Friday, September 28, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Jean Sibelius - His Music and Life
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Many of his in-laws and forefathers were well-known doctors, artists and clergy members. Sibelius began to study law at first. But unsatisfied, he changed his mind soon and shifted courses to music.
In 1890, his real composition works started. The first decade had been the most fruitful and successful period of Sibelius' whole career and life.
Finland's history and its wonderful ferry tales and legends had been inexhaustible source for symphonies and incredible orchestral suites such as "En Saga" (1892, revised in 1901), "Karelia" (1893), "Four Legends for Orchestra" (1895) and "Finlandia" (1900). Sibelius took most of his musical ideas from his native land Finland with Finnish longing and melancholy.
One might ask, whether Sibelius' "Violin Concert" was the composer's carefully planed revenge on the deities of this instrument.
In his childhood, Sibelius had first played the piano, but after a few years he switched to the violin. He later confessed: "The violin took me over completely. From then on for the next ten years or so my profoundest wish, the loftiest aspiration of my ambitions, was to become a great violin virtuoso." But Sibelius never quit managed to reach these goals.
As I mentioned earlier: Sibelius took most of his musical ideas from his native land Finland. In this respect, the music that he wrote in 1906 for Hjalmar Procope's play "Belshazar's Feast" represents a rare excursion for the composer into the exotic and the oriental.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Peter I.Tschaikowsky - His Life and Music
Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky has been born on May 7, 1840 in Wotkinsk and passed away in Saint Petersburg / Russia. His father was technical director in Saint Petersburg. Tschaikowsky ignored his musical talent for a long time and got shattered when his beloved mother died so early because of cholera.
Tschaikowsky studied law and was employed in different public offices. But all those tasks had been unsuitable for him. At the age of 23, he started to study music. The overture "Romeo and Juliet" from 1869 made him popular. But the continuing popularity didn't ease his melancholy and depressions. Tschaikowsky lived mostly in the province of Saint Petersburg as well as in France and Italy.
Tschaikowsky was terrible shy and afraid of his popularity. Main works have been his six symphonies as well as his incredible and unique "Piano Concerto in b-flat major" from 1875 and the "Violin Concerto in d-major" from 1878. Wonderful music treasures are also his "1812 Overture" (1880), the "Italian Capriccio" (1880) and the "String Serenade in c-major".
Tschaikowsky has been a fantastic ballet maestro - unbelievable and seldom reachable by other composers during that period. Up to now "Swan Lake", "Nutcracker" or "The Sleeping Beauty" have been unforgettable.
Tschaikowsky also composed nine operas, but only two are still known: "Eugene Onegin" (1877) and "Pique Dame" (1890)..
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Niccolo Paganini - His Life and Music
In 1798, the father escaped because of the begotten mother. It's difficult to decide, while reading different encyclopedias and a published biography of Paganini, which are reality and legend regarding his life.
The decline of the tradition of instrumental music in Italy during the 19th century, the first signs of which had appeared late in the previous century, resulted from a number of related and complex events: the dispersion of Italy's leading composers throughout Europe, the gradual and unrelenting decline of Italian orchestras and, most importantly, the evolution and spread of the operatic style.
Whereas instrumental music on German Romanticism assumed a completely autonomous and dominant position, Italian composers felt more and more captive to the wiles of opera, gradually abandoning thematic elaboration and a classical sense of form for a dramatic stage style.
The nature of the 19th century concerto is inseparable from the idea of virtuosity. The new audiences and institutions that promoted popular concerts contributed to the transformation of the musician into an actor. It is within the framework that one must consider the violin concertos by Niccolo Paganini, the violin virtuoso who mesmerized such as Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.
Paganini elevated the dying tradition of improvisation to a transcendental level with his dazzling performances,a and, he gave rise to a star worship comparable to that which vocalists enjoyed, colored, however, by a "demonic" aspect unique to instrumental music. In fact, Paganini's concertos for violin show strong ties to operatic tradition in the form of numerous Rossini-like cadenzas - something in common to most Italian instrumental music of that time.
The "Concerto or Violin in d-major", composed in 1817-18 (an earlier concerto was dated 1815), gives wonderful expression to the musical charm of this epoch. From a convential and rather superficial point of view, it anticipates the 19th century tradition. The central "Adagio espressivo" transforms operatic elements of an aria to a moving and personal romance, modest, yet dignified.
The "Concerto for Violin No. 4 in d-minor", composed in 1829-30 and first performed in Frankfurt/Main on the 16th April 1830 (and revived by Gallini in Paris in 1954!), displays a pronounced balance between melody and virtuosity.
Pagaini's play, many times, was described as "devil's play". He composed many pieces for the g-string, maybe, because during many performances his violin strings have been cut because of this "devil's play"... .
His sonatas and compositions for guitars have been forgotten since long, even wonderful to be listening. I am glad, I still have some pieces in my music library... .
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