Four Centuries of Great Music February 4, 2024 The Baroque and Modern Era 3 Bs

Today on Four centuries of Great Music are the three Bs - not all the ones you are thinking Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.   But  we are having my three Bs of the baroque era and my three Bs of the modern era.  The three Bs of the baroque era are Johann Sebastian Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude and Georg Böhm.  And the modern three Bs are Leonard Bernstein, Luciano Berio and Bela Bartok.

Let’s start with the Baroque three Bs.  First is the one you expect, Johann Sebastian Bach.  And this is Bach: Violin Partita #2 In D Minor, BWV 1004.  This is a suite of 5 dance movements: Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabande, Gigue and Ciaccona

Johann Sebastian Bach: Violin Partita #2 In BDMinor, BWV 1004 as performed by Johnny Gandelsman from the album Bach: Complete Sonatas & Partitas For Violin
In A Circle Records

This episode of Four Centuries of Great Music, we are celebrating three B’s from the baroque era Bach, Buxtehude and Böhm and three B’s from the modern era Beril, Boulez and Bernstein.  Next we jump to the modern era but still with the solo violin with Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII for Violin.

Luciano Berio wrote “To compose Sequenza VIII has been like paying a personal debt to the violin, which to me is one of the most subtle and complex of instruments. I studied violin myself, while I was already learning the piano and before starting the clarinet (my father wanted me to practise “all” the instruments), and I have always maintained a strong attraction for this instrument, mixed, however, with rather tormented feelings (perhaps because I was already 13 - much too late - when I started my violin lessons).


While almost all the other Sequenzas develop to an extreme degree a very limited choice of instrumental possibilities, Sequenza VIII deals with a larger and more global view of the violin: and can be listened to as a development of instrumental gestures.


Sequenza VIII is built around two notes (A and B), which - as in a chaconne - act as a compass in the work’s rather diversified and elaborate itinerary, where polyphony is no longer virtual but real, and where the soloist must make the listener constantly aware of the history behind each instrumental gesture. Sequenza VIII, therefore, becomes inevitably a tribute to that musical apex which is the Ciaccona from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in D minor, where - historically - past, present and future violin techniques coexist.

Sequenza VIII was written in 1976 for Carlo Chiarappa.

Here is a performance of Luciano Berlo’s Sequenza VIII for Violin as performed by violinist Irvine Arditti from the album Berio: The Complete Sequenzas, Alternate Sequenzas Mode Records

This episode of Four Centuries of Great Music, we are celebrating three B’s from the baroque era Bach, Buxtehude and Böhm and three B’s from the modern era Berio, Boulez and Bernstein.  

Let’s close this first hour with Georg Böhm’s Suite No. 1 in C Minor for harpsichord.  It is in Four movements Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue.  Here is a performance by Simone Stella from the album Böhm: Complete Harpsichord and Organ Music.  Brilliant Classics

This performance of Georg Böhm’s Suite No. 1 in C Minor: I. for harpsichord is by Simone Stella from the album Böhm: Complete Harpsichord and Organ Music.


Lets open this second hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music with Bela Bartok: Piano Concerto No 1 in A Major Sz 83

Béla Bartók: Piano Concerto No 1 in A Major Sz 83 I Allegro moderato Allegro
Béla Bartók: Piano Concerto No 1 in A Major Sz 83 II Andante  attacca
Béla Bartók: Piano Concerto No 1 in A Major Sz 83 III Allegro molto


Bartók's First Piano Concerto along with the the Piano Sonata, the suite Out of Doors showed a composer forging a distinctive modernist path: music where angular rhythms and abrasive harmonies sat side-by-side with an ever-deepening assimilation of Hungarian folk music.

The First Piano Concerto was intended for Bartók himself to play, as means of securing solo engagements with orchestras. While he had often performed the early Rhapsody Op. 1, he needed a work that was representative of his mature musical language. It was written between August and November 1926, and first performed by the composer himself at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Frankfurt on 1 July 1927, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.  Although early critics and audiences did not receive the work with a great deal of enthusiasm, a decade later, in 1939, Bartók wrote that, while he considered the concerto a success, “its writing is a bit difficult — one might even say very difficult! — as much for orchestras as for audiences.”  He was more explicit in a letter dated 12 January 1939 to Hans Priegnitz about a planned broadcast on Berlin radio: “the orchestral part … is extraordinarily difficult, and if the conductor and orchestra are not absolutely first class, and if there is no adequate time for rehearsals, it would be better to abandon the performance.’

With its troubled early history in mind, it comes as a relief to find Bartók’s biographer Halsey Stevens writing in 1953 about the concerto’s “immense vitality, at white heat throughout” and that “its élan … carries everything before it.”  Perhaps its most remarkable feature is Bartók’s deliberate decision to explore the use of the solo piano as a percussion instrument, and, indeed, to integrate it with the rest of the section in a kind of concertante group: a note in the score states that ‘percussion instruments (including timpani) are to be placed, if possible, directly behind the piano’. This gives the concerto a unique sonority - something which baffled early audiences but which can now be appreciated as a highly innovative contribution to the form — even though the overall design in three movements: Allegro, Andante and Allegro molto seems, on the surface, to be conventional.  And the second movement is played attacca without pause into the third movement.

Here is a performance of Béla Bartók: Piano Concerto No 1 in A Major Sz 83 by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the San Francisco Symphony from the album Bartók Piano Concertos   Pentatone Records

This is a recent release from September of 2023.

Next we have Dietrich Buxtehude Trio Sonata in A Minor, Op. 1 No.3 BuxWV 254.

First published in Hamburg in 1694, Dietrich Buxtehude’s VII Suonate a due, violino & viola da gamba, con cembalo Op.1 stands as a testament to his remarkable contribution to the instrumental repertoire of the Baroque era. The collection highlights Buxtehude’s distinct style of composition, which was shaped by his creative ingenuity and his exposure to a diverse range of European music in the latter half of the 17th century. Born in Denmark in 1637, Buxtehude became organist and Werkmeister at St. Mary’s Church of Lubëck in 1688. The city thrived as a prominent maritime center during the period of the Hanseatic League. It can be inferred that Buxtehude had access to a rich array of musical resources and influences, which transpire through the Opus 1 sonatas.

This Op.1 No. 3 sonata in A minor contains extensive contrapuntal and fugal sections which are punctuated by slower modulatory sections — a practice inherited from the North German organ music tradition and the stylus fantasticus. It offers  an insight into Buxtehude’s remarkable musical aesthetic, which celebrates the diaspora of human emotions.

Here is a performance of Dietrich Buxtehude Trio Sonata in A Minor, Op. 1 No.3 BuxWV 254 by the Ensemble Spinoza  which combines violinist Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais, viola da gambist Margaret Little and keyboardist Christophe Gauthier from the album Buxtehude: Trio Sonatas op.1 Navona Records


And now Leonard Bernstein and his first published work the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.  It was written during 1941–42 and published in 1942 and dedicated to clarinetist David Oppenheim, whom Bernstein met while studying conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood during the summers of 1940 and 1941.

The piece consists of two movements. The first movement is a lyrical grazioso, opening with a musical line reminiscent of Paul Hindemith, who was the composer-in-residence at Tanglewood in 1941, and hinting at the influence of Copland and the idyllic Tanglewood atmosphere. The second movement begins andantino (time signature 3/8) and moves into a fast Vivace e leggiero after a tranquil opening. This movement is predominantly in 5/8 but also changes between 3/8, 4/8 & 7/8 throughout the piece and with a walking bass line and syncopations which reflects his jazz influences which will be seeing his later music.  Later the more reflective mood of the first movement recurs, with a Latin-infused bridge passage that reflected the time Bernstein spent in Key West in the early compositional stages, before finishing in a flourish.

Here is a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano performed by Walter Boeykens, clarinet & Jan Gruithuyzen, piano from the album Walter Boeykens: Clarinet Masterclass Volume 1. Etcetera Records

We have a few minutes left in today’s episode so let’s wrap up with some more Bernstein with there third of the three dance episodes from On the Town: III. Times Square: 1944.  This is from both the broadway and movie musical versions of “On the Town”On the town is the story of three sailors helping one of them find the girl of his dreams.  The dance sequences were choreographed by Jerome Robbins.  The story along with some of the music and dance sequences were taken from a previous ballet work “Fancy Free”.  Here is a performance of Times Square: 1944 from “On the Town” by Keitaro Harada conducting the  NHK Symphony Orchestra from the album Danzón: Copland, Bernstein, Walker, Piazzolla & Márquez. Denon

You have been listening to the third of three dance episodes from Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town:  III. Times Square: 1944 in a performance by Keitaro Harada conducting the  NHK Symphony Orchestra from the album Danzón: Copland, Bernstein, Walker, Piazzolla & Márquez.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring the music of my three Bs of the baroque era and my three Bs of the modern era.  The three Bs of the baroque era are Johann Sebastian Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude and Georg Böhm.  And the modern three Bs are Leonard Bernstein, Luciano Berio and Bela Bartok.

Join us again next Sunday from 3-5 pm.