The famous #Debussy Arabesque no.1 - played by Inga Fiolia at the Trinitatis Church Cologne
A multiple prizewinner of international competitions and described in the international press as a “poet on the piano with remarkable maturity”, German-Georgian pianist Inga Fiolia has a bright future. Since giving her first performance with an orchestra at the age of seven, she has shown a phenomenal ability as a soloist, accompanist and interpreter of a wide variety of styles, from the Baroque to the 21st century compositions.
Inga Fiolia studied at the Central Music School of Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and the Cologne Musikhochschule with Alexey Nasedkin, Rudolf Kehrer and Vassily Lobanov. She is the youngest follower of the Neuhaus piano tradition, which included Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels.
As a soloist she has collaborated with orchestras including the Brandenburg State Opera Philharmonic (Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1), the Brussels Philharmonic (Rachmaninov Concerto No.2), the Georgian State Chamber Orchestra (Bach No. 5) and National Philharmonic (Haydn D major, Beethoven No. 1), the Bergische Symphoniker and the South Westphalia Philharmonic (Liszt No.2). She received the Solti Award and German Piano Magazine´s “Piano News prize” and has also performed for major TV and radio stations including ZDF, ARTE, Classica TV, SWR, Deutschlandradio, WDR, as well as on Georgian TV. Her performance of Scriabin’s Preludes and Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto was released on the DVD “Stars of tomorrow, presented by Rolando Villazon” (Unitel Classica, 2015). She released two recordings of Mikhail Glinka´s piano works: “Piano Variations” (2017), “Dances” (2018) and Sulkhan Tsintsadze´s “24 Preludes” (2019) on Naxos´ Lable Grand Piano. In 2019 she made her U.S Debut at Lincoln Center in New York, a Debut at the Klavierfestival Ruhr with works by Ravel, Debussy (CD Edition Klavierfestival Ruhr), Schubert and Glinka and has performed Chopin´s 1. Piano Concerto with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra. In 2020 she made her reloaded arrangements of Beethoven‘s best Piano pieces, that were premiered and recorded live at Ruhr Piano Festival with the Sting‘s percussionist Rhani Krija (Album Release in 2022).
Showing posts with label Claude Debussy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Claude Debussy. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Friday, April 12, 2024
Playlist: Water Games
by Frances Wilson, Interlude
Shipwreck
Each is equally apt: in this piece Ravel brilliantly evokes “the splashing of water and by the musical sounds of fountains, cascades and rivulets” (Ravel) through shimmering figurations, cascading arpeggios and other fluid textures. It’s a masterpiece of Impressionism and was the well-spring for other water-inspired piano music by Ravel, namely Une barque sur l’océan from Miroirs and Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit.
Fountain in Villa d’Este, Tivoli
But the forerunner of these pieces was undoubtedly Franz Liszt’s Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este, which, like Jeux d’eau, evokes the sparkling play of fountains and the fluidity and brilliance of water. The Villa d’Este boasts an extraordinary system of fountains, with some fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins, fed by 875 metres of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps.
Reflections on water
Debussy was also a master of depicting water in music. Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water). Here Debussy imitates not just the sounds of water – droplets and burbles, splashes and raindrops – but also reflections, the pictures that float upon the surface.
n. The Lone Wreck, from The Tides by English composer William Baines, is a dramatic tone poem which paints a haunting picture of an abandoned ship deep in the ocean, complete with the calls of sea birds.
Night gondola in Venice, Italy
The Barcarolle, or “boat song”, inspired by the songs of Venetian gondoliers, seeks to portray the rocking motion of the sea and the rise and fall of waves. Chopin’s Barcarolle is perhaps the most famous work in this genre. Mendelssohn’s Venetian Gondolier’s Song in f-sharp minor from his Songs Without Words is dark and atmospheric, suggesting nighttime on the Venetian lagoon.
Liszt was also adept at portraying the motion of the ocean. In his Legende No. 2, St. Francis of Paola walking on the waves, the waters roll and bubble beneath the saint’s feet as he crosses the Straits of Messina.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Britten transports us to more serene waters in Sailing from his Holiday Diary suite. The wind gets up in the middle section, tossing the boat about, before calm is restored.
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Monday, December 4, 2023
Composers and their Poets: Ernest Chausson
by
French Chansons Composed by Ernest Chausson
Ernest Chausson, by Guy & Mockel, Paris (ca. 1897)
French composer Ernest Chausson’s early death in a bicycle accident cut short a career just as it was beginning to flourish. His position as secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique for 13 years put him at the centre of France’s active music networks. He studied with Massenet and César Franck at the Paris Conservatoire, which he attended at the relatively advanced age of 24, was friends with Vincent d’Indy, and many other composers including Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Isaac Albéniz. He also knew the poet Mallarmé, although he never set any of his poetry, and the painter Monet.
Chausson, standing, turning pages for Debussy (1893)
The poets he set include Camille Mauclair (1872-1945), Jean Richepin (1849-1926), Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), Maurice Bouchor (1855-1929), and Maurice Maeterlinck (1849-1949), among others. If we look just at his contemporaries, Camille Mauclair, Maurice Bouchor, and Maurice Maeterlinck, we have three poets of very different sensibilities.
Camille Mauclair by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1896)
Camille Mauclair (the pseudonym of Séverin Faust) was not only a poet but also a novelist, biographer, travel writer, and critic. He was an admirer of Mallarmé and was most famous for his roman à clef, Le Soleil des Morts (1898). For his contemporaries, it was brilliant portrait of the leading actors in the arts of his day, including writers, artists, critics, and musicians. For us, it has become an important historical document about the French avant-garde at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the most musically relevant portraits in the novel is that of Debussy at the premiere of “Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune”. Chausson appears in the book as ‘Rudolphe Méreuse’ and is the dedicatee of the novel. He is, in the novel, praised as ‘ …the composer whose symphonies, with those of César Franck, were the only original works to appear since Wagner.’
Mauclair provided the words for Chausson’s Op. 27 lieder. The first song, Les heures, casts us directly into the shadowy decadent world of the French fin du siècle: the piano provides a mordent background to the poet, ‘singing until death’ the pale hours of the night.
Maurice Bouchor
Maurice Bouchor was a poet and playwright with an interest in music. He worked with the musician Julien Tiersot to preserve French folk songs and published a book of them for use in schools.
His poetry was set extensively, and Chausson set it a number of times, most memorably in his Op. 8 set. This set of four poems describes love in all aspects: from the young love in the first poem, the memory of a former lover in the second, to the broken heart of ‘Printemps triste’ and the memories of the happy past in ‘Nos souvenirs’.
Maurice Maeterlinck
The Belgian playwright, poet and essayist Maurice Maeterlinck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. At the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, he was a source of musical inspiration: Debussy set his Pelléas and Mélisande, and it inspired Gabriel Fauré, Arnold Schoenberg, Jean Silbelius and others. 13 of his other plays were also made into operas, inspired symphonic poems, or had incidental music written for them by some 40 composers. His plays forged a new style, an example of which can be seen in Pelléas and Mélisande: the setting is lean and spare and the characters have no foresight and a limited view and understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit. The forces that compel people, not the emotions that drive them, was the centre of his style.
Maeterlinck’s first collection of poetry, Serres chaudes (Hothouses) (1889), was the source for Chausson’s Op. 24 song cycle. The second song, ‘Serre d’ennui’ (Hothouse boredom), seems to capture the overly humid confines of a hothouse, where boredom is blue but is captured within a green world where all is still.
Chausson set poetry by many other poets, including Verlaine, Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, and Gautier. In his brief life, Chausson brought the French chanson forward out of the Romanticism found in composers such as Massenet and Franck and closer to the more introspective world found in Debussy’s work.
Thursday, November 16, 2023
Blind pianist Lucy stuns Royal Albert Hall with breathtaking Debussy debut
Watch a very special performance, as the exceptional pianist who won Channel 4’s ‘The Piano’ plays deeply emotional Debussy to an audience of 6,000 in London’s iconic theatre.
Monday night saw an incredible piano debut on one of the world’s biggest and most iconic stages.
Playing at Classic FM Live with Viking was a musician whose talent and deep relationship with music has stunned the classical world. Teenage pianist Lucy played Claude Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1 to the packed hall.
The remarkable young pianist earlier this year, aged just 13. Her opening performance of a nocturne on a train station piano left judge Lang Lang stunned and .
From that moment, a new piano star was born. Lucy played in May’s Coronation Concert for King Charles at Windsor Castle, and has now continued her incredible journey with this Classic FM concert and a Royal Albert Hall debut.
Lucy, from West Yorkshire, is blind and neurodivergent. She is taught by Daniel Bath, a teacher who she first met when she was three years old. Daniel was beside his student on stage as she made her debut on Monday.
Watch her performance above. Her interpretation of the French composer’s music captivated the huge audience, holding them in an awed silence before a huge ovation at the end. What a moment it was.
The Arabesque is a piece Lucy has made her own. In March, she played it at London’s Royal Festival Hall, as part of the grand finale of the TV series where she took top honours.
The concert saw a night of incredible solo performances, with British-Iranian pianist Arsha Kaviani, guitarist Miloš Karadaglic, and brilliant young violinist – and Classic FM Rising Star – Luka Faulisi all sharing the stage with Lucy.
Along with the Debussy, Lucy also played Bach’s beautiful C-major Prelude from the Well-tempered Klavier.
You can hear her performances and all the night’s musical magic by catching up on Friday’s exclusive broadcast of Classic FM Live with Viking YOu can also watch the full concert soon on Sky Arts.
Saturday, November 4, 2023
CLAUDE DEBUSSY: CLAIR DE LUNE
92,577,634 views • Oct 7, 2008
Thursday, August 24, 2023
Who was Lili Boulanger?
Meet the inspiring composer who died tragically young
Lili Boulanger was one of the most exciting composers of the early 20th century, until she died at just 24. Here’s everything you need to know about her life, music, and how her influence lives on today.
A promising talent from a very early age, Boulanger was a multi-instrumentalist and pioneering composer, who shared her musical genius with the world right up to her untimely death in 1918, at just 24 years old.
Lili was part of the musically-gifted Boulanger family
Lili Boulanger was born to a prodigious family of musicians, so it’s no wonder she followed the family tradition with several generations’ worth of musical talent flowing through her veins.
Her mother, Raissa Myshetskaya, was a Russian princess who studied at the Paris Conservatoire. It was there that she fell in love with her teacher, Ernest Boulanger.
Boulanger himself was a conductor and composer, and the descendant of fine musical stock: his father, Frédéric was an acclaimed cellist, and his mother, Juliette, was a singer.
Lili Boulanger was a child prodigy
Lili Boulanger was just two years old when she began to be noticed for her musical prowess. The great composer Gabriel Fauré, a friend of the family, spotted that she had perfect pitch, and the tot was able to sing melodies by ear.
Her parents nurtured her abilities and encouraged a prestigious music education. Before the age of five she was accompanying her older sister, Nadia, to lessons at the Paris Conservatoire. Later she would attend independently, taking classes in music theory and the organ.
Boulanger also played piano, violin, cello and harp, as well as singing.
The first woman to win the Prix de Rome
In 1912, Lili Boulanger entered the Prix de Rome – the most prestigious honour for artists at the time. First awarded in the 17th century, the prize allowed the winner to live in Rome for three to five years, all expenses paid.
With categories in painting, sculpture, architecture and engraving, the first prize for musical competition was awarded in 1803 to Albert Androt.
Among its winners are some of Europe’s finest composers: Georges Bizet, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, and even Lili’s own father, Ernest, in 1835 at the age of 20.
However, her 1912 entry was ill-fated. Boulanger collapsed from illness during her performance, and was unable to complete her entry. Not easily discouraged, Boulanger attempted once more in 1913, then aged 19, and won.
Her victory made her the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, though the judges couldn’t quite bear to let her enjoy the honour on her own. So they also awarded first prize that year to Claude Delvincourt.
She wrote the cantata ‘Faust et Hélène’ in just four weeks
Faust et Hélène is the piece that gave the Prix de Rome judges no choice but to give her the award.
The rules of the competition stated that the piece had to be written in four weeks – so that’s what the precocious 19-year-old Lili did.
The cantata is 30 minutes long and is written for a full orchestra, telling the story of Faust, the man seduced by the power offered by the demon Mephistopheles.
Boulanger’s retelling of the German legend contains flavours of and Debussy, and it’s no surprise it won the most prestigious prize of its day. Just listen to this:
A prolific composer and diligent worker, Boulanger continued writing music on her sickbed. Her final piece, a haunting and evocative ‘’, was completed in her 24th year in 1918.
Initial sketches of the work have been found in the composer’s composition book, used between 1909 and 1913. It was completed with the help of her sister Nadia, who wrote out the work as it was dictated to her.
Lili Boulanger’s illness and death
Much of Lili Boulanger’s short life was afflicted by tragedy. At just two years old, she contracted bronchial pneumonia, an infection of the lungs.
Boulanger recovered, but her immune system was irrevocably weakened by the illness and she suffered from chronic illness for the remainder of her life.
In 1900, when she was just seven years old, her father, who had been 77 at her birth, died. His death affected Boulanger, who was very close to her father, greatly, and much of her work would deal with themes of loss.
In 1918, Boulanger died from intestinal tuberculosis which arose from her life-long health complications. She was buried in the Cemetery of Montmartre, where she was joined by her sister, Nadia, in 1979, as well as both of their parents.
Lili Boulanger’s legacy
Despite such a brief career, cut short by her premature death, Lili Boulanger’s legacy lives on today through both her own music, and that of many other eminent composers.
Lili’s sister, , who was a fine composer in her own right, was so affected by her sibling’s death that she deemed her own works “useless” and turned her complete attention to teaching, hoping to continue her sister’s legacy through pedagogy.
Over a lifetime of nurturing young musical talent, Nadia Boulanger’s students became some of the 20th century’s most famous composers and conductors, from Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein to Quincy Jones and Daniel Barenboim.
So although Lili Boulanger’s young death may have robbed us from plenty of brilliant music, perhaps if she had lived we may never have had West Side Story, ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, or the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
Friday, August 18, 2023
Five of the Angriest Classical Music Feuds
By Emily F. Hogstad, Interlude
Salieri v. Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri © slavicwritings.com
Everyone who saw the 1984 movie “Amadeus” knows the story. Antonio Salieri was a mediocre composer who was blindingly jealous of his young and impish colleague, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In fury, he sabotages his career – and ultimately, his life.
That said… It’s not true. In real life, Salieri was a generally well-liked and well-regarded man, and a prolific and talented composer. He even taught Mozart’s son after Mozart died. And he didn’t poison Mozart.
The core of the legend came from letters that Mozart and his father wrote to each other in the 1780s, positing the existence of an “Italian cabal” that was seeking to block Mozart’s ascendance. The Mozart men were irritated that the Austrian court gave such prominence to the work of Italians; they believed that Austrian artists should reign supreme at court. This wider feud between Italian and Germanic styles of music persisted long after Mozart and Salieri, and perhaps consequentially, a rumor arose after their deaths that Salieri outright poisoned Mozart. So there was indeed a feud between the two composers, but it was a bit one-sided, and it wasn’t as dramatic – or deadly – as Hollywood suggests.
Brahms v. Wagner
Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner © operalibera.net
After Beethoven’s revolutionary contributions to orchestral music, composers had to make tough decisions about how they would respond. Would they continue to embrace and refine the more instrumental-based genres that Beethoven had embraced, like the symphony or the sonata? Or would they throw out the old rule book and push forward to create new musical concepts and languages, as seen in program music? What genre would win the battle for cultural relevance: symphonies or operas?
This argument grew incredibly heated in the mid-1800s and became known (perhaps a bit melodramatically) as the War of the Romantics. Generally speaking, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert and Clara Schumann were seen as the “conservatives” in this struggle, while figures like Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner were seen as the “radicals.” A great deal of ink was spilled delineating the positions of the two camps. In the end, Wagner never wrote a symphony, and Brahms never wrote an opera.
Although their music was very different, Brahms appreciated at least some of Wagner’s music. “I’m the best of Wagnerians,” he told his friends in private. He even collected original Wagner manuscripts (much to Wagner’s irritation). That said, Brahms wasn’t such a fan of the loud extra-musical opinions that Wagner blared in various screeds and pamphlets.
Debussy v. Ravel
Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel © wfmt.com
The music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel is often jammed together on compilation discs with titles like “French Impressionism.” But just because the two men were writing music at the same time in the same city doesn’t mean they were best friends.
They met around 1900 when Debussy’s stepson Raoul Bardac, a classmate of Ravel’s, introduced them. Ravel was thirteen years younger and at a different stage of artistic and professional development than Debussy was, and Ravel admired the older man’s work intensely, to the point where he was criticized in the press for copying Debussy too closely.
In 1903, a hubbub arose when Debussy wrote a piece that seemed to be inspired by the Spanish-sounding strains in Ravel’s music. It was understandable for a younger man to copy an older one, the train of thought went, but should the older one be the composer copying the younger one? Then in 1913 the two – without knowing the other one was embarking on the same project – set some of Stéphane Mallarmé’s new poetry to music, before the poetry had been published. Their mutual distrust grew.
Another scandalous issue closer to home had caused the two composers to drift apart emotionally. Raoul Bardac introduced his (married) mother to (the married) Debussy…and the two fell in love and ran off together. Debussy’s first wife was left without a husband, and Ravel was one of the Parisians who made a financial contribution to her. The feud became official.
Mendelssohn v. Liszt
Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn
We wrote an entire article about the rivalry between Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt! But to make a long story short, these two men got caught up in the War of the Romantics, just like Brahms and Wagner did. On a more personal note, Liszt once rewrote portions of Mendelssohn’s G-minor piano concerto, which understandably greatly irritated Mendelssohn. They also had an encounter at a salon gathering that could easily have turned into a disaster, when Liszt debuted yet another arrangement that he’d made of one of Mendelssohn’s work, the Capriccio, Op. 5…but Mendelssohn managed to smooth it over by joking afterward and congratulating Liszt on his extraordinary performance.
Stravinsky v. Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, 1920 © History of Music Facebook Page
Stravinsky and Prokofiev are often mentioned in the same sentence simply because they both were Russian composers, born in 1882 and 1891 respectively. But just like in the case of Ravel and Debussy, that didn’t guarantee they got along.
Although Stravinsky once magnanimously praised Prokofiev’s ballet “Chout” as “the single piece of modern music [he] could listen to with pleasure”, the relationship eventually deteriorated. By the following year, when “Chout” was being run through for a possible revival, Stravinsky started an argument with Prokofiev, telling him he was wasting his time writing opera. The younger man retorted that Stravinsky “was in no position to lay down a general artistic direction” since Stravinsky himself “was not immune to error.”
Prokofiev later described what came next: Stravinsky “became incandescent with rage” and “we almost came to blows and were separated only with difficulty.”
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