Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Mozart

Mozart’s Gran Partita Marlboro Festival

“This was no composition by a performing monkey. This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.”

In Peter Schaffer’s “Amadeus,” it is the work that threw Antonio Salieri into ecstasies. “On the page it looked nothing – just a pulse, bassoons and basset-horns, like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly, high above it, an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took it over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight!”

Salieri (the character) had difficulty reconciling such sublime music with its composer’s vulgar personality. By extension, it’s easy to imagine Salieri smiling ruefully at the incongruity of a work of such sustained beauty being identified by the equivalent of an 18th century typo – the “Gran Partita.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s seven-movement tour de force will be featured on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” We’ll hear it performed by an all-star cast of twelve wind players – and a double bassist – under the direction of Marcel Moyse, from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival.

Moyse was Marlboro royalty. Alongside Rudolf Serkin and Adolf Busch, the legendary flutist cofounded the Marlboro Music School and Festival in 1951. A veteran of Paris’ Opéra Comique, he would instruct his wind players to emulate the phrasings of the human voice in song.

This summer’s Marlboro Music Festival will take place from July 13 to August 11, as always on the campus of Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont. This weekend will include two concerts: on Saturday at 8 p.m., featuring music by Haydn, John Harbison, Schubert, and Beethoven; and on Sunday at 2:30 p.m., with music by Ernest Chausson, Mendelssohn, and again Beethoven. More information is available at marlboromusic.org.

Learn more about Marcel Moyse, who worked with some of the greatest artists of his time, in this generous biographical sketch by Marlboro Senior Administrator Frank Salomon:

From the Archives: Marcel Moyse

Then tune in and have a gran’ ol’ time with Mozart’s “Gran Partita,” on “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

July 10, 2019
Mozart’s Genius at Marlboro Music

“The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts.”

– Richard Wagner

So glad to hear you say that, Richie. Then you won’t mind if we enjoy an all-Mozart hour for your birthday, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”*

Mozart doubles the violas in his String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593. Composed in 1790, the work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Constanze, as having been written for a musical amateur, often speculated to be Johann Trost. Trost must have been quite the gifted dilettante. He also knew Haydn from Esterhaza, and Haydn dedicated some of his quartets to him.

When Haydn and Mozart played through the D Major Quintet together before Haydn’s first visit to London, the two men took turns indulging in the first viola part. The work was known for centuries as the “Zigzag” because of an alteration to the original manuscript that modified what had been a descending chromatic figure in the final movement into something decidedly more humorous.

We’ll hear it played at the 2005 Marlboro Music Festival by Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, violas; and David Soyer, cello.

Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 35 in 1782. Subtitled the “Haffner,” it is not to be confused with his “Haffner Serenade,” though both works had their origins in commissions from the eminent Haffner family of Salzburg.

The “Serenade” was composed in 1776 to celebrate the wedding of Marie Elisabeth Haffner. A second serenade was written four years later for her brother, Mozart’s friend, Sigmund Haffner the Younger, for the occasion of his ennoblement. Mozart complained to his father at the time that he was “up to his eyeballs in work.” On top of his usual teaching obligations, he was pressed to complete an arrangement of his opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” even as he was looking to move into a house in Vienna prior to his marriage to Constanze Weber. Nevertheless, he began churning out music, sending it piecemeal to his father.

It was only later, when Mozart found a moment of calm, that he was able to take a look at what he had actually written and realized that it wasn’t half bad. He arranged material from this second “Haffner” serenade and expanded the orchestration to create what we now know as the “Haffner” Symphony – his Symphony No. 35 – in 1783.

We’ll hear an inspired performance of the work, featuring an ad hoc orchestra under the direction of Pablo Casals. Together, they manage to convey joy, intimacy, and exuberance in a cherishable recording from the 1967 Marlboro Music Festival.

Get the most from Mozart, 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

(*For all you Wagnerites, tune in a little early to enjoy some of HIS music between 4 and 6!)

May 22, 2019
Remembering Flutist Robert Stallman

I’m very sorry to learn of the death of my friend, the flutist Robert Stallman. Bob was one of several artists I got to know while living in Philadelphia, as a proprietor of an antiquarian book business. I scored big points by being able to identify him (“…like the flutist?”) by his name on his credit card.

Bob and I palled around and ate a lot of lunches together. He was always neck-deep in some project or other, producing his own CDs and creating arrangements of the works of his beloved Mozart and Schubert. These went beyond mere transcriptions. They involved all sorts of creative decisions, and Bob inevitably arrived at polished and ingenious solutions to every kind of puzzle.

I absolutely recommend his recording of Mozart “New” Quintets for Flute and Strings, on his own label, Bogner’s Café.

Stallman studied with Jean-Pierre Rampal, recorded with Placido Domingo, and championed the music of his friend, the English composer Stephen Dodgson. In addition, he gave first performances of works by John Harbison, Karel Husa, William Thomas McKinley, and Burr Van Nostrand, among others.

He was crazy about music, of course, but he was also fond of literature and good food. His apartment walls were adorned by letters and autographs of the great composers, which he collected.

We started to drift apart after he and his wife, Hannah, moved to Massachusetts, maybe four or five years ago. We did do a telephone interview over the air in 2015. Prior to that, he was my guest several times on “The Lost Chord.”

Bob was 73 years-old. I will always remember him as cheerful, garrulous, and boundlessly enthusiastic. Often, he seemed almost boyish. He was certainly far younger than his years.

I’ll honor Bob with one of his recordings, following Otto Klemperer’s performance of Beethoven’s “Miss Solemnis” – which is to say around 3:40 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

http://www.aboutrobertstallman.com/

May 14, 2019
Alexander Quartet’s NYC Concert: Mozart Penderecki Dvořák

There must be something in human nature that pleases us in the idea that good things come in threes.

Even so, this afternoon on The Classical Network, I’ll be interviewing violinist Frederick Lifsitz, one of four musicians that comprise the very fine Alexander String Quartet.

The Alexander Quartet will appear on Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City. On the program will be works of Mozart, Penderecki, and Dvořák. The concert will cap a day of lectures and panel discussions on the topic of Poland and the Jewish people, to coincide with the observation of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. The Alexander’s recital will include Penderecki’s poignant String Quartet No. 3 “Leaves of an Unwritten Diary.”

The Alexander Quartet has been Baruch’s quartet-in-residence since 1986. My interview with Lifsitz will take place at 5:00 this afternoon.

But if “three” is indeed your thing, then there will be plenty else to satisfy your organizational impulses, including the observations of the birthdays today of three notable conductors – Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Malcolm Sargent, and Zubin Mehta – and three American composers – Wallingford Riegger, Harold Shapero, and Duke Ellington.

I hope you’ll join me today from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT (that’s THREE hours), with the interview at 5. We’ll take the time to count our musical blessings, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 29, 2019
Mozart, Allegri’s Miserere, and a Stolen Masterpiece

It was on this date in 1770 that the Mozarts, father and son, attended a Holy Week service in Rome. Young Wolfgang, then only 14, was intrigued by what he heard.

Gregorio Allegri composed his “Miserere mei, Deus” – or “Miserere,” for short, a setting of Psalm 51 – in the 1630s. The piece was designed for exclusive performance in the Sistine Chapel, as part of the Tenebrae service of Holy Wednesday and Good Friday.

Allegri’s conception was a striking one, for two choirs, one intoning a simple chant, and the other, spatially separated, providing ornamentation. The pièce de résistance was the inclusion of a stratospheric top C, which has the effect of making the “Miserere” one of the most haunting works in the choral literature of the late Renaissance.

The Vatican, realizing it had a good thing, forbade performance of the piece outside its walls or copies of the score to leave the premises, under threat of excommunication. But Mozart couldn’t help himself. A couple of hours later, he copied the work down from memory. Not long after, he handed it off to author and music historian Charles Burney, who published it without delay.

Mozart was summoned before the Pope, but rather than being excommunicated, he was showered with praise for his feat of musical genius, and the ban on the “Miserere” was lifted.

But did Mozart ever actually hear that famous “top C?”

In 1831, Mendelssohn made his own transcription of the “Miserere,” but, for whatever the reason, the performance he heard was sung a fourth higher than intended.

Leap ahead half a century to the first edition of “Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians,” published in 1881. An editorial error resulted in a passage from Mendelssohn’s transcription being incorporated into a musical example used to illustrate one of the entries. The article was widely reproduced, until Grove’s error came to be established as the preferred version of the “Miserere.”

A good thing, too! I wouldn’t trade that top C for the world.

Here is Allegri’s “Miserere,” performed by the ensemble Tenebrae:

Franz Liszt also made an arrangement, which is most frequently encountered on the organ – sometimes the piano – but apparently he also orchestrated it. His version cleverly juxtaposes the “Miserere” with Mozart’s own “Ave verum corpus.”

For context, Mozart’s “Ave verum corpus:”

Liszt’s “À la Chapelle Sixtine” for piano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkAMKzRSrjc

And for orchestra:

Clockwise from left: Allegri; happy Mozarts, father and son; Mendelssohn; and the Abbé Liszt

April 11, 2019

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS