The Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, commonly known as the Italian, is an orchestral symphony written by German composer Felix Mendelssohn.
The work has its origins (as had the composer's Scottish 3rd Symphony and The Hebrides overture) in the tour of Europe which occupied Mendelssohn from 1829 to 1831. Its inspiration is the colour and atmosphere of Italy, where Mendelssohn made sketches but left the work incomplete. Below is a snippet of a letter he wrote to his father:
This is Italy! And now has begun what I have always thought... to be the supreme joy in life. And I am loving it. Today was so rich that now, in the evening, I must collect myself a little, and so I am writing to you to thank you, dear parents, for having given me all this happiness.
In February he wrote from Rome to his sister Fanny,
The Italian symphony is making great progress. It will be the jolliest piece I have ever done, especially the last movement. I have not found anything for the slow movement yet, and I think that I will save that for Naples.
The Italian Symphony was finished in Berlin on 13 March 1833, in response to an invitation for a symphony from the London (now Royal) Philharmonic Society; he conducted the first performance himself in London on 13 May 1833 at a London Philharmonic Society concert. The symphony's success, and Mendelssohn's popularity, influenced the course of British music for the rest of the century. The Germania Musical Society of Boston gave the first performance in the United States, on 1 November 1851, with Carl Bergmann conducting.
Mendelssohn himself, however, remained dissatisfied with the composition, which cost him, he said, some of the bitterest moments of his career; he revised it in 1834 and even planned to write alternative versions of the second, third, and fourth movements. He never published the symphony, and it appeared in print only in 1851; thus it is numbered as his "Symphony No. 4", even though it was in fact the third he composed.
Conductor - Gioacchino Pensato
Contact the artist at gioacchino.pensato@gmail.com
Visit the Gioacchino Pensato Facebook page at www.facebook.com/GioacchinoPensato
Symphony No. 4 - Italian
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
#MusicHistory
#ClassicalMusic
#Mendelssohn
Hector Berlioz - The Damnation of Faust Op. 24 (Hungarian March)
La damnation de Faust (English: The Damnation of Faust), Op. 24 is a work for four solo voices, full seven-part chorus, large children's chorus and orchestra by the French composer Hector Berlioz. He called it a "légende dramatique" (dramatic legend). It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 6 December 1846.
The French composer was inspired by a translation of Goethe's dramatic poem Faust and produced a musical work that, like the masterpiece on which it is based, defies easy categorisation. Conceived at various times as a free-form oratorio and as an opera (Berlioz ultimately called it a "légende dramatique") its travelogue form and cosmic perspective have made it an extreme challenge to stage as an opera. Berlioz himself was eager to see the work staged, but once he did, he conceded that the production techniques of his time were not up to the task of bringing the work to dramatic life. Most of the work's fame has come through concert performances.
Berlioz read Goethe's Faust, Part One in 1828, in Gérard de Nerval's translation; "this marvellous book fascinated me from the first", he recalled in his Memoirs. "I could not put it down. I read it incessantly, at meals, in the theatre, in the street." He was so impressed that a suite entitled Eight Scenes from Faust became his Opus 1 (1829), though he later recalled all the copies of it he could find. He returned to the material in 1845, to make a larger work, with some additional text by Almire Gandonnière to Berlioz's specifications, that he first called a "concert opera", and as it expanded, finally a "dramatic legend".
He worked on the score during his concert tour of 1845, adding his own text for "Nature immense, impénétrable et fière"—Faust's climactic invocation of all nature—and incorporating the Rákóczi March, which had been a thunderous success at a concert in Pest, Hungary, on 15 February 1846.
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
#MusicHistory
#ClassicalMusic
#Berlioz