral chord" preceding the piano entrance in both cases.
the concerto was grieg's first major success. its premiere was attended by gade and rubinstein, and later when grieg was invited to rome to visit liszt, the latter took it upon himself to sight read the piece right then and there. apparently liszt's enthusiasm was so much that at one point near the end of his reading he "rose from the piano and strode about the room with his arms raised, singing the theme at the top of his voice," and then sat back down at the piano and finished playing it, after which he gave his unequivocal praise and encouragement to the young grieg. damn.

ok, obviously tons of great recordings out there to be found of this concerto, which has proved one of the most enduring ever written (and with its romantic flair and moderate difficulty - several steps removed from tchaik and rach - a favorite among students just getting into the concerto form). here are just a couple.

a fairly old rubinstein takes this with stateliness and matter-of-factness, very different from standard playful and more indulgent interpretations.

this is a bit more sympathetic. lipatti plays with tons of fire, briskness, and intensity.
if you have time, also check out gieseking, and richter.
the opening motif of falling half step/falling major third is supposedly characteristic of his native norwegian folk music.
the drama in this first movement is immediately accessible. there is an inherent songfulness and singability about this entire concerto, which is evident from the very first melody (given by the winds after the dramatic a minor chords in the beginning measures). this dotted rhythm and melody comes back again and again, always leaving an open end for subsequent developments.
second theme begins at . one of liszt's suggestions to grieg regarding orchestration was to give this theme to the trumpets instead of the celli. grieg made almost 300 edits to this concerto between its original completion and his death in 1907. liszt's suggestion was at some point incorporated but didn't make the final cut, for which i am pretty glad.

one more interesting tidbit - this was the first piano concerto ever recorded (in significantly abridged form) - backhaus in 1909. check it out!

cool.

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 - II. Adagio

ok so i'm putting off mozart another day because today is a very special day! and i'm going to commemorate it with some sappy romantic music that everyone already knows :D and today is bruch's birthday, so this is also a pretty good excuse.

bruch wrote this concerto and, unbeknownst to a lot of violinists, two other ones that apparently he thought were just as good (history has not been kind to these other concerti, unfortunately). this first one was composed first in 1866, premiered, and then revised with help from the famous joachim, who premiered that in 1868. and that's the piece we hear today.

i have always felt that the second movement was *far and away* the best of the three movements. from the warm key to the core melody, the majestic arpeggios, the beautiful climax, it's pretty much all there.

ok i wanted to upload the recording i grew up with - isaac stern with ormandy and the philadelphia orchestra. classic, clear, and never overdone. i love it. but unfortunately it's not on youtube and blogger doesn't have audio hosting services. blah. well if you can find it, give it a go. for now we'll go with...

can't really lose here.

i've always felt that this slow movement is great at being melodic without being shrill, even with the alternating a-bflats in the climax. just listen to the beginning of the movement. it is romantic without really being thick, even though sometimes the movement does get a hair repetitive or cheesy with arpeggios, stretched out chromatic passing tones, etc. this is really quite well mitigated by many violinists though, if they can convey the pathos of these moments without necessarily making them excessive, and also if they can find moments other than the obvious ones to deliver on. it is so easy with romantic concerti to fall into a rote interpretation.

there is pretty much no better example of the ability to convey intensity without excess (yeah, he does this weird open d string thing in the second line or so that just sounds strange, but just listen to the length of his phrases...)

ok i really want to kill blogger right now for its fail youtube search which refuses to give me this video among its search options. but you must watch this! you need to turn the volume up because it's set so low on this video, but it's definitely worth it.
Ida Haendel at 77(?) years in 2005
i'm ashamed to admit i didn't even know whether she was still alive, but this video is fascinating. there are a number of orchestral following fails and also fairly common intonation blunders. but this is so amazing by virtue of the fact that she has *so much conviction* it makes me want to back up because of the intensity. i would usually call mistakes in intonation "slips," but after listening to this you will have to agree that nothing she does can be really called a "slip" because through all these 'errors' she is playing with such oomph that you don't even care that the errors are being made anymore. it's like THIS IS THE WAY I'M GONNA DO IT NOW PUT UP OR SHUT UP. lets keep in mind that she's 77, if you or i can play like that at 77 then we can talk about those things.
o my this is so intense.

Barber: Violin Concerto, Op. 14

Something easy for today. After I get into the habit of doing this I'll start branching out.

I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Presto in moto perpetuo

this concerto was written/published in 1939 on commission by this industrialist named Fels and originally was to be performed by one of Barber's Curtis classmates, a violinist named briselli. the entire complicated history of its composition is readable on the wiki page in much more detail than i care to discuss. we'll just note here that briselli rejected the premiere of the work because in his opinion, the last movement needed to be heftier. it's only about 3-4 minutes long (there is somewhat of a competition about how short one can make's one's recording of this movement, which hilary hahn has pretty much dominated thus far at a handy 3:24 and 216 bpm which is actually as fast as my metronome goes. i can't remember the original metronome marking, but it's well below 200... wtf).
because of this work's relative simplicity it's kind of difficult to only do one movement unless i'm planning on doing a formal analysis, so here is anne akiko meyers's recording of the whole thing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-171252879226640654#

(for some reason blogger doesn't have a tool for inserting google videos into blogposts, only youtube videos. what?)
i really like this recording, btw, although maybe that's just because of the mounds of student ones i had to wade through to find it. she is a very, very aggressive player sometimes, so i find her climaxes fantastic, especially the one in her first movement. but i guess sometimes she doesn't quite achieve the lightness that i am searching for, for instance in the second sixteenth-note subject in the first movement.
here also is the first movement of gil shaham's, which i have to say is probably one of the only recordings he does that i genuinely like.

most of shaham's stuff leaves me sort of unfulfilled, and maybe his last movement of this concerto also falls into that category. but it's a very sweet recording of a very sweet and pretty simple concerto.

most discussions of this work just point out that this is generally a great example of the sort of "popularism" that was emblematic of these couple decades in American classical composition - the same sort that copland, weill, and a lot of others engaged in during this time. gibson is pretty much correct when he says that it was idiotic of the violinist to reject the concerto, which "just about screams, 'i am going to be one of the most popular violin concertos in history, and i will make your career.' " with like a thousand student recordings of it on youtube, who can really argue? it's no wonder that the songful nature of the first movement have made it a favorite among violinists. with listeners, though, it's actually probably the last movement which really impresses. brief though it is, it's the only really virtuosic thing of the concerto, and i once attended a concert in which the audience probably would not have given more than two ovations if not for the finale (you could feel the dampness in the air after the second movement...)

it's a good leadin to the discussion of popularism during this period of america's compositional history but i'm not really in the mood, so i'll just say that it is so accessible in its structure and yet very sophisticated in its harmonies (uniquely barber - lots of major seconds imposed on fifths and the like), that it's hard to "feel bad" about liking it. i think the fact that it's such a favorite among violinists is very telling.

i will also mention that the second movement is actually by far my favorite. get a load of the augmented tenths. also the oboe solo at the beginning (brahms anyone?)

it's actually a little hard to see how the piece hangs together. the melodies are so clear, so simplistic, it's a bit hard to see how anything in the first movement is reflected in the latter two movements. but as i was working on this piece a few years back i held onto exactly one moment in each movement that seemed to tie the movements together - near the end of each movement (in the cadenza section for the first and second movement, and somewhere in the second half of the third, though i may just be dreaming about this one and it is probably a coincidence) there is an attention-getting two-octave thing.

anyway it's a great bit of fun to play. i can blabber about it for a while, but i'd rather just go listen to the second movement, bye!