Paganini's Ubiquitous Theme

An inspiration for works by Liszt, Brahms, Schumann, and most famously Rachmaninov, the last caprice of Paganini’s 24 (opus 1) has had a well-cited life over the last century and a half. Other composers, less famous today but celebrated in their time such as Mark Hambourg and Ignaz Friedman also wrote paraphrases on the theme. This theme continues to be “varied” today, with the “Song and Dance” of Andrew Lloyd Webber being a famous example, and influence is seen in numerous other rock/pop writers. The 24^th caprice itself is in theme and variations form, lending itself to new interpretations and homage. Theme and variations is perhaps my favorite form because of the different twists and colors each new composer adds to the original, while still remaining recognizable. Here are some of my favorite takes on the 24^th caprice, both famous and less well-known.

To start off, here is Itzhak Perlman with the original. Perlman is possibly my favorite violinist ever (not a group I’m terribly familiar with, but regardless), with impeccable technique and considerable, friendly charm. Paganini’s 24^th caprice is in A minor, fast and agile, and presents numerous technical demands on the violinist. When transplanted to a different instrument or orchestrated, the caprice’s theme loses some of its diabolical technique but none of its explosive energy and hair’s edge precision. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM3Qfhd7dAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9zYrBW9jVQ + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZJtwdFOoi8&feature=related Ignaz Friedman opens our set of Paganini variations, quoting the theme and varying it in 17 concert studies in A minor. Friedman was a fantastic Polish virtuoso pianist who often wrote concert transcriptions of opera arias or canonical repertoire. He lived from 1882 to 1948, making him a contemporary of the next composer on the list: Sergei Rachmaninoff, who wrote perhaps the most famous piece based on the Paganini caprice.

Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini” gets a lot of airplay on today’s “easy listening” classical radio stations, and still gets featured in film soundtracks. The most memorable use in film (for me) was in the 1980 film “Somewhere in Time” with Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve, set in a grand turn-of-the-century hotel. Here’s a clip of the music itself as it appeared in the movie, as Reeve is musing on the lovely actress Seymour. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4N1mxN5JbU He happens to have fallen in love with her across time, but time travel is no match for their love (though doomed). The film is based on a Richard Matheson novel Bid Time Return and uses the 18^th variation, a theme with long lines and sentimental grandeur made for Hollywood (which Rachmaninoff knew, calling this variation “a theme for my producer”) though the equivalent in Matheson’s novel is a Mahler symphony. Interestingly, Matheson is better known for having written I am Legend. The 18^th variation is the most famous of Rachmaninoff’s set, which follows a loose concerto form (fast-slow-fast, with the introduction and 1^st variation placed before the theme appears) and features a piano soloist. Rachmaninoff, like Friedman, brings a virtuosic element to the piano, and casts the homage to Paganini in gigantic Rachmaninoff concrete-and-steel style. When the 18^th variation arrives, the piece has moved in the slow section to Db major and the theme is inverted; it is still a massive, crashing section in terms of what the piano is actually doing, but the orchestra softens the edges and creates the lush romantic atmosphere for which we love this piece. 

Finally, no less a composer than Johannes Brahms (unlike others mentioned here including Paganini himself, a composer of “serious,” German non-”brillant” music) wrote a set of variations on this theme. http://www.kellydeanhansen.com/opus35.html Here is a link with extensive detail regarding each variation, and links for Evgeny Kissin’s rendition on YouTube. Brahms’ variations are of the same cloth as Rachmaninoff’s – the piano here has a big and dense sound, with many shadings of color and sound. These variations are also entitled “Studies,” a title that draws attention to the various pianistic challenges in this work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fihjGJ0Brw0

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcOeXpV5uzU&feature=related

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw3VjY4rda8

Atonal Counterpoint from Norway: Fartein Valen

Valen (1887-1952) lived his entire life a bachelor in the country of Norway, but made important strides in the field of 20^th century music despite his relative isolation. His particular atonal “dissonant counterpoint” was developed in all likelihood completely unaware of Schoenberg’s work, though based on the same recognition of the need for a solid ground when leaving tonality behind. Valen was fond of the polyphony of Bach and worked out contrapuntal solutions which, while not tonal or based on consonant intervals, are as intricate and complex a system as that of the old masters. Interestingly, Valen studied composition with Max Bruch about ten years after the latter had mentored Ernst Mielck (see Friday’s post).

Much of Valen’s work is available at IMSLP, which is where I first encountered this fascinating composer. Recordings are available through Naxos for most of his work including the pieces written after 1923 which are not yet in the public domain. In addition, here is a taste of Valen’s unique style, from YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7kPHBiB0Lc Nachtstuck, from a set of 4 piano pieces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q2rBzyPzhM Glenn Gould plays the 2^nd piano sonata (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hrz-vSBpVw&feature=related (part 2)

Sources: Grove, Naxos, links from Wikipedia

Tchaikovsky, Boris

Yes, that’s right, not Piotr Ilich, but Boris Alexandrovich Tchaikovsky (1925-1996). A composer of the modern age, his career took place 100 years after his more famous countryman. This Tchaikovsky is represented by orchestral works, film scores, chamber music, and an opera. His miniatures for piano are playful, sometimes modal, and ultimately charming.  If you can, check them out on Naxos, or his "After the Ball" suite, also on Naxos - lovely old-fashioned orchestral dance music.  Developing his style from the Russian masters of the previous generation and mixing in contemporary influences, Tchaikovsky was famous in his country but not well known outside of the Iron Curtain. Nowadays, he is fairly well represented on record, with several dozen recordings at the Naxos Music Library. 

Here is a recording of one of his settings of Pushkin’s poetry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK_NOYNSRJU

the String Quartet, no.6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zoh9cBkEL8

and the Sinfonietta for Strings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3YNaxTW5l4


Sources - Grove, Naxos, additional links available from Wikipedia

Alfredo Casella

Casella (1883-1947) is another one of my cherished finds from IMSLP.  His use of modes and colorful pianistic style make him a unique find from the era immediately surrounding 1923 - the beginning-date of copyright, the end-date of free public domain music.  Casella was also a theorist and talented orchestrator, and I own a copy of his treatise on orchestration. His piano works vary from miniatures "for children" to vignettes in the style of various contemporaries or predecessors- Brahms, Debussy, Wagner, Strauss. The  children's pieces are a joy and cover various levels of technical skill, all in Casella's unique style and mixing in various influences and modes. The vignettes demonstrate the composer's sense of reverent and not-so reverent humor towards his fellows - in each piece, both the title and the use of the piano are pitch-perfect to the composer they evoke.  His orchestral music represents different periods of his career, from the early influence of Impressionism (A Notte Alta is a good example), to the "second generation" (Puccini being the first) of lush pieces like Resphighi's Pines of Rome, to angular, chromatic works of the later years. 

Here is a recording from YouTube of the first 6 of the Children's pieces: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4-qsdEjeaY 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq5il4xkPmw  virtuoso etudes 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuA8QOXpCFA&playnext=1&list=PLAEB1B84D21D745DD  A Notte Alta part 1 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXG8A8NPp5g&feature=related  part 2

The Short but Promising Life of Ernst Mielck

Ernst Mielck was a Finnish pianist and composer whose life was entirely spent in the last third of the 19th century. He died of tuberculosis two days before his 22nd birthday, leaving a small oeuvre of approximately 30 works. The Finnish critic Flodin, a contemporary of Sibelius, called him "the Finnish Schubert." During his brief career Mielck wrote songs for four part choir, orchestra pieces, chamber music, and works featuring his own instrument, the piano. As with the premature death of Mozart, we will never know what the mature Mielck would have produced; at the time of his death, his compositions had just won international notice, and even favorable comparison with Sibelius, considered a rival by critics. It is interesting to note that Mielck did not begin playing or composing music until he was 10, making his career and development by the time of his death even more remarkable. 

The few recordings I can locate are available through Naxos Music Library: the String Quartet, op.1; the Fairy Tale Symphony, op.4; the Konzertstuck for Violin, op.8, and two songs for baritone on poems by Fontane, without opus. Scores for one of the songs, Heimat, and the String Quartet are available through IMSLP, as well as 3 works for piano and 4 songs for choir. These pieces, however, have been scanned in color and are consequently difficult to reproduce in a printed copy. I transcribed several of the partsongs and the Sarabande, one of Mielck's last works, in a clean and reproducible copy.  Mielck's music is late-Romantic and as accessible as that of Sibelius, with the piano music idiomatic and brilliant as might be expected from a composer who was first a pianist. What I have seen of his oeuvre tends to be melancholy, but this may not be representative of the (only slightly larger) entire collection. 

Here is a recording of the Symphony from youtube: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wCb3ggMAD8 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R7h1qEUPxc 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DosihHqf61o 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCyi9vkxJc8 

and the Violin Concerto: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9yxF6AATH0&feature=related 


Sources: Grove, Naxos, additional links available from wikipedia

Quarter tones and Beethoven

In free time, I frequently browse IMSLP by “random page” in search of the next obscure find. In this way I came across the composer and theorist Anton Reicha, who perhaps I might have found earlier had I been a woodwind player. He is well known for his woodwind quintets, but was also a prescient and ground-breaking theorist, exploring polymeter, quarter tones, and bitonality in his theoretical treatises – in Beethoven’s time! Reicha and Beethoven were friends and contemporaries, though Reicha lived much longer than Beethoven and never became the same kind of celebrity.

One particular favorite of mine from Reicha’s works is the Overture in D, which is in 5/8 time. Not on Youtube, unfortunately, and out of print commercially in the US. Here instead is a segment from Reicha’s Requiem- the Lacrimosa, at 7:51 – notice the augmented 2^nd!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em0FtFd8QWs

http://www.youtube.com/user/agir3?blend=9&ob=5#p/u/0/sSu7a4oO7xg some fugues from his set of 36 – Reicha re-envisioned the fugue, with the answer entering on any step of the scale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkN_GrNGdrk&playnext=1&list=PLC288BD9B3985EEDD for Glass Harmonica and Orchestra – a novelty piece then as now (not the best recording)

Sources: Grove, Naxos, and sites from wikipedia

Verdi: the Falstaff fugue - Spring 2011

Verdi’s last opera may well be his greatest, and Falstaff has received its share of analysis and interpretation from multiple angles, as befits this great magnum opus. This paper will address some details of the overall work, while focusing in greater depth on the fugue[1] at the end of Act III, a topic which receives less attention than others in this opera.

Falstaff, Verdi’s last opera, premiered when the composer was nearly 80 years old. The project had been germinating in his mind for years,