Sergei Prokofiev - Scythian Suite

The nice thing about being in charge of a 24Classics playlist is that it gives me a reason to both seek out new music and to go through my own collection to find suitable pieces. When your music collection has grown to a certain size sometimes you forget to listen to certain albums for months (… if not years) and the re-discovery tends to be a really happy moment. My most recent one has been Prokofiev's Scythian Suite which I absolutely love. It's fun and loud and full of brassy goodness.

Today I found out that there is a video of my favourite orchestra (the Rotterdam Philharmonic, of course) playing it (conducted by Valery Gergiev), so obviously I have to share it:

It is not the best recording because it's from a VHS tape and therefore a bit grainy, if that annoys you you can go here to see Claudio Abbado and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra play it (also a good version, but not as violent as Gergiev's). 

The Scythian Suite was written by Prokofiev in 1915 (Prokofiev was 24 when he composed it), though in its original form it was a ballet called Ala and Lolli, and it was commissioned and rejected by Diagheliv and the Ballet Russes (why it was rejected is a mystery to me, it's such a good piece). Prokofiev reworked the music into a suite, which consists of four movements and lasts around 20 minutes. It's very fast and energetic for most of these 20 minutes, and calls for a large orchestra which might explain why it's not performed as often as it should be. The piece was eventually premiered in 1916 (the first premiere was cancelled because of a lack of musicians) and apparently was quite a riot. As we can read in my favourite book on music;

"Crashing Siberias, volcano hell, Krakatoa, sea-bottom crawlers. Incomprehensible? So is Prokofiev. A splendid tribute was paid to his Scythian Suite in Petrograd by Glazunov. The poor tortured classicist walked out of the hall during the performance of the work. No one walked out of the Aelian Hall but several respectable pianists ran out."  (Musical America, November 20 1918)

I hope you enjoy it more than Glazunov did.

Other YPGTCM posts on Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet, Piano Concerto No.2, Piano Sonata No.6.  

Francis Poulenc - Stabat Mater

Even though my favourite choral works tend to be requiems, the many Stabat Maters in the history of classical music make for quite an impressive list. Palestrina, Pergolesi, Rossini, Pärt, Dvorak, Verdi, Szymanowski and many others composed a version of this hymn. But it is Francis Poulenc's Stabat Mater that I've been listening to endlessly for the past few days, it is an astonishing piece of music. 

Francis Poulenc - Stabat Mater (playlist of the complete piece)

Performed by Orchestre de la Cité, Choeur Régional Vittoria d'Ile-de-France, soprano Danielle Borst, cond. Michel Piquemal

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was a French composer. He was a member of the famous Les Six, a group of 6 composers working in Paris (other members were Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Louis Dury and Germaine Tailleferre) and composed many works, including four ballets, three operas (incl the AMAZING Dialogues des Carmélites), five concertos and a whole lots of chamber and piano music. One of the most interesting things about his musical output is that a lot of his pieces are humorous and energetic, he also wrote a lot of moving liturgical (choral) music. This Stabat Mater is one of them, others are the Litanies à la Vièrge Noire, the Gloria and Quatre petites prières de Saint François d'Assise and the Mass.

Poulenc composed the Stabat Mater in 1950, after the death of his good friend Christian Bérard. He briefly considered writing a requiem, but after a visit to Rocamadour, he considered the setting of the Stabat Mater more appropriate. The text of the Stabat Mater is a medieval hymn, and tells of the suffering of Mary as she sees Jesus dying on the cross. Poulenc's piece is divided into 12 different sections, each of them noticeably different in tempo, rhythm and orchestration. The solo soprano only appears in three of the movements, 'Vidit suum', 'Fac ut portem' and 'Quando corpus', the rest of the movements are performed by the chorus and orchestra. As usual, my favourite movements are some of the louder ones, in particular movement 5 'Quis est homo' and 11 'Inflammatus et accensus' but you should really listen to the whole piece (it's only about 30 mins long).

Alfred Schnittke - Symphony No.1

Sometimes you come across pieces of music that you just love instantly, for whatever reason. Schnittke's Symphony No.1 is one of those pieces for me because it's just so much fun and so chockful of different genres and references that you cannot help but be amazed and shocked every couple of minutes. It's an absolutely mad piece but for some reason it works really well. Here's Alex Ross's spot-on description (taken from this article about Schnittke on The Rest is Noise, which is definitely worth a read)

Bedlam erupts in the very first bars of this symphony, and never really subsides.  Jazz combos do not merely add flavor to the texture, as they do in many urbane twentieth-century scores, but actually take charge of the piece for considerable stretches.  From time to time the full orchestra attempts to bring the madness to a halt, with a loud minor chord heavy on the interval of the third.  This warning goes unheeded.  The second movement opens with a lampoon of mindless Baroque music that falls quickly into disrepair.  At the outset of the fourth, a trumpet plays the lilting second theme from the funeral-march movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, significant in the annals of musical satire for its refurbishment as kitsch in Erik Satie's Embryons desséchés.  The Chopin tune is the fanfare for an unrestrained five minutes of mayhem, in which Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto (among other works) fights like a wounded animal against a fusillade of sound that recalls and exceeds the most anarchic moments in the music of Charles Ives.  

Thankfully someone has uploaded one of Rozhdestvensky's recordings of this symphony onto youtube;

Alfred Schnittke - Symphony No.1 (all 4 movements: I Senza tempo moderato, II Allegretto, III Lento, IV Lento. Allegro)

Played by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra, cond. Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) was a Russian composer. He was born in the Soviet Union but educated in Vienna, and was never particularly popular with the Russian rulers (but then again, not many composers were). In 1990 he moved to Hamburg where he died 8 years later, and he did get a state funeral in Moscow. Even though his early works were very influenced by Shostakovich, his later works are incredibly diverse and 'polystylistic'. This polystylistic nature of his music means that not only is it difficult to define/pigeon-hole, it's also very exciting and constantly surprising music. He was ill a lot but still composed many works, including 9 symphonies, 9 Concerto Grossi, 15 Concertos, and a whole lot of chamber music. From what I've heard of his music (which I am admittedly still quite new to) his Symphony No.1 is my favourite but I also adore his Requiem and his Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. 

On Wednesday (the 30th of October) I will be seeing this piece in concert, played by the London Philharmonic and I am so excited, I imagine it will be amazing to hear this live. Though I am slightly worried that I might giggle too much...

Mieczyslaw Weinberg - Sinfonietta No.1

I've been having some trouble with finding inspiration for blogposts because lately I have really only been listening to the same three composers over and over again (with some short excursions into others); Weinberg, Martinu and Shostakovich. And of course I'd like this blog to be diverse but hopefully this will be okay as well (and you can just go to 24classics for some diversity and excitement). So here's another post about the under-appreciated Mieczyslaw Weinberg! For those of you paying close attention I've actually posted this piece before, in the post on Spring Music. But I love it so much that I think it deserves some more attention, on its own.

Miecyslaw Weinberg - Sinfonietta No.1 (I Allegro risoluto and II Lento)
Played by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice, cond. Gabriel Chmura


Sinfonietta No.1 (III Allegretto and IV Vivace).

The Sinfonietta No.1 was written in 1948, and Weinberg had already moved to Moscow at that time. It's heavily influenced by Jewish folk music, which you can hear very clearly throughout the work (look out for the clarinet solo in movement 2!). It's a wonderful piece to listen to and not particularly complicated or opaque but I feel like it has such a mesmerizing beauty to it. Some of Weinberg's symphonies are as dark and emotional as Shostakovich's, and this Sinfonietta is obviously quite a bit more uplifting. It's energetic and catchy and just really, really good. 

Other YPGTCM posts on Miecsyzlaw Weinberg: Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes

Bohuslav Martinů - Symphony No.3

There are so many composers still on my to-listen list, but thanks to The Rest is Noise Festival I can strike one of them off: Bohuslav Martinů. Last week I saw the London Philharmonic Orchestra play his Double Concerto, which was amazing (you can read my review here, they also played Berg, Bartók and Webern). It was an incredibly moving and exciting piece, and so of course I had to seek out more of his music. My favourite so far? The Symphony No.3:


Bohuslav Martinů - Symphony No.3: I Allegro Poco Moderato
Played by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Vaclav Neumann

Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) was a Czech composer. He studied at the Prague Conservatory for a while but was dismissed because he preferred to study and explore on his own. Eventually he studied composition under Josef Suk for a few years, after which he left and moved to Paris. He was really interested in different styles of music and of course Paris at that time was an absolutely fantastic place artistically speaking. His composing style continued to develop, but it wasn't until after his move to the US in 1941 that he wrote his six symphonies. He composed many pieces (almost 400!) throughout his life, apart from the symphonies there are many ballets, 8 pieces for piano and orchestra, a whole bunch of other concertos, and a lot of chamber music, including 12 string quartets.

Symphony No.3 contains three movements and was composed in 1944. The piece wasn't commissioned but it was dedicated to and premiered by the Boston Symphonic Orchestra and Serge Koussevitzky (premiere was in 1945). It's an energetic and loud piece, but honestly it's also quite unlike anything else I've heard before (even though it fits squarely into the genre of loud 20th Century symphonic music that I love so much). The piano has a prominent place in the symphony, perhaps similar to Stravinsky's Sympony in Three Movements. At the same time it has some stunning writing for woodwinds, and some wonderful percussion. Basically, it's really fantastic and you should listen to it. If you like the first movement, here are the others: II Largo and III Allegro - Andante.

Witold Lutoslawski - Concerto for Orchestra

One of the things I absolutely love most about classical music is that I keep discovering new composers and new pieces. There is such an endless amount of fantastic music out there, and still being quite young and relatively ignorant, there's still so much I have yet to discover. Every year I have some more composers to add to my composers-I-love list, and this year has already proven to be quite successful in that regard: I discovered Witold Lutoslawski.

These past months the Philharmonia Orchestra had a festival going on called Woven Words. It is in celebration of Witold Lutoslawski, who was born 100 years ago this year. I was lucky enough to see the first concert at the Royal Festival Hall, which included Lutoslawski's Piano Concerto (played by dedicatee Krystian Zimmerman) and Musique Funèbre (and also a fabulous performance of Ravel's complete Daphnis et Chloé!). Both pieces were beautiful, and the Piano Concerto in particular blew my mind. Needless to say I immediately searched out more of Lutoslawski's music and I've loved everything I've listened to. This inspired me to go to yet another of the Woven Words concerts, this time with a raucous performance of Debussy's La Mer and two Lutoslawski pieces: the Cello Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra. It's this latter piece that I'm going to talk about in this blog post.


Witold Lutoslawski - Concerto for Orchestra : I Intrada (allegro)
Played by the Polish National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lutoslawski himself.

Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) was a Polish composer. Many people consider him to be one of the most important composers of the 20th Century, though he is not as well-known as he deserves. He wrote, among others, four symphonies (the second is my favourite), a bunch of shorter orchestral works (Like the Musique Funèbre, Livre pour orchestre, Mi-parti and Jeux Vénitiens), and some great vocals works (like Paroles Tissées and Les Espaces du Sommeil). He is perhaps best well-known for his use of the alaetory technique, in which the musicians and conductor can decide when each instrument moves from one section to the next - there is a precise structure but also some freedom in interpretation. He had an immense talent for orchestral colour and texture, perhaps reminiscent of Ravel and Debussy (which is why the Woven Words concerts were so beautifully programmed), but more modern and chaotic (even though his music makes complete sense to me).

The Concerto for Orchestra was finished in 1954, and originally inspired by Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. It consists of three movements, I Intrada, II Capriccio, Notturna e Arioso and III Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale. It contains a lot of folk(-inspired) melodies, taken from Lutoslawski's native Poland. I absolutely love the piece because it's exhilarating and unpredictable yet it never becomes confusing. It has some wonderful loud moments, which of course I always love but Lutoslawksi's music is so full of constrasts, and this makes every loud moment and every quiet moment effective and at times very, very moving. But above all Lutoslawski's music is just really exciting, always.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg - Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes

Quite sometime ago I saw a concert in Utrecht that had Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Violin Concerto on the program. I hadn't heard Weinberg's music before and even though it wasn't the most genius thing I'd ever heard, I really enjoyed the Violin Concerto and it piqued my interest to find some more of Weinberg's music. I have since fallen in love with quite a lot of his pieces, especially his orchestral work and feel like it's time to share one!

This is the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes. It starts off really calmly, with cellos and basses, though pretty soon the rest of the orchestra joins in and the main melody first appears just after 2 minutes. But for me the real joy is after about 6 minutes! There are Weinberg works that I find more beautiful or more moving and I'm sure I'll post those sometime, but I've been addicted to this Rhapsody for a few days now because it brings a smile to my face. Have a listen:


Mieczyslaw Weinberg - Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes
Played by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Gabriel Chmura.

Mieczyslav (Moisey) Weinberg (1919-2006) was a Jewish Polish/Russian composer. He was born in Warsaw, where he later studied at the conservatory. The history of his family is tragic, his parents and sister died in the Trawniki concentration camp, but when WWII broke out Weinberg fled to the Soviet Union, settling in Minsk. In 1943 Dmitri Shostakovich convinced him to move to Moscow, and the two became good friends. Weinberg was never a part of the musical elite in Russia, some considered him a bad version of Shostakovich, but at the same time many other composers (and some critics) did love Weinberg's music. Nowadays he is still much less well-known than his contemporaries, though last year the Vredenburg in Utrecht had a small festival dedicated to his music (and of course I am very much regretting not seeing more of those concerts!). Weinberg wrote 22(!) symphonies, 17 string quartets, 7 operas and whole bunch of other music including a requiem. I still have to a lot to explore when it comes to his music, but I'm very excited to do so.

The Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes was written in 1949. Unfortunately I can't find all that much information on it. It's about 12 to 15 minutes long and its title already gives away where much of its inspiration was taken from. One of the reasons why I like it so much is that although it contains some upbeat catchy melodies it's not a consistently joyful piece. Take the opening for example, which one could perhaps compare to something like Shostakovich's Eight Symphony (and no one could ever call that a happy piece!). It is slow and brooding, almost foreboding. It doesn't betray anything of the energetic and joyous middle part, yet everything flows and everything works well together. I hope at the very least that it makes you remember Weinberg's name and perhaps search out some more of his music.

Favourite albums of 2012

Now that it is January 2013 a post about my favourite music of 2012 is probably appropriate. In a couple days I'll write about my favourite concerts, but for now I want to highlight two CDs that were released in 2012 that were definitely the highlight of my musical year. Both involved Esa-Pekka Salonen; one CD is his "Out of Nowhere" with the Violin Concerto and Nyx, and the other is his premiere recording of Shostakovich's Orango as well as Symphony No.4.

I wrote about Salonen's Violin Concerto here, and I hope you've all listened to and loved the piece. The CD recording is actually spot on as well, never too clean and it's just very dynamic. Leila Josefowicz is a star in her own right and of course her playing is stunning. In that earlier post I lamented about Nyx not being on youtube, but now it is! It's fast growing to be my favourite Salonen piece, so listen and enjoy:



The Shostakovich CD by Salonen is something else altogether. Orango is an unfinished opera by Shostakovich of which 30 minutes survives(he and the librettists decided it wasn't a good idea to continue with in their current political climate). Some of the music will be very familiar to Shostakovich-lovers, however, as he re-used quite a bit of it for his ballet The Bolt (and rightly so, it's fantastic music). However, there's still lots that was never played or released before and it's such an honour to be around for its rediscovery.

In 2004 Olga Digonskaya, a Russian musicologist, found the piano score of Orango in a museum in Moscow. Because of her research we now know that it was commisioned by the Bolshoi Theatre in 1932, and that Alexei Tolstoy and Alexander Starchakov were to write the libretto. Tolstoy and Shostakovich together decided to make it "an uproariously irreverent squib, a satirical farce taking potshots at all kinds of aspects of contemporary culture" (CD liner notes by Gerard McBurney). The story tells of some sort of weird experiment of breeding a cross between men and apes to produce a hybrid (named Orango). This hybrid then becomes a successful soldier, a wheeler-dealer and a press-baron (quite a career!). Only the prologue survives both in word and music, as all involved decided to abandon the project. It's raucous piece, with probably the loudest percussion I've ever heard (and that includes Varèse), it's full of irony and humour but there's darkness in the music as well. All in all, it's an absolutely amazing work and it's sad that there are only 30 minutes left, though that's certainly better than nothing. There's nothing on youtube with the music, but here's Esa-Pekka talking about Orango:



Salonen and the LA Philharmonic's recording of Shostakovich Symphony No.4 has very much reaffirmed my belief that Salonen understands Shostakovich. Or perhaps I should say, he understands Shostakovich in the same way I understand him. The performance is absolutely and entirely spot on. There's not one thing I can say that I'd like to see differently (and this is usually the case with Shostakovich recordings, especially the Fourth of which I have too many so there's usually something I disagree with). Even though I will probably forever be loyal to Rostropovich and especially Kondrashin's recordings, Salonen comes really really close to my favourites. The recording is crystal clear but still has enough depth (which you definitely need in the Fourth). So if you're in the mood to buy some music; get these albums!

R.I.P. Galina Vishnevskaya

On December 11 Russan soprano Galina Vishnevskaya passed away. She was an incredible opera singer, famous for everything from Verdi to Shostakovich to Mussorgsky to Puccini. In 1955 she married cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and together they left the Soviet Union in the 70's. I'm a massive fan of her recording of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death in particular. Also, in 2007 she played the lead role in a filmed called Alexandra which is definitely worth checking out. I've had her autobiography on my book shelf for quite a while but it's about time I start reading it. For now, enjoy her voice and remember her:

The Rest is Noise at the Southbank Centre

From January 2013 onwards the Southbank Centre in London will play host to probably the most exciting classical music festival I know. It's inspired by Alex Ross's amazing book The Rest Is Noise, which is also the title of the festival. The first half of the festival, from January till June, is concerned with music from the early 1900s until right after WWII.

And honestly, it's like someone asked "hey Renée, what kinda music do you like"? and put it all in one festival. There are 18 concerts I REALLY want to go to and a whole bunch of other that I'd like to go to. Because I love the whole program so much, I figured I'll highlight some of the concerts on this blog. It is important to note, however, that this is only a tiny fraction of all the amazing concerts going on at the festival, you really ought to look at official site as well.

Saturday 16 February 2013 "Riot at the Ballet"
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Leila Josefowicz
Ravel - Ma Mère l'oye (complete ballet)
Prokofiev - Violin Concerto No.1
Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring

I love Yannick so much I would even consider seeing him conduct Haydn or someone else I hate. But to see him conduct a program consisting of Ravel, Prokofiev and Stravinsky is pretty much perfect. His understanding and love for the music of Ravel is much-documented, but I'm sure he'll kick ass at the Prokofiev and Stravinsky as well. I am excited to see Leila Josefowicz play Prokofiev, I'm a huge fan of her Adès and Salonen concertos and even though I've been kinda spoilt by seeing Vadim Repin play this concerto before, if there's anyone up to the challenge it's her.

Wednesday 20 February 2013 "Imagining America"
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Marin Alsop, London Adventist Chorale
Trad. - Spirituals (a capella)
Dvorak - Symphony No.9
Milhaud - La Création du Monde suite
Varèse - Amériques

One of the things I love about this festival is that Darius Milhaud, a criminally underappreciated composer is getting quite a bit of attention. Of course La Création du Monde is his most well-known pipece, but on February 20th at 6 there's a free concert with two of his Petite Symphonies as well. And this concert in the evening will be amazing if only because Varèse's (also underappreciated) Amériques is absolutely insane and incredible to hear live. I CANNOT wait to hear it again!

Saturday 6 April 2013 "Orff's Carmina Burana"
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans Graf, Sally Matthews, Andrew Kennedy, Rodion Pogossov, the London Philharmonic Choir and Trinity Boys Choir
Stravinsky - Symphony of Psalms
Orff - Carmina Burana

Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms is incredibly beautiful. To have it combined with one of the highlights of Twentieth century choral music; Orff's Carmina Burana is the stuff dreams are made of. It'll be loud and exhausting and overwhelming and absolutely fantastic.

Saturday 27 April 2013 "Music from Dark Times"
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski, Barbara Hannigan
Webern - Variations for Orchestra
Berg - Lulu Suite
Martinu - Double Concerto
Bartók - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

I love Bartók and Berg and Barbara Hannigan so this can only be an evening full of excitement. On top of that, Martinu is one of those composers that I've wanted to check out for ages but still haven't, so this is a great opportunity to get to know his music!

Thursday 2 May 2013 "Composing Under Stalin"
Philharmonia Orchestra, Jakub Hrusa, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Philharmonia Voices
Skriabin - Rêverie for Orchestra
Shostakovich - Violin Concerto No.1
Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky cantata

Oh what to say about this one... Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No.1 is one of my favourite pieces, I've seen it quite a few times by now and it still makes me want to weep like a little girl (apart from the scherzo which is hilarious). Alexander Nevsky is great as well, and I love it when cantatas are performed, somehow it seems to be quite rare.

Friday 10 May 2013 "Imprisoned Music"
Renaud Capucon, Gautier Capucon, Denis Kozhukhin, Jörg Wildmann
Shostakovich - Piano Trio No.2
Messiaen - Quatuor pour la fin du temps

Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps is probably the piece of music with one of the most moving histories; it was composed and first performed in a prisoner of war camp in 1941. The instrumentation was one of necessity, as it is tailored to the musicians Messiaen met in the camp. It is not as bleak as one might expect, but it is heartbreakingly beautiful and upsetting piece of music. Programmed with Shostakovich's Piano Trio No.2, written in 1944 this evening of music will probably be overwhelming, but it will be worth it.

Thursday 16 May 2012 "Satirical Shostakovich"
Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Peter Sellars, Philharmonia Voices
Shostakovich - Orango: Prologue (orch. Gerard McBurney)
Shostakovich - Symphony No.4

I'm not sure if I can adequately explain how exciting this concert is for me. Perhaps you get the picture when I say that I bought tickets for it as soon as they became available. Orango was only performed for the first time in december of last year, by the LA Philharmonic with Salonen, and I've played the CD of that performance about a million times. It is the prologue to what would've been an opera by Shostakovich, but halfway through he and the libretto-writers (who both died in workcamps later on) decided it might not be such a good idea to finish it and have it performed. It was discarded and a pianoscore was rediscovered years later, from with McBurney made an excellent orchestration. The Fourth Symphony is of course one of my favourite pieces ever and to see Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct it is a dream come true!

Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No.11

I apologise again for a long absence from this blog. For those who didn't know; I recently moved to England to pursue a PhD in philosophy which has been both exciting and exhausting, and obviously very distracting. I'm definitely going to try to post more regularly from now on though.

Right now I want to talk about a piece that I've avoided posting in here for several reasons; Shostakovich's Symphony No.11. It is, together with the 4th, my favourite Shostakovich symphony but not everyone praises it. I've read comments ranging from calling it too cinematographic (yeah, I don't know why that's a bad thing either) to kitschy, from superficial to bland. Basically, a lot of people find it so over-the-top that it loses all emotional impact. It's pretty much the opposite for me, I'd say it's the single most emotionally laden piece of music I know. It reduces me to tears every time I listen to it, and there are two moments in particular that literally make me unable to breathe.

There are many 'objective' features of the symphony that I could argue make it so good; it has some of the most beautiful soft and slow movements of any Shostakovich piece, there's a beautiful balance between the loud and the quiet, the melodies will stay in your head for days, and the ending is quite possibly the best finale Shostakovich ever wrote. But it all comes down to what you feel when you listen to it, so I won't bore you too much with details. Some history of the piece is interesting, though. It was written in 1957, and has as a subtitle "The Year 1905" (thus in memory of the Russian revolution of that year). There are all sorts of rumours about why Shostakovich gave it this subtitle, and indeed many people think that he originally had it as "The Year 1906" - the year of his birth. In a way, the symphony is a requiem which I think makes the ending all the more powerful, the chiming bells are very creepy and ominous.

The four movements have subtitles as well; "The Palace Square", "The Ninth of January", "Eternal Memory" and "The Toscin". The second movement, which is my favourite, refers to Bloody Sunday - when at least 1000 peaceful demonstrators were shot and killed by the Tsar's army. You will hear this in the music - at some point the percussion and brass sections go berserk and then everything is quiet....

If you have 50 minutes to spare, I recommend you listen to this recording, by Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic:



But if you're in a hurry, here are movements 2 and 4.

(stick around until the 13-minute mark, that's when the madness happens)

Benjamin Britten - Sinfonia da Requiem

I realised that I haven't written any proper posts on Benjamin Britten yet, which is a bit silly because he is actually one of my favourite composers. My lack of writing on him is partly because I love his operas so much and I don't yet know how to post on opera in here, and how to do the genre justice (I'm sure some posts on opera will appear soon though). Of course 2013 is going to be Britten-year which is rather exciting! Peter Grimes on the beach at Aldeburgh! How amazing will that be? Very, I tell thee.

Anyway, for now I'd like to talk about Britten's Sinfonia Da Requiem - not to be confused with his actual requiem which I did write about briefly here. The Sinfonia da Requiem is more of a symphony, and is in fact the largest purely orchestral piece Britten wrote. The origin of the piece is somewhat interesting, as it's reported that Britten originally started writing it as a requiem to his parents, as a reaction to WWII and expression of his own pacifism (also very apparent in the War Requiem but also after being commissioned (via the British consulate) to write a piece for Japan. The Japanese didn't seem to approve of the piece as it was considered to gloomy and Christian for their particular celebration, and then Pearl Harbour happened which obviously put a damper on the Britain-Japan relations. The piece was therefore premiered in New York, in March 1941.

My favourite part is the second, "Dies Irae" (as always) - but thankfully youtube has a video of the entire thing:


Benjamin Britten - Sinfonia da Requiem (I Lacrimosa, II Dies Irae, III Requiem Aeternam)

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was an English composer who's definitely most well-known for his operas (including Peter Grimes, The Turn of the Screw, Death in Venice and The Rape of Lucretia) and his War Requiem. In general his compositions for voice (so the operas, cantatas, songs etc) are to die for. He was really good friends with Mistislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya and of course Shostakovich, who admired him greatly. In fact, Britten conducted the first non-Russian premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No.14. He and his partner Peter Pears launched the Aldeburgh Festival which is still going strong to this day. Here is my favourite picture of him, with Galina Vishnevskaya:

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Sonata No.6

After two violin-centric posts it's probably about time for something else, right? So I thought it might be a good idea to post a piano sonata! It is by one of my favourite Russians, Sergei Prokofiev, who wrote a huge amount of fantastic piano music. The Piano Sonata No.6 was the first piano sonata I actually listened to on my own all the way through (a recording by Evgeny Kissin that I "borrowed" from my parents) quite a few years ago. I love it because it's energetic and fun and diverse yet it's still rather affecting and just wonderful.

   

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Sonata No.6 - Mvt.1: Allegro moderato. 
Played by Nikolai Lugansky (I'm still waiting for CDs of him playing all of Prokofiev's piano concertos, seriously don't understand why these don't exist yet) 

The Piano Sonata No.6 (1940) is a four-movement work for solo piano. I once tried to play it but my hands couldn't even reach to play the opening chords, so it wasn't quite succesful. I've read lots of conflicting opinions about the sonata, some find it overly simple and don't find enough (emotional) depth in it, but there's also lots of people for whom it's their favourite sonata. And legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter said this about it: "The remarkable clarity of style and structural perfection of the music amazed me. I hadn't heard anything like it before. The composer, with barbaric audacity, breaks with the ideals of the Romantics and includes the shattering pulse of the twentieth century in his music." (From Sergei Prokofiev by Daniel Jaffé). If you like bombastic Russians writing amazing melodies and being jealous of pianists, then I'm sure you'll like it too. If you're only into Chopin/Satie/the piano as a calming instrument, you might not be so keen. But give it a try anyway! 

Other YPGTCM posts on Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet, Piano Concerto No.2.

Edgard Varèse - Amériques

As I described in this post, one of my musical highlights of 2011 was the performance of Edgard Varèse's Amériques by the Concertgebouworkest. I only knew Varèse by name because of "The Rest Is Noise" by Alex Ross (must-read for everyone!) and hadn't heard his music before but the concert was so impressive that I quickly sought out more of his music and everything I've heard so far has been amazing. Amériques is a crazy piece, it's written for a massive orchestra (especially the original version, which is what the Concertgebouworkest played) and there's all sorts of funny sounds in there but most of all it's such an intense and powerful work.


Edgard Varèse - Amériques.
Performed by the Polish National Symphony Radio Orchestra, cond. Christopher Lyndon-Gee.

Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) was a French/American composer. He lived in France, Italy and Germany before moving to the United States in 1921. Back in Europe he knew Debussy, Strauss, Satie and others and he had seen the first performances of Stravinsky's ballets - all influences he brought with him to the US. Amériques was the first piece he wrote there, and it's famous for its depiction of the New York skylines and the hustle and bustle of the city in general. He experimented with electronics as well as traditional instruments and thereby influenced a great number of other composers, including Penderecki, Stockhausen, Schnittke, Rihm, Xenakis and Messiaen.

Amériques was originally written in 1918-1921 and first performed in 1926 by the Philadelphia Orchestra, but in 1927 Varèse revised the work (both versions are still performed, though the revised version is definitely more common). It's scored for an orchestra with at least 10 percussionists who make all sorts of weird sounds (there's a siren! a wind machine! a lion's roar!). Its opening is obviously reminiscent of Debussy, but don't let that mislead you. Similarly, some of the rhythmic drive and mad dance-like moments in the music sound Stravinskean, but despite these influences, Amériques is a very idiosyncratic work that deserves to be played way way wayyyy more often.

Béla Bartók - Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion

I buy quite a lot of secondhand classical LPs because they're cheap but sometimes I forget what I actually own. A few months ago I saw the Asko|Schönberg perform Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion at the Muziekgebouw and I absolutely loved it but I couldn't find a recording particularly easily. Cue me looking at my LPs this weekend, and it turns out I own a recording of it! It's the B-side to a recording of Bartók's Piano Concerto No.2, played by György Sándor. I have a few Bartók recordings by him and they're all insanely good. The Sonata is played by him, Rolf Reinhardt (piano) and Otto Schad and Richard Sohm (both percussionists). Unfortunately I can't find this recording on youtube, but here's another a nice one:

Béla Bartók - Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, part III Allegro non troppo

The work consists of three movements: I Assai lento - allegro troppo, II Lento, ma non troppo and the third that I posted above. Bartók wrote it in 1937 and was himself one of the pianist playing at the premiere. It's a piece that has everything I love about Bartók, it's rhythmically exciting, there's some beautiful folk-like melodies, but there's also a lot of moments where you have to pay proper attention to know what's going on. The third movement is probably the most memorable because of the theme played by the xylophone, but it's also the most boisterous (not a bad thing). If you like it you should listen to the entire thing, here's Movement 1 and here's Movement 2 (and 3 again).

Other YPGTCM posts on Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin and Violin Concerto No.2.

Maurice Ravel - La Valse

Waltzes are generally a really bad idea. They either remind me of André Rieu (URGH) or the Wiener Philharmoniker's New Years concert (URGH again) - two things I really don't want reminding of. There's a few exceptions, some symphonies have interesting waltz-like movements and of course Shostakovich's Waltz No.2 from Jazz Suite No.2 is quite lovely. But there is only one waltz that I genuinely love, and mostly because it's kind of weird and it's Maurice Ravel's La Valse. I'm currently on a bit of a Ravel-bender because I saw his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand a little while ago, played by Nikolai Lugansky (who else) twice in one weekend and it was amaaaaazing (my review of one of these concerts is here) and then last saturday I saw a the Finzi Quartet play his string quartet (Shostakovich's 8th string quartet kinda outshone the Ravel but it was still great, review here), and a little while ago I bought a CD of Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic playing a whole bunch of Ravel's orchestral music which is really wonderful.


Maurice Ravel - La Valse.
Performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conductor Myung-Whun Chung.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a French composer. He's appeared on this blog before but only as an arranger, he orchestrated Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that I posted about here. That may be slightly misleading, because he was an absolutely amazing composer in his own right. His most famous work is probably the Bolero, but that piece seems to have as many haters as lovers. Some of my favourite works by him are Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, the two piano concertos, Rhapsodie Espagnole and Tzigane. He was apparently friends with Debussy, and they really admired each other's music even though their styles were so different. One of the things I like most about Ravel's music is his use of rhythms, most of his works have a tangible rhythmic feel to them without becoming predictable. You can hear this very clearly in La Valse. Like Debussy, he could also create intense atmospheric music that glides and almost makes you drift off into a fantasy world.

La Valse was written in 1919-1920 and was commisioned by Diaghilev of Ballet Russes fame. Ravel had previously written the ballet Daphnis et Chloé for Diaghilev (Stravinsky called it "one of the most beautiful products of all French music" but it wasn't really well-received at the time). Diaghilev didn't like La Valse, however, which was the end of their friendship. It was first performed as a ballet in Antwerp in 1926, but nowadays it's mostly performed as a purely orchestral piece.

Claude Debussy - Six épigraphes antiques (arr. for orchestra)

I'm a naturally stressy person. I get stressed out easily, I worry about everything and sometimes find it really difficult to relax. Music is one of the best ways to calm myself down, and although pretty much any music I love will help me relax, there are some works that accomplish this more than others. For example, the Satie piano music I blogged about here are beautiful pieces that really do have a calming effect. Another composer that has written a lot of works with the same effect is Claude Debussy. A couple of weeks ago I went to a concert in Utrecht that opened with Debussy's Six épigraphes antiques, arranged for small orchestra by Rudolf Escher. As soon as the music started I found myself breathing more slowly, and becoming more and more relaxed.

Six épigraphes antiques is originally a piano work for quatre-mains (though Debussy also made an arrangment for solo piano). It has been transcribed for the orchestra by Dutch composer Rudolf Escher as well as Ernest Ansermat and Jean-Francois Paillard. I can't find the Escher version on youtube but apparently the Escher and Ansermat versions are quite similar, so I'll post that one instead.

Claude Debussy - Six épigraphes antiques (arr. Ansermat).
Performed by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, cond. Ansermat (recorded in 1953).

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer. He's often called an impressionist but this was not a term he liked (to be honest I think "impressionist" doesn't do his music justice either). Debussy was really popular with the ladies and had a string of affairs as well as two marriages (when he divorced his first wife she tried to kill herself by shooting herself in her chest, somehow she survived). He's written some really well-known pieces such as Clair de Lune and La Mer as well as a huge amount of works for the piano. Some of his works I would almost consider to be dull (though this definitely depends on the performer/conductor - for example, Yannick Nézet-Séguin makes any Debussy exciting) but there's some beauties as well, such as the Nocturnes and Pélléas et Mélisande. There's somewhat of a spring-like element to most of his music, which means that you can often easily recognise works as his.

Dmitri Shostakovich - The Execution of Stepan Razin

I actually have a favourite piece of music. My all-time, absolute, undisputed favourite piece of music. Unsusprisingly it's a Shostakovich piece, but it's one that's not heard nearly as often as it should be: The Execution of Stepan Razin. It's a cantata for bass soloist, male and female chorus and orchestra. It's one of those works that I keep going back to, it doesn't matter what kind of mood I'm in or even if I'm keen on listening to music at that moment: I will always love it. There's probably quite a big risk with presenting a piece as your all-time favourite, expectations will be high and I'll probably be slightly offended when people don't like it (though this is always the case with Shostakovich pieces, I can't help it!), but I think it's important to emphasize just quite how much this work means to me. I think it might very well be the most-listened-to piece of music in my entire life.

In a way, it's surprisingly simple for a Shostakovich piece. It's not *that* loud, it has quite basic rhythms and beautiful but understated melodies. But it's just so incredibly good, especially the vocal lines, for both the bass and the chorus and it does have a few wonderfully spastic moments in the music that always put a smile on my face. The story tells of Stepan Razin, a Cossack leader in the 17th century. He led an army of peasants against the Tsar and captured a few cities before being defeated and eventually executed in Moscow. The particular words Shostakovich uses are a poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko, who we also know from, among others, his beautiful Babi Yar which Shostakovich used in his 13th Symphony.


Dmitri Shostakovich - The Execution of Stepan Razin (composed in 1964)
Performed by the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Symphony Chorale, cond. Gerard Schwarz and bass Charles Robert Austin (my favourite recording is the world premier recording of Kondrashin with Gromadsky, which is also on youtube but that one's cut into bits and also the sound quality of this one is a tiny bit better. But if you're interested in getting the work, get the Kondrashin LP!).

The work lasts around 28 minutes (depending on the recording) and I really would recommend you listen to its entirety. My favourite part is after about 20 minutes, when the entire chorus sings "Not for nothing! Not for nothing!" (Nye zazrya!), it gets me every single time. Because the work very clearly tells a story, I will post the words here in English, with a little note saying who's singing, so that you can keep track while listening (when it's a soloist and chorus the italics specify when it's just the chorus singing):

Arnold Schoenberg - Gurrelieder

As a rule I like my music loud (surprise, surprise). What I like to be especially loud are choral and vocal works. Although beautiful subdued choral works can be lovely too (like the heartbreaking Rothko Chapel by Morton Feldman), I find it much more exhilirating when there's just lots of noise. A little while ago my dad bought a CD of Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and even though I have a bit of an ambiguous relationship with Schoenberg's music I have to say that this piece is exactly my cup of tea. Here's why:

Arnold Schoenberg - Gurrelieder Part I: 4 Ross! Mein Ross!
 

Part I: 12 Tauben von Gurre!


Part II: Herrgott, weisst du, was du tatest


Part III: 3 Gegrüsst, o König

All these recordings are conducted by Riccardo Chailly with the Radio Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Siegfried Jerusalem, Susan Dunn, Brigitte Fassbaender, Hermann Becht, Peter Haage, Hans Hotter and the Chor der St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale Berlin. I prefer Esa-Pekka Salonen's recent recording with the Philharmonia because that one's EXTRA-LOUD but this will do just fine.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an Austrian/American composer. He is perhaps most well-known for his twelve-tone technique and atonal works. He wrote all sorts of weird things I can't wrap my head around but also some other wonderful pieces like Pierrot Lunaire and some of his chamber music. He seems to have been one of those composers that spent just as much time thinking about the structure of his music as he did composing it (though this could just be my interpretation). He was ridiculously influential though and influenced composers like Alban Berg (who I love), Alexander Zemlinsky, Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez and of course Anton Webern. If I had my copy of Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise with me I'm sure I could come up with some more interesting information, but that will have to wait till next time I'm afraid.

Gurrelieder is an absolutely massive work (probably most accurately called a cantata) for five soloists, a chorus, a narrator and orchestra. It is based around poems by Jens Peter Jacobsen (translated to German by Robert Franz Arnold). The story tells of two lovers, Waldermar and Tove. Waldemar was a king in love with his mistress Tove but Helvig the queen jealously murdered Tove. The distraught Waldemar somehow brings his dead soldiers back to life (rising of the dead always makes for good music, doesn't it?) and then they go riding around scaring everyone silly at night, until the sun rises again. The entire text can be read here (with an English translation). The composing-process of this piece was very interesting and complex. Schoenberg started writing it in 1900, intending it to be a small-ish piece and worked on it until 1903, although by this time it had taken on its more massive scale. In 1910 he returned to it, and by this time he had already written a bunch of atonal works (like the Five Pieces for Orchestra) but the Gurrelieder remain far from being atonal. Apparently he was influenced by both Mahler and Wagner in the writing of this piece, which is definitely not a surprise when you're listening.

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No.2

Prokofiev's piano concertos are probably my favourite piano concertos. The second and third especially, they are so fantastic. A while ago I was lucky enough to see my beloved Nikolai Lugansky play the second (I've already seen him play the third a few times) and it just confirmed for me how fantastic that piece is. Here is the third movement:

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No.2: III Intermezzo - Allegro moderato. 
Played by Nikolai Lugansky, conductor is Vladimir Jurowski but I don't know what orchestra it is.

Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.2 was first performed in 1913 when Prokofiev was only 22 years old. Unfortunately the score was lost during the Russian revolution and Prokofiev used sketches he still had of the piece to reconstruct it, with some considerable revisions (though we will obviously never know what the revisions were). He said later of these revisions that they turned the piece into something different altogether and that it was "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered no. 4". Apparently it is one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire and it's definitely one of the most exciting ones! It consists of four movements, apart from the third I posted in here there's Mvt. 1: Andantino-Allegretto Part 1, Mvt 1 Part 2, Mvt 2: Scherzo - vivace (so ridiculously fast!), Mvt. 4: Allegro tempestoso Part 1 (this part is great for Lugansky's Amazing Bouncing Hands), Mvt. 4 Part 2.

On an unrelated note, I have written a few more reviews for bachtrack.com since I last posted: The opening night of Haarlem's Koorbiennale with pieces by Feldman, Gubaidulina, Manneke and Ešenvalds, Ravel, Prokofiev and Dvorak in the Concertgebouw and Debussy, Saint-Saëns and Franck, also in the Concertgebouw. As always, any and all feedback is welcome.

Other YPGTCM posts on Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet