Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Johannes Brahms

Richard Goode: Marlboro Music Spotlight

If it’s Goode, you know it’s got to be great.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll celebrate pianist Richard Goode. Goode served as co-artistic director (with Mitsuko Uchida) of the Marlboro Music School and Festival, from 1999 to 2013. On and off, he’s been part of the fabric of Marlboro since he was 14 years-old.

We’ll sample his artistry in outstanding performances of music by Ferruccio Busoni and Johannes Brahms.

Inspired in part by Bach’s “Art of the Fugue,” Busoni composed his “Fantasia contrappuntistica” for solo piano in a flurry of inspiration in 1910. His arrangement for two pianos followed. I think you’ll agree, there’s no substitute for its thrilling antiphonal effects.

The work is built into one continuous span, but subdivided into twelve parts – a prelude and variations on the Bach chorale “Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe” (“Glory to God in the Highest”) – capped by a quadruple fugue. The laws of counterpoint are rigorously applied, in a manner that would have made even Max Reger smile.

The work was composed during a whirlwind tour of the United States. Busoni was especially proud of his ability to make every note of the fugue “sound.”

We’ll hear it performed on a Marlboro spin-off recording from 1964, with Richard Goode and Peter Serkin, making musical mincemeat of this vertiginous knuckle-buster. Goode was only 20 years-old at the time – and Serkin was 16!

Bach was also an important source of inspiration for Johannes Brahms. Following the death of his mother, the composer was discovered by one of his friends, weeping over the keyboard as he played through works by the Baroque master.

Also stemming from his loss was Brahms’ Horn Trio in E flat major, Op. 40. The horn, which takes the place of the cello in the traditional configuration of the piano trio, was a highly unusual choice for chamber music, but one which must have recalled for Brahms the lessons he had taken as a child.

Fortuitously, the instrument also has rustic associations. It was during a walk in the Black Forest that the composer first “heard” the trio’s opening theme. While the work is a celebration of nature, and in the last movement, perhaps even the hunt, the tempo marking of the third movement adagio is characterized as “slow and sad.” Brahms uncovers a well of emotion in the quotation of a German funeral melody, “Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten” (“If thou but suffer God to guide thee”).

Demonstrating the kind of continuity that makes Marlboro shine among summer music festivals, we’ll again hear Richard Goode, this time in middle age, joining hornist Marie-Luise Neunecker and violinist Mark Steinberg, in 1989.

We’ve never had it so Goode, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

FOR THE GREATER GOODE: Richard Goode at Marlboro in 2011

January 15, 2020
Woldemar Bargiel Birthday Forgotten Composer

Today is the birthday of… He Who Must Not Be Named.

Oh, wait a minute. Sorry. Case of mistaken identity. It’s actually the birthday of WOLDEMAR BARGIEL. Bargiel, who lived from 1828 to 1897, was the half-brother of Clara Schumann.

Bargiel’s mother had been married to Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck – unhappily, I might add – which should come as little surprise, considering Wieck was the man who threatened to shoot Robert Schumann for courting his daughter. He faced the would-be couple down in court, violated Clara’s privacy, spread vicious rumors about her, and even promoted a rival pianist in her place in the hopes that she would supplant his own daughter. Wieck was so unruly in his determination to see “justice” done that he himself was ordered to pay the lovers a hefty sum and sentenced to jail for 18 days. Amazingly, everyone eventually reconciled, once Wieck became a grandfather, though he never completely abandoned his slippery-yet-inflexible ways.

It was he who drove Bargiel’s future mother, Mariane, into the arms of one of his friends, a fellow music teacher, who would soon become her second husband.

Despite the turbulence that rocked their parents’ world, Woldemar and Clara – who was nine years his senior – enjoyed a warm relationship. Thanks to her advocacy, Bargiel was welcomed by both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn, and was admitted to the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, Niels Gade and Julius Rietz. Later, Clara and Robert arranged for the publication of some of his early works.

Bargiel would one day repay the favor by coediting with Johannes Brahms a complete edition of Robert Schumann’s scores.

Avada Kedavra! Happy birthday, Woldemar Bargiel!

Bargiel’s Adagio for Cello and Orchestra:

His Piano Trio No. 1:

October 3, 2019
Brahms: Beyond the Bearded Bear

It’s amusing that the most enduring image of Johannes Brahms is that of a gruff and portly, bearded old bear, incongruously disposed to writing lullabies.

Lest we forget, Brahms was once a slender young man with piercing blue eyes, who wore his hair long and caused Clara Schumann, 17 years his senior, to confide to her diary, “He is so masterful that it seems God sent him into the world complete.”

Also, he liked his coffee strong.

Don’t expect anything too grandfatherly on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” when the focus will be on Brahms’ unusually intense Piano Quintet in F minor.

This is not music of wistful recollection. The quintet is often tempestuous and even tragic, fueled by all the passion and earnestness of an excitable young man. Brahms began his quintet in 1862, when he was 29 years-old.

That’s not to say the composer ever teeters over into sentiment or excess of a kind common to his fin-de-siècle successors. Even in his 20s, Brahms was too much himself ever to allow that to happen.

Instead he takes the prototype of the piano quintet – established by his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann – and fashions it into something unsettled and at times downright sublime. We are in the presence of something great, but also perhaps a little terrifying.

This masterpiece of Brahms’ early maturity began life as a string quintet, written under the spell of Schubert’s famous Quintet in C. Brahms showed the work in this form to Clara Schumann and his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. Both were full of praise, at least at first, but gradually the compliments gave way to suggestions. Joachim, in particular, admired the work’s power, but confessed he found little in it to charm.

Undaunted, Brahms took the piece and arranged it for two pianos in 1863-64, consigning the original version, for strings alone, to flames of woe. This two-piano reworking was politely rather than enthusiastically received, and Clara, thinking now it sounded more like a transcription than an original composition, begged him to recast it once more.

The third time proved to be a charm. The resulting quintet, which achieved its final state in the summer of 1864, was met with resounding acclaim. At last, the piece had arrived at a perfect marriage of expression and form.

While Brahms retains the classical poise for which he is so well known, he stiffens the sinews and conjures the blood, so to speak. In fact, there are times when he ratchets up the tension so effectively it seems the music might just fly off the rails.

We’ll hear an exciting performance from the 2007 Marlboro Music Festival, featuring pianist Richard Goode, violinists Augustin Hadelich and Benjamin Beilman, violist Samuel Rhodes, and cellist Amir Eldan.

In tandem with the whole “bearded bear” thing, Brahms is generally pigeonholed as the Classicist among Romantics. With this in mind, I’ll open the hour with a work by Walter Piston, the great American classicist, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who gained esteem as one of our worthiest symphonists. These days, his symphonies are hardly ever played (more’s the pity), but we sure do hear his ballet “The Incredible Flutist” – probably his least characteristic composition.

Piston’s 1946 “Divertimento for Nine Instruments” was performed at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1977, by violinists Young Uck Kim and Mitchell Stern, violist Karen Dreyfus, cellist Jerry Grossman, double bassist Julius Levine, flutist Julia Bogorad, oboist Roger Cole, clarinetist Stewart Newbold, and bassoonist Sol Schoenbach.

It is, after all, called “classical music.” Tune in for worthwhile works by a pair of classicists, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTOS: Boy, Brahms… you really let yourself go!

October 2, 2019
Celebrating Clara Schumann’s Bicentennial

I invite you to join me today in celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of Clara Schumann. Clara Schumann was born Clara Wieck on this date in 1819; she died in 1896.

While she composed comparatively little herself, if we were to stack her manuscripts alongside those of her associates, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, based on what survives, she really sold herself short.

Still, there’s no underestimating her influence as a pianist. Not only was she praised for her imaginative and sensitive interpretations at the keyboard, as a successful performer, she was also able to keep enough food on the table to sustain her large family and to hold it all together when her mercurial husband slipped off the rails.

For the last two decades of her life, she taught at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. This shot out tendrils in all directions, including to the Juilliard School, where one of her pupils taught Malcolm Frager and Bruce Hungerford.

Fortunately, enough of her music survives to put together a decent salute. We just heard her Piano Trio in G minor on “Music from Marlboro” on Wednesday. Today, we’ll enjoy her “Three Romances” for violin and piano, as well as her Konzertsatz in F minor, the first movement of an intended second piano concerto. We’ll also hear Robert Schumann’s “Variations on a Theme by Clara Wieck” (her maiden name) and “Widmung,” or “Dedication,” a song Robert composed for his new bride.

I am celebrating women all month long. To this end, we’ll also hear Elisabetta Brusa’s opulent Schumann tribute, “Florestan.” Then at 6:00, we’ll hear film scores of Doreen Carwithen, alongside those of her decades-long partner and future husband, William Alwyn.

I hope you’ll join me for Clara Schumann and more, from 3 to 6:00 EDT – with “Picture Perfect” following at 6 – on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 13, 2019
Clara Schumann: Genius, Wife, and Forgotten Composer

Clara Schumann was a musician of impeccable taste. Her insights and opinions helped mold the artistic development of her husband and also to a great extent that of Johannes Brahms, who frequented the Schumann house from the age of 20 and became a life-long friend. She was also a pianist of genius. She performed publicly to great acclaim for over six decades. It was through concertizing that she supported her unstable husband and eight children. Later in life, she also became a revered teacher.

Her acceptance as performer and pedagogue were highly unusual for a woman of her time. She was a child prodigy, the daughter of Friedrich Wieck, who also taught Robert Schumann. Under her father’s tutelage, she demonstrated a marked facility in composition. She was also a better pianist than Robert, who, according to some accounts, had managed to wreck one of his hands through the use of a finger-strengthening device (an assertion Clara denied.)

Having enjoyed such a promising start, it’s heartbreaking, then, to read Clara’s comment, confided to her diary in 1839, at the age of 20, “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up on this idea. A woman must not desire to compose – there never yet has been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”

It’s especially sad, since composing gave her such pleasure. “There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation,” she wrote. “if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.”

Fortunately for us, we have her Piano Trio in G minor, and on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll have the pleasure of hearing it performed at the 2005 Marlboro Music Festival by pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute, violinist Julianne Lee, and cellist Judith Serkin.

Clara would have been 26 at the time of her Trio’s composition. She passed the summer of 1846 on the isle of Norderney, where she accompanied her husband during his convalescence following an attack of neurasthenia. While there, compounding the Schumanns’ misfortunes, Clara suffered a miscarriage. The completion of her Trio must have seemed like an especially welcome escape. A year later, Robert composed his first piano trio, Op. 63, which bears some striking similarities to his wife’s creation.

We’ll round out the hour with Robert Schumann’s “Andante and Variations,” from 1849. Though written soon after the back-to-back masterpieces of the Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet, both in the key of E flat major, Schumann was less pleased with his new work. Part of the problem was in its unusual instrumentation, which called for two pianos, two cellos, and horn. Early performances in the Schumann home were so loud, it may have contributed to the composer’s disgust with the piece.

Schumann withdrew the work from his catalogue, later revising it for two pianos at the suggestion of Felix Mendelssohn. He also altered the structure of piece, which he ruthlessly cropped. It was Brahms and Clara Schumann who reappraised the value of his original thoughts and resurrected the work in the form he had initially intended, twelve years after the composer’s death, giving it its first public performance in 1868. It is in this version that the piece is now most often heard.

We’ll hear it performed at the 1985 Marlboro Music Festival by husband-and-wife pianists Claude Frank and Lilian Kallir, cellists Melissa Meeli and Peter Stumpf, and hornist Julie Landsman.

It’s an all-Schumann hour, in advance of the Clara Schumann bicentennial (which falls on Friday), on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

September 11, 2019

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