Chopin Polonaise Op.26 No.1

The Polonaise opens with a fiery Allegro appasionato in C-sharp minor, the primary theme preceded by descending octaves. The section climaxes with a series of virtuosic arpeggio figures which give way to a tender melody. This is then followed by a repetition of the theme. After this opening section there is a new theme introduced in the enharmonic D-flat major. This new theme is then developed and followed by a new left hand melody, which increases the tension until a repeat of the meno mosso. This polonaise is very diverse in textures, dynamics, and moods, and sometimes is considered one of the best polonaises by Chopin.

Ave Maria (Bach/Schubert/Gounod)

Ave Maria is a popular and much-recorded setting of the Latin text Ave Maria, originally published in 1853 as Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach.

The piece consists of a melody by the French Romantic composer Charles Gounod especially designed to be superimposed over the Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, written some 137 years earlier. Although published in instrumental versions and fitted to various texts during Gounod's lifetime, the claim that he never 'wrote' it appears to be literally true.Alongside Schubert's Ave Maria (another contrafactum), the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria has become a fixture at wedding masses, funerals and quinceañeras. There are many different instrumental arrangements including for violin and guitar, string quartet, piano solo, cello, and even trombones. Opera singers, such as Luciano Pavarotti, as well as choirs have recorded it hundreds of times during the twentieth century.Gounod's father-in-law Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann transcribed the improvisation and in 1853 made an arrangement for violin (or cello) with piano and harmonium. The same year it appeared with the words of Alphonse de Lamartine's poem Le livre de la vie ("The Book of Life") In 1859 Jacques Léopold Heugel published a version with the familiar Latin text. The version of Bach's prelude used by Gounod has the addition of one measure (m.23), found only in the Schwenke manuscript and the Simrock printed edition based upon it, but not in the other Bach manuscripts or the scholarly Bischoff and G. Henle Verlag Urtext printed editions.

Later in his career, Gounod composed an unrelated setting of Ave Maria for a four-part SATB choir.

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Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900. The complete work was premiered, again with the composer as soloist, on 9 November 1901, with his cousin Alexander Siloti conducting.

The work is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B♭ (I mov.) and A (II & III mov.), 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in B♭, 3 trombones (2 tenor, 1 bass), tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, solo piano, and strings. It is written in three-movement concerto form.

I.Moderato: C minor

II.Adagio sostenuto – Più animato – Tempo I: C minor → E major

III.Allegro scherzando: E major → C minor → C major

Revaz Lagidze Lela's Aria

Today I Want to share with you one of my favorite Arias From  LELA Opera 

Vocal : Sofo Nizharadze 
"Lela's Aria" (Daybreak : Gantiadi : განთიადი)
(Revaz Lagidze, Akaki Tsereteli)
Conductor and Musical version by: Nikoloz Rachveli (Georgia National Music Center)

Zygmunt Stojowski - Symphony in D Minor (1898)

Zygmunt Denis Antoni Jordan de Stojowski (May 4, 1870 – November 5, 1946) was a Polish pianist and composer.

I Suggest you to listen to this amazing and beautiful Symphony 

List of compositions by Zygmunt Stojowski

Swan Lake

Swan Lake ballet, Op. 20, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was composed in 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger. The ballet was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet on 4 March [O.S. 20 February] 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, billed as The Lake of the Swans. Although it is presented in many different versions, most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revised by the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre's chief conductor and composer Riccardo Drigo.a

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The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)

The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) is a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of baroque music. The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season. For example, "Winter" is peppered with silvery pizzicato notes from the high strings, calling to mind icy rain, whereas "Summer" evokes a thunderstorm in its final movement, which is why the movement is often dubbed "Storm".

The concertos were first published in 1725 as part of a set of twelve concerti, Vivaldi's Op. 8, entitled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention). The first four concertos were designated Le quattro stagioni, each being named after a season. Each one is in three movements, with a slow movement between two faster ones. At the time of writing The Four Seasons, the modern solo form of the concerto had not yet been defined (typically a solo instrument and accompanying orchestra). Vivaldi's original arrangement for solo violin with string quartet and basso continuo helped to define the form of the concerto.

• Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, "La primavera" (Spring)
  1. Allegro
  2. Largo e pianissimo sempre
  3. Allegro Pastorale
• Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 8, RV 315, "L'estate" (Summer)
  1. Allegro non molto
  2. Adagio e piano – Presto e forte
  3. Presto
• Concerto No. 3 in F major, Op. 8, RV 293, "L'autunno" also known as the "Danza Pastorale" (Autumn)
  1. Allegro
  2. Adagio molto
  3. Allegro
• Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, "L'inverno" (Winter)
1. Allegro non molto
2. Largo
3. Allegro

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Saint-Saens - Piano Concerto No.2 Arthur Rubinstein

 Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22


The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 by Camille Saint-Saëns, was composed in 1868 and is probably Saint-Saëns' most popular piano concerto. It was dedicated to Madame A. de Villers née de Haber. At the première, the composer was the soloist and Anton Rubinstein conducted the orchestra. Saint-Saëns wrote the concerto in three weeks, and had very little time to prepare for the première; consequently, the piece was not initially successful. The capricious changes in style provoked Zygmunt Stojowski to quip that it "begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach."

Saint-Saens: Piano Concerto No.2, Piano: Arthur Rubinstein - Conducted: Andre Previn London Symphony Orchestra 1975. 

1. Andante sostenuto
2. Allegro scherzando
3. Presto

Glenn Gould String Quartet in F minor, Op. 1

Glenn Gould String Quartet in F minor, Op. 1

Bach's Passion music

The St John Passion and St Matthew Passion are two Bach's most famous pieces of sacred music, telling the Biblical story of Jesus' crucifixion. But where do you start with these two mammoth works? Let us ease you in gently with a quick and easy introduction to the best moments of these religious pieces.

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Glenn Gould: The Russian Journey

A Film About Glenn Gould 

I Suggest You TO Watch It

To Know Better Glenn Gould

The Dark Side of Schubert

Composer: Schubert 

Repertoire: String Quartet No.12, ‘Quartettsatz’; String Quartet No.14, ‘Death and the Maiden’

Schubert’s late works may be melodically glorious, but emotionally they are no picnic. The composer, who had suffered from syphilis since his mid-twenties and died aged just 31, experienced a polarity of passion for life and despair over the nature and likely outcome of his illness. In his famous D minor String Quartet No.14, ‘Death and the Maiden’, with its central variations on his song of that title portraying death as a welcome release, Schubert is often at his bleakest. There’s the starkly violent opening, shudders of fear and doubt in the variations, and tremendous nervous energy in the finale, a sort of dance-of-death of a kind he explored in a number of works from around the same period.

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J-S-Bach. complete Goldberg variations by GLENN GOULD

J-S-Bach. complete Goldberg variations by GLENN GOULD

First we have to know the importance of Goldberg Variations : 

The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a work for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form. The Variations are named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the first performer.

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The Unanswered Question 1973 ( Leonard Bernstein )

The famous Norton Lectures at Harvard presented by Leonard Bernstein back in 1973

Ok first let me to explain to you what the Norton Lectures is :

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts, including painting, architecture, and music deliver customarily six lectures. The lectures are usually dated by the academic year in which they are given, though sometimes by just the calendar year.

Ok now we can move on and we can start with some information and some explanation about Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lectures :

At the beginning of his first Norton Lecture, Leonard Bernstein explained the importance of "inter-disciplinary values - that the best way to 'know' a thing is in the context of another discipline." In these six lectures, Bernstein communicated his ideas of the universality of musical language through wide-ranging analogies to linguistics, aesthetic philosophy, acoustics as well as music history. However, while many of his ideas are intellectually challenging, the great achievement of the lectures is that through their breadth they make complex musical concepts accessible to a general audience. 

Leonard Bernstein was invited to become the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 1971. This one-year position had previously been held by such notable musical figures as Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, and by poets such as e.e. cummings and W.H. Auden. The professorship required Bernstein to live on campus for one school year, counsel students and, most significantly, deliver of a series of six public lectures. Bernstein, a "Harvard man" himself, was pleased and honored to become a part of this distinguished tradition. 

Bernstein began his residency at Harvard in the fall of 1972. He immersed himself in the academic culture with enthusiasm, and his popularity with students resulted in his being named "Man of the Year" by Harvard's student newspaper. His daughter Jamie was an undergraduate at Radcliffe at the time, so his involvement in the University's student life had special meaning for him. 

Bernstein was scheduled to give the six lectures in the spring of 1973, but with a full schedule of various composing projects and conducting engagements, he postponed the lectures until the fall. Preparing for the lectures was no small undertaking, and Bernstein wanted to have the time to make the most of this unique opportunity. 

 

Because the lectures embraced such a wide variety of disciplines, Bernstein faced the challenge of organizing his ideas into a coherent progression of six talks. Also, every word had to be written out and memorized because each of the lectures was to be presented twice: live at the University and then in a subsequent taping session for television. 

Bernstein used hundreds of musical examples during the course of the lectures. Many of these he could play on the piano, but each lecture also featured Bernstein conducting entire movements and even complete works. These needed to be rehearsed and then filmed for presentation during the lectures. The Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic were employed for this purpose. 

The first lecture, on October 9, 1973 began with Bernstein referring to Copland's Piano Variations,a work he had fallen in love with as an undergraduate at Harvard. He recalled his discovery that the four germinal notes of this work were also seed for other pieces ranging from a Bach fugue to Stravinsky's Octet to something Bernstein heard played by the Uday Shan-kar Dance Company. "From that time," Bernstein confessed, " ...the notion of a worldwide, inborn musical grammar has haunted me." 

 

Bernstein based much of the lectures on the linguistic theories Noam Chomsky set out in his book, "Language and Mind." In the first three lectures, Bernstein analyzed music in linguistic terms phonology (sound), syntax (structure) and semantics (meaning)--focusing on music from the Classical period. In the fourth lecture ("The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity"), Bernstein looked at music from the Romantic period, with its heightened harmonic uncertainties and structural freedoms. The fifth lecture ("The Twentieth Century Crisis") outlined the movement toward atonality and the crisis provoked by this crucial change in our musical language. Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question," one of the primary musical examples, became Bernstein's title for the entire series of lectures. The final lecture ("The Poetry of the Earth") concentrated on the work of Igor Stravinsky, whom Bernstein thought had found a musical answer to "the unanswered question," one that kept tonality at its center. The series ended with Bernstein's artistic and philosophical "credo," an essentially optimistic and celebratory statement of beliefs. 

Although the very breadth of the lectures attracted some negative criticism, they were also widely recognized as an impressive achievement. Lavishly multi-disciplinary long before it was fashionable, they provided a fresh way to analyze music and interpret musical history. The Norton Lectures stand as a special monument in Bernstein's legacy. 

Beethoven's music: The Piano Concertos

Beethoven's music: The Piano Concertos

By John Suchet From Classic FM

Beethoven completed five Piano Concertos in under 20 years, but from the age of 38 he would never finish one again as his deafness stopped him from performing

Five completed Piano Concertos, spanning a period from whenBeethoven was around 19 or 20 to when he was just 38. Then, full stop. Well, almost. He started a sixth six years later, but abandoned it. So, no completed piano concerto for the final 18 years of his life.

And this was a composer who, like Mozart, had stunned audiences and earned considerable amounts of money by composing fiendishly difficult piano concertos and performing them effortlessly in concert.

Almost effortlessly, in Beethoven’s case. At the first performance of the Third, he had not had time to write out the piano part in full. He asked Ignaz Seyfried to turn for him. The hapless Seyfried said later the markings on the manuscript, far from being musical notation, were more like Egyptian hieroglyphics , intelligible only to Beethoven himself. He was unable to read them, relying on Beethoven to dig him in the ribs when he wanted the page turned.

At the premier of the Fourth, two boys stood by the piano holding candles. Beethoven leapt up at one point, knocking the candles to the floor. (No wonder audiences locked to Beethoven’s concerts: they never knew what was going to happen next.)

So why did he suddenly stop writing piano concertos? We do not know for certain, but the answer is pretty obvious. His deafness took hold, and he could no longer trust himself to hear the orchestra properly. The dreadful realisation had dawned that he could no longer perform his own concertos in public.

Piano Concertos no.1, 2 and 3

 Emil Gilels , Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1

Emil Gilels , Beethoven Piano Concerto No.2 

Emil Gilels , Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 

One feature of the Piano Concertos no.1, 2 and 3  immediately strikes even the most casual listener. They all begin with a lengthy orchestral introduction, before the piano enters – and when it does it is always solo and with a new theme (in the Third, a set of scales). Beethoven has grabbed your attention from the start.

Piano Concerto no.4

In Piano Concerto no.4  he turns this on its head. The piano begins alone ! It is a gentle, turning theme of just five bars, and it sets the tone for the whole movement. The second movement, where piano and orchestra seem to inhabit different worlds, like a warring married couple – angry, sweet, petulant – is quite frankly 21^st century music. It is light years ahead of its time. The same is true of the whole work. My favourite.

Piano Concerto no.5, the Emperor

Piano Concerto no.5, the Emperor , is by far the best known because of the sheer virtuosity it demands. Once again the opening is unique. Accompanied by chords from the orchestra, the soloist has to execute massive runs – before he or she has had time to hear the sound of the instrument, or the orchestra, or gauge the tempo the conductor has set, or, most importantly, gauge the mood of the audience.

The middle movement is ethereal, all the more so because Beethoven gives the beautiful theme almost entirely to the orchestra, with the piano accompanying – the reverse of what you would expect. The syncopations of the final movement are admired by jazz musicians and classical musicians alike.

There is a false entry for the piano to the second movement of the Emperor (similar to the false horn entry in the first movement of the Eroica Symphony ) – an extra (grace) note that you do not expect to be there. At a concert in London featuring the virtuoso Alfred Brendel, the critic of the Times wrote that Brendel had fluffed the entry, playing one note too many. Brendel wrote to the paper, pointing out that he had played it exactly as Beethoven had written it.

Bach - Mass in h-moll BWV 232

Lets Move On And Start today with Bach's Mass in h-moll BWV 232

Joélle Harvey soprano
Carolyn Sampson soprano
Iestyn Davies counter-tenor
Ed Lyon tenor
Matthew Rose bass

Choir of the English Concert
The English Concert
Harry Bicket conductor

Royal Albert Hall
2 August 2012

0:00:07 - Kyrie eleison
0:10:33 - Christe eleison
0:15:20 - Kyrie eleison
0:19:06 - Gloria in excelsis Deo
0:25:35 - Laudamus te
0:29:40 - Gratias agimus tibi

First words

First words are always very hard to tell but If a Composer Or Musician could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music ....

Artur Rubinstein - Schumann Concerto in A minor Op. 54

1. Allegro affettuoso
2. Intermezzo. Andantino grazioso (14:52)
3. Allegro vivace (20:10)

RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra
William Steinberg

1947