The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

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103. Voice of the Flute Oct 01, 2010

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Works for flute and harp and for voice and chamber ensemble performed by flutists Paula Robison and Sooyun Kim, clarinetist Alexis Lanz, violinist David Fulmer, cellist Eric Jacobsen, harpist Mariko Anraku, and pianist Steven Beck.

Debussy: Chansons de Bilitis (arr. Paula Robison)
Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21

Flutist Paula Robison is undoubtedly one of the Gardner Museum’s greatest champions and favorite guests. On this podcast, we’ll hear two of her Gardner performances. Chansons de Bilitis had many lives within Debussy’s own oeuvre: first as a cycle of three songs; then as incidental music for narrator, harps, flutes, and celeste; and finally, rearranged for two pianists. That music, in turn, was arranged for orchestra and—now—flute and harp. It seems a fitting instrumentation—languid and sensual, and also evocative of the poems, which mention the mythical flutist Pan. Ms. Robison puts down the flute for a special performance as the speaker in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. The technique of Sprechstimme had been used in German musical theatre before, but it truly came to life in this work. Rather than vocalizing on pitch, the narrator recites poetry in a semi-song, following Schoenberg’s melodic contours and rhythms to produce a sort of heightened, dramatic speech. One of the piece’s other great legacies is its distinctive five-instrument ensemble, a configuration that would come to be known as the “Pierrot Ensemble,” and which has been employed by a variety of 20th century composers.

102. Mendelssohn Double-Header Sep 15, 2010

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Works for solo piano and string quartet performed by pianist Benjamin Moser and the Borromeo String Quartet.

Mendelssohn: Four Songs Without Words
Mendelssohn: String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13

First up: excerpts from the composer’s famous Songs Without Words. The origin of this set of lieder for piano is still a bit mysterious. The New Grove dictionary postulates that it may have been a bit of an inside joke between Felix and his sister, who used to improvise words to their favorite piano pieces. Regardless, they are lovely little gems. Next at bat: String Quartet in A minor. Though it was the second quartet published, this work was actually the first Mendelssohn wrote in the genre. The 18-year-old composer—like many in his generation—was living in the shadow of Beethoven, and it shows. Like Beethoven, Mendelssohn develops a single theme—a quote from his own song “Ist es wahr?”—over the course of the entire piece.

101. Point of Departure Sep 01, 2010

Show notes

Works for solo violin and string quartet performed by violinist Ray Chen and the Borromeo String Quartet.

Bach: Chaconne from Partita in D minor
Bartók: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor

Music is an art of variation. From the cantus firmus masses of medieval Europe to the 12-bar-blues of early 20th century America, the art of the varying and building upon a set theme has a long history. Bach’s famous Chaconne from the D minor partita is regarded as the apotheosis of the genre—a four-bar ground bass, repeated some 64 times with incredibly rich variation. In Bartok’s second String Quartet, the mournful first and third movements draw on intervals from Hungarian peasant music. The contrasting second movement is a driving rondo—another classic form based on a returning, repeated theme. The folk music that inspired this energetic movement was from North Africa. Listen for the rhythmic, repetitive ostinato—inspired by Arabian drumming.

100. Music and the Great War Aug 15, 2010

Show notes

Works for solo piano and piano quintet performed by pianist Jean-Frederic Neuburger and Musicians from Marlboro.

Ravel: La Valse
Franck: Piano Quintet in F minor

World War I truly changed the way people saw the world around them, and that shift was particularly evident in art and music. On this episode we’ll hear French works from before and after the war. Franck was a full-fledged Romantic who never lived to see the war. His Piano Quintet exhibits the intense passion that characterized music of his era. Biographers have suggested that Franck was infatuated with one of his students at the time—a love that was not returned—and that emotional strife may explain this work’s extremes of feeling. Ravel, on the other hand, experienced the Great War firsthand, as an ambulance driver on the front lines. His La Valse, written just after the war, begins as a seeming homage to the waltz. But, as it progresses, the dance spins further and further out of control, the waltz itself becoming a stand-in for all the excesses of pre-war Austria, and its musical unraveling a metaphor for the destruction wrought by war.

99. The Romantic-Tempered Clavier Aug 01, 2010

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Chopin: Twenty-four Preludes, Op. 28

In the Romantic era, “preluding” was a common practice. Before or between set pieces on a program, the pianist would often improvise a brief prelude, to establish the mood and key. Chopin was an expert at that art, but his composed Preludes were quite different, and as such somewhat confounding to his contemporaries. The set of 24 short pieces—one in every key—wasn’t intended as a compilation of introductory material, but rather a complete cycle unto itself. In that way, many have noted, they took more inspiration from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier—also a set of keyboard works in every key—than from the traditional Romantic conception of a prelude.

98. From Romantic to Modern Jul 15, 2010

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Brahms: Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79
Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10

With lush harmony and passionate, singing melody, the Brahms Rhapsodies are textbook examples of the mature Romantic style. As the Romantic era progressed, composers began pushing the harmonic envelope further, and that late Romantic language is typified and further extended by Schoenberg’s Quartet No. 2. The first and second movements exhibit that late Romantic practice of stretching tonality, but they are fairly idiomatic for the time period. It is in the final movement that the real change comes. There is no key signature; the harmonies roam freely across the chromatic scale, in what is considered by many to be the composer’s first real experiment with atonality. It would be a little more than a decade before Schoenberg introduced his 12-tone system, but there is a sense that, with this quartet, the path of modern music has been irrevocably altered.

97. Baroque Treats Jul 01, 2010

Show notes

Telemann: Gulliver Suite in D Major for two violins
Pachelbel: Canon and Gigue in D Major for three violins and continuo
Vivaldi: Sonata in D minor for two violins and continuo, RV 63 (“La Follia”)
Bach: Trio Sonata in C minor for flute, violin, and continuo from The Musical Offering

Today’s podcast offers up a menu of Baroque treats. Telemann’s suite, a five-movement work inspired by Jonathan Swift’s immensely popular novel Gulliver’s Travels, offers playful depictions of some of the story’s main characters. Next is Pachelbel’s canon, followed by a series of virtuosic variations on a famous 16th century tune and harmonic progression, “La Follia.” The theme has been set by dozens of composers over the centuries, and Vivaldi’s version is one of the most famous. We end with Bach’s Trio Sonata from “The Musical Offering.” This composition builds on a highly chromatic tune given to Bach by Frederick the Great of Prussia, who challenged the composer to use it in a six-voice fugue.

96. Taking a Solo Jun 15, 2010

Show notes

Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major, Op. 5, No. 1
Beethoven: Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 31, No. 3 (“La Chasse”)

Just as in jazz, Baroque music had a “rhythm section” of its own: the continuo group. The gamba or cello played the bass line and the harpsichord or organ improvised the harmonic accompaniment. At the time that Beethoven wrote his first cello sonata it was still relatively rare to feature the cello as a solo chamber music instrument. Also unique was the import Beethoven placed on the keyboard part; its lines are far from mere harmonic accompaniment. Written throughout the course of his career, Beethoven’s piano 32 sonatas were a vital part of the evolution of the solo piano repertoire and they demonstrate the progress of the piano itself, as an instrument capable of a range of colors and dynamics. The sonata we’ll hear today was written about halfway through the group. The jocular mood throughout, and a final-movement theme reminiscent of a French horn call, may have inspired the nickname “The Hunt.”

95. Recycling Tchaikovsky and Dvořák Jun 01, 2010

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Tchaikovsky: Meditation
Dvořák: String Quintet in G Major, Op. 77

Stravinsky once famously said, “Good composers borrow. Great composers steal.” Today we’ll listen to works by two composers who stole from themselves. “Meditation” began its life as the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, but was rejected and re-cast as the first movement of his Souvenir d'un lieu cher for violin and piano, and finally extracted and published separately, as it is performed in this recording. Dvořák’s String Quintet was originally written as a five-movement work, with an Intermezzo as the second movement, as we hear it performed on this podcast. That movement, however, was cut from the final version of the quintet, and it has had several lives in other arrangements.

94. Chausson’s Chamber Concerto May 15, 2010

Show notes

Walter-Küne: Fantasy on Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
Chausson: Concerto in D Major for violin, piano, and string quartet, Op. 21

Had circumstances been different, Ernest Chausson might well have become one of the most important French composers to bridge the Romantic and modern eras. Chausson led a comfortable upper-class life, studying law at his father’s encouragement prior to taking up composition in his early 20s. He studied with Massenet and then Franck at the Paris Conservatory, and made rapid progress. Still, there was no pressure on Chausson to make a living as a musician, and his output was modest. Chausson did leave behind a number of works that have found a foothold in the repertoire, among them the chamber piece on today’s program. Though it is a work for six instruments, Chausson’s odd title is far more fitting a name than “sextet”. The violin and piano are clearly the stars here, with the quartet acting like a miniature orchestra. Before the Chausson, you will hear Walter-Küne’s Fantasy on Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. A professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Walter-Küne composed a number of fantasies on operatic themes, a number of which remain favorites with harpists today.

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