Ludwig von Beethoven “The Sounds of Silence”

by Georg Predota  

Ludwig van Beethoven, 1818

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was the rising star on the Viennese music scene in the last decade of the 18th century. He made his name by showcasing his talents as a pianist, and he composed and performed piano sonatas of extreme technical difficulty. At the same time he composed music for a variety of musical ensemble and occasions. Ludwig van Beethoven needed to be busy, because he was a freelance musician. In fact, he was the first major composer in that city who did not depend on a fixed musical appointment. However, Beethoven had a dark secret. During his mid-20s, he gradually started to lose his hearing. At first, these periods of temporary hearing loss might not have caused him much concern, as he had suffered from a number of ailments, including abdominal pain, diarrhea, and spells of fever since childhood. It seems that he noticed the first symptoms in 1796, or possibly somewhat earlier. In 1815, he told the English pianist Charles Neate that the cause of his hearing loss could be traced back to a quarrel he had with a singer in 1798.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 2, No. 3 

Beethoven, 1800-01

The story goes that a tenor was visiting Beethoven in his apartment. Apparently, they got into a heated argument and the tenor stormed out in a huff. Unexpectedly he returned and knocked on the door. Beethoven is said to have jumped up from the piano angrily to rush and open the door. However, his leg got stuck and he fell face down to the floor. This small accident was not the cause of Beethoven’s deafness, but it triggered a long and continuous hearing loss that would end in almost complete silence. Supposedly, Beethoven said about that particular fall, “I found myself deaf, and have been so ever since.” The hearing loss initially affected mostly his left ear, and as it grew worse Beethoven started to suffer from a severe form of tinnitus. The continued buzzing in his ear made it increasingly difficult to hear music or conversations, and it drove him to the brink of suicide. Beethoven writes, “my ears keep buzzing and humming day and night, and if someone yells, it is unbearable to me.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No.1 in C major, Op. 21 

The young Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven continued to perform publically, and he was very careful to not reveal his deafness. He rightly believed that it would ruin his career. He writes, “I don’t hear the high notes of the instruments and voices, and sometimes, I cannot hear people who speak quietly. I can hear the sounds, but not the words. I can with truth say that my life is very wretched. For nearly 2 years past I have avoided all society, because I find it impossible to say to people, ‘I am deaf!’ In any other profession this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a condition is truly frightful. As for my enemies, of whom I have a fair number, what would they say?” In June 1801 Beethoven confides in his Bonn friend F. G. Wegeler, “that the malicious demon, however, bad health, has been a stumbling-block in my path; my hearing during the last three years has become gradually worse.” At that particular time, Ludwig van Beethoven was still hoping that his doctors might be able to help him. He was aware that his hearing loss would present some problems in his professional life, and “what was of equal importance for him, his social life as well.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in C minor, Op. 14, No. 4 

Kaspar Anton Karl van Beethoven, Beethoven’s brother

In a letter to his good friend Karl Amenda, Beethoven writes, “Your Beethoven is leading a very unhappy life and is at variance with Nature and his Creator…When I am playing and composing my affliction is hampering me least—it is affecting me most when I am in company.” However, he also reports that Lichnowsky had agreed to pay him an annuity of 600 florins for some years, removing all his financial concerns. His childhood friend Stephan von Breuning had moved to Vienna, and six or seven publishers were competing for each new work. “I often produce three or four works at the same time,” he writes. “My piano playing has considerably improved, and at the moment I feel equal to anything.” Predictably, Beethoven consulted a number of doctors in the hope of finding a cure for his hearing troubles. Initially he looked up Johann Frank, a local professor of medicine. Frank believed that the cause of Beethoven’s hearing loss was related to his abdominal problems. He prescribed a number of traditional herbal remedies that included pushing balls of cotton soaked in almond oil into his ears. Beethoven reports, “Frank has tried to tone up my constitution with strengthening medicines, and my hearing with almond oil, but much good did it do me! His treatment had no effect, my deafness became even worse, and my abdomen continued to be in the same state as before.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Serenade in D major Op. 25 

Beethoven’s ear trumpets

Gerhard von Vering was a former German military surgeon and subsequently the Director of the Viennese Health Institute. He was a celebrity doctor, and among his patients was none other than Emperor Joseph II. When Frank’s almond oil treatment showed no healing effect, Beethoven consulted von Vering. He recommended that Beethoven take daily “Danube baths.” Beethoven followed that advice, and sat in tepid baths of river water combined with the ingestion of a small vial of herbal tonic. Apparently, “this treatment miraculously improved Beethoven’s digestive ailments, but his deafness not only persisted, it became even worse.” Beethoven continued to see Dr. von Vering for several months, but he started to protest the increasingly bizarre and unpleasant treatments. It was reported that Dr. Vering strapped toxic bark to Beethoven’s forearms that caused his skin to blister and itch painfully for several days at the time. Beethoven reports to his friend Franz Wegeler in November 1801, “Vering, for the last few months, has applied blisters to both my arms, consisting of a certain bark … This is a most disagreeable remedy, as it deprives me of the free use of my arms for two or three days at a time, until the bark has drawn sufficiently, which occasions a good deal of pain. It is true the ringing in my ears is somewhat less than it was, especially in my left ear where the illness began, but my hearing is by no means improved; indeed I am not sure but that the evil is increased … I am upon the whole much dissatisfied with Vering; he cares too little about his patients.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 

Beethoven, 1801

Dr. Johann Adam Schmidt had also started his medical career as an army surgeon. In 1789 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy in Vienna, and he published a number of important scientific articles. Beethoven implicitly trusted Dr. Schmidt, who recommended leeches and bloodletting as a means of treating the composer’s hearing loss. Dr. Schmidt dejectedly wrote to Beethoven after a number of treatments, “From leeches we can expect no further relief.” Schmidt also recommended for Beethoven to have one of his teeth pulled in hopes of improving the gout-related headache from which Beethoven had been suffering. I am not sure Beethoven heeded this particular advice, but he was clearly interested “in the newest trend sweeping medical science at the time, called galvanism.” That particular treatment involved passing a mild electric current through the afflicted part of the body “as a means of simulating normal bodily activity and aiding the healing process.” Beethoven wrote to a friend, “People talk about miraculous cures by galvanism; what is your opinion? A medical man told me that in Berlin he saw a deaf and dumb child recover its hearing, and a man who had also been deaf for seven years recover his—I have just heard that Schmidt is making experiments with galvanism.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 38 

Beethoven’s house in Heiligenstadt

There has been some scholarly debate whether or not Beethoven ever received galvanic treatment. The only known instance comes from an entry in his conversation books from April 1823. Apparently, he conversed with a man suffering from worsening deafness. Beethoven advised, “do not start using hearing aids too soon… Lately, I have not been able to stand galvanism. It is sad. Doctors do not know much, one tires of them eventually.” None of the proposed cures offered any kind of relief, and Beethoven fell into a deep depression. He gradually had begun to realize that his deafness was progressive and probably incurable. Dr. Schmidt finally advised Beethoven to move away from the bustling city and take refuge in the countryside. As such, Beethoven moved to the small town of Heiligenstadt in 1802, at that time located just outside the city limits. Being socially isolated with his hearing further deteriorating, Beethoven wrote a long letter to his two brothers, Carl and Johann, in which he explained his feelings and his condition in great detail, and admitted to having contemplated suicide. He writes, “For six years I have been a hopeless case, aggravated by senseless physicians, cheated year after year in the hope of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2 “Tempest” 

“The Heiligenstadt Testament”

The “Heiligenstadt Testament”, as this letter has become known, continues, “What a humiliation, when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing, and again I heard nothing. Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life. Only art it was that withheld me … and so I endured this wretched existence—truly wretched … It was virtue that upheld me in misery, to it, next to my art, I owe the fact that I did not end my life with suicide. Farewell and love each other. I thank all my friends … how glad will I be if I can still be helpful to you in my grave—with joy I hasten towards death. If it comes before I shall have had an opportunity to show all my artistic capacities, it will still come too early for me, despite my hard fate, and I shall probably wish it had come later—but even then I am satisfied, will it not free me from my state? Come when thou will, I shall meet thee bravely. Farewell and do not wholly forget me when I am dead.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30 No. 2 

Postcard of Beethoven in Heiligenstadt

Beethoven never posted that letter, and it was only discovered in his papers after his death. In this famous letter, Beethoven addressed and possibly resolved his inner turmoil. He came to terms with the fact that his hearing would never improve, and it marked a turning point in his life. Beethoven was ready to “seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely—it would be so lovely to live a thousand lives.” This newly found zest for life was also “brought about by a dear charming girl who loves me and whom I love,” as Beethoven confided in a friend. “For the first time I feel that marriage might bring me happiness. Unfortunately she is not of my class.” This “dear charming girl” was no doubt the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi who had not yet celebrated her 17th birthday. Although she was flattered to receive attention from the famous Beethoven, Giulietta wasn’t inclined to take Beethoven’s devotion very seriously. Beethoven noted on one of his musical sketches, “Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even in art.” Determined to continue living for and through his art, he promised “a completely new way of composing.” This new way is reflected in a series of compositions that reflect or embody extra-musical ideas of heroism.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 “Eroica” 

Waldmüller: Beethoven (1823)

While Beethoven was able to compose music, playing concerts, which had been an important source of income, became increasingly difficult. His student Carl Czerny once said that Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally until about 1812. By 1818, however, “Beethoven’s deafness had progressed to such an extent that, with increasing frequency, he began to carry blank books with him, so that his friends and acquaintances, especially when in public, could write their sides of conversations without being overheard, while Beethoven himself customarily replied orally.” Scholars have suggested that Beethoven never became completely deaf, and that he was able to hear muffled words when they were spoken directly into his left ear. Even in his final years, Beethoven was apparently still able to distinguish low tones and sudden loud sound.

Beethoven’s conversation notebook

One day after his death on 27 March, the Institute of Pathology in Vienna performed an autopsy with “specific focus on his ears and the cochlear nerves…” The Eustachian tube was very thickened… and the facial nerves of considerable thickness; the auditory nerves on the other hand shrunken and without pith; the accompanying auditory arteries were of a calibre of a crow-quill, and of cartilaginous consistency. The left auditory nerve, much thinner, arose by three very thin, greyish roots; the right by one root, stronger and pale white… The vault of the skull showed great tightness throughout and a thickness of about half an inch”. Today, physicians are generally in agreement that Beethoven’s deafness was caused by otosclerosis, a condition that exhibits abnormal bone growth inside the ear. In Beethoven’s case, this was accompanied by the degeneration of the auditory nerve. For almost 25 years of his life Ludwig van Beethoven struggled with his severe disability, but his passion for art was all consuming. Music became a mode of self-expression that “transcended the mundane and the narcissistic, as he artistically realized the potential for optimism and idealism within all of us.” Beethoven’s music is an endearing monument to the persistence of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

The Bach Family: Eight Fascinating Relatives of Johann Sebastian

by Emily E. Hogstad  

Many music history lovers know that Johann Sebastian Bach had many children: twenty kids by two wives.

What fewer people know is that the wider Bach family was famously fertile…as well as famously musical.

The Bach family tree © aco.com.au

In fact, the Wikipedia article on the Bach family includes over 75 names.

Many of these Bachs – who lived before, during, and after the lifespan of Johann Sebastian Bach – were professional musicians.

Today we’re taking a look at ten of the most interesting musical Bachs who weren’t Johann Sebastian or his children.

(If you want to find out what happened to Bach’s twenty children, we wrote an article about them here.)

Let’s get started!

Veit Bach (1550-1619)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s great-great-grandfather

The Veit-Bach-Mill at Thuringia

Veit Bach was born around 1550 near present-day Bratislava in the Kingdom of Hungary. He worked as a miller and a baker.

During his lifetime, the Kingdom of Hungary was under the control of the Vienna-based Hapsburg dynasty. The Hapsburgs were Catholic, while Veit was Protestant.

At the time, Protestantism was a relatively new movement. Martin Luther had released his famous Ninety-five Theses, a protest against what he viewed as Catholic corruption, in 1517, only a generation before Veit Bach was born.

To escape religious persecution, Veit Bach moved to Wechmar in the German state of Thuringia, almost halfway between the cities of Leipzig and Frankfurt.

He continued working as a miller after the move. According to local legend, he would play an instrument called the cythringen, a kind of Renaissance-era guitar-like instrument, in rhythm to the sounds of the mill.

Johannes Bach I (15?? – 1626)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s great-grandfather

Johannes Bach I was Veit Bach’s son and born in Wechmar. We’re not sure what year.

According to a family genealogy that Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons assembled generations later, Johannes began his professional life as a baker.

Later, however, he took an apprenticeship as a town piper in the town of Gotha, ten kilometers away from his birthplace.

Tragically, he died of the plague in 1626.

Interestingly, the eulogy for one of Johannes Bach I’s sons stated that his father had once been a carpet weaver. The early members of this musical dynasty clearly had non-musical day jobs to support themselves.

Christoph Bach (1613-1661)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s grandfather

Johannes Bach I had several musician sons. One of them was Christoph Bach, who was born in Wechmar, becoming a court musician there. His brothers also became musicians.

During his career, Christoph Bach took musical jobs in the neighboring towns of Erfurt and Arnstadt. (His famous grandson Johann Sebastian would work in Arnstadt, too.)

He married a woman named Maria Magdalena Grabler. She had three sons: Georg Christian Bach in 1642 and twins Johann Ambrosius Bach and Johann Christian Bach in 1645. (Twins ran in the Bach family!)

Christoph Bach died in 1661 in Arnstadt.

Johann Ambrosius Bach (1645-1695)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s father

Johann Ambrosius Bach, J.S. Bach’s father

Johann Ambrosius Bach and his twin Johann Christoph were born in 1645, when their father was working as a musician in Erfurt.

Johann Ambrosius would have been surrounded by music at an early age. He ultimately followed in his father’s footsteps and became a professional violinist and trumpet player.

Tragically, Johann Ambrosius became an orphan when he was just 16. He and his twin moved in with an uncle until they could support themselves.

In 1668, when Johann Ambrosius was 23, he married a woman named Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt.

In 1671, the couple moved to Eisenach, forty kilometers from Wechmar, so that Johann Ambrosius could take a job as the town musician. Together they would have eight children, including Johann Sebastian in 1685.

Tragedy struck in the spring of 1694 when Maria Elisabeth died.

Johann Ambrosius, in desperate need of a wife to help raise his children, remarried that November.

But this union was doomed, too: he died in March 1695, making Johann Sebastian Bach an orphan just weeks before his tenth birthday.

Johann Christoph Bach (1645-1693)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s uncle

Johann Christoph Bach was Johann Ambrosius Bach’s twin.

One of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons later wrote, “They loved each other tenderly, and looked so much alike that even their own wives could not distinguish them.”

Like his twin and their father, Johann Christoph became a professional musician, first working in the town band in Erfurt and later as a violinist in the Arnstadt court.

Johann Christoph had a volatile temper and lashed out at the musicians in Arnstadt. (Apparently, high tempers and perfectionism ran in the Bach family!) Things got so bad that he was fired.

In 1682, he got his job back, thanks to the intervention of Arnstadt-based Count Anton Günther II, a celebrated patron of music.

Johann Christoph’s biggest claim to fame might be that he introduced his nephew Johann Sebastian to the organ.

Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s brother

Here’s another Johann Christoph Bach! (The family loved reusing names.)

This particular Johann Christoph Bach was born in Erfurt in 1671, but raised in Eisenach, where his brother Johann Sebastian, fourteen years his junior, was born.

In 1686, as a teenager, he was sent back to Erfurt to apprentice under Johann Pachelbel. He worked as an organist in Erfurt and Arnstadt.

In 1690, he got a job playing organ in the nearby town of Ohrdruf. His and Johann Sebastian’s mother died in the spring of 1694, and their father less than a year later.

In between his parents’ deaths, Johann Christoph got married to a woman named Dorothea von Hof. This meant that after his father’s death, he was no longer a bachelor and was in a position to take in ten-year-old Johann Sebastian.

Not only did Johann Christoph take in Johann Sebastian, he also continued his musical education.

We don’t know exactly what their relationship was like, but Bach’s biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel wrote in his 1802 biography:

The most renowned Clavier composers of that day were Froberger, Fischer, Johann Caspar Kerl, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Bruhns, and Böhm. Johann Christoph possessed a book containing several pieces by these masters, and [Johann Sebastian] Bach begged earnestly for it, but without effect. Refusal increasing his determination, he laid his plans to get the book without his brother’s knowledge. It was kept on a book-shelf which had a latticed front. Bach’s hands were small. Inserting them, he got hold of the book, rolled it up, and drew it out. As he was not allowed a candle, he could only copy it on moonlight nights, and it was six months before he finished his heavy task. As soon as it was completed, he looked forward to using in secret a treasure won by so much labour. But his brother found the copy and took it from him without pity, nor did Bach recover it until his brother’s death soon after.

If the story is true, Johann Sebastian didn’t hold his brother’s strictness against him. He later composed a Capriccio in E major (BWV 993) in honor of Johann Christoph.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Capriccio in E Major, BWV 993 

Johann Ernst Bach I (1683-1739)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s cousin

Twins Johann Ambrosius Bach and Johann Christoph Bach both had children. The former fathered Johann Sebastian, while the latter fathered (among others) Johann Ernst Bach I.

Johann Ernst was born in Arnstadt in 1683. Johann Ernst’s father died ten years later. He moved to Ohrdruf to be near family.

After Johann Sebastian’s parents died and he also moved to Ohrdruf, the two musical cousins began going to school together.

He studied briefly in Frankfurt before securing a job there. A few years later, he moved back to Arnstadt and became Johann Sebastian’s organ-playing substitute.

After Johann Sebastian moved away in 1707, Johann Ernst applied for his vacated position. He won the job…but his salary was less than half of what his cousin’s had been.

He died in 1739 in his mid-fifties.

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach (1759-1845)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s grandson

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach was the grandson of Johann Sebastian Bach, through Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach.

He was born in 1759 and received his initial musical training from two of his uncles, C.P.E. Bach and Johann Christian Bach.

When Johann Christian Bach, Johann Sebastian’s youngest son, died in 1782 in London, Wilhelm was present at his deathbed.

Between 1788 and 1811, he worked as Kapellmeister in Berlin at the court of Prince Frederick William II of Prussia. After he received a pension, he retired.

Wilhelm’s most famous piece is possibly the Dreyblatt, a titillating work for piano six hands. It requires one man sitting in the center of the piano bench, with a woman on either side of him. Over the course of the work, the man has to reach behind and around the women.

Dreyblatt für Klavier zu 6 Händen (William Friedrich Ernst Bach) 

In 1843, a monument to Johann Sebastian Bach was erected in Leipzig. Composer Robert Schumann was present, as was Wilhelm. Schumann described Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst as “a very agile old gentleman of 84 years with snow-white hair and expressive features.”

Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach had four children. His eldest daughter Caroline died in 1871. She was the last surviving descendant of Johann Sebastian Bach.

He famously said of himself and his work, “Heredity can tend to run out of musical ideas.”

10 Pieces of Classical Music About Childhood

by Emily E. Hogstad  

Classical music sometimes has a reputation of being solely for elderly people. If that’s true (spoiler alert: it’s not), it’s certainly strange how many pieces of classical music are about childhood and youth.

Today we’re looking at classical music inspired by childhood.

© soundgirls.org

Robert Schumann: Kinderszenen (1838) 

Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen (“Songs from Childhood”) is a set of thirteen pieces for solo piano about childhood.

Robert was twenty-eight at the time he wrote these pieces, and he was dating the nineteen-year-old piano superstar Clara Wieck.

For a variety of reasons, Clara had always been mature for her age, and at one point she observed that Robert was “like a child.” Robert, amused, decided to embrace his childlike nature, took her idea, and ran with it.

The pieces in this collection include Blind Man’s Buff, Knight of the Hobbyhorse, and, most famously, Dreaming (better-known by its German title, Träumerei). 

Teresa Carreño: Mi Teresita (ca 1885) 

Teresa Carreño was one of the most famous women composers of her generation, and Mi Teresita (“My Little Teresa”) is one of her most famous works.

It’s a waltz that was written for her third child, Teresita, who had been born in 1882. (As a bit of trivia, Carreño had six children in all: one by French violinist Émile Sauret, three by Italian baritone Giovanni Tagliapietra, and two more by German pianist Eugen d’Albert.)

Teresita would become a concert pianist like her mother.

Amy Beach: Children’s Carnival (1894) 

In 1894, twenty-seven-year-old American composer Amy Beach wrote six charming piano pieces for young players. She called the works Children’s Carnival.

The Carnival portrayed different stock characters often found in commedia dell’arte or pantomime, such as the meddling merchant Pantalon, the street-smart and gossipy maid Columbina, and her nimble, quick-thinking love interest, Harlequin.

Beach portrays each character with sweet and satisfying innocence.

Claude Debussy: Children’s Corner (1906-08) 

In January 1905, Claude Debussy’s married mistress Emma Bardac became pregnant. That spring, both Debussy and Bardac divorced from their respective spouses.

In October 1905, their little daughter Claude-Emma, whom they nicknamed Chouchou, was born. Debussy found Chouchou to be delightful beyond words.

Debussy with his daughter Chou-Chou

To celebrate his love for her, he wrote a six-movement suite of piano pieces called Children’s Corner. The work’s translated dedication reads, “To my dear little Chouchou, with tender apologies from her father for what follows.”

Children’s Corner portrays various scenes from childhood, including a serenade for a doll, a lullaby for an elephant, and a portrait of dancing snow.

John Alden Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator (1914)  

John Alden Carpenter was a composer born in Illinois in 1876. He studied music as a young man but chose not to make his living in music, instead joining the family shipping business as vice-president.

In 1914, he composed an orchestral portrait of his baby daughter Ginny’s day, perhaps taking inspiration from Richard Strauss, who, in 1903, had immortalized his own wife and baby in a tone poem called Symphonia Domestica.

Baby in Perambulator

Carpenter provided an incredibly detailed description of Ginny’s day from her perspective:

Every morning – after my second breakfast – if the wind and the sun are favorable, I go out. I should like to go alone, but my will is overborne…

Almost satiated with adventure, my Nurse firmly pushes me on, and almost before I recover my balance I am face to face with new sensation. The land comes to an end, and there at my feet is The Lake…

We pass on. Probably there is nothing more in the World. If there is, it is superfluous. There IS. It is Dogs!

Read more about Adventures in a Perambulator.

Florence Price: “To My Little Son” (ca 1915) 

Sometime around 1915, composer Florence Price set a melancholy poem by Julia Johnson Davis to music.

In your face I sometimes see
shadowings of the man to be
And eager dream of what my son shall be
in twenty years and one…

This was an especially poignant song for Price to set, as she lost a baby boy in infancy.

Edward Elgar: Nursery Suite (1931) 

Nursery Suite is one of the last pieces of music that Elgar ever wrote. In 1930, a 73-year-old Elgar told a friend that he’d recently found a box of music in manuscript dating from his youth.

His friend suggested that he work them up into something to celebrate the recent birth of Princess Margaret. He agreed, and by the following year he produced a sweet little orchestral suite with movement titles like “The Sad Doll” and “The Merry Doll.”

Elgar expanded the dedication: the final work was dedicated to Princess Margaret, Princess Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth II), and their mother, the Duchess of York.

Sergei Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf (1936) 

Peter and the Wolf was commissioned by the director of the Central Children’s Theatre in Moscow. She wanted Prokofiev to write a special symphony for children.

Peter, the work’s protagonist, plays in a meadow, listening to a whole menagerie of animals symbolised by various instruments.

Peter’s grandfather warns him of a gray wolf who might come to attack him. On cue, the wolf makes an appearance. Luckily, with the help of his animal friends, Peter is able to catch it.

Hunters come out of the forest, ready to kill the wolf, but Peter convinces them to put the wolf in a cage and bring it to a zoo instead. They do so in triumphant formation. At the last minute, a quacking comes from the wolf’s stomach: he has eaten the duck whole!

The work has proven to be incredibly popular and enduring, and it is often used even today as an introduction to the orchestra and orchestral instruments.

Benjamin Britten: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945) 

In the mid-1940s, composer Benjamin Britten was commissioned to score an educational documentary called Instruments of the Orchestra.

The main theme comes from another famous British composer: Henry Purcell‘s incidental music to Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer.

Each section shows off a different part of the orchestra, helping young listeners (of all ages!) to appreciate the uniqueness of each one.

Interestingly, there is a version with narration and another one without.

Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947) 

Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is for orchestra and soprano soloist. It is a nostalgic portrait of the narrator’s childhood.

The lyrics are from a 1938 prose poem by James Agee, describing the summer before his father died in a car accident:

On the rough, wet grass of the back yard, my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there….They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near…

Barber’s music beautifully captures the uneasy poignancy of Agee’s words.

Conclusion

So there you have it: ten pieces of classical music about childhood and youth.

Did you have a favorite piece of classical music as a child? Is it still a favorite now? Let us know!

This Piano Performance Will Give You CHILLS!

236,097 views Feb 28, 2025

236,097 views • Feb 28, 2025

Unchained Melody piano cover by Gamazda.

Music

 

Martha Argerich Plays Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.3

Legendary pianist Martha Argerich, as part of her long-awaited Singapore debut, performed her signature Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.3 at the 25th Singapore International Piano Festival (SIPF) 2018. SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891 - 1953) Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26 00:00 Entry and applause 00:45 I. Andante – Allegro 10:20 II. Tema con variazioni 20:09 III. Allegro, ma non troppo 30:30 Applause Martha Argerich, piano Darío Alejandro Ntaca, conductor Singapore Symphony Orchestra Recorded live at the Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, on 13 June 2018. This video is the property of the Singapore Symphony Group. Unauthorised reproduction or re-uploading is not permitted.

Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto: a century of recordings – from the composer to contemporary mavericks

David Gutman

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Prokofiev’s most popular concerto has inspired a range of interpretations since the composer’s own 1932 recording. David Gutman picks the finest from a burgeoning discography

Still radiant: the 1967 recording by Martha Argerich and Claudio Abbado dominates the catalogue (Ilsa Buhs / DG)

Sviatoslav Richter, a great admirer of Prokofiev’s work who considered its creator positively dangerous, left us with a vignette of the man at his worst. ‘One day a pupil was playing him his Third Concerto, accompanied by his teacher at a second piano, when the composer suddenly got up and grabbed the teacher by the neck, shouting: “Idiot! You don’t even know how to play, get out of the room!” To a teacher! He was violent. Completely different from Shostakovich, who was forever mumbling “Sorry”.’ Richter, who played Prokofiev’s Fifth Piano Concerto under the composer’s direction at his last Moscow concert in March 1941, avoided the Third, a piece more readily accepted on both sides of the Iron Curtain than almost anything else he wrote. Its discography has grown exponentially since the 1950s but is not without its own black holes and unanswered questions. Prokofiev may have contributed more new music to the standard repertoire than Schoenberg and Stravinsky but his motivation remains a puzzle. The brute who delighted to offend was also a traditionalist in search of a good tune who rarely strayed beyond hand-me-down classical forms. Like Beethoven he completed five concertos for his own instrument, losing interest once he no longer had to play for a living yet continuing to produce sonatas.

By now a peripheral member of the Diaghilev set, Prokofiev spent the summer of 1921 on the French Channel coast in upbeat mood assembling a calling card for his idiosyncratic pianistic brand. The juxtaposition of material from long ago (the sharp-witted subject of the Concerto’s second movement dates from 1913) with later ideas, including some intended for an aborted ‘white-key’ string quartet, reinforced that familiar fondness for ‘stepping on the throat of his own song’. Literally international – Prokofiev was entering his fourth year of peripatetic semi-exile – the music has remained fresh for more than a century, its balancing act between the lyrical and the circus constantly renegotiated. On a purely technical level, pianists have become increasingly adept at the acrobatics, orchestras ever more meticulous in support.

Sergey Prokofiev completed his Third Piano Concerto – the most popular of his five – in France in 1921 (Tully Potter Collection)

There are the usual three movements in which the solo part fairly bristles with innovation. That said, the story begins in a nostalgic dreamworld which performers either interpret as a temporary distraction or indulge with a heavier hand. Apart from its lissom clarinet theme, the Andante – Allegro’s material consists of a first group of aerobic exercises, a contrasting wrong-note gavotte and an aggressive tarantella-like passage which unexpectedly pitches us back into a full-throated recall of the opening.

The second movement is a theme and variations, launched in Prokofiev’s ‘neoclassical’ vein, the theme titivated by precisely notated, frequently ignored slurs, dots and accents. How far the variations should stray from the theme is moot. There are five plus a return to the main idea, gently guyed by the pianist’s clipped staccato chords, before a coda. It may have been a mistake to mark the first variation L’istesso tempo. Some pianists ignore the injunction altogether, anxious to avoid the impression that we are listening to a reiteration rather than a makeover. Most of the variations offer what were once insuperable and inspiring technical challenges – Oscar Levant reports that George Gershwin kept the score close by him. If the soloist is so minded, Prokofiev’s fourth variation locates a deep space of nocturnal stasis. The movement’s plagal cadences and mainly instrumental appendix can either be brushed aside or suggest a longing for home implied by the Molto meno mosso and espressivo markings.

The finale mixes extrovert display with a degree of emotional uncertainty. Its slower central section gives us a ‘big tune’ even if, as in the Second Piano Concerto, all may not be quite what it seems. Some performers give the theme the full-on Hollywood treatment, others highlight the pianist’s querulousness as endorsed by muted violins and squawking woodwind. The last pages encode a famously gymnastic sprint to the finishing line, one designed at least in part for its dazzling visual impact. Those who shy away from audiovisual recordings of non-operatic music will miss out on some distinctive readings showcasing the younger generation.

Having given the Concerto its premiere on December 16, 1921, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock, Prokofiev performed the piece on numerous occasions, first in New York, later in Paris and London. Not everyone enthused. The Musical Times wrote off the existing concertos in no uncertain terms: ‘None but the composer has yet been known to play one [sic]. In a way it is infantile. You think of a singularly ugly baby solemnly shaking a rattle. But no; it is not so human as that …’

The earliest recordings

A pity that such distinguished past collaborators as Serge Koussevitzky, Albert Coates, Henry Wood and Eugene Goossens were passed over when HMV set down Sergey Prokofiev’s ‘definitive’ interpretation of the work at Abbey Road in 1932. The task of holding things together went to Milan-born Debussy specialist Piero Coppola, the artistic director of the company’s French branch, supposedly instrumental in luring the composer into the recording studio for the first time. Be that as it may, the composer’s diaries confirm that he was uncomfortable with the process and, although the recording gives us a good idea of his distinctive timbre and insistent rhythmic drive, it may disappoint today. Presumably unwilling to compromise on tempo, Prokofiev often races ahead. And with no consistent pulse established for the main body of the first movement, its first group is recapitulated at an unrelated (faster) speed. In the second movement transitions between variations are fraught. Prokofiev simplifies the dynamics at the arrival of Var 2, rushes Var 3’s syncopated deconstruction of the theme and fails to agree an exit strategy from Var 5. He tends to operate continuously at one dynamic level before hopping to another. For sceptical listeners the Concerto is in danger of turning into a frantic cartoon, a caricature of itself.

On his first return visit to Russia in 1927 Prokofiev performed the Concerto with the ideologically inspired conductorless orchestra Persimfans, initiating an unlikely sub-category of renditions without conductor in the West. Barring exhaustive rehearsal the dangers could only multiply, despite which the work’s second commercial recording was made under just such conditions by Dimitri Mitropoulos with Philadelphia Orchestra players during their off-season summer series. Certain passages muddled by Prokofiev and Coppola go well; much is scrappier. Mitropoulos, as undisciplined at the keyboard as he sometimes was on the podium, slams on the brakes at the very end of the finale. While he is not alone in this, it makes no sense. Van Cliburn, who made his official studio recording in Chicago (RCA, 8/61), risks fewer deviations directing from the keyboard in a lo‑fi Soviet-era telecast. The trumpets get lost entirely in the theme and variations but the band’s timbral specificity, the pianist’s straightforward manner and his full tone offer their own rewards. In recent tours Lahav Shani and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra have included such renderings with results as clean and polished as any. No commercial audio recording, though.

Arriving at the tail end of the 78rpm era, William Kapell’s 1949 account is a significant marker, outpacing even Prokofiev’s ‘fingers of steel’. Antal Dorati’s Dallas Symphony Orchestra prove fallible, unable to manage the transition from Var 5 to the return of the main theme, but Kapell’s blistering technique heralds an era in which an ill-starred generation of American pianists would remake the Concerto as a vehicle for their own prodigious talents. Kapell himself died in a plane crash aged 31, Julius Katchen was taken by cancer aged 42, while Byron Janis and Gary Graffman suffered incapacitating problems with their hands; Cliburn merely suffered burn-out. The first American to tour Russia on a cultural exchange, Janis’s subsequent recording was the first to be made there using Western equipment and technical staff imported for the occasion. Having Kirill Kondrashin’s expert Moscow Philharmonic in support adds character without the poster-paint crudity commonly associated with Soviet orchestras. Without the benefit of close-up Mercury stereo on 35mm film, Kondrashin had previously collaborated with the great Emil Gilels on a mono LP barely distributed in the West. Home-pressed releases from the likes of Samson François (Columbia, 3/54) and Leonard Pennario (Capitol, 11/54) also failed to last long in the catalogue. Moura Lympany (HMV, 9/57) is in early stereo but hampered by Walter Susskind’s stodgy treatment of the second-movement theme. A few years later, on the other side of the pond, Gary Graffman would have the support of George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra in prioritising clangorous rigour over intimacy and humour. Katchen’s remake with the LSO and István Kertész (Decca, 5/70) arrived posthumously, by which time a rather different approach to the Concerto was making waves.

Into the modern era

In 1967 we arrive at one of Martha Argerich’s most celebrated recordings, and it is here that the modern performance history of the Concerto really takes off. After so much unyielding tone she brings unprecedented light and shade to the work, proving that it can be lyrical and whimsical as well as barnstorming. Gramophone’s critic, who should perhaps remain nameless, made reference to ‘abundant signs of femininity in wonderfully delicate, clear passagework and the most elegant phrasing’. The Karajan-era Berliners adapt well to Claudio Abbado’s feline proclivities; Argerich’s steadier Montreal version with Charles Dutoit (EMI, 10/98) feels weightier. There have since been many more remakes, official and unofficial given the pianist’s permissive attitude to sharing music online. BBC footage from 1977 in which Argerich is the guest of André Previn’s LSO popped up on DVD in 2012 and remains accessible via video streaming platforms. Sound may not be top-notch but old-school mise en scène focuses on her hands to spellbinding effect: there’s no cheating towards the end!

Vladimir Ashkenazy’s 1974 account with André Previn still holds firm (Photography: Suzie Maeder - Bridgeman Images)

By now the first cycle of all five concertos was under way in Boston, though neither John Browning nor Erich Leinsdorf sound much engaged by the Third, which they had previously taped in London (Capitol, 3/62). As so often the main theme of the second movement is smoothed over. Also unstylish though more boisterous are Alexis Weissenberg and Seiji Ozawa in Paris (HMV, 9/71). Moving forwards to perhaps the most durable of the complete sets, Vladimir Ashkenazy and the LSO under Previn elicit an emotional variety missing elsewhere. Dry, close-miked castanets in the first movement feel like a throwback to 1932. Elsewhere the approach is Russian and/or Romantic, as in the very free treatment of the second movement’s Var 1. Ashkenazy is no shrinking violet, the opening of his third movement notably impactful. Jon Kimura Parker, also with Previn (Telarc, 12/86), offers similar solutions in less dramatic, perhaps less ego-driven fashion. The same might be said of Michel Béroff with Kurt Masur, whose Leipzig musicians sound timbrally distinct from their West European counterparts in another first-rate 1970s cycle.

Rediscovered: a poised Maurizio Pollini (Interfoto - Alamy Stock Photo)

Those who find Argerich too flippant shouldn’t look to Maurizio Pollini to restore the machine-age thrust of Italian futurism, his take on the score being essentially poised and aristocratic. A studio recording released during the years when he was playing the Concerto in public (qv Turin footage online) might have changed the way we hear it now. As it is, the belated release of a Tokyo broadcast allows us to savour his wonderfully pure, crystalline tone. There is surely no pianist one would rather hear play a long trill followed by a glissando-like run up the keyboard. Ivo Pogorelich is the one major advocate whose interpretation remains officially unavailable. His spacious, ultra-sensitive way with Var 4 is very special.

Another outlier in compromised sound is Terence Judd, taped at the 1978 Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition, in which the British pianist came joint fourth. Ecstatic drive tempers steeliness in this prime souvenir of a star whose career was cruelly cut short aged 22. The competition was won by Mikhail Pletnev, whose own later studio recording seems cold (DG, 6/03). Glenn Gould once cited Prokofiev’s ability to achieve ‘maximum effect for minimum effort’. That comment doesn’t make much sense until you hear Pletnev using his transcendental gifts to coast. Nikolai Lugansky is another Russian whose lucidity and control compensate for an adrenalin deficit (Naïve Ambroisie, 1/14).

The Concerto comes home

Most all-Russian recordings adopt a heavier style, sometimes attributable to the broader ideological priorities of music-making in the Soviet era and beyond. Viktoria Postnikova’s 1985 cycle with Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra (Melodiya, 9/96) unfolds as if determined to subvert reductive gender stereotypes. Vladimir Krainev’s first recording (HMV Melodiya, 9/79), a cult classic, is currently more elusive than his Frankfurt-made remake, part of a second complete set again under Dmitry Kitaenko. Unforced errors aside, Krainev rather brutalises his very first entry, playing its final note fortissimo rather than letting the line recede into the orchestral texture as implied by the mezzo-piano marking. Treating the end of the first movement more precipitately than anyone else until Daniil Trifonov, Krainev goes to the other extreme in the next with his other-worldly take on Var 4. Alexander Toradze is more consistently pugnacious in his Mariinsky cycle with Valery Gergiev, Denis Matsuev ultimately exhausting in a hard-driven one-off issue with the same forces (Mariinsky, 4/14).

Mixed casting continued to attract the record companies. Cécile Ousset (EMI, 12/83), another really big player but no speed merchant, is paired with Rudolf Barshai in Bournemouth. Soviet-born Israeli-American Yefim Bronfman recorded his accomplished cycle with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, lacking only the last ounce of personality to set it apart. Moscow-born at least, Yevgeny Kissin joined Claudio Abbado’s gilt-edged Berliners for the second and best recorded of his three versions. Kissin is masterly, the orchestral response oddly pale as could be the case with Abbado in this period. Then again, the pianist himself offers few magical half-lights in Var 4 and refuses to rush the end of the finale.

The 1990s brought a bargain-basement series from Kun-Woo Paik (Naxos, 11/92) and a fancier one from Nikolai Demidenko with Lazarev and the London Philharmonic (Hyperion, 11/96). Acclaimed in the 2010s was a Gramophone Award-winning set from Jean‑Efflam Bavouzet in which, as Rob Cowan noted, the pianist displays a chameleon-like response to the disparate personalities of each piece rather than imposing his own template across the board. The Third becomes a slightly low-key neoclassical entity, its first movement almost dapper, the second notable for the super-attentive contribution of Gianandrea Noseda’s BBC Philharmonic. There’s a degree of motoric abstraction in music that need not be sugar-coated. A similarly sophisticated orchestral backdrop is a feature of Simon Trpčeski’s rendition with Vasily Petrenko’s RLPO (Onyx, 8/17). Andrew Litton provides warmer but finely detailed support for Freddy Kempf and Stewart Goodyear. Both enjoy top-notch sound engineering beside which older favourites risk coming across as dated.

Prokofiev’s secco writing suits Olli Mustonen (Heikki Tuuli)

A keen individualism informs the work of four 21st-century mavericks, the first two being Graffman pupils. Yuja Wang, closer to Argerich in style, has a natural empathy for Prokofiev. Caught early in her career in a relay from the 2009 Lucerne Festival, she dazzles – of course – while admitting a certain whimsicality in a reading that never runs counter to Abbado’s re-engaged, essentially anti-Romantic conception. Is that why the audience response, like the balance accorded her instrument, is curiously muted? Lang Lang opts for a broader canvas that some might find unnecessary although there is certainly a case for it. Memorable is the free cadenza-like treatment of Var 1. Less happily, the finale’s big tune goes way over the top, with Simon Rattle’s Berliners rather gloopily sentimental in support. Daniil Trifonov takes us back to Russia with a brilliant, radically intense account filmed as part of Gergiev’s Prokofiev binge of 2016. These 125th anniversary celebrations had the imprimatur of Putin himself and the orchestral playing is perhaps statelier than the music warrants. Or is the upscale treatment all Trifonov’s idea? He imparts the shock of the new regardless of tempo, perennially open to original voicings. Particularly extraordinary is the middle section of the finale, where un-Lang Lang-like anxiety never wholly dissipates.

Olli Mustonen pushes still further into unknown territory, remorselessly crisp and non-legato with an aversion to the sustaining pedal. It’s as if fresh characters have invaded a familiar narrative, stalking the text in a language we can’t quite read. Many will reject the experiment although, being paradoxically gentler than usual, the results bring us closer to the ‘fairy-tale’ Prokofiev of the First Violin Concerto.

These disparate readings confirm that in what remains Prokofiev’s most popular piano concerto the story need not end with Martha Argerich, unparalleled though her engagement with the score has been. Our survey does so, but then you were expecting that all along!