Alfred Schnittke: Concerto for Viola and Orchestra | Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.5 in E minor – Antoine Tamestit, SWR Symphonieorchester, Teodor Currentzis (HD 1080p)

Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis, an "eccentric super-talented maestro", conducts SWR Symphonieorchester in Alfred Schnittke's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (viola plays Antoine Tamestit), and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64. The concert recorded at Liederhalle Stuttgart, on December 14, 2018.

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1985 was a watershed year in Alfred Schnittke's life, in good ways and bad. It was a tremendously prolific year, seeing the composition of some of Schnittke's most famous, personality-defining works – his String Trio, his Third Concerto Grosso, the first two movements of his First Cello Concerto, and his Viola Concerto. However, these works seem to have come at a cost: soon after the completion of the Trio, Schnittke suffered his first serious strokes. This catastrophic turn would have immense effect: just as Schnittke's work was entering a kind of "archetype" stage, it would shift radically. Everything after that fateful year, as Schnittke remarked in 1988, would now be different.

This proclamation, coming after such a blow, leaves those works of 1985 with an inevitable hue, an unsettling force of premonition and farewell. Certainly this tone hangs heavy over the Viola Concerto, perhaps Schnittke's single most famous work. Its success was due in no small part to the advocacy of its dedicatee, Russian violist Yuri Bashmet; Bashmet's extraordinary performances of the concerto achieved a certain fame on their own. However, Bashmet also seems to have captured a new, confessional desperation of tone; he played the part of an great actor, in a work which comes closer to theater than almost other musical work of Schnittke's.

The Viola Concerto revisits many of Schnittke's standard concerto formulae. There is its three-part form, the role of its three movements-a slow, loose introductory movement, presenting the work's main materials, a second movement which hurls violently toward fatality through an array of styles, and a lugubrious lament-finale, which assembles the previous shards into a painful farewell-plaint.

The materials Schnittke uses contain a new depth, and a hint of biography as well. After the famous opening motive, based on Bashmet's name, we hear a wide arching melody on viola accompanied by low strings (Schnittke does this work without violins). In its throaty, charred tone, its bottomless and searching sorrow, it treads the mire like the blacker passages in Dostoyevsky; it's shot through with Russian excess, pathos, and pride, and testifies nobly to that side of Schnittke's heritage. After a cataclysmic outburst, we also hear a small cadential figure, a fairy-tale from the Viennese woods right out Schubert; and this confession comes from Schnittke's other side, his German heritage. These sides, the Russian-confessional and the German-constructive, will determine the trajectory of the rest of the concerto.

The second movement is vintage Schnittke, a nightmare-train hurtling towards its inevitable wreck. We encounter garishly colorful characters and episodes: the martial constantly flows into the wanton and reckless. Barracks mix with booze, marches with waltzes, and all veer towards a kind of irresistibly repugnant luxuriance. In one notorious passage, the violist is seduced, then coerced, into revisiting the Schubert-passage from the first movement; the little motive spins and spins from nostalgic reminiscence into noxious souvenir. Seldom has Schnittke so well orchestrated the shift from youthful morbidity to withered corpse. Eventually the soloist is dealt his death-blow in a sonic boom both tragic and trashy.

This sad filth overflows into the finale, where the violist weaves out an interior death-song of great scope. The sweep of this movement is clearly epic, a collection of memories and laments for losses. The tone is again Russian, and eventually attains the steady inertia of a funeral procession. The coda is one of the most nauseatingly drawn-out in all of Schnittke, a dwindling out of the flame as oddly effective as it is uncompromising; as Bashmet plays it, it's a Shakespearean death-soliloquy entering a cryogenic coffin.

Source: Seth Brodsky (allmusic.com)

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Tchaikovsky composed the Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64, between May and the end of August 1888, and conducted its premiere at St Petersburg on November 17 of that year. Eleven years separated the "fateful" Fourth Symphony of 1877 from the Fifth, about which Tchaikovsky expressed ambivalent feelings both during its composition and later on. To his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, he wrote in August 1888 that "it seems to me I have not failed, and that it is good". After conducting it in Prague, however, he wrote "...It is a failure; there is something repellent, something superfluous and insincere that the public instinctively recognizes". Yet by March he could write: "I like it far better now".

By no means did Tchaikovsky neglect the orchestra between 1877 (when he committed, in his words, the "rash act" of marriage) and 1888. He composed four wholly charming and fanciful suites, of which the second and third could have passed as symphonies had he chosen to call them that. Furthermore, he wrote the unnumbered but inspired Manfred Symphony in 1885. Yet Tchaikovsky never found symphonic structure as congenial as opera or ballet. His method was closer to Liszt's tone-poem procedure than to the Austro-German heritage, continued by Brahms and Bruckner among his contemporaries. Tchaikovsky favored sequences (in his case, the iteration and reiteration of four-bar cells) over enharmonic evolution. Listeners who've sometimes found his music as irritating as he found Brahms' tend do so because of sequence overload, finding that such repeated gestures result in an overblown effect. His greatest gifts were melody and orchestration: witness the popular songs plagiarized from his music, such as "Moon Love", cribbed from the slow movement of Symphony No.5.

Like the Fourth, the Symphony No.5 is unified by a six-measure "Fate" motto, heard straightaway in a darkly colored Andante introduction until, after a pause, the body of the opening 4/4 movement becomes a sonata-form Allegro con anima (with "soul" as well as spirit). It builds to a ferocious fortissimo climax before ending gloomily. Tchaikovsky marked this melodically rich slow movement Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza (songfully unhurried, with some freedom). In D major basically, it is a 12/8 sonatina (exposition and reprise), with an elaborate three-part song structure replacing the development section. Its special glory is the solo-horn arietta looted by "Moon Love", although the ominous motto theme from the first movement interrupts twice – like the Commendatore's Statue answering Don Giovanni's invitation to dinner.

The quasi-scherzo third movement is a waltz in A major out of Tchaikovsky's top balletic drawer, with a trio in F sharp minor plus a long coda that reprises the motto, now in 3/4 time. Germanic academics were scandalized by the presence of a waltz in a numbered symphony, but not Brahms, who stayed over in Hamburg to hear a rehearsal, and during a bibulous lunch with Tchaikovsky the day after praised the first three movements.

The motto launches the last movement as it did the first, but now in E major, Andante maestoso, leading to another sonata-allegro construct – this one vivace rather than moderato, with an alla breve meter that keeps it moving. At the end of the reprise, Tchaikovsky writes six B major chords – a false cadence that invariably provokes applause – before the motto, now bedecked in alb and fanon, launches a major-key coda as long as the entire development section. It quickens to a Presto dash for the double bar before broadening at the very end for a triumphantly sonorous tetrad of "end-of-file" chords.

Source: Roger Dettmer (allmusic.com)



Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

♪ Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1985)

i. Largo
ii. Allegro molto
iii. Largo


Encore:

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

♪ Sarabande

Antoine Tamestit, viola


Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

♪ Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64 (1888)

i. Andante – Allegro con anima
ii. Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza
iii. Valse. Allegro moderato
iv. Finale. Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace


SWR Symphonieorchester
Conductor: Teodor Currentzis

Liederhalle Stuttgart, December 14, 2018

(HD 1080p)

Antoine Tamestit is recognised internationally as one of the great violists – soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. He has been described as possessing "a flawless technique, and combines effortless musicality with an easy communicative power" (Bachtrack). In addition to his peerless technique and profound musicianship, he is known for the depth and beauty of his sound with its rich, deep, burnished quality. His repertoire is broad, ranging from the Baroque to the contemporary, and he has performed and recorded several world premieres.

In the 2018-2019 season, Tamestit is Artist-in-Residence SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart with which he will perform the Schnittke, Walton and Hoffmeister concerti. He will also play/direct the orchestra in a programme of Bach, Hindemith, Britten and Brahms. Elsewhere this season, he will tour the US with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and will appear as Gardiner's soloist with the orchestra of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He returns to the London Symphony Orchestra, and will perform with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Dresden Saatskapelle, Orchestre de Paris in Paris and on tour, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. In recital and chamber music, he will appear at the Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus, Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels and the Prinzregententheater in Munich.

Since giving the world premiere performance of Jörg Widmann's Viola Concerto in 2015 with the Orchestre de Paris and Paavo Järvi, Tamestit has given performances of the concerto with the co-commissioners, Swedish Radio Symphony and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, both under Daniel Harding, again with the Orchestre de Paris, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Tamestit has also appeared as soloist with orchestras such as the Czech Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, WDR Köln, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He has worked with many great conductors including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Harding, Marek Janowski, Antonio Pappano, François-Xavier Roth and Franz Welser-Möst.

Antoine Tamestit is a founding member of Trio Zimmermann with Frank Peter Zimmermann and Christian Poltera. Together they have recorded a number of acclaimed CDs for BIS Records and played in Europe's most famous concert halls and series. Other chamber music partners include Nicholas Angelich, Gautier Capucon, Martin Fröst, Leonidas Kavakos, Nikolai Lugansky, Emmanuel Pahud, Francesco Piemontesi, Christian Tetzlaff, Cédric Tiberghien, Yuja Wang, Jörg Widmann, Shai Wosner and the Ebene and Hagen Quartets.

Antoine Tamestit records for Harmonia Mundi and released the Widmann Concerto, recorded with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding in February 2018. The recording was selected as Editor's Choice in BBC Music Magazine. His first recording on Harmonia Mundi was Bel Canto: The Voice of the Viola, with Cédric Tiberghien released in February 2017. Tamestit's distinguished discography includes Berlioz's Harold en Italie with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev for LSO Live; for Naïve he has recorded three Bach Suites, Hindemith solo and concertante works with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Paavo Järvi; and an earlier recording of Harold in Italy with Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre. In 2016 he appeared with Frank Peter Zimmermann and the Chamber Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on a new recording of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante (Hännsler Classic).

Tamestit's other world premiere performances and recordings include Thierry Escaich's La Nuit Des Chants in 2018, the Concerto for Two Violas by Bruno Mantovani written for Tabea Zimmermann and Tamestit, and Olga Neuwirth's Remnants of Songs. Works composed for Tamestit also include Neuwirth's Weariness Heals Wounds and Gérard Tamestit's Sakura.

Together with Nobuko Imai, Antoine Tamestit is co-artistic director of the Viola Space Festival in Japan, focusing on the development of viola repertoire and a wide range of education programmes.

Born in Paris in 1979, Antoine Tamestit studied with Jean Sulem, Jesse Levine, and with Tabea Zimmermann. He was the recipient of several coveted prizes including first prize at the ARD International Music Competition, the William Primrose Competition and the Young Concert Artists (YCA) International Auditions, as well as BBC Radio 3's New Generation Artists Scheme, Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award in 2008.

Tamestit has taught at both the Cologne Hochschule für Musik and Paris Conservatoire, and regularly gives masterclasses worldwide.

Antoine Tamestit plays on a viola made by Stradivarius in 1672, loaned by the Habisreutinger Foundation.

Source: intermusica.co.uk

More photos


See also

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.6 in B minor, "Pathétique" – MusicAeterna, Teodor Currentzis (Download 96kHz/24bit & 44.1kHz/16bit)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major | Igor Stravinsky: Les Noces – Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Nadine Koutcher, MusicAeterna, Teodor Currentzis (Download 96kHz/24bit)

Dmitri Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No.1 in E flat major, & Symphony No.1 in F minor | Benjamin Britten: Sinfonietta, Op.1 – Steven Isserlis, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Teodor Currentzis (HD 1080p)

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor – Martha Argerich, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim

Accompanied by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under the baton of the Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, the Argentine classical pianist Martha Argerich, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time, performs Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op.23. The concert was recorded during the Salzburger Festspiele in Austria, at Großes Festspielhaus on August 14, 2019.

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Although Tchaikovsky was already an accomplished composer (having already produced his first two symphonies, a string quartet, and two notable tone poems, all of these successful and enduring works), he still sought the approval of mentors such as Balakirev and Nicolas Rubinstein. On Christmas Eve 1874 he played the concerto for Rubinstein (its intended soloist) in an empty classroom. Rubinstein responded with a torrent of castigation, made famous by Tchaikovsky's own recollection. Tchaikovsky slunk off in despair. Later Rubinstein called him back and detailed a list of changes that must be made by a certain date if Rubinstein were to perform it. Tchaikovsky wrote that he responded, "I shall not change a single note, and I shall publish the concerto as it is now". He continued in his reminiscence, "And this, indeed, I did". Well, not entirely. Although there are no really substantial changes, he did subject the concerto to some minor revision before it was printed, as happens with most compositions. The premiere fell to Hans von Bülow, who played it first in Boston, October 15, 1875. The audience was enraptured and demanded a repeat of the entire final movement. Von Bülow took the concerto back to Europe, where it was quickly added to the repertoire of other leading pianists; even Rubinstein started playing it in 1878. It has been a giant success, virtually the epitome of the romantic piano concerto, ever since.

The form of the concerto is lopsided: possessing a notably large scale introduction, the broad melodies of the first movement run its length out to nearly 25 minutes, more than the length of the two remaining movements combined. Its arresting opening horn call, with bold orchestral chords interrupting, leads immediately to one of the most recognizable and beloved of classical melodies, played by strings with rich harmonic support from the piano solo. Tchaikovsky initiates a great formal surprise by going straightway into a full-fledged cadenza for the piano solo, a powerful treatment of the theme. The strings then reassert the melody in its original form – and all this is only the introduction to the first movement proper. A lengthy introduction to be sure (106 measures), but once it ends, that's the last time in the concerto this music is used in any way. The movement proper is a full-scale sonata-allegro treatment of two themes, one reputedly a Ukrainian folk theme, the other a gentle romantic theme. There is great drama and passion in its working out; when it is all over one realizes that there is also a minimum (for Tchaikovsky) of angst and pathos.

The second movement is tender, beginning with pizzicato chords so quiet as to be almost whispers. A flute melody of young adolescent tenderness is the main theme of the movement. There is a central section with a delicate waltz.

The finale opens with a rushing string figure and a powerful drum stroke. The main theme is an arresting, galloping dance made up of many short phrases. Yet another romantic theme provides contrast.

Source: Joseph Stevenson (allmusic.com)



Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

♪ Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op.23 (1874-1875, 1879, 1888)

i. Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso – Allegro con spirito [00:18]*
ii. Andantino semplice – Prestissimo – Tempo I [21:17]
iii. Allegro con fuoco – Molto meno mosso – Allegro vivo [27:50]


Encore:

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

♪ Rondo in A major for piano four hands, Op.107 D.951 (1828)**

Allegretto quasi andantino [40:11]


Martha Argerich, piano
Daniel Barenboim, piano**

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Conductor: Daniel Barenboim

Salzburger Festspiele, Großes Festspielhaus, Austria, August 14, 2019

(HD 720p)

* Start time of each movement

The Rondo in A major D.951 is Schubert's final work for piano four hands, written five months before his death. Schubert demonstrated one last time the inspired greatness and heartfelt beauty of melodic gifts that have never been matched in the history of music.

The work is launched with an Allegretto quasi Andantino that is effusive and tender, animated and simple, serenely cheerful as a folksong recalled from one's earliest youth. The melodic line is developed, decorated and ornamented. Inspired idea follows inspired idea, until we reach a second great subject in the dominant (E major) that will later play an imporrant role in the development section of this sonata-rondo.

Schubert transforms it, modulates to remote keys and explores distant sonorities, while at the same time holding back the most glorious climax until the coda. At the very end the rondo theme returns, overwhelmingly transformed, weighed down by a minor sixth and a ritardando, as though touched by the hand of death.

Thus Schubert ends his very last work for piano four hands, which was published one month after his death as the "Grand Rondeau" by the Viennese publisher Domenico Artaria who commissioned it from Schubert.

Source: franzpeterschubert.com

More photos


See also

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor – Ivan Bessonov, Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, Dimitris Botinis (HD 1080p)

Sergei Rachmaninov: Suite No.2 for two pianos, Op.17 – Martha Argerich, Nelson Freire

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.4 in F minor – Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly (HD 1080p)

Riccardo Chailly conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.4 in F minor, Op.36. The concert was recorded live during the Summer Festival in Lucerne, at KKL Luzern, Concert Hall, on August 17, 2019.

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed his Fourth Symphony between 1877 and 1878, dedicated to his patroness and "best friend" Nadezhda von Meck.

Following his catastrophic marriage to former student Antonina Miliukova, lasting a mere two months, Tchaikovsky made a start on his fourth symphony. After emerging from a profound period of writer's block, struggling with his sexuality and battling with a heavy bout of depression, it's perhaps unsurprising that the music is urgent, supercharged and violent at points. Even the opening bars of the first movement are intended to represent a metaphor for Fate, or, as poor old Tchaikovsky put it: "the fatal power which prevents one from attaining the goal of happiness".

Between the moments of anguish and melancholy, Tchaikovsky proves he knows how to write a great tune – even the plaintive oboe melody at the beginning of the second movement, the Andantino in modo di canzone, swells with a poignancy and optimism, helped along by lush strings and booming brass.

The Finale, complete with frenzied plucking from the strings and rushing scales bursting through the texture, is certainly a highlight. The doom-laden Fate theme comes back once more – a cyclical feature Tchaikovsky went on to use in the two symphonies that followed, Manfred, and Symphony No.5, completed in 1885 and 1888 respectively.

Source: classicfm.com



Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

♪ Symphony No.4 in F minor, Op.36 (1877-1878)

i. Andante sostenuto – Moderato con anima – Moderato assai, quasi Andante – Allegro vivo [06:30]*
ii. Andantino in modo di canzone [26:30]
iii. Scherzo. Pizzicato ostinato – Allegro [37:07]
iv. Finale. Allegro con fuoco [49:18]

Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Conductor: Riccardo Chailly

Summer Festival, Lucerne, KKL Luzern, Concert Hall, August 17, 2019

(HD 1080p)

* Start time of each movement

Riccardo Chailly has been Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2016. Born in 1953 in Milan, he studied at the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome, and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and began his career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. Chailly was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1980, and in 1988 he took up the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for sixteen years. From 2005 to the summer of 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He has been Music Director of La Scala in Milan since January 2015. Chailly regularly conducts such leading European orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris. In the United States, he has worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As an opera conductor – in addition to his performances at La Scala – he has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London, Zurich Opera, the Bavarian and Vienna Staatsoper companies, Chicago Lyric Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Riccardo Chailly has received many prizes for his more than 150 CDs, including Gramophone's Record of the Year Award for his account of the Brahms symphonies. In the fall of 2019, he will release an album of three Strauss tone poems with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Riccardo Chailly is a Grand'Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, a Cavaliere di Gran Croce, and a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In 1996 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and he has been an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France since 2011.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 7 September 1988 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam in a program of works by Wagner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.

Source: lucernefestival.ch/en/

Lucerne Festival Orchestra

The idea for a unique festival orchestra of international standing in Lucerne goes back to Arturo Toscanini, who in 1938 convened acclaimed virtuosos of the time into an elite ensemble with the legendary "Concert de Gala". It was 65 years later that the conductor Claudio Abbado and Festival Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger established a connection to this moment of the Festival's birth and founded the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which made its public debut in August 2003. With Riccardo Chailly, this unique orchestra once again has an Italian music director. Moreover, each summer a guest conductor is invited in order to offer the audience an additional musical perspective.

Every summer famous soloists, chamber musicians, renowned music teachers, and principals of the leading European orchestras, along with members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and of the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, join together in Lucerne to form an ensemble that is special class. Many of the musicians spend their vacations here to rehearse and experience afresh a symphonic repertoire free from workaday regimentation and routine.

Many stars of the classical music scene have played in the Lucerne Festival Orchestra over the years: members of the Alban Berg and Hagen Quartets; the violinists Kolja Blacher and Renaud Capuçon; the violists Wolfram Christ and Antoine Tamestit; the cellists Jens Peter Maintz, Natalia Gutman, Gautier Capuçon, and Julian Steckel; the flutists Jacques Zoon and Emmanuel Pahud; the clarinetists Sabine Meyer and Alessandro Carbonare; the oboists Lucas Macías Navarro and Albrecht Mayer; the horn players Alessio Allegrini and Ivo Gass; the trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and Jeroen Berwaerts; the trombonist Jörgen van Rijen; the timpanist Raymond Curfs; and the list goes on and on... and every summer still more new names come along.

The orchestra sets the tone for the opening week of Lucerne Festival with several symphony concerts. And at the season's end comes the grand tour. Foreign residencies have taken these musicians throughout Europe and to Asia and the USA.

Source: lucernefestival.ch/en

More photos


See also

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor – Ivan Bessonov, Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, Dimitris Botinis (HD 1080p)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Seasons – Olga Scheps (HD 1080p)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.6 in B minor "Pathétique" – Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali (HD 1080p)

Read More

Musical Love Letters: Dedications By LGBT Composers

Aaron Copland with Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti
in Bernardsville, New Jersey, 1945

By Heather O'Donovan
June 7, 2019

June is Pride Month, commemorating the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which took place in 1969 in New York City. To mark 50 years since those history-changing events, we've decided to compile a special playlist of musical dedications by LGBT composers – musical love letters, if you will – in honor of Pride.

In 1969, for many composers, dedicating their compositions to a same-sex romantic partner, or even referencing aspects of their lives in their work, could be considered risky, to say the least. From societal prejudices to legal ramifications, the world did not – and still does not always – look kindly upon the LGBT community. Today, these musical love letters can be viewed in the greater history of Pride as small acts of subversion and assertions of the fundamental rights owed to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identification.

Richard Chanlaire: Nature morte aux fleurs, tableau

Francis Poulenc to Richard Chanlaire: Concert champêtre

Francis Poulenc's first serious love was a painter by the name of Richard Chanlaire. In a letter accompanying the original score of Concert champêtre, Poulenc addressed Chanlaire: "Here is the best gift I can offer you – accept it along with my heart as it contains all the best parts of myself. These are my tears, my joy, my blood and flesh itself that I have put into this Concerto. I offer it to you today because you are the being that I cherish most upon this earth. You have changed my life, you are the sunshine of my thirty years, my reason for living and for working. During my long months of solitude, I called to you without knowing you... Thank you for finding me at last".

The letter was dated May 10, 1929, although the pair had already established a friendship long before then. In 1927, Poulenc used an inheritance to purchase an estate. Rumors circulated that he was preparing for marriage, and perhaps wanting to dispel the gossip, and maybe in an attempt to grapple with his own "Parisian sexuality", as he referred to it, Poulenc proposed to long-time friend Raymonde Linossier. But she refused him, sparking Poulenc's first real relationship with a man, Chanlaire. Poulenc's letters became suffused with declarations of love for the painter.

After his short-lived affair with Chanlaire, Poulenc went on to have relationships with other men, and also fathered a daughter with Fréderique Lebedeff. Even when Poulenc's religious faith deepened in his mid-30s, he clarified in a letter to a friend that he remained "as sincere in my faith, without any messianic screaming, as I am in my Parisian sexuality".

Ethel Smyth

Emmeline Pankhurst

Ethel Smyth to Emmeline Pankhurst: The March of the Women

Ethel Smyth – the first female composer to have her work performed at the Metropolitan Opera –  was a strong figure who played an important role in the development of England's women's suffrage movement, and scholars today believe she was involved romantically with several women. As a female composer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Smyth experienced significant prejudice and resistance, which hindered her ability to get her works performed, particularly at the beginning of her career. When she heard Women's Social and Political Union leader Emmeline Pankhurst deliver a speech in 1910, she was immediately drawn to the cause – and Pankhurst. Smyth gave up music for the ensuing two years, devoting herself instead entirely to the suffrage movement.

The evidence surrounding the actuality of a romantic relationship between Smyth and Pankhurst is somewhat speculative, as it is mostly based upon snippets from letters. Virginia Woolf (another intimate acquaintance) wrote, "In strict confidence, Ethel used to love Emmeline – they shared a bed". In 1914 Smythe wrote to Pankhurst, "Goodnight my darling amd thank you for your letters... Do you really know, I wonder, what they are to me? how I devour them... how I live on one, and all its wonderful news, till the next comes!" Regardless of the romantic extent of their relationship, Smyth was undeniably drawn to the "quiet, exceedingly feminine-looking companion" she found in Pankhurst.

In 1911, Smyth returned to composition briefly in order to compose The March of the Women, which she dedicated to Pankhurst. It became the official anthem of England's women's suffrage movement.

Peter Pears & Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten to Peter Pears: My Beloved Is Mine

Composer Benjamin Britten met tenor Peter Pears through a mutual friend in 1937. What initially began as a fruitful professional relationship soon blossomed into a meaningful personal bond as well. When Britten was nearing the end of his life, he asked a friend to promise that he would "tell the truth about Peter and me" once the composer had passed. It was important to Britten and Pears that their love not be struck from history, even if they were careful about the people with whom they shared their open secret.

Pears was Britten's "beloved man", and the composer wrote many of his greatest works for his voice, including Canticle I: My Beloved is mine, an effusive declaration of passionate and uninhibited love. The dedication says only, "This Canticle was written for the Dick Sheppard Memorial Concert on 1 November 1947, when it was performed by Peter Pears and the composer". The text comes from 17th-century poet Francis Quarles, who intended the poem to be a declaration of religious love for God. But we can confidently infer that Britten's relationship with Pears served as a major influence on his setting of the text and that, for him, it was an undeniable homage to romantic, rather than religious, passion. Its closing text beautifully summarizes the love the couple shared: "He gives me wealth; I give him all my vows: I give him songs; he gives me length of days; With wreaths of grace he crowns my longing brows, And I his temples with a crown of Praise, Which he accepts: an everlasting sign, That I my best-beloved's am; that he is mine".

Gian Carlo Menotti & Samuel Barber

Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber: Vanessa

Composers Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber met at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1928. Menotti had come to the school with very little knowledge of the English language. He did, however, speak Italian and French, and soon became acquainted with another student – one year older than himself – who also spoke French. Menotti's friendship with Barber ("Sam") may have been born out of practicality (in fact, for about two years the pair spoke almost exclusively French), but it soon turned into something deeply meaningful that would profoundly touch both their lives for over three decades.

In 1956, the pair began working on an opera – Barber's first – entitled Vanessa. Menotti crafted the libretto and Barber, the music. By that point they had been partners for much of their lives, and so the work they completed together was born out of their deep understanding of and love for one another. Reminiscing on the intimate nature of Menotti's libretto, a pupil of Barber's remarked that small details like a character borrowing a comb harken back to Barber himself, who never had one. Other references to the intimate details of a life shared for many years come to life as mini love letters throughout the otherwise unhappy story of Vanessa.

Sergey Kireyev

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to Sergey Kireyev: My Genius, My Angel, My Friend

Tchaikovsky's sexuality, once covered up by Soviet censors, has since become a topic of significant research. We know that Tchaikovsky had relationships with many men throughout his life, although the nature of some of his adorations, such as that of his nephew Vladimir Davidov, give today's reader pause. Tchaikovsky struggled to come to terms with his sexuality. At 36 years old, he even resolved to marry a woman, "so as to shut the mouths of assorted contemptible creatures whose opinions mean nothing to me, but who are in a position to cause distress to those near me".

One of Tchaikovsky's earliest infatuations was with Sergey Kireyev, a student four years his junior that he met at school when the composer was 16. It is believed that Tchaikovsky dedicated his first surviving song, My Genius, My Angel, My Friend, to Kireyev. The dedication reads only "To . . . . . . . . . . . . ." It is believed that these 13 dots refer to the 13 letters in Kireyev's name. The pair had a tempestuous relationship during their school days – possibly due to teasing from his schoolmates, Kireyev began to treat Tchaikovsky cruelly, flattering him one moment and mocking him the next. In 1867, 10 years following the composition of the song, Kireyev visited Tchaikovsky in Moscow. Tchaikovsky was happy to see him, but less smitten with him than he had formerly been.

Victor Kraft, 1935 (Photo by Carl Van Vechten)

Aaron Copland to Victor Kraft: El Salón México

Victor Kraft began studying music with Aaron Copland during his teenage years. Although Kraft would eventually turn to a career in photography, he remained a constant in Copland's life. The pair traveled to Mexico together in the fall of 1932 (when Kraft was 17 and Copland 32), and not long after their return, Kraft moved into the composer's Manhattan residence.

Copland dedicated El Salón México to Kraft. Named after a popular dance hall in Mexico City, Copland was determined to create the next España or Bolero, a piece devoid of any pretensions, which can be beloved by all. The orchestral work is a reflection of the Mexican spirit as perceived from the outside eye, suffused with Latin dance rhythms and quotes from Mexican folk music. This musical dedication demonstrates the extent to which Copland was inspired by his travel companion.

Kraft later fathered a son named Jeremy, requesting that Copland be the boy's godfather. After Kraft's death, Copland continued to provide financial support for the boy, even leaving $25,000 in his will to the mother in order to support Jeremy.

Michael Tippett (right) with Wilfred Franks in Spain in 1933

Michael Tippett and Wilfred Franks: String Quartet No.1

Michael Tippett met Wilfred Franks in the spring of 1932 on a train platform in Manchester, introduced through a mutual friend. "Wilf" was unmistakable, wearing a green shirt and green shorts. His personality was marked by what the friend described as "a taxi driver's fund of knowledge, irreverence and humour". Tippett quickly became enamored, and Franks became an embodiment of the sort of freedom that Tippett found elusive. Franks was a Marxist who represented a starkly different outlook on life, and through him, Tippett's understanding of music as a vehicle for social change grew.

In 1934-1935, Tippett wrote his String Quartet No.1, ascribing the piece's beauty to his "deepest, most shattering experience of falling in love", and dedicating it to Wilf. As he described it, "all that love flowed out in the slow movement of my First String Quartet, an unbroken span of lyrical music in which all four instruments sing ardently from start to finish". Tippett revised the work in 1943 after his relationship with Franks had ended, transforming the four-movement version into another with three movements, retaining only the last two of the original score.

Lou Harrison & Bill Colvig, Cabrillo College, 1967

Lou Harrison to Bill Colvig: Music for Bill and Me

Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig met in San Francisco in 1967 after a concert featuring the composer's works. Just weeks later, the pair moved into Harrison's woodland cabin together. They shared many interests, including a deep fascination with and love of non-Western musical traditions. They became particularly interested in the gamelan, a set of pitched percussion instruments from Indonesia. Together, Harrison and Colvig developed and built three "American" gamelans featuring such materials as tin cans and oxygen tanks. Outside of music, the pair were also active members in the Society for Individual Rights, a San Francisco-based organization for protecting gay rights. In 1975, Harrison performed at the very first Santa Cruz Pride celebration, playing one of the gamelans that the couple had built together.

Harrison was happy to live what he called "a life of mountains and music" with Colvig. He composed Music for Bill and Me shortly after the pair's meeting in 1967. The couple remained together for 33 years, until Colvig's death in March 2000.

Source: wqxr.org

P. I. Tchaikovsky, Samuel Barber & Gian Carlo Menotti, Benjamin Britten

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The White Crow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 2019) – Ilan Eshkeri, Lisa Batiashvili – London Metropolitan Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Andy Brown (Download 44.1kHz/16bit)

The album "The White Crow" features the film's original score composed by Ilan Eshkeri (Stardust, Layer Cake, Still Alice, Kick-Ass, Johnny English Reborn) and featuring violin solos by Lisa Batiashvili. Also included are ballet compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Krein and Ludwig Minkus, most of which have been newly arranged for the project by Eshkeri.

The White Crow is directed by Ralph Fiennes who also stars in the movie alongside Oleg Ivenko, Adèle Exarchopoulos, as well as ballet-world enfant terrible Sergei Polunin, Chulpan Khamatova, Olivier Rabourdin, Raphaël Personnaz and Louis Hofmann. The movie is inspired by the book "Rudolf Nureyev: The Life" by Julie Kavanaugh and charts the iconic dancer's famed defection from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him.

The White Crow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 2019)

Score by Ilan Eshkeri

Lisa Batiashvili, violin
Dudana Mazmanishvili, piano (track 9)

London Metropolitan Orchestra
Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: Andy Brown

Deutsche Grammophon 2019


Tracks:

1. Ilan Eshkeri: Trans-Siberian Express (Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
2. Ilan Eshkeri: Paris (Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
3. Alexander Krein: Laurencia – Pas de six: 10. Wedding Dance (Arr. Ilan Eshkeri and Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
4. Ilan Eshkeri: La Sainte-Chapelle (Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
5. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake, Op.20, TH.12 – Pas de trois: 2. Andante sostenuto (Arr. Ilan Eshkeri and Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
6. Ilan Eshkeri: Ufa (Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
7. Ludwig Minkus: La Bayadère – 46. Third Shade Variation (Arr. Matthias Gohl)
8. Ilan Eshkeri: Leningrad (Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
9. Ilan Eshkeri: Nureyev
10. Ludwig Minkus: La Bayadère – 32. Solor Variation (Arr. Vladimir Podgoretsky)
11. Ilan Eshkeri: The Prodigal Son (Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
12. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake, Op.20, TH.12 – Pas de deux: 4. Coda (Arr. Ilan Eshkeri and Jessica Dannheisser)
13. Ilan Eshkeri: Le Bourget (Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)
14. Traditional: Bashkirian Folk Dance (Arr. Ilan Eshkeri) – Danny Driver
15. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The White Crow (Arr. Ilan Eshkeri and Orch. Jessica Dannheisser)


Watch the trailer




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(44.1kHz/16bit, Size: 156.14 MB)


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New biopic from Oscar nominees Ralph Fiennes and David Hare probes intense drama of ballet superstar Rudolf Nureyev's defection from the Soviet Union. The White Crow features captivating score by British composer Ilan Eshkeri and places solo spotlight on acclaimed violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Both the Score and the Film were released on March 22, 2019.

Half-hearted concessions to freedom of expression were not enough to hold Rudolf Nureyev in the Soviet Union. The young dancer, a superstar soloist of the Kirov Ballet, caused an international sensation when he became the first Soviet artist to defect to the West during the Cold War. The White Crow, a new film directed by Ralph Fiennes, charts Nureyev's journey from childhood poverty in Siberia and meteoric rise as a principal dancer to the decisive moment of his defection in June 1961 at Le Bourget airport in Paris.

The story's personal and political drama surges through Sir David Hare's screenplay and is intensified by the austere beauty of Ilan Eshkeri's original score. Deutsche Grammophon is set to release the soundtrack album on 22 March 2019 to coincide with the movie's international release.

Russophile Fiennes, who also plays Nureyev's mentor Alexander Pushkin (in Russian) in The White Crow, became fascinated by the dancer's drive and dynamism almost twenty years ago when he first read Julie Kavanagh's "Rudolf Nureyev: The Life", a book whose cinematic potential immediately captured his imagination. When he finally came to direct the film, his renowned attention to detail was valued by all his collaborators, including contemporary British composer Eshkeri, who is best known for his soundtracks to The Young Victoria and Still Alice. He created the music for Coriolanus, Ralph Fiennes's directorial debut as film-maker, and for the actor-director's critically acclaimed second film, The Invisible Woman, and here too worked closely with Fiennes in writing a score that expresses the complex and conflicting emotions involved in Nureyev's story.

Deutsche Grammophon artist Lisa Batiashvili plays a prominent off-screen role as soloist in the score to The White Crow. The Georgian-born German violinist, raised under the Soviet system during its final years before moving with her family in 1991 from war-torn Tbilisi to Munich, plays the beautiful melody of the "White Crow", which begins as the Entr'acte from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, an intimate solo for the Prince brought back into fashion by Nureyev, and is then transformed into a full-scale piece by Eshkeri that conveys the catharsis and freedom of the dancer's defection. Batiashvili also performs all the other key melodies in Eshkeri's score.

Her discography for the Yellow Label already includes majestic readings of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Christian Thielemann, and of Prokofiev's Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Her recording of the violin concertos of Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, made in partnership with Daniel Barenboim, was described by BBC Music Magazine simply as "Two greats, performed by two greats". She was named Instrumentalist of the Year in 2015 by Musical America. After an acclaimed 2017-2018 residency with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and having previously been Artist in Residence with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Batiashvili is currently enjoying a varied year as Artist in Residence with the Münchner Konzertdirektion Hörtnagel. This summer is her first as Artistic Director of Audi Sommerkonzerte, Ingolstadt.

"I think [Nureyev] was highly individual",” said Ralph Fiennes before a screening of The White Crow at last October's London Film Festival. "He had a real sense of how things can be pushed further, a true artistic spirit, which is to break down or question the received wisdom or the received opinion, to challenge. But also he was trained in a very precise ballet tradition, the [Russian] imperial ballet tradition that the Soviet regime had co-opted for itself. He was a ferocious and difficult, contradictory man, who provokes different responses in people, but I love that. For me, he's a character rich in his fire to realise himself".

Source: screamsmedia.com

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