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Image courtesy of Naxos Records Luciano Berio (1925–2003) Duetti for two violins It can happen that a violinist friend tells a composer one night that, other than those of Bartók, there are not enough violin duets today. And it can happen that the composer immediately sets himself to writing duets that night until dawn… and then more duets in moments of leisure, in different cities and hotels, between rehearsals, travelling, thinking of somebody, when looking for a present... This is what happened to me and I am grateful to that nocturnal violinist whose name [musicologist Leonardo Pinzauti (1926–2015)] is given to one of these   Duetti . [1] This is how Luciano Berio described the genesis of the 34 Duetti for two violins. With the exception of the first duet – a nod to those Bartók violin duos – each of the pieces is associated with one of his friends, inspired by "personal reasons and situations" and connected by "the fragile thread of daily occas

John Singer Sargent Gabriele Fauré and Mrs Patrick Campbell (Charcoal, 1898) *     *     *     * Gabriele Fauré (1845–1924) Piano Trio in D minor, Op.120 In the early 20 th century Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg revolutionized the foundation of Western music in the areas of tonality, harmony, and symmetric meter. At the same time, Gabriele Fauré was working with this foundation, not by abandoning the traditional structures, but by “blurring” them – especially in his later works. (Christopher Steele, Tonal and Formal Blurring in Fauré’s Piano Trio Op. 120. ) “Blurring” of tradition is an excellent description for Fauré, but impossible to address in a program note. However, a selective sketch of his life might provide a hint. As a composer, from an early age, Fauré developed independently of the establishment. Rather than the Paris Conservatoire, a gateway for any French musician, he attended the École Niedermeyer in Paris.   His early influences came fr

Charging Cossacks – March 1st, 1915 ◉     ◉     ◉     ◉ Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) Dumky Trio (1891) In the first edition of the "Dumky" Trio in 1894, the German publisher N. Simrock added a footnote at the bottom of the first page of the score explaining, “Dumky” [plural of "dumka"] is a Little Russian [i.e., Ukrainian] word and cannot be translated. It is a kind of folk poetry often found in Russian literature, usually of a melancholic character. We might best call this the tip of the iceberg. Despite the publisher feeling the need to provide an explanation, it's not as if Dvořák was the first to have composed a dumka. There were dumkas by many other composers that appeared in the late 19th century, including ones by Chopin, Liszt, Borodin, Balakirev, Tchaikovsky. But before the mid-19 th century, the word "dumka" associated either with published or folk music was virtually non-existent. In ge

Nikolai Kapustin (1937–) Nikolai Kapustin: Piano Quintet, Op. 89 Nikolai Kapustin once wrote, “In the early ’50s jazz was completely prohibited, and there were articles in our magazines that said it was typical capitalistic culture, so we have to throw it away and forget about it.” With occasional respites, this situation lasted well beyond the Stalin years into the Krushchev and even Brezhnev regimes. But forbidden fruit had always managed to survive the censors in two ways. One was “samizdat” (self- published) and the other, “tamizdat” (published abroad and smuggled in). Jazz and popular Western music were particularly difficult to get because there were few machines to play vinyl recordings or tapes. Yet American and Western European records were still snuck in and shared among the few who had record players. Samizdat sound recordings were produced on home made record lathes. Some enterprising Russian jazz- lover had discovered that x-ray film is soft enough to be

On September 17 th Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival presented one of the most provocative programs of its 2017 season. The musical works on this program are drawn from two radically distinct worlds. The piano quartet by a young Gustav Mahler and earlier songs by Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg on this program all date from the period 1871–1914 that we know as the “Belle Époque.” It was also during this age of peace, prosperity and optimism that Gustav Klimt painted Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer which later came to be known as The Woman in Gold . The “War to End All Wars” came and went – and the optimism of the Belle Époque vanished. Despots appeared to fill the void left by Europe’s broken kingdoms and empires. Mussolini, Hitler, Franco. And then World War II. Millions of people were killed, their possessions destroyed or looted in an attempt to wipe out their memory and accomplishments. The Woman in Gold , like so many other artworks,

Standing: Mme Chausson, Ernest Chausson, and Raymond Bonheur. Seated on the ground: Claude Debussy In 1893, Claude Debussy wrote to Ernest Chausson, Music really ought to have been an hermetical science, enshrined in texts so hard and laborious to decipher as to discourage the herd of people who treat it as casually as they do a handkerchief! I'd go further and, instead of spreading music among the populace, I propose the foundation of a 'Society of Musical Esotericism'. His words project a sense of the place and times, ca. 1871-1914, that we call 'Belle Époque Paris', the focus in Europe for the symbolist movement in poetry, and impressionism in painting and music. Putting to one side the artist's disdain for an uncomprehending audience (imagined or real), it's difficult now to understand just why the music of this era, which audiences today rarely consider 'difficult', was labeled 'decadent' and worse. A major justifi

On Monday, January 2nd, 1911, there was an historic concert in Munich. The program was devoted entirely to the music of Arnold Schönberg: two string quartets, five lieder, and three short pieces for piano. I doubt anyone in the audience at the time would have considered the concert significant, let alone historic, except for Schönberg and his circle – and one man who had recently arrived in Munich, Wassily Kandinsky. He was so taken with Schoenberg's music that he made this sketch for a painting: The sketch indicates colors for the final work: 'Schw[arz]' = black for the piano; 'gelb' = yellow for a mass or large space on the lower right; and  'w[eiß]'  = white for the two posts and the dress of the pianist, Etta Werndorff (see Schönberg's more figurative portrait of Werndorff below). Etta Werndorff, pianist Portrait by Arnold Schönberg Kandinsky completed the painting only a couple of days later. In both sketch and painting, the shapes

Antonin Dvořák (1841–1904) Last night I heard the  Dvořák E-flat Piano Quartet at Garth Newel Music Center  in the first concert of their 2017 summer season. As often as I have heard this quartet over the years, I am still surprised at how new it sounds to me with each hearing. The craftsmanship and sheer energy are a marvel.  This morning I recalled that about fifteen years ago I wrote liner notes for this work and the Martinů First Piano Quartet which were included on a CD the Garth Newel Piano Quartet recorded. Below is the essay I wrote for the  Dvořák. Since I can't find the GNPQ recording anywhere on the web now, I've included a 2014 performance by Mistral. ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ 1889: the year Antonin Dvořák composed his Piano Quartet in E-­flat major and the eve of the twentieth century. Most of the leading early and middle romantics, Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Wagner, were dead; and in 1889 Brahms had privately resolved to lay down