Four Centuries of Great Music April 16, 2023 Recently Released Classical Music

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are continuing from last week a series of works from new recording releases.  

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: 12 Variations in C Major K 265  from 1778 on the French song “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman”.

Today we are beginning with some piano music by one of the most famous composers in history Mozart which I just received.   Today I am going to play 12 Variations in C Major K 265  from 1778 on the French song “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman”.   This is a set of variations on a very popular theme in France in the second half of the 1700s, better known today in the English version “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. The Variations are dedicated to the pianist Josepha von Auernhammer. The Artaria publishing house, where the pianist worked, published the cycle in 1785. The theme is introduced in the simplest possible version, with only the melody and bass in a regular crotchet rhythm, but the following variations bring a remarkable intensification of style of writing and tempo. Although often learned by young pianists, these variations require sophisticated technical and expressive skills in order to convey the finesse of the writing and the virtuosic momentum adequately.

Niels Wilhelm Gade: Sonata in E minor Op. 28.

Next is a composer who is well known among music specialists, but unfortunately largely ignored by the mainstream concert repertoire and its audiences.  And that is Niels Wilhelm Gade. This is an unfair and regrettable situation, since Gade is an important figure under both the historical and the artistic viewpoint.  Historically, he occupies a prime place in the so-called “music nationalism” of the nineteenth century and indeed can be considered as one of its founders. While today the word nationalism has acquired some negative connotations, at Gade’s time it was a rather praiseworthy and commendable stance. In fact, “music nationalists” believed in the value of the traditional musical heritage of their countries, and attempted to disseminate it by employing tunes, rhythms and sounds of folk music in works conceived on the basis of “classical” principles. This can, and should, be seen as an effort to affirm the value of the local over a monolithic and self-referential tradition, and thus as an appreciation of what the local minorities can contribute to the musical repertoire.   He has not be ignored here on Four Centuries of Great Music as I have played his 4th symphony 6-7 months ago.

Gade was born in Copenhagen on February 22nd, 1817. He grew up in a musical family, since his father was an instrument maker. The child studied violin and composition, although he was also a proficient piano player.  His first steps in the musical world saw him as a violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra; however, the same ensemble acknowledged his value as a composer by premiering his Efterklange af Ossian (1841), a concert overture. Soon afterwards, Gade finished his First Symphony, and had it sent to Felix Mendelssohn, who was, at that time, the conductor of Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mendelssohn was deeply impressed by the work and premiered it; after that, Gade moved to Leipzig where he befriended both Mendelssohn and Schumann, and where he obtained prestigious appointments (including a teaching post at the Conservatory). Schumann, who was always ready to promote musicians of value, wrote enthusiastically about Gade.  Schumann found it suggestive that Gade’s family name was formed by the letters indicating the violin strings, and employed the corresponding notes in a composition of his own, found in the Album für die Jugend op. 68.

The most important piano work written by Gade is his Piano Sonata, whose gestation occupied him for no less than fifteen years. Gade was not the only Romantic composer to feel the powerful attraction for the Sonata Form: to be fascinated by it and almost compelled toward it, but at the same time to feel always inadequate and unsatisfied when facing it.

What had remained as a private sketch, always awaiting revisions and always demanding further perfecting, eventually became Gade’s piano masterpiece after he heard Liszt’s Piano Sonata. To be honest, Liszt belonged in the opposite musical field with respect to Schumann and Mendelssohn. However, similar to Gade, Liszt was attentive to the traditional music of his own land, Hungary, and of other countries. Moreover, Liszt’s Sonata was the one masterpiece by the Hungarian genius against which even his harsher opponents had nothing to say. Gade partly borrowed from Liszt’s concept of cyclic Sonata, although on the plane of form, content and technique there are marked differences between their two Sonatas. Still, Liszt’s influence was openly acknowledged by Gade, who dedicated his own piano sonata to the Liszt.

It is in 4 movements I. Allegro con fuoco; II. Andante; III. Allegretto and IV. Molto Allegro e appassionato

And I should note that this could have easily been played as part of my series from last couple of months “chamber music that needs to be programmed”



Let’s close this first hour of today’s 4 centuries of great music featuring recent releases with Johann Sebastian Bach Violin Concerto in A minor, No. 1, BWV 1041.   It is in three movements: I. Allegro moderato; II. Andante and III. Allegro assai



We are going to open this second hour of 4 centuries of great music featuring recent releases  with Bela Bartok’s Viola concerto.

During the last years of his life, Bartók lived frugally in a tiny apartment on Manhattan’s upper West Side. But hardly alone or neglected, as romantically-inclined commentators would have us believe. He had the companionship of his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory, and he had commissions from some musical heavyweights. If he could also have had his health, Bartók might have lived to the see the acclaim his music would receive by the late 1950s, to say nothing of the near-worship it inspires today, when his name is linked with those of Stravinsky and Schoenberg as a giant of modern music.

Early in 1943, saw the creation and successful premiere by the Boston Symphony of his Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky. In the wake of that success, several violinists – most notably, Yehudi Menuhin – suddenly “discovered” and began to play Bartók’s theretofore neglected Second Violin Concerto (written in 1938), which was enthusiastically received throughout the U.S. and in Britain.

Although leukemia was diagnosed late in 1943, his outward appearance at the time indicated the Bartókian equivalent of robust health and he was able to write to a friend, “for the next three years, a modest living is secured for us from royalties”. His medical bills, which were substantial even before the onset of leukemia, were being paid by ASCAP.

After the Concerto for Orchestra, he tackled commissions from Menuhin for a solo violin sonata, a piano concerto (his third) as a legacy to his wife and from William Primrose for a viola concerto.

He did complete the sonata for Menuhin and write his Third Piano Concerto (as a legacy for his wife), the latter lacking all but the final 17 measures, which were supplied by his friend and musical executor, Tibor Serly.

On September 8, 1945, less than three weeks before his death, Bartók wrote to Primrose: “I am very glad to be able to tell you that your viola concerto is ready in draft, so that only the score has to be written, which means a purely mechanical work... If nothing happens, I can be through in 5 or 6 weeks, that is, I can send you a copy of the orchestra score in the second half of October... This work will be rather transparent, more transparent than in a violin concerto. Also, the somber, more masculine character of your instrument exerted some influence on the general character of the work. The highest note is ‘A,’ but I exploit rather frequently the lower registers. It is conceived in a rather virtuoso style. Most probably some passages will prove to be uncomfortable or unplayable. These we will discuss later according to your observations.”
There was, of course, no “later.”

The composer must have had a good deal more of the Concerto in his mind than he had committed to paper. Tibor Serly would also prepare for performance and publication this fragmentary Viola Concerto. The “draft” that Bartók left turned out to be 15 unnumbered manuscript pages, undecipherable to all but those most familiar with his methods, and hardly easy even for them, as Serly quickly discovered. Serly next had to fill out harmonies and, finally, to orchestrate the whole, which, he noted, “presented the least difficulty, for the leading voices and contrapuntal lines upon which the background is composed were clearly indicated in the manuscript.”

What Bartók referred to as “a purely mechanical work,” which it would have been for him, required over two years for another man to execute.

In December of 1949, the Viola Concerto was performed for the first time. Primrose was the soloist and Bartók’s onetime pupil, Antal Doráti, conducted the Minneapolis Symphony.

The following is excerpted from Serly’s analysis of the Concerto:
“[It] starts with the solo viola accompanied by light rhythmic beats. The solo’s cadenza-like acceleration discloses the first thirteen bars to be an introduction, after which the theme proper starts... [The second subject, is a] “fantastically chromatic and contrapuntal theme, without parallel in any of Bartók’s other music. Scales rise, fall and intertwine. Yet... the actual effect is one of restful calm.”

“A brief interlude, Lento parlando, precedes the second movement... bringing to mind a cantor’s improvisation... A motive from the solo bassoon connects it to the second movement proper. The expressive simplicity of this music is [determined] by the A-B-A ternary song form... Bartók has succeeded [here] in exploiting all the registers of the viola... Toward the end, the motive of the first movement’s theme is again heard, accelerating into a cadenza that leads without pause into an allegretto introduction to the third movement.

“In contrast to what has preceded, the finale is a gay dance, in rondo form... more Rumanian than Hungarian in character. The solo viola moves at a breathless pace, becoming slightly slower with the folklike tune of the trio... From here on, ascending and descending chromatic scale formations recall a similar use of chromatics in the second theme of the first movement. A four-bar fortissimo tutti, followed by an upward scale passage for the viola... brings the [Concerto] to a breathtaking end.”

Béla Bartók: Concerto for Viola and Orchestra Sz. 120 - I. Allegro vivace
Béla Bartók: Concerto for Viola and Orchestra Sz. 120 - II. Adagio religioso - Allegretto
Béla Bartók: Concerto for Viola and Orchestra Sz. 120 - III. Moderato


Franz Schreker:  Chamber Symphony

The Chamber Symphony is in four movements  I. Langsam, schwebend; II. Scherzo. Allegro vivace ; III. Ziemlich bewegt and IV. Langsam, schwebend (Tempo des Anfangs)