Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition ( A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann', French: Tableaux d'une exposition) is a suite of ten pieces (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.
The suite is Mussorgsky's most famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. It has become further known through various orchestrations and arrangements produced by other musicians and composers, with Maurice Ravel's 1922 version for full symphony orchestra being by far the most recorded and performed.
The composition is based on pictures by the artist, architect, and designer Viktor Hartmann. It was probably in 1868 that Mussorgsky first met Hartmann, not long after the latter's return to Russia from abroad. Both men were devoted to the cause of an intrinsically Russian art and quickly became friends. They likely met in the home of the influential critic Vladimir Stasov, who followed both of their careers with interest. According to Stasov's testimony, in 1868, Hartmann gave Mussorgsky two of the pictures that later formed the basis of Pictures at an Exhibition. In 1870, Mussorgsky dedicated the second song ("In the Corner") of the cycle The Nursery to Hartmann. Stasov remarked that Hartmann loved Mussorgsky's compositions, and particularly liked the "Scene by the Fountain" in his opera Boris Godunov. Mussorgsky abandoned the scene in his original 1869 version, but at the requests of Stasov and Hartmann, he reworked it for Act 3 in his revision of 1872.
The years 1873–74 are associated with the staging of Boris Godunov, the zenith of Mussorgsky's career as a composer—at least from the standpoint of public acclaim. Mussorgsky's distant relative, friend, and roommate during this period, Arseniy Golenishchev-Kutuzov, describing the January 1874 premiere of the opera, remarked: "During the winter, there were, I think, nine performances, and each time the theatre was sold out, each time the public tumultuously called for Mussorgsky." The composer's triumph was overshadowed, however, by the critical drubbing he received in the press. Other circumstances conspired to dampen Mussorgsky's spirits. The disintegration of The Mighty Handful and their failure to understand his artistic goals contributed to the isolation he experienced as an outsider in Saint Petersburg's musical establishment. Golenishchev-Kutuzov wrote: "[The Mighty Handful's] banner was held by Mussorgsky alone; all the other members had left it and pursued his own path ..."
Hartmann's sudden death on 4 August 1873 from an aneurysm shook Mussorgsky along with others in Russia's art world. The loss of the artist, aged only 39, plunged the composer into deep despair. Stasov helped to organize a memorial exhibition of over 400 Hartmann works in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in February and March 1874. Mussorgsky lent to the exhibition the two pictures Hartmann had given him, and viewed the show in person. Later in June, two-thirds of the way through composing his song cycle, Sunless, Mussorgsky was inspired to compose Pictures at an Exhibition, quickly completing the score in three weeks (2–22 June 1874). In a letter to Stasov (see photo), probably written on 12 June 1874, he describes his progress:
My dear généralissime, Hartmann is boiling as Boris boiled—sounds and ideas hung in the air, I am gulping and overeating, and can barely manage to scribble them on paper. I am writing the 4th No.—the transitions are good (on the 'promenade'). I want to work more quickly and steadily. My physiognomy can be seen in the interludes. So far I think it's well turned ...
The music depicts his tour of the exhibition, with each of the ten numbers of the suite serving as a musical illustration of an individual work by Hartmann.
Five days after finishing the composition, he wrote on the title page of the manuscript a tribute to Vladimir Stasov, to whom the work is dedicated. One month later, he added an indication that he intended to have it published.
Golenishchev-Kutuzov gives the following (perhaps biased) account of the work's reception among Mussorgsky's friends and colleagues and an explanation for his failure to follow through on his plans to publish it:
Soon, with the composition of the musical illustrations for Pictures from an Exhibition by the architect Hartmann, he reached the acme of that musical radicalism, to whose 'new shores' and to whose 'unfathomed depths' the admirers of his 'Peepshows' and 'Savishnas' had pushed him so diligently. In music for these illustrations, as Mussorgsky called them, he represented [chicks], children, Baba Yaga in her wooden house on chicken legs, catacombs, gates, and even rattling carts. All this was not done jokingly, but 'seriously'.
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Liszt - Années de pèlerinage II, S. 161
Années de pèlerinage (French for Years of Pilgrimage) (S.160, S.161, S.163) is a set of three suites for solo piano by Franz Liszt. Much of it derives from his earlier work, Album d'un voyageur, his first major published piano cycle, which was composed between 1835 and 1838 and published in 1842. Années de pèlerinage is widely considered as the masterwork and summation of Liszt's musical style. The third volume is notable as an example of his later style. Composed well after the first two volumes, it displays less virtuosity and more harmonic experimentation.
The title Années de pèlerinage refers to Goethe's famous novel of self-realization, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and especially its sequel Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years (whose original title Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre meant Years of Wandering or Years of Pilgrimage, the latter being used for its first French translation). Liszt clearly places these compositions in line with the Romantic literature of his time, prefacing most pieces with a literary passage from writers such as Schiller, Byron or Senancour, and, in an introduction to the entire work, writing:
Having recently travelled to many new countries, through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions.
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Brahms - Clarinet Quintet Op. 115
The Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114 is one of four chamber works composed by Johannes Brahms featuring the clarinet as a primary instrument. It was written in the summer of 1891 for the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, and is considered by scholars as part of a rebirth for the composer who in 1890 declared his String Quintet in G major to be his final work.
The work calls for clarinet, piano, and cello, and is one of the very few in that genre to have entered the standard repertoire.
It was written for clarinet in A, which can also be substituted by a viola.
The overall mood of the piece is somber but includes both romantic and introspective qualities. Music historians and scholars have admitted that the trio is "not among the most interesting of his compositions" The work incorporates a considerable amount of arpeggio patterns in its theme, complemented by conversation-like passages in the upper register of the cello. Perhaps due to this lack of interesting material, Op. 114 has been overshadowed by another one of Brahms' chamber works written for Mühlfeld: the Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115.
However, it is very clear in the music that Brahms absolutely adored the playing of Richard Mühlfeld, and that this adoration made its way into the trio. Eusebius Mandyczewski, a scholar and friend of Brahms, wrote of the trio that "It is as though the instruments were in love with each other."
On his fifty-eighth birthday, Brahms was busy writing his will to his publisher, initially providing for his siblings and stepmother, and secondly for his landlord and faithful landlady, Celestine "Mandy" Truxa. Shortly afterwards, when visiting the Ducal Court in March 1891, he was deeply fascinated by the beautiful playing of the clarinetist, Richard Mühlfeld. The serious mood of his later compositions was made appropriate by the tone of the instrument. To emphasize how much he loved his performance, Brahms called Mühlfeld his Fräulein Klarinette, or "his dear nightingale". Following his performance, Brahms wrote the score of the Clarinet Trio and sent it to his beloved landlady. In addition, a historical painter, Adolf Menzel was in the audience during the first performance of Brahms’ Op. 114 on December 12, 1891, with Robert Hausmann on cello and Brahms on piano. Menzel was so moved that he made a sketch of Mühlfeld as some sort of Greek god, saying to Brahms, "We often think of you here, and often enough, comparing notes, we confess our suspicions that on a certain night the Muse itself appeared in person for the purpose of executing a certain woodwind part. On this page I have tried to capture the sublime vision." The following month they had a triumph with the public premiere in Berlin.
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Liszt -Liebesträume, S 541
Liebesträume (German for Dreams of Love) is a set of three solo piano works (S.541/R.211) by Franz Liszt, published in 1850. Originally the three Liebesträume were conceived as lieder after poems by Ludwig Uhland and Ferdinand Freiligrath. In 1850, two versions appeared simultaneously as a set of songs for high voice and piano, and as transcriptions for piano two-hands.
The two poems by Uhland and the one by Freiligrath depict three different forms of love. Uhland's "Hohe Liebe" (exalted love) is saintly or religious love: the "martyr" renounces worldly love and "heaven has opened its gates". The second song "Seliger Tod" (blessed death) is often known by its first line ("Gestorben war ich", "I had died"), and evokes erotic love; ("I was dead from love's bliss; I lay buried in her arms; I was wakened by her kisses; I saw heaven in her eyes"). Freiligrath's poem for the famous third Notturno is about unconditional mature love ("Love as long as you can!", "O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst").
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Brahms - Piano Quintet in F minor Op. 34
The Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, by Johannes Brahms was completed during the summer of 1864 and published in 1865. It was dedicated to Her Royal Highness Princess Anna of Hesse. Like most piano quintets composed after Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet (1842), it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello).
The work, "often called the crown of his chamber music," began life as a string quintet (completed in 1862 and scored for two violins, viola and two cellos). Brahms transcribed the quintet into a sonata for two pianos (in which form Brahms and Carl Tausig performed it) before giving it its final form. Brahms destroyed the original version for string quintet, but published the Sonata as Op. 34b. The outer movements are more adventurous than usual in terms of harmony and are unsettling in effect. The introduction to the finale, with its rising figure in semitones, is especially remarkable. Piano and strings play an equally important role throughout this work, which Swafford notes for its "unity of expression" and a consistently dark mood: "at times anguished, at times (in the scherzo) demonic, at times tragic."
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Telemann - Sonata for Viola da Gamba, TWV 40-1
Georg Philipp Telemann's collection of Twelve Fantasias for Viola da Gamba Solo, TWV 40:26–37, was published in Hamburg in 1735, titled Fantaisies pour la Basse de Violle. The fantasias for viola da gamba were considered lost until an original print was found in a private collection in 2015. They were published by Edition Güntersberg in 2016, and first recorded and performed again by Thomas Fritzsch the same year.
Telemann printed the fantasias for viola da gamba in 1735 in his own publishing house in Hamburg. He undertook self-publishing, offering works by subscription: His subscriber lists include buyers from Amsterdam, London and Paris. He offered a 20% discount to subscribers to the fantasias. The fantasias are among Telemann's collections of music for unaccompanied instruments, with others being twelve fantasias for solo flute (1732/33), twelve fantasias for solo violin (1735), and thirty-six pieces for harpsichord (1732–33).
Based on research by the French musicologist François-Pierre Goy, the fantasias, which had been thought to be lost, were found in 2015 in an archive of the State Archive of Lower Saxony [de] in Osnabrück. The archive held a complete copy of the music printed by Telemann in 1735 in the private collection from Schloss Ledenburg, now called Ledenburg Collection. The fantasias were published by Edition Güntersberg in 2016, with a facsimile of Telemann's print. After their discovery, the fantasias were first performed by the gambist Thomas Fritzsch, who is also a musicologist teaching at the Leipzig University. Fritzsch played them for the first time after their rediscovery in two concerts as part of the 23rd Magdeburger Telemann-Festtage on 19 and 20 March 2016, along with a recording (made at the abbey church of Zscheiplitz) and the presentation of the edition.
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Mozart - Symphony No. 34 in C major
The symphony features the fanfares and flourishes typical of the "festive symphony" or "trumpet symphony", which is characteristic of Austrian symphonic writing in C major. This is the first of Mozart's C-major symphonies to exhibit this character, but the style would be revisited in his subsequent two works in this key, the 36th and 41st symphonies.
The first movement is written in sonata form but also contains many styles and formal aspects of an Italian overture. There is no expositional repeat. The expositional coda contains an overture-like crescendo which is not included in the recapitulation. The development is based entirely on new material. The recapitulation on the exposition's first theme is abbreviated and interrupted by a brief development of that theme. Finally, the movement's coda contains nearly all of this first theme creating the appearance of a reverse-recapitulation common in Italian overtures.
The second movement in F major is scored for strings sotto voce with divided violas and a single bassoon doubling the cellos and bass.
Alfred Einstein advanced a theory in the third edition of the Köchel catalogue that the Minuet K. 409 was written at a later date by the composer for this work. However, there is no proof in the sources to support his thesis.[2] Also, K. 409 calls for two flutes in its orchestration which does not match the rest of the symphony.
The finale is in sonata form and features energetic tarantella or saltarello rhythms.
The autograph score is today preserved in two halves: the first half (f.1-18) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the second half (f.19-28) is in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska, in Kraków.
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Frédéric Chopin wrote his set of three Mazurkas for solo piano, Op. 63, in 1846. They were published the following year, and dedicated to Laura de Czosnowska. A standard performance of the whole set takes around six minutes.
Chopin - Mazurka in B major Op. 63 No. 1
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Tannhäuser (or Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg Castle) is an opera in three acts, written by Richard Wagner between 1842 and 1845, and based on two separate German legends: the legend of Tannhauser, and the Legend of the Song Contest. The opera was premiered in Dresden in 1845, with the last revision to this version made in 1860. However, 1861 some changes were made for a second premiere at Paris, which turned out to be a failure after the performances were sabotaged by some members of the Jockey Club, finally convincing Wagner to drop his idea of establishing himself in Paris.
Liszt / Wagner - Overture to Tannhauser - Piano version S 442
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Johann Sebastian Bach composed his Harpsichord Concerto no. 6 in 1738. The work has a span of three movements, and it is in the key of F major. As many of his Harpsichord Concertos, this was actually an arrangement of a piece for a melodic instrument, in this case of the Brandenburg Concerto no. 4 (BWV 1049) which features a violin and two recorders. Leaving the flute parts unchanged, Bach wrote the harpsichord part as a combination of the violin material from the original concerto and a written out continuo. The concerto was first published in 1851.
Bach - Harpsichord Concerto No. 6 in F major, BWV 1057
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