Tag: Ludwig van Beethoven
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PROGRAM NOTES: ARCANTO QUARTET
This evening the Arcanto Quartet offers us a chance to explore chamber music from the end of the 17th century to the recent past, sampling music for four players by Henry Purcell (1659–95), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Henry Purcell Long before the primacy of the string quartet, consort music for…
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PROGRAM NOTES: CAROLINE GOULDING & WENWEN DU
Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata in A major, BWV 1015 Before taking up his post as Cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723, Bach served as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen (1694-1728). The young Prince was of the Calvinist persuasion, and thus had little need for church music, but he was also an avid…
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PROGRAM NOTES: PAUL LEWIS
Beethoven’s Late Piano Sonatas If ever a composer were to be remembered as going out swinging, that composer would be Beethoven. As ‘sunset’ periods go, the blaze of glory that the late piano sonatas and quartets, the Diabelli Variations, the Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony lit up in the historical firmament can still be felt…
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PROGRAM NOTES: JOSEPH MOOG
Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata in C minor Op. 13 (Pathétique) At the end of the 18th century, a young Ludwig van Beethoven burst upon the scene with a musical personality that mixed brooding machismo with emotional vulnerability. This unusual combination soon established him as the Marlon Brando of Viennese composers, with the key of C…
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PROGRAM NOTES: STEVEN ISSERLIS & ROBERT LEVIN PERFORMANCE 2
Ludwig van Beethoven 7 Variations on Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte Wo046 Beethoven’s second set of cello and piano variations on a tune derived from Mozart’s Magic Flute was composed in 1801, five years after his previous Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen variations of 1796. In this set, Beethoven picks another simple…
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PROGRAM NOTES: STEVEN ISSERLIS & ROBERT LEVIN PERFORMANCE 1
Ludwig van Beethoven 12 Variations on a Theme from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus Wo0 45 In 1796 Beethoven paid a visit to the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm II in Berlin, and cellists the world over are glad that he did. From this visit resulted a number of works for cello and piano that set the…
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PROGRAM NOTES: SIR ANDRÁS SCHIFF
Franz Joseph Haydn Sonata No. 60 in C major Hob. XV1:50 Haydn’s last three piano sonatas, Nos. 60 to 62 (Hob. XVI:50-52), were written during the composer’s second trip to London of 1794-1795. All three were composed with a specific dedicatee in mind: the female keyboard virtuoso Therese Jansen Bartolozzi (1770-1843), a student of Clementi…
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PROGRAM NOTES: STEVEN OSBORNE
Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata in E minor, Op. 90 The use of the piano sonata in marriage counselling has not found wide adoption in the profession since Beethoven first introduced the practice with his Sonata in E minor Op. 90. The curious story associated this sonata is as follows. Beethoven’s biographer Anton Schindler relates that…
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PROGRAM NOTES: DORIC STRING QUARTET
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN String Quartet in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2 Those of us wondering in our spare moments what a happy retirement consists of might do well to consider the case of one Franz Joseph Haydn, whose life in the years 1796-97, when his collection of six string quartets Op. 76 was written,…
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PROGRAM NOTES: LUCA PISARONI & WOLFRAM RIEGER
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Four Songs The earliest German lieder we have in the concert repertoire come from the more than 30 works that Mozart wrote between 1768 (at the age of twelve!) and his death in 1791. His mature songs reflect his skill as an opera composer in their sensitive treatment of the text, bolstered by…