Name: Béla Bartók - Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938) @bartjebartmans
Uploaded: 2026-09-23T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: Béla Bartók - Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938)

Béla Bartók - Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938)

Bartje Bartmans 2026-09-23 | Béla Bartók - Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938)

Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring, arr. for Piano 4 hands (1912) {Ashkenazy/Gavrilov}

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-18 | Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (sometimes spelled Strawinski, Strawinsky, or Stravinskii; Russian: И́горь Фёдорович Страви́нский, tr. Igorʹ Fëdorovič Stravinskij; 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian-French-American composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.

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Le Sacre du Printemps (1910-13)
arranged by the composer for piano 4 hands (1912)

I. L'adoration de la terre

1. Introduction (0:00)
2. Les Augures printaniers; The Harbingers of Spring (4:00)
3. Jeu du rapt; Mock Abduction (7:20)
4. Rondes printanières; Spring Rounds (8:35)
5. Jeux des cités rivales; Games of the Rival Tribes (12:22)
6. Cortège du sage; Procession of the Sage (14:04)
7. Danse de la terre; Dance of the Earth (15:08)

II. Le sacrifice

8. Introduction (16:15)
9. Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes; Mystical Circle of the Adolescents (20:44)
10. Glorification de l'élue; Glorification of the Chosen One (24:14)
11. Evocation des ancêtres; Evocation of the Ancestors (25:39)
12. Action rituelle des ancêtres; Ritual of the Ancestors (26:17)
13. Danse sacrale (L'élue); Sacrificial Dance (29:45)

Vladimir Ashkenazy & Andrei Gavrilov, piano

Stravinsky's sketchbooks show that after returning to his home at Ustilug in Ukraine in September 1911, he worked on two movements, the "Augurs of Spring" and the "Spring Rounds". In October he left Ustilug for Clarens in Switzerland, where in a tiny and sparsely-furnished room—an 8-by-8-foot (2.4 by 2.4 m) closet, with only a muted upright piano, a table and two chairs—he worked throughout the 1911–12 winter on the score. By March 1912, according to the sketchbook chronology, Stravinsky had completed Part I and had drafted much of Part II. He also prepared a two-hand piano version, subsequently lost, which he may have used to demonstrate the work to Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes conductor Pierre Monteux in April 1912. He also made a four-hand piano arrangement which became the first published version of Le Sacre; he and the composer Claude Debussy played the first half of this together, in June 1912.

Following Diaghilev's decision to delay the premiere until 1913, Stravinsky put The Rite aside during the summer of 1912. He enjoyed the Paris season, and accompanied Diaghilev to the Bayreuth Festival to attend a performance of Parsifal. Stravinsky resumed work on The Rite in the autumn; the sketchbooks indicate that he had finished the outline of the final sacrificial dance on 17 November 1912. During the remaining months of winter he worked on the full orchestral score, which he signed and dated as "completed in Clarens, March 8, 1913". He showed the manuscript to Maurice Ravel, who was enthusiastic and predicted, in a letter to a friend, that the first performance of Le Sacre would be as important as the 1902 premiere of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. After the orchestral rehearsals began in late March, Monteux drew the composer's attention to several passages which were causing problems: inaudible horns, a flute solo drowned out by brass and strings, and multiple problems with the balance among instruments in the brass section during fortissimo episodes. Stravinsky amended these passages, and as late as April was still revising and rewriting the final bars of the "Sacrificial Dance". Revision of the score did not end with the version prepared for the 1913 premiere; rather, Stravinsky continued to make changes for the next 30 years or more. According to Van den Toorn, "[n]o other work of Stravinsky's underwent such a series of post-premiere revisions".

Stravinsky acknowledged that the work's opening bassoon melody was derived from an anthology of Lithuanian folk songs, but maintained that this was his only borrowing from such sources; if other elements sounded like aboriginal folk music, he said, it was due to "some unconscious 'folk' memory". However, Morton has identified several more melodies in Part I as having their origins in the Lithuanian collection. More recently Richard Taruskin discovered in the score an adapted tune from one of Rimsky-Korsakov's "One Hundred Russian National Songs". Taruskin notes the paradox whereby The Rite, generally acknowledged as the most revolutionary of the composer's early works, is in fact rooted in the traditions of Russian music.

Vladimir Ashkenazy & Andrei Gavrilov, piano

William Grant Still - Symphony No. 2 Song of a New Race (1937)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-15 | William Grant Still Jr. (May 11, 1895– December 3, 1978) was an American composer of nearly two hundred works, including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, over thirty choral works, art songs, chamber music, and solo works.

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Symphony No. 2 in G minor "Song of a New Race" (1937)
Dedication: Isabel Morse Jones

I. Slowly (0:00)
2. Slowly and deeply expressive (10:03)
3. Moderately fast (18:25)
4. Moderately slow (22:08)

Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi

William Grant Still contrasted his Symphony No. 2 with his earlier Symphony No. 1. If Symphony No. 1 "represented the Negro of days not far removed from the Civil War," Symphony No. 2 represented "the American colored man of today, in so many instances a totally new individual produced through the fusion of White, Indian and Negro bloods". According to one reviewer commenting on the premiere performance of the symphony by the Philadelphia Orchestra, "[The symphony]'s characteristically expansive, lyrical string writing seems specifically intended to exploit that orchestra’s famously silky string sound. Near the climax of the first movement, and at key moments elsewhere, the brasses-trumpets and trombones especially, punctuate the texture with gestures suggesting call and response, elements of the African American essence that persistently asserts itself even as blacks were more fully integrated into the wider, more diverse American culture."

The work was first performed on December 10, 1937, by the Philadelphia Orchestra led by conductor Leopold Stokowski.

Gordon Jacob - Clarinet Trio (1969)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-13 | Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.

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Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano (1969)

1. Adagio molto (0:00)
2. Menuetto (4:24)
3. Adagio molto (7:52)
4. Presto assai (12:45)

Borys Biniecki, clarinet & Jadwiga Stanek, viola
Magdalena Swatowska, piano

This work was commissioned by the British Petroleum Company Limited and given its first performance at BP House, Harlow by the Stadler Trio (Martin Ronchetti, John White and Martin Jones) at a concert entirely devoted to works by the Composer.

Gordon Jacob wrote:
During the last fifty years I have, from time to time, written various works for viola, an instrument of which I have always been fond on account of its highly individual and fascinating tone quality.

These works include a concerto with orchestra (1926) five pieces with piano, a sonatina for two violas, and one with piano* an Air and Dance and for the Lionel Tertis Centenary concert (1976), a Suite for eight violas.

There are also a Trio for Clarinet*, Viola and Piano*, a Miniature Suite* for Clarinet and Viola and a Suite for Violin and Viola.

William Dawson - Negro Folk Symphony (1934)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-12 | William Levi Dawson (September 26, 1899 – May 2, 1990) was an African-American composer, choir director and professor.

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Negro Folk Symphony (1934)

I. The Bond of Africa (0:00)
II. Hope in the Night (11:08)
III. O Let Me Shine! (21:08)

Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi

Dawson's arrangements of traditional African-American spirituals are widely published in the United States and are regularly performed by school, college and community choral programs. According to Dominique-René de Lerma of Lawrence University, in notes to "The Spirituals of William L. Dawson" produced by The St Olaf Choir in 1997, "What is even more striking than the richness of Dawson's textures is the lushness of his sonorities, exhibiting his remarkable insight into vocal potentials."

Description of the Symphony by "Blue" Gene Tyranny [-]

Completed in 1932, and premiered by Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia in November 1934, this marvelous and neglected symphony was later revised in 1952 after a visit by the composer to West Africa. The first movement, "The Bond of Africa, " opens with a plaintive theme played by a solo French horn that symbolizes for the composer a "missing link, " a break in the human, social chain when his ancestors were taken from Africa in slavery. The beautiful melody is interrupted by chromatic chords whenever it is stated and never allowed to finish. After a development of this original theme, the orchestra suddenly bursts into fantastical variations on the traditional spiritual (called in dialect) "Oh, m' littl' soul gwine-a shine" (Oh, my little soul is going to shine); the orchestration is brilliant and original. The variations gradually develop into more dramatic territory with sweeping canonic imitation. An energetic, cascading coda, finely and richly orchestrated concludes the first movement.

Three low gong strikes, representing the Trinity, open the next movement, "Hope in the Night." An English horn emerges with a moving, elegant melody, "a plea from the darkness, " which is soon taken up by the strings and developed to a dramatic, desperate tension, which is suddenly broken by an Allegretto, a song of children "yet unaware of the hopelessness beclouding their future." The "missing link" melody from the first movement is recalled by a solo cello, and then French horn, surrounded by wind melissima. We again hear the children's song, although it is now mixed with the "plea" melody and the "missing link" melody which are all interwoven and developed in a dramatic Mahlerian dialogue. Tolling bells join in and drive the music to an extreme, passionate cry. A marvelous effect is created with low trombones and an insistent pulse on the tom-tom depicting the drudgery of the slaves' existence. Three orchestra bells with gong are separated by tremolo swells in the strings and the pulsing tom-tom to create an overwhelmingly effective ending.

The third movement, "O Le' Me Shine" (Oh, Let Me Shine), is built on two interwoven themes from the Afro-American folk songs "O le' me shine, le'me shine, lik' a mornin' star" and "Hallelujah, Lord, I been down into the sea." Fragments from the tunes are given to various instruments, which answer each other, and then play in complex polyphonic groups. Some spectacular brass and wind writing occur in the development section. The melodies become stretched chromatically toward the conclusion, and a glorious, spine-tingling coda concludes the work. No mere pastiche of Americana, this grand work is by a composer fully conversant with the subtleties of technique and possibilities of expression in the symphonic form.

Gordon Jacob - Variations for Viola Solo (1975)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-10 | Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.

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Variations for Viola Solo (1975)
Dedication: To John White

Theme. Andante (0:00)
Variation 1. (0:52)
Variation 2. Larghetto (1:22)
Variation 3. Allegro leggiero (1:51)
Variation 4. Alla Sarabande (2:27)
Variation 5. Alla Marcia (3:37)
Variation 6. Tempo di Valse (4:29)
Variation 7. Molto allegro (5:29)
Variation 8. Lento (6:07)
Variation 9. Allegro alla giga (7:44)

Jadwiga Stanek, viola

Gordon Jacob wrote:
During the last fifty years I have, from time to time, written various works for viola, an instrument of which I have always been fond on account of its highly individual and fascinating tone quality.

These works include a concerto with orchestra (1926) five pieces with piano, a sonatina for two violas, and one with piano* an Air and Dance and for the Lionel Tertis Centenary concert (1976), a Suite for eight violas.

There are also a Trio for Clarinet*, Viola and Piano*, a Miniature Suite* for Clarinet and Viola and a Suite for Violin and Viola.

The Variations were written in 1975 for John White to whom I am indebted for useful suggestions about the bowing of certain passages and other technical points.

works marked with * you can find on my channel.

Jean Françaix - Clarinet Trio (1990)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-09 | Jean René Désiré Françaix (23 May 1912, in Le Mans – 25 September 1997, in Paris) was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.

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Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano (1990)

I. Preludio. Largo (0:00)
II. Allegrissimo (2:44)
III. Scherzando - Poco meno mosso (6:15)
IV. Largo (12:08)
V. Presto - Alla burlesca (17:03)

Reinecke Trio

Gordon Jacob - Viola Sonatina (1946)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-07 | Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.

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Sonatina for Viola and Piano or Clarinet and Piano (1946)
Dedication: For Jean Stewart

I. Allegro giusto (0:00)
II. Andante espressivo (3:17)
III. Allegro con brio (7:46)

Jadwiga Stanek, viola & Magdalena Swatowska, piano

Mikhail Gnessin - Piano Trio, Op. 63 (1943)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-05 | Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin (Russian: Михаил Фабианович Гнесин; sometimes transcribed Gnesin; 2 February [O.S. 21 January] 1883 – 5 May 1957) was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. Gnessin's works The Maccabeans and The Youth of Abraham earned him the nickname the "Jewish Glinka".

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Piano Trio in B-flat minor, Op. 63 (1943)

Andante sostenuto, quasi una ballata
Dedication: To the memory of our lost children

Edward Iatsoun, violin
Dmitri Surikov, cello
Basina Shulman, piano

Gordon Jacob - Miniature Suite for Clarinet & Viola (1968)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-05 | Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.

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Miniature Suite for Clarinet & Viola (1968)
Dedication: For Georgina Dobrée and Anatole Mines

I. March. Alla marcia, giocoso (0:00)
II. Berceuse. Andante tranquillo (1:37)
III. Minuet and Trio. Grazioso (3:40)
IV. Fugue. Allegro molto (7:19)

Borys Biniecki, clarinet & Jadwiga Stanek, viola

Ingvar Lidholm - Stamp Music I (1971) {Dorothy Dorow}

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-04 | Ingvar Natanael Lidholm (24 February 1921 – 17 October 2017) was a Swedish composer, violinist, violist, educator, and etc.

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Stamp Music I (1971)
Written for Dorothy Dorow and dedicated to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music

Dorothy Dorow and Rudolf Jansen (tam tam)

Stamp Music is a graphic composition for postage stamp. Stamp Music I is a realization of Stamp Music for soprano and tam-tam.
The graphical score can provide a basis for improvisations, instrumentally and/or vocally. In connection with the publishing of the stamp a great number of such improvisations (scored from everything to solo to orchestra) were broadcasted and recorded.

Gordon Jacob - Piano Concerto No. 2 (1957)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-10-03 | Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.

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Piano Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major (1957)
Dedication: For Edith Vogel

I. Allegro vivace (0:00)
II. Variations. Poco Adagio (10:34)
III. Allegro con brio (23:38)

Simon Callaghan, piano and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Stephen Bell

Jacob was a prolific composer. Grove lists 16 concertos by him for a wide variety of solo instruments, including trombone and timpani. A website dedicated to Jacob lists more than 700 original compositions or arrangements of existing music. His biographer (and former pupil) Eric Wetherell writes that as a composer, Jacob was influenced more by early 20th-century French and Russian examples rather than the German tradition. Wetherell writes of Jacob's "clarity of structure and instrumental writing that shows a keen awareness of the capabilities and limitations of every instrument". Reviewing a concert of his music given in 1939, The Times said, "As a general description, 'Good, but a little dry' might be justly applied to Jacob's work".

In the 1920s and 1930s Jacob composed music for choral societies and school choirs, which provided a steady income, in between more ambitious compositions. From his works of the 1920s, Wetherell singles out a viola concerto (1926), a piano concerto followed (1927) and the First Symphony (1929) dedicated to the memory of Jacob's favourite brother who was killed in the First World War. Large-scale works from the 1930s include an oboe concerto for Léon Goossens (1935) and Variations on an Original Theme (1937)

In the 1930s Jacob, along with several other young composers, wrote for the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company (now The Royal Ballet). His one original ballet was Uncle Remus (1934), written for them. During the Second World War, Jacob wrote music for several propaganda films, and after the war he provided the score for the feature film Esther Waters (1948). A more personal take on the war is evident in the austere Symphony for Strings (1943), written for the Boyd Neel Orchestra.

Jacob's Second Symphony, premiered on 1 May 1946 at a BBC studio recording, was considered by one reviewer to be "perhaps the most stimulating work that has yet come from this composer". The reviewer remarked on the work's intensity of feeling, ranging from romantic excitement in the first movement, through poignancy and fury in the two middle movements to a mood of heroism in the final passacaglia. Four new works appeared in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain: Music for a Festival (for brass and military bands), concertos for flute and for horn, and the cantata A Goodly Heritage.

Among the original compositions from Jacob's later years was incidental music to a dramatised adaptation of the biblical Book of Job, first performed at the Festival of the Arts, Saffron Walden, and later broadcast by the BBC.

Mikhail Gnessin - Adygea Sextet, Op. 48 (1933)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-30 | Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin (Russian: Михаил Фабианович Гнесин; sometimes transcribed Gnesin; 2 February [O.S. 21 January] 1883 – 5 May 1957) was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. Gnessin's works The Maccabeans and The Youth of Abraham earned him the nickname the "Jewish Glinka".

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"Adygea" Sextet in G major, Op. 48 (1933) for clarinet (B♭), horn, violin, viola, cello and piano

One movement

Moscow Soloist Ensemble
Edward Iatsoun, violin; Anna Zlozcovskaya, violin; Stanislav Koriakin, viola; Dimitri Surikov, cello; Alexandre Morogovsky, clarinet; Nikita Glagolev, horn; Basinia Shulman, piano

Adygea is one of Russia's republics and home to the Circassian people. The official languages of Adygea are Russian and Adyghe.

Louise Farrenc - Violin Sonata No. 2, Op. 39 (1850)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-30 | Louise Farrenc (31 May 1804 – 15 September 1875) was a French composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher. Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont in Paris, she was the daughter of Jacques-Edme Dumont, a successful sculptor, and sister to Auguste Dumont.

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Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 39 (1850)
Dedication: Louis Sina

1. Allegro grazioso (0:00)
2. Scherzo. Allegro (10:43)
3. Adagio (16:01)
4. Finale. Allegro (22:47)

Daniele Orlando, violin & Linda Di Carlo, piano

The Sonata is dedicated to violinist Louis Sina, member of the Schuppanzigh
String Quartet.

According to Ernest Reyer, there is in this sonata "a virility which is not the least salient aspect of Mme Farrenc's talent". The melody of the first movement is of a masterly simplicity, and "the aridity of science is very skillfully tempered by the charm of inspiration and the originality of details"

Musicologist Bea Friedland notes the inversion of the two central movements, first the Scherzo, realized in a Mendelsohnian spirit, before the slow movement, noted Adagio.

The work was performed on November 25, 1857, during an evening concert of early music, Farrenc accompanying the violinist Richard Hammer on the piano.

Kenneth Leighton - Violin Concerto, Op. 12 (1952)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-29 | Kenneth Leighton (2 October 1929 – 24 August 1988) was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.

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Violin Concerto, Op. 12 (1952)
Dedication: To Frederick Grinke

I. Allegro con brio, molto ritmico (0:00)
II. Intermezzo. Moderato con moto, sempre dolce (7:45)
III. Scherzo. Allegro molto e nervoso (13:37)
IV. Epilogo. Lento, molto sostenuto ed intenso (17:04)

Clare Howick, violin and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Grant Llewellyn

The Violin Concerto, first performed in May 1953 in the Third Programme by Frederick Grinke with the St. Cecilia Orchestra under Trevor Harvey, dates from the Spring of 1952. It was written in Italy, under strong emotional compulsion, in the space of three weeks, and is prefixed by some verses of Ada Negri which can be roughly translated 'Today I seek you, and do not find you; you are neither in me nor near me, nor do I know what fault I have committed that you have punished me in the light of your presence'. While reflecting the spirit of the whole work (whose themes - particularly in their 'soaring' upward movement and the significance of moves of a semitone - are interrelated in the four movements), the verses throw particular light on the concluding slow Epilogue, which is the emotional climax of the concerto. The work is a true concerto in the demands it makes on the soloist, yet at the same time it avoids all empty display. The solo part contains little, if anything, that is not thematic, and with much cunning interplay between violinist and orchestra the whole strongly felt argument is expressed with a conciseness and authority that augur extremely well for this composer's future.

The urgent, uprising theme which opens the Allegro con brio at once creates a mood of restless striving. The slightly less busy second subject (announced by the solo violin espressivo and piano) uses all twelve semitones of the chromatic scale as if it were a Schonbergian note-series, but the composer has emphatically stated that this was pure coincidence, that he is note a 'twelve-note' composer, and that all the themes in the work were entirely spontaneous and uncalculated. The cadenza comes as the climax of the development section; the orchestra takes up the soloist's final trills, with arresting effect, by way of a lead back into the recapitulation, in which section the second subject claims attention before the first. Tension is slightly relaxed in the following Intermezzo, though its leading theme (again of strongly marked musical personality) maintains the striving upward movement characteristic of the whole work as it climbs a note higher in each of its opening bars. There is a strong kinship between this theme and the two episodes with which it alternates. The third movement is a Scherzo and Trio, in which the word nervoso qualifying the Allegro molto is the best clue to the kind of highly strung brilliance required in the Scherzo, while the ironico written above the jaunty Trio leaves no doubt as to the composer's mood here. The deeply expressive final Epilogue has the strongest thematic links with the material of the opening movement, and by means of eloquent cantilena from the soloist, solemnly reiterated drum strokes and much sympathetic support from the whole orchestra, rises from a brooding start to an impassioned climax of yearning before sinking into final despair.

Gordon Jacob - Oboe Sonatina (1962)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-28 | Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.

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Sonatina for Oboe and Harpsichord (or Piano) (1962)
Dedication: For Evelyn Rothwell and Valda Aveling

I. Adagio (0:00)
II. Allegro giocoso (2:14)
III. Lento alla Sarabande (4:08)
IV. Allegro molto vivace (6:10)

Sandro Caldini, oboe and Fulvio Caldini, piano

Recorded live in Udine, Italy April 28, 2002.

Kenneth Leighton - Elegy for Cello & Piano, Op. 5 (1949)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-27 | Kenneth Leighton (2 October 1929 – 24 August 1988) was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.

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Elegy for Cello & Piano, Op. 5 (1949)
Dedication: Jeanne Fry

Raphael Wallfisch, cello & Raphael Terroni, piano

Chopin/Françaix - Preludes Book II, arr. for Orchestra (1969)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-25 | Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".

Jean René Désiré Françaix (23 May 1912, in Le Mans – 25 September 1997, in Paris) was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.

24 Preludes, Op. 28 (1838-39)
Dedication: Camille Pleyel (French edition); Joseph Christoph Kessler (German edition)
Orchestrated by Jean Françaix (1969)

13. Lento. Cortot: On foreign soil, under a night of stars, thinking of my beloved faraway (0:00)
Bülow: Loss
14. Allegro. Cortot: Fear (2:51)
Bülow: Stormy sea
15. Sostenuto. Cortot: But Death is here, in the shadows (3:30)
Bülow: Raindrop
16. Presto con fuoco. Cortot: Descent into the abyss (8:49)
Bülow: Hades
17. Allegretto. Cortot: She told me, "I love you" (10:17)
Bülow: Scene on the Place de Notre-Dame de Paris
18. Molto allegro. Cortot: Divine curses (13:29)
Bülow: Suicide
19. Vivace. Cortot: Wings, wings, that I may flee to you, o my beloved! (14:31)
Bülow: Heartfelt happiness
20. Largo. Cortot: Funerals (16:14)
Bülow: Funeral march
21. Cantabile. Cortot: Solitary return, to the place of confession (17:46)
Bülow: Sunday
22. Molto agitato. Cortot: Rebellion (19:47)
Bülow: Impatience
23. Moderato. Cortot: Playing water faeries (20:45)
Bülow: A pleasure boat
24. Allegro appassionato. Cortot: of blood, of earthly pleasure, of death (21:42)
Bülow: the storm

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Karl Rickenbacher

The cycle of 24 Preludes, Op. 28, covers all major and minor keys. Chopin wrote them between 1835 and 1839, partly at Valldemossa, Mallorca, where he spent the winter of 1838–39 and where he had fled with George Sand and her children to escape the damp Paris weather. In Majorca, Chopin had a copy of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, and as in each of Bach's two sets of preludes and fugues, his Op. 28 set comprises a complete cycle of the major and minor keys, albeit with a different ordering.

Chopin himself never played more than four of the preludes at any single public performance. Nor was this the practice for the 25 years after his death. The first pianist to program the complete set in a recital was probably Anna Yesipova for a concert in 1876. Nowadays, the complete set of Op. 28 preludes has become repertory fare, and many concert pianists have recorded the entire set, beginning with Ferruccio Busoni in 1915, when making piano rolls for the Duo-Art label. Alfred Cortot was the next pianist to record the complete preludes in 1926.

As with his other works, Chopin did not himself attach names or descriptions to any of the Op. 28 preludes, in contrast to many of Robert Schumann's and Franz Liszt's pieces.

Chopin/Françaix - Preludes Book I, arr. for Orchestra (1969)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-23 | Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".

Jean René Désiré Françaix (23 May 1912, in Le Mans – 25 September 1997, in Paris) was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.

24 Preludes, Op. 28 (1838-39)
Dedication: Camille Pleyel (French edition); Joseph Christoph Kessler (German edition)
Orchestrated by Jean Françaix (1969)

1. Agitato. Cortot: Feverish anticipation of loved ones (0:00)
Bülow: Reunion
2. Lento. Cortot: Painful meditation; the distant, deserted sea... (0:43)
Bülow: Presentiment of death
3. Vivace. Cortot: The singing of the stream (2:44)
Bülow: Thou Art So Like a Flower
4. Largo. Cortot: Above a grave (3:58)
Bülow: Suffocation
5. Molto allegro. Cortot: Tree full of songs (5:42)
Bülow: Uncertainty
6. Lento assai. Cortot: Homesickness (6:24)
Bülow: Tolling bells
7. Andantino. Cortot: Sensational memories float like perfume through my mind... (8:10)
Bülow: The Polish dancer
8. Molto agitato. Cortot: The snow falls, the wind screams, and the storm rages; yet in my sad heart, the tempest is the worst to behold (8:58)
Bülow: Desperation
9. Largo. Cortot: Prophetic voices (10:56)
Bülow: Vision
10. Molto allegro. Cortot: Rockets that fall back down to earth (12:09)
Bülow: The night moth
11. Vivace. Cortot: Desire of a young girl (12:49)
Bülow: The dragonfly
12. Presto. Cortot: Night ride (13:34)
Bülow: The duel

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Karl Rickenbacher

The cycle of 24 Preludes, Op. 28, covers all major and minor keys. Chopin wrote them between 1835 and 1839, partly at Valldemossa, Mallorca, where he spent the winter of 1838–39 and where he had fled with George Sand and her children to escape the damp Paris weather. In Majorca, Chopin had a copy of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, and as in each of Bach's two sets of preludes and fugues, his Op. 28 set comprises a complete cycle of the major and minor keys, albeit with a different ordering.

Chopin himself never played more than four of the preludes at any single public performance. Nor was this the practice for the 25 years after his death. The first pianist to program the complete set in a recital was probably Anna Yesipova for a concert in 1876. Nowadays, the complete set of Op. 28 preludes has become repertory fare, and many concert pianists have recorded the entire set, beginning with Ferruccio Busoni in 1915, when making piano rolls for the Duo-Art label. Alfred Cortot was the next pianist to record the complete preludes in 1926.

As with his other works, Chopin did not himself attach names or descriptions to any of the Op. 28 preludes, in contrast to many of Robert Schumann's and Franz Liszt's pieces.

Fredrik Högberg - Bogo Bogo for clarinet and tape (2004)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-22 | Fredrik Karl Kristian Högberg, born 5 February 1971 in Vellinge, Sweden, is a Swedish composer and producer. He resides in the old courthouse in Nyland, Ångermanland (mid-Sweden).

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Bogo Bogo – for oboe (or optional Bb- or C-instrument) and tape (2004)

Diogo Maia - clarinets, sound editing and mixing.
Henrique Villas Boas - mastering
Special guests: Isabel Junqueira and Laura Maia
Watch performance here:
youtu.be/B84oRT_ETRE?si=1JEh95ehQgNXxION

From the early 2000 Högberg has worked mainly with works that contains multimedia, like the music film Brassbones – a brass western (2001) and the concertos Ice Concerto (2012) and The Accordion King (2014).

Works like Dancing with Silent Purpose and Rocky Island Boat Bay are examples of Högberg's humorous approach to his musical creation, and his inclination to combine contemporary art music with elements of popular music.

Högberg's work is sometimes controversial; while working with the Ice Concerto Högberg shot burning pianos being dropped from 40 metres onto the ice of Ångermanälven. He was charged with environmental crimes, which were later dropped. 2016 he wrote the music (in collaboration with singer/songwriter Nicolai Dunger) for the critically acclaimed opera Stilla min eld, inspired by the circumstances of Eva Rausings death in Belgravia, London, 2012.

Högberg can be said to have embraced the instrumental theatre of the 1960s in many of his works, for example Subadobe (1992/1994), for trombone, and Baboon Concerto (2018), for bassoon and orchestra.

Richard Rodney Bennett - Alto Saxophone Concerto (1988)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-20 | Sir Richard Rodney Bennett CBE (29 March 1936 – 24 December 2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.

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Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra (1988)

1. Molto vivo (0:00)
2. Interlude. Andante (6:13)
3. Allegro (9:50)

John Harle, alto saxophone and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner

Bennett was a pupil at Leighton Park School. He later studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Howard Ferguson and Lennox Berkeley. Ferguson regarded him as extraordinarily brilliant, having perhaps the greatest talent of any British composer in his generation, though lacking in a personal style. During this time, Bennett attended some of the Darmstadt summer courses in 1955, where he was exposed to serialism. He later spent two years in Paris as a student of the prominent serialist Pierre Boulez between 1957 and 1959. He always used both his first names after finding another Richard Bennett active in music.

Bennett taught at the Royal Academy of Music between 1963 and 1965, at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, United States from 1970 to 1971, and was later International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music between 1994 and the year 2000. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1977, and was knighted in 1998.

Bennett produced over 200 works for the concert hall, and 50 scores for film and television. He was also a writer and performer of jazz songs for 50 years. Immersed in the techniques of the European avant-garde via his contact with Boulez, Bennett subsequently developed his own dramato-abstract style. In his later years, he adopted an increasingly tonal idiom.

Bennett regularly performed as a jazz pianist, with such singers as Cleo Laine, Marion Montgomery (until her death in 2002), Mary Cleere Haran (until her death in 2011), and more recently with Claire Martin, performing the Great American Songbook. Bennett and Martin performed at such venues as The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, and The Pheasantry and Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London.

Despite his early studies in modernist techniques, Bennett's tastes were eclectic. He wrote in a wide range of styles, including jazz, for which he had a particular fondness. Early on, he began to write music for feature films. He said that it was as if the different styles of music that he was writing went on 'in different rooms, albeit in the same house'. Later in his career the different aspects all became equally celebrated – for example in his 75th birthday year (2011), there were numerous concerts featuring all the different strands of his work. At the BBC Proms for example his Murder on the Orient Express Suite was performed in a concert of film music, and in the same season his Dream Dancing and Jazz Calendar were also featured. Also at the Wigmore Hall, London, on 23 March 2011 (a few days before his 75th birthday), a double concert took place in which his Debussy-inspired piece Sonata After Syrinx was performed in the first concert, and in the Late Night Jazz Event which followed, Bennett and Claire Martin performed his arrangements of the Great American Songbook (Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart and so on). See also Tom Service's appreciation of Bennett's music published in The Guardian in July 2012.

He wrote music for films and television; among his scores were the Doctor Who story The Aztecs (1964) for television, and the feature films Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) and Equus (1977). His scores for Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), each earned him Academy Award nominations, with Murder on the Orient Express gaining a BAFTA award. Later works include Enchanted April (1992), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1999) and Gormenghast (2000). He was also a prolific composer of orchestral works, piano solos, choral works and operas. Despite this eclecticism, Bennett's music rarely involved stylistic crossover.

Mikhail Gnessin - 2 Songs of the Knight Errant, Op. 28 & 34 (1917/1921)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-19 | Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin (Russian: Михаил Фабианович Гнесин; sometimes transcribed Gnesin; 2 February [O.S. 21 January] 1883 – 5 May 1957) was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. Gnessin's works The Maccabeans and The Youth of Abraham earned him the nickname the "Jewish Glinka".

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2 Songs of the Knight Errant

1. Op. 28 (1917) Lied des fahrenden Ritters. Andante (0:00)
for Harp Quintet
2. Op. 34 (1921) Vivo ma sostenuto in B minor (9:37)
Dedication: Aleksandr Shtrimer (1888-1961)
for Viola and Piano

Op. 28: Moscow Soloist Ensemble: Edward Iatsoun, violin; Anna Zlozcovskaya, violin; Stanislav Koriakin, viola; Dimitri Surikov, cello; Svetlana Paramonova, harp

Op. 34 Tabea Zimmermann, viola and Jascha Nemtsov, piano

Op. 28 Based on a movement from unfinished piano sonata by the composer

Harald Genzmer - From: Alte Volkslieder in neuen Sätzen für gleiche Stimmen (1958)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-18 | Harald Genzmer (9 February 1909 – 16 December 2007) was a German composer, pianist, clarinetist and academic.

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Alte Volkslieder in neuen Sätzen für gleiche Stimmen
Female Chorus/Children's Chorus (Alternative)

1. All mein Gedanken (Lochheimer Liederbuch um 1460) (0:00)
2. Ich fahr dahin (Lochheimer Liederbuch um 1460) (2:23)
3. So treiben wir den Winter aus (16th Century) (4:27)
4. Der grimmig Tod (16th Century) (5:56)

Hermine Mölzer, Felicitas Lottner, Clarissa Jaekel &
Via-Nova-Chor München, conducted by Kurt Suttner

Dmitry Kabalevsky - Violin Concerto, Op. 48 (1948)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-17 | Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky (Russian: Дми́трий Бори́сович Кабале́вский 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1904 – 14 February 1987) was a Soviet composer, conductor, pianist and pedagogue of Russian gentry descent.

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Violin Concerto in C major, Op. 48 (1948)

I. Allegro molto e con brio (0:00)
II. Andante cantabile (4:15)
III. Vivace giocoso (10:43)

David Oistrakh and the USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dmitry Kabalevsky

This violin concerto is one of the first concertos Kabalevsky composed and he dedicated it to the Soviet youth. Kabalevsky sought to motivate children and young students in the Soviet Union, through his music. This violin concerto was first performed by 18-year-old, Igor Bezrodny, in the fall of 1948. This piece is full of life and contains characteristics of Russian music. The first movement is full of quick rhythms and even contains a Ukrainian folk tune. Dmitri Kabalevsky served his country faithfully and reflected this in the music he wrote.

Hugo Wolf - 5 Mörike Lieder, arr. for Voice and Orchestra (publ. 1904)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-15 | Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but diverging greatly in technique.

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Mörike-Lieder 53 songs in 4 volumes on texts by Eduard Mörike (1804-1875)
Hugo Wolf orchestrations were published in 1904

1. No. 10. Fußreise. Ziemlich bewegt (0:00)
2. No. 25. Schlafendes Jesuskind. Sehr getragen und weihevoll (2:36)
3. No. 28. Gebet. Getragen (5:51)
4. No. 29. An den Schlaf. Sehr ruhig (8:23)
5. No. 39. Denk es, o Seele! Mäßig (10:56)

Benjamin Appl, baritone and the Jenaer Philharmonie conducted by Simon Gaudenz

Jean Françaix - LHeure du Berger (1947)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-14 | Jean René Désiré Françaix (23 May 1912, in Le Mans – 25 September 1997, in Paris) was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.

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L'Heure du Berger (1947) for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano
Musique de Brasserie

I. Les Vieux Beaux (0:00)
II. Pin Up Girls (02:14)
III. Les Petites Nerveux (4:28)

Kammervereinigung Berlin

In 1947 Françaix composed his delightful suite for piano and wind quintet L’heure du berger, subtitled ‘Musique de Brasserie’ in honour of a noted Paris restaurant. This was a kind of musique d’ameublement (‘background music’ might be an apt translation) score, such as was written in those days especially for Parisian fashion shows and the like, but—as one might expect from this fastidious composer—it is so well written that it stands independently as a highly appealing score. Technically, Françaix uses variation technique in this work, which falls into three short movements. The first opens humorously with clarinet and bassoon passing a simple phrase, one to the other, as if we had a maître d’ noted for his fun ushering us to our table. A faster new theme appears as the waiters busy about us before the opening idea returns. The central slow movement has a languid atmosphere, decorated with clarinet arabesques which gradually grow and proliferate in brilliance to create a vividly fascinating scene. The finale is a dazzling piece of much rhythmic subtlety; music which smiles throughout and is adorable in its tingling good humour before a scrap of a music-hall tune glides across the fabric of the score. The rhythmic luminosity of the music returns to end L’heure du berger in a riot of colour.
from notes by Robert Matthew-Walker © 1998

Salvador Bacarisse - 3 Pieces from Petite Suite for guitar, Op. 57 (1950)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-11 | Salvador Bacarisse Chinoria (12 September 1898 – 5 August 1963) was a Spanish composer.

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Three pieces from Petite Suite for Guitar, Op. 57 (1950)
Dedication: A Nicolas Alfonso

1. Allegro moderato (0:00)
2. Allegretto (1:40)
3. Allegro vivace (3:38)

Ken Murray, guitar

Bacarisse composed for the piano, mixed chamber ensembles, operas including El tesoro de Boabdil which won a French radio award in 1958, and orchestral works including four piano concertos and a violin concerto. His most famous work today is the Concertino for Guitar and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 72, composed in 1952 in a neo-romantic style. It is known in a celebrated recording by Narciso Yepes.

Lennox Berkeley - Oboe Sonatina (1962)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-10 | Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley CBE (12 May 1903 – 26 December 1989) was an English composer.

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Sonatina for Oboe and Piano
Dedication: To Janet and John Craxton

1. Molto moderato (0:00)
2. Andante (4:45)
3. Allegro (7:32)

Sarah Francis, oboe and Michael Dussek, piano

Lennox Berkeley did not take up the serious study of music until after coming down from Oxford in his early twenties. His musical education occupied the next six years, which he spent in Paris as a pupil of that celebrated teacher, the last Nadia Boulanger. He consequently escaped the influence of the English academic tradition and the folksong revival, and acquired a cosmopolitan outlook.

Now one of England’s most respected senior composers, Sir Lennox remains a keen Francophile. It is clear that some of the most characteristic traits of French music and of the neo-classical Stravinsky of the Paris years struck responsive chords in the refined sensibility of his own temperament. However, every composer worth his salt develops an individual musical personality, absorbing only those influences’ that serve his artistic purpose. In the music of Berkeley’s maturity it is the sensitive handling of instrumental sonority and the unfailing lucidity of texture that may be traced back to his formative years.

Lennox Berkeley must be tired of the word ‘Gallic’ which had been applied to his music ever since he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger over forty years ago; but if the adjective implies a certain elegant understatement and a crisp, unsentimental lucidity, combined with a certain pungency, its use is inescapable. His language still shows some indebtedness to Stravinsky’s neo-classic period, even though he begins his Oboe Sonatina (dedicated to Janet and John Craxton and published in 1964) with a twelve-note row (soon abandoned) and makes extensive use in the finale of augmented triads.

The first movement is classically structured, with a gracefully contoured first subject, a forceful ensuing idea and a murmurously lyrical second subject; the second movement generates an intensity of feeling which is the greater for the very restraint of its language; and the finale effectively introduces calm moments to offset the prevailing syncopated ebullience.

Lionel Salter

Jean Françaix - Concertino for Piano and Orchestra (1932)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-08 | Jean René Désiré Françaix (23 May 1912, in Le Mans – 25 September 1997, in Paris) was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.

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Concertino for Piano and Orchestra (1932)
Dedication: à Madame Boulanger

1. Prélude. Presto leggiero (0:00)
2. Lent (1:56)
3. Menuet (3:40)
4. Finale - Rondo. Allegretto vivo (5:24)

Claude Françaix, piano and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Doráti

Françaix carried off the first prize for piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1930 and was himself, at the age of twenty-two, the soloist in the premiere of his Concertino for piano and orchestra, which was given in a Lamoureux Concert in Paris on 15 December 1934. This pithy and highly polished work, one of his earliest successes and still one of his best-known compositions, seems an archetypal example of the elegant, witty and tender style that was to serve him well throughout a long composing career. The busy moto perpetuo manner of the first movement is propelled by chattering piano figuration, but the underlying melodic shape of the opening (modelled, it has been claimed, on Czerny’s Study Op 299 No 8, in C major) is varied resourcefully by scalic and broken-chord figures in a brief development that leads to a short climax. Here, as throughout the works on this disc, brevity is the soul of wit – the forms are miniaturized, the music reduced to its simplest essentials. When the piano resumes its figurations it is in the foreign key of B minor, but the music side-slips into the home key before it fades out.

The slow movement is simplicity itself, both in melody and harmony, a poised and serene page of music that repeats itself da capo only to make way for the scherzo, spun out of a perky Gounod-like motif, a little counterpoint, a trumpet tune and twanging cellos. A tiny trio, suggesting a Musette, gives the merest glimpse of Watteauesque pastoral. The return of the minuet leads without a break into the finale. This is a breezy Rondeau in 5/8 time that establishes a distinct kinship to the first movement, with similarly bustling figuration and thematic quips bandied about between the soloist (who here shows the strongest penchant for bravura) and the orchestra. A louche and jazzy trumpet eventually takes up the main tune and the Concertino patters off in high good humour, vanishing on an upward glissando.

from notes by Calum MacDonald © 2004

Pierre Sancan - Oboe Sonatina (1957)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-07 | Pierre Sancan (24 October 1916 – 20 October 2008) was a French composer, pianist, teacher and conductor. Along with Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux, he was a major figure among French musicians in the mid-twentieth-century transition between modern and contemporary eras; but outside France his name is almost unknown.

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Sonatina for Oboe and Piano (1957)

I. Modéré (0:00)
II. Andante (2:55)
III. Presto (6:26)

François Leleux, oboe & Emmanuel Strosser, piano

Born in Mazamet in the South of France, Sancan began in musical studies in Morocco and Toulouse before entering the Conservatoire de Paris where he studied with Jean Gallon, conducting with Charles Munch and Roger Désormière, piano with Yves Nat, and composition with Henri Busser.

In 1943, he won the Conservatoire's Prix de Rome for composition, with his cantata La Légende de Icare, but did not assume a regular teaching post there until 1956 when his former teacher Yves Nat retired. Sancan held this job until his own retirement in 1985. He lived another 23 years, to the age of 91, but his later years were compromised by Alzheimer's disease. He died in Paris.

Achievements
As a pianist, Sancan was most prominently seen in his role as accompanist to the great cellist André Navarra. His recordings of Ravel's two piano concertos with conductor Pierre Dervaux and Mozart's 4-hand concertos with Jean-Bernard Pommier were highly praised upon their release in the 1960s.

As a piano teacher, Sancan helped to train the successful pianists Olivier Cazal, Michel Béroff, Selman Ada, Abdel Rahman El Bacha, Emile Naoumoff, Géry Moutier, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Daniel Varsano, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Jacques Rouvier, Kristin Merscher, Eric Larsen, Jean-Marc Savelli, and Jean-Philippe Collard who has recorded Sancan's Piano Concerto. Sancan's Sonatine for flute and piano (1946) is his best-known work, and has been a popular staple for flute players since its publication, but little else of his oeuvre is well known. Sancan also composed a Violin Concerto, at least three ballets, a Symphony for Strings (1961), and an opera, Ondine (1962). Some of his shorter piano pieces, such as Boîte à musique and the Toccata, have caught on as encore pieces.

Sancan sought to reconcile contemporary performance techniques with the harmonic language of Debussy, a composer of whom Sancan was an expert interpreter.

Eduard Nápravník - Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 24 (1876)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-07 | Eduard Francevič Naprávnik (Russian: Эдуа́рд Фра́нцевич Напра́вник; 24 August 1839 – 10 November 1916) was a Czech conductor and composer. Nápravník settled in Russian Empire and is best known for his leading role in Russian musical life as the principal conductor of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg for many decades. In that capacity, he conducted the premieres of many operas by Russian composers, including those by Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.

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Piano Trio No. 1 in G minor, Op. 24 (1876)
Dedication: Grand Duke Constantin Nikolaievich

1. Allegro con fuoco (0:00)
2. Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino (13:31)
3. Scherzo. & Trio. Presto (20:04)
4. Alla russe, vivace (27:06)

SPYROS PIANO TRIO
Tatiana Korsunskaya, Piano
Bartek Niziol, Violine
Denis Severin, Violoncello

MDG, 2017
amazon.com/Eduard-Napravnik-Complete-Piano-Trios/dp/B01NH9GM61

Details by Edition Silvertrust:
Eduard Napravnik's Piano Trio No.1 in g minor dates from 1876 and won first prize in the Imperial Russian Music Society Competition for that year. It is dedicated to the Tsar's brother, the Grand Duke Constantin Nikolaievich who subsequently ennobled the composer. The main theme to the big opening movement, Allegro con fuoco, is passionate and full of foward drive while a second subject is more lyrical. The second movement, Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino, is a slinky Russian slow dance. A pounding Scherzo with contrasting trio serves as the third movement. The finale, Alla Russe, vivace, no doubt caught the attention of both the Music Society and the Grand Duke. The opening theme is a rhythmic, stomping affair, full of nervous energy, but it is the tender slower section that follows which is full of Russian pathos.

Eduard Nápravník (1839-1916) was born in Bohemian town of Beischt (now Býšť), in what was then the Habsburg Empire. He learned to play the organ at his local church and then entered the Prague Organ School after which he obtained an appointment to serve as conductor of the famous private orchestra of Prince Yusupov in St. Petersburg. Thereafter he served as conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre and later several Imperial Theaters. He became an influential figure in Russian musical life and was even mentioned in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov as a famous conductor. He premiered several of Tchaikovsky’s works and assisted the composer in tightening up certain scores. He wrote in most genres but today is remembered for his most successful opera, Dubrovsky. He did not neglect chamber music writing three string quartets, a string quintet, two piano trios, a piano quartet and several instrumental works.

Vincenzo Bellini - Oboe Concerto in E-flat major (1823)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-06 | Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever made before'.

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Oboe Concerto in E-flat major (c. 1823)

I. Maestoso e deciso (0:00)
II. Larghetto cantabile (0:19)
III. Allegro polonese (3:25)

Christoph Hartmann, oboe and Ensemble Berlin
EMI recording

In 1819, at the age of eighteen, Bellini received a scholarship to the Conservatorio di San Sebastiano in Naples. He composed the Oboe Concerto during his studies. Gramophone called the piece "a product of his youth". Some other works composed by Bellini during the period included sacred music and fifteen symphonies (six of which are lost). In addition, fragments exist for two other concertos for woodwind instruments composed around the time: a bassoon concerto in G major that remains incomplete and a draft for a flute concerto in A major.

The concerto has often been noted for its operatic qualities and the usage of bel canto themes in the solo oboe part. Valeria Lucentini, in an introduction to an edition of the piece, wrote, "Bellini devolves the lively and intense expressiveness of vocal music to the cantabile. As a result, Bellini places particular emphasis on the solo instrument, in effect giving it the same attention as the human voice." She also stated that this characteristic was possibly influenced by some of the wordless songs composed by Bellini's teacher, Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli.

Program notes for a United States Military Academy concert wrote that "The lyrical writing in the concerto is so indicative of Bellini's style that one could easily believe it to belong to one of Bellini's operas, and yet the work is still thoroughly idiomatic to the oboe." Hyperion Records opined that "Bellini's juxtaposition of lyrical and more rigorous passages gives the little work an expertly managed inner balance." Gramophone referred to the concerto as one that "extends the past rather than smooths the passage to the twentieth-century revival of the form," contrasting it with Domenico Cimarosa's constructed oboe concerto by Arthur Benjamin as an example of a 20th-century 'revival' of a work that was not originally made.

Kenneth Leighton - Organ Concerto, Op. 58 (1970)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-05 | Kenneth Leighton (2 October 1929 – 24 August 1988) was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.

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Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani, Op. 58 (1970)

I. Lament. Adagio sostenuto (0:00)
II. Toccata. Allegro molto e ritmico (7:43)
III. Chorale and Variations. Lento sostenuto - piu mosso agitato - Andante con moto (12:23)

John Scott, organ and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Hickox

This work was composed during the summer of 1970, and uses the same medium as the well-known Concerto by Poulenc. It was first performed on 4 August 1971 by Robert Munns with the London Chamber Soloists, conducted by David Willcocks in King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

The first movement - Lament - is really in the form of a Passacaglia, but the ostinato here consists of three chords moving very slowly indeed, and first heard on the organ at the outset. The three chords persist throughout the movement in direct opposition to closely knit counterpoint on the strings, eventually dominating and reaching a climax in a great cluster. The music thus moves on two very separate levels, a third element being introduced in an ostinato figure on the timpani.

In the Toccata, an attempt is made to integrate the opposing forces in a mainly light Scherzo-like movement built on two distinct themes. Much use is made here of pizzicato string accompaniments, and the timpani returns with a variation of its ostinato from the first movement.

The Chorale and Variations form the most substantial movement. The opening string melody on low 'cellos is of importance is in the light of later developments, and also serves as string interludes between the opening statements of the chorale on the organ. The tempo quickens and a new contrapuntal section is set in motion by the organ leading into a continuous series of variations and a gradual rise in tension. This culminates in an organ cadenza which alternates with high and vibrant statements of the chorale on strings (the roles of organ and strings being now reversed).

Finally there is an extended Andante in which the lyrical potentialities of the opening 'cello theme are fully exploited, leading eventually back to a triumphant version of three-chord ostinato of the first movement.

© Kenneth Leighton

Hugo Wolf - 2 Goethe Lieder arr. for voice and orchestra (1890)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-04 | Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but diverging greatly in technique.

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Goethe-Lieder (written from 1875, publ. 1889), 51 songs to texts by Goethe.
Hugo Wolf arranged several for voice and orchestra in 1890. (December)

1. Anakreon's Grab (No. 29) (0:00)
2. Epiphinias (No. 19) (2:45)
Dedication: Melanie Köchert

Benjamin Appl, baritone and the Jenaer Philharmonie conducted by Simon Gaudenz

(2) The Song Epiphinias was written to celebrate the birthday of Mrs. Melanie Köchert and was sung and performed by her children Ilse, Hilde and Irmina on Epiphany Day in the costumes of the Three Wise Men.

Hugo Wolf - Prometheus from Goethe Lieder, arr. for voice and orchestra (1890)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-09-01 | Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but diverging greatly in technique.

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Goethe-Lieder (written from 1875, publ. 1889), 51 songs to texts by Goethe.
Hugo Wolf arranged several for voice and orchestra in 1890. (December)

No. 49. Prometheus (1890)

Benjamin Appl, baritone and the Jenaer Philharmonie conducted by Simon Gaudenz

Wolf's greatest musical influence was Richard Wagner, who, in an encounter after Wolf first came to the Vienna Conservatory, encouraged the young composer to persist in composing and to attempt larger-scale works, cementing Wolf's desire to emulate his musical idol. His antipathy to Johannes Brahms was fueled equally by his devotion to Wagner's musical radicalism and his loathing of Brahms' musical "conservatism".

Early in his career Wolf modelled his lieder after those of Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, particularly in the period around his relationship with Vally Franck; in fact, they were good enough imitations to pass off as the real thing, which he once attempted, though his cover was blown too soon. It is speculated that his choice of lieder texts in the earlier years, largely dealing with sin and anguish, were partly influenced by his contracting syphilis. His love for Vally, not fully requited, inspired highly chromatic and philosophical lieder that could be regarded as successors to Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder cycle. Others were as distant from those in mood as possible; lighthearted and humorous. The rarely heard symphonic poem Penthesilea, based on the tragedy by Heinrich von Kleist, is tempestuous and highly colored as well. Although Wolf admired Liszt, who had encouraged him to complete the work, he felt Liszt's own music too dry and academic and strove for color and passion.

The year 1888 marked a turning point in his style as well as his career, with the Mörike, Eichendorff and Goethe sets drawing him away from Schubert's simpler, more diatonic lyricism and into "Wölferl's own howl". Mörike in particular drew out and complemented Wolf's musical gifts, the variety of subjects suiting Wolf's tailoring of music to text, his dark sense of humor matching Wolf's own, his insight and imagery demanding a wider variety of compositional techniques and command of text painting to portray. In his later works he relied less on the text to give him his musical framework and more on his pure musical ideas themselves; the later Spanish and Italian songs reflect this move toward "absolute music".

Wolf wrote hundreds of lieder, three operas, incidental music, choral music, as well as some rarely heard orchestral, chamber and piano music. His most famous instrumental piece is the Italian Serenade (1887), originally for string quartet and later transcribed for orchestra, which marked the beginning of his mature style.

Wolf was famous for his use of tonality to reinforce meaning. Concentrating on two tonal areas to musically depict ambiguity and conflict in the text became a hallmark of his style, resolving only when appropriate to the meaning of the song. His chosen texts were often full of anguish and inability to find resolution, and thus so too was the tonality wandering, unable to return to the home key. Use of deceptive cadences, chromaticism, dissonance, and chromatic mediants obscure the harmonic destination for as long as the psychological tension is sustained. His formal structure as well reflected the texts being set, and he wrote almost none of the straightforward strophic songs favoured by his contemporaries, instead building the form around the nature of the work.

Hugo Wolf - Harfenspieler I/III from Goethe Lieder, arr. for voice and orchestra (1890)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-31 | Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but diverging greatly in technique.

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Goethe-Lieder (written from 1875, publ. 1889), 51 songs to texts by Goethe.
Hugo Wolf arranged several for voice and orchestra in 1890. (December)

Harfenspieler I. (no. 1) Sehr getragen, schwermutig (0:00)
Harfenspieler II. (no. 2) Langsam, aber nicht zu schleppend (3:20)
Harfenspieler III (no. 3) Langsam und mit tief klagenden Ausdruck (5:36)

Benjamin Appl, baritone and the Jenaer Philharmonie conducted by Simon Gaudenz

Wolf's greatest musical influence was Richard Wagner, who, in an encounter after Wolf first came to the Vienna Conservatory, encouraged the young composer to persist in composing and to attempt larger-scale works, cementing Wolf's desire to emulate his musical idol. His antipathy to Johannes Brahms was fueled equally by his devotion to Wagner's musical radicalism and his loathing of Brahms' musical "conservatism".

Early in his career Wolf modelled his lieder after those of Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, particularly in the period around his relationship with Vally Franck; in fact, they were good enough imitations to pass off as the real thing, which he once attempted, though his cover was blown too soon. It is speculated that his choice of lieder texts in the earlier years, largely dealing with sin and anguish, were partly influenced by his contracting syphilis. His love for Vally, not fully requited, inspired highly chromatic and philosophical lieder that could be regarded as successors to Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder cycle. Others were as distant from those in mood as possible; lighthearted and humorous. The rarely heard symphonic poem Penthesilea, based on the tragedy by Heinrich von Kleist, is tempestuous and highly colored as well. Although Wolf admired Liszt, who had encouraged him to complete the work, he felt Liszt's own music too dry and academic and strove for color and passion.

The year 1888 marked a turning point in his style as well as his career, with the Mörike, Eichendorff and Goethe sets drawing him away from Schubert's simpler, more diatonic lyricism and into "Wölferl's own howl". Mörike in particular drew out and complemented Wolf's musical gifts, the variety of subjects suiting Wolf's tailoring of music to text, his dark sense of humor matching Wolf's own, his insight and imagery demanding a wider variety of compositional techniques and command of text painting to portray. In his later works he relied less on the text to give him his musical framework and more on his pure musical ideas themselves; the later Spanish and Italian songs reflect this move toward "absolute music".

Wolf wrote hundreds of lieder, three operas, incidental music, choral music, as well as some rarely heard orchestral, chamber and piano music. His most famous instrumental piece is the Italian Serenade (1887), originally for string quartet and later transcribed for orchestra, which marked the beginning of his mature style.

Wolf was famous for his use of tonality to reinforce meaning. Concentrating on two tonal areas to musically depict ambiguity and conflict in the text became a hallmark of his style, resolving only when appropriate to the meaning of the song. His chosen texts were often full of anguish and inability to find resolution, and thus so too was the tonality wandering, unable to return to the home key. Use of deceptive cadences, chromaticism, dissonance, and chromatic mediants obscure the harmonic destination for as long as the psychological tension is sustained. His formal structure as well reflected the texts being set, and he wrote almost none of the straightforward strophic songs favoured by his contemporaries, instead building the form around the nature of the work.

Eduard Tubin - Violin Sonata No. 2 (1949)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-30 | Eduard Tubin (18 June [O.S. 5 June] 1905 – 17 November 1982) was an Estonian composer, conductor, and choreographer.

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Violin Sonata No. 2 (1949)

I. Allegro (0:00)
II. Andante (7:52)
III. Allegro risoluto (16:01)

Arvo Leibur, violin and Vardo Rumessen, piano

Tubin often used Estonian folk music in his works, for instance in the Sinfonietta on Estonian motifs. His ballet Kratt is entirely based on folk tunes. In 1938 Tubin had visited the Estonian island of Hiiumaa to collect folk songs. Tubin was also a very good orchestrator, and this can be heard particularly in the Third and Fourth symphonies.

A change took place in Tubin's style at the end of the 1940s; the music became harmonically more astringent. The finale of the seventh symphony makes much use of a theme with all twelve notes, though it is tonal. The shift to a less nationalistic and more international style came after Tubin had fled Estonia to Sweden.

Tubin is perhaps not better known because of his displacement. Although Estonia claims him as one of their greatest composers, most of his composing was done in Sweden, which never gave him the attention he was due. Tubin is gaining recognition, however, particularly for his later symphonies and the Second Piano Sonata, which are recognised as masterpieces. Most of his works have been recorded (there are two complete recorded sets of his symphonies, conducted by Neeme Järvi and Arvo Volmer). In June 2005 the city of Tallinn observed the centennial of his birth with a festival where all of his symphonies and much of his piano and chamber music was performed. A statue of Tubin was erected in Tartu.

Read more here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Tubin

Ingvar Lidholm - 3 Elegies and Epilogue for String Quartet (1940/1986)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-29 | Ingvar Natanael Lidholm (24 February 1921 – 17 October 2017) was a Swedish composer, violinist, violist, educator, and etc.

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Three Elegies and Epilogue for String Quartet

1. Adagio (1940) (0:00)
2. Vivace (1940) (4:33)
3. Larghetto (1940) (10:13)
4. Epilogue (1982) (17:37)

Tale Quartet
Live recording

The Three Elegies and Epilogue for string quartet were composed over a period which spans a large part of Ingvar Lidholm's active years as a composer. The first three movements - Adagio, Vivace and Larghetto - were composed during the summer of 1940 and first performed that autumn in Södertälje (Sweden) under the title of Elegiac Suite. These movements were written under the influence of Sibelius' Fourth Symphony and his string quartet Voces Intimae, and were perhaps also influenced by Willhelm Stenhammar. Lidholm presented the elegies as a sample of his work when he approached Hilding Rosenberg with a view to taking lessons from him. Many years later, as a tribute to Hilding Rosenberg on his 90th birthday in 1982, Lidholm, Sven-Erik Bäck and Daniel Börtz completed an unfinished quartet by Rosenberg, to which Lidholm then added an Epilogue "a Hilding Rosenberg con reverenza", which by the way of conclusion makes use of bird music taken from Rosenberg's fourth string quartet. In 1986 the Epilogue was added to the Three Elegies, because Lidholm "wanted to see if the tones from my youth were of any revelance to tcomposer who wrote the Epilogue".

Eduard Tubin - Violin Sonata No.1 (1936, rev.1969)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-27 | Eduard Tubin (18 June [O.S. 5 June] 1905 – 17 November 1982) was an Estonian composer, conductor, and choreographer.

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Violin Sonata No.1 (1934–1936, revised 1968–1969)

1. Moderato, attacca (0:00)
2. Quasi presto, misterioso, attacca (6:20)
3. Grave - Lento - Ostinato - Marciale (10:44)

Arvo Leibur, violin and Vardo Rumessen, piano

Tubin often used Estonian folk music in his works, for instance in the Sinfonietta on Estonian motifs. His ballet Kratt is entirely based on folk tunes. In 1938 Tubin had visited the Estonian island of Hiiumaa to collect folk songs. Tubin was also a very good orchestrator, and this can be heard particularly in the Third and Fourth symphonies.

A change took place in Tubin's style at the end of the 1940s; the music became harmonically more astringent. The finale of the seventh symphony makes much use of a theme with all twelve notes, though it is tonal. The shift to a less nationalistic and more international style came after Tubin had fled Estonia to Sweden.

Tubin is perhaps not better known because of his displacement. Although Estonia claims him as one of their greatest composers, most of his composing was done in Sweden, which never gave him the attention he was due. Tubin is gaining recognition, however, particularly for his later symphonies and the Second Piano Sonata, which are recognised as masterpieces. Most of his works have been recorded (there are two complete recorded sets of his symphonies, conducted by Neeme Järvi and Arvo Volmer). In June 2005 the city of Tallinn observed the centennial of his birth with a festival where all of his symphonies and much of his piano and chamber music was performed. A statue of Tubin was erected in Tartu.

Read more here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Tubin

Marcel Landowski - Concerto for ondes Martenot (1954)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-25 | Marcel François Paul Landowski (18 February 1915 – 23 December 1999) was a French composer, biographer and arts administrator.

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Concerto for ondes Martenot, String Orchestra and percussion (1954)
Dedication: à Ginette Martenot

1. Andante (0:00)
2. Adagio (5:28)
Cadence (10:43)
3. Allegro (12:30)

Jeanne Loriod, Ondes Martenot and the Chamber Orchestra for Contemporary Music conducted by Jacques Bondon

Erato recording digitized by Sid Taylor

Born at Pont-l'Abbé, Finistère, Brittany, he was the son of French sculptor Paul Landowski and great-grandson of the composer Henri Vieuxtemps. He was father of a son and two daughters. The younger, Manon Landowski is singer-songwriter, performer, author and composer of musical shows.

As an infant he showed early musical promise, and studied piano under Marguerite Long. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1935; in addition one of his teachers was Pierre Monteux.

Administrative career
In 1966, France's Cultural Affairs minister André Malraux appointed Landowski as the ministry's director of music, a controversial appointment made in the teeth of opposition from the then ascendant modernists, led by Pierre Boulez.

One of his first acts was the establishment, in 1967, of the Orchestre de Paris, appointing Charles Munch as its first director. He also championed the establishment of regional orchestras at a time when interest in them appeared to be waning. This was part of a so-called "ten-year plan for music", instituted with the intention of establishing an opera company and conservatoire in each of the Regions of France. The new Orchestre de Paris was also built on the model intended to be followed by planned regional orchestras. In this endeavour Landowski worked with local authorities, especially those in the regional centres such as Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Strasbourg and Toulouse, who signed agreements under which the French State would finance a third of each company or ensemble's operating budget. Landowski also oversaw modernisation of regional concert halls and theatres.

In 1975 Landowski was appointed Inspector General of Music, and was Director of Cultural Affairs of the City of Paris from 1977 to 1979. He succeeded Emmanuel Bondeville as President of the Maurice Ravel Foundation and was in turn succeeded by Manuel Rosenthal.

He died in hospital in Paris in 1999, aged 84.

The ondes Martenot ("Martenot waves") or ondes musicales ("musical waves") is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. A player of the ondes Martenot is called an ondist.

The ondes Martenot was invented in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot. Martenot was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators, and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello.

The ondes Martenot is used in more than 100 orchestral compositions. The French composer Olivier Messiaen used it in pieces such as his 1949 symphony Turangalîla-Symphonie, and his sister-in-law Jeanne Loriod was a celebrated player of the instrument. It appears in numerous film and television soundtracks, particularly science fiction and horror films. It has also been used by contemporary acts such as Daft Punk, Damon Albarn and the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

Paul Creston - Alto Saxophone Concerto Op. 26 (1944)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-23 | Paul Creston (born Giuseppe Guttoveggio; October 10, 1906 – August 24, 1985) was an Italian American composer. Creston was one of the most performed American composers of the 1940s and 1950s. Several of his works have become staples of the wind band repertoire. Zanoni, Prelude and Dance and the Celebration Overture have been and still are on several state lists for contests across the USA.

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Alto Saxophone Concerto, Op. 26 (1944)
Dedication: Cecil Leeson

1. Energetic (0:00)
2. Meditative (6:40)
3. Rhythmic (14:08)

Rob Burton, alto saxophone and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Wigglesworth
See live performance here:
youtu.be/i4XE0NsTgjM?si=q7_igsYCzRXcRV5b

Creston was a notable teacher, whose students included the composers Irwin Swack, John Corigliano, Alvin Singleton, Elliott Schwartz, Frank Felice, Charles Roland Berry; accordionist/composer William Schimmel; and the jazz musicians Rusty Dedrick and Charlie Queener. He wrote the theoretical books Principles of Rhythm (1964) and Rational Metric Notation (1979). He taught at Central Washington State College from 1968 to 1975.

Ingvar Lidholm - Piano Sonata (1947)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-22 | Ingvar Natanael Lidholm (24 February 1921 – 17 October 2017) was a Swedish composer, violinist, violist, educator, and etc.

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Piano Sonata (1947)
Dedication: Ingmar Bengtsson

1. Allegro (0:00)
2. Intermezzo, fuga e variazioni
Andante (4:49)
Allegretto (9:06)
Tema: Andante grazioso (10:59)
Variation I (12:07)
Variation II (12:41)
Variation III (13:36)
Variation IV (14:20)
Variation V (15:07)
Variation VI (15:55)

Greta Erikson, piano

Lidholm spent the academic year 1946/47 abroad as the recipient of a governmental Jenny Lind scholarship, during which he broadened his artistic experiences, meeting people, discussing ideas, and planning compositions. While in Bergen, Norway, he wrote the Sonata for piano, dedicated to musicologist and pianist Ingmar Bengtsson.

Lidholm established a reputation as a composer of demanding (but well-respected) choral music during his early career, and he continued to compose vocal music throughout his career, and especially during his later years. Of the final nine works that he composed after the age of 70, six included choir or solo voice.

Read more here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvar_Lidholm

Willem Pijper - String Quartet No. 1 (1914)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-21 | Willem Frederik Johannes Pijper (8 September 1894 – 18 March 1947) was a Dutch composer, music critic and music teacher. Pijper is considered to be among the most important Dutch composers of the first half of the 20th century.

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String Quartet No. 1 (1914)
Dedication: Johan Wagenaar

1. Allegro moderato (00:00)
2. Scherzo (comodo) (5:04)
3. Largo (09:30)
4. Poco agitato (18:25)

Schoenberg Quartet

The part of the first violin in this quartet has to be played by a mute violin.

Pijper quickly chose his own path as a composer. The difference in style between his First Symphony (Pan; 1917) (in which Mahler's influence is evident) and the Second (1921) is significant, and between 1918 and 1922 he grew into one of the more advanced composers in Europe. In each successive work he went a step further, starting from his conception that every work of art arises out of a number of "germ cells" (somewhat akin to Igor Stravinsky's early "cell technique").

From 1919, Pijper's music can be described as polytonal. Yet there is no question of Pijper's consciously abandoning tonality; rather his polyphonic way of thinking and his sense of counterpoint made his harmonic style evolve in that direction. In that sense, he stands quite close to the music of his contemporary Matthijs Vermeulen, but his music does not quite reach the ecstatic level of Vermeulen's. Nonetheless, Pijper remained a composer of strong emotional character, to which his Third Symphony (1926) bears witness. In Pijper's later works the harmonic expression seems at times to approach monotonality.

The octatonic scale has been called the "Pijper scale" in Dutch. As a teacher, Pijper had a great influence on modern Dutch music, teaching many prominent Dutch composers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. He was senior teacher of instrumentation at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, and from 1930 until his death in 1947 he acted as principal of the Rotterdam Conservatoire.

Georgy Catoire - Symphony in C minor, Op. 7 (1897)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-20 | Georgy Lvovich Catoire (or Katuar, Russian: Гео́ргий Льво́вич Катуа́р, French: Georges Catoire) (Moscow 27 April 1861 – 21 May 1926) was a Russian composer of French heritage.

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Symphony in C minor, Op. 7 (1897)

1. Allegro moderato, e poco maestoso (0:00)
2. Allegretto con moto, e capriccioso ((12:43)
3. Andante non tanto ((20:36)
4. Allegro moderato, ma con spirito (30:58)

Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Martin Yates

In his letter to Catoire written on October 21, 1904 Glazunov informed him: "We have decided to include your symphony in the program of Russian Symphonic Concerts. The symphony will be conducted by Nikolay Cherepnin, who is studying it now. I have looked through both of your compositions and found many merits in them. There are fine episodes in "Mtsyri". I found also a lot of beautiful passages in the symphony, however I am afraid that some points are rather poorly orchestrated".
The symphony was premiered in St. Petersburg on March 17, 1905 at the second Russian Symphonic Concert with N. Cherepnin conducting. It took all the way to 1961 when it finally got published.

I am quite baffled to read Glazunov's mellow critique of this Symphony. Compare that to the way he approached and bungled the premiere of one of the greatest Russian Symphonies ever written, namely Rachmaninov's First Symphony.

Aulis Sallinen - Symphony No. 1, Op. 24 (1971)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-19 | Aulis Heikki Sallinen (born 9 April 1935) is a Finnish contemporary classical music composer. Sallinen studied at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Joonas Kokkonen. He has had works commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and has also written seven operas, eight symphonies, concertos for violin, cello, flute, horn, and English horn, as well as several chamber works. He won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1978 for his opera Ratsumies (The Horseman).

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Symphony No. 1, Op. 24 (1971)

Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz conducted by Ari Rasilainen

Aulis Sallinen began writing his first Symphony in 1970 when the City of Helsinki announced a composers' competition to mark the inauguration of Finlandia Hall. Completing the symphony in 1971, Sallinen was awarded First Prize in the contest; the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director, Jorma Panula, premiered the work at Finlandia Hall during the 2 December inaugural festivities.

Details from Fugue for Thought:
The work begins poignantly with a viola solo, joined shortly after by violin. Flute, piccolo and glockenspiel afford a magical, haunting glimmer to the melancholy tones of the strings, and this sets the mood of the entire piece, heartfelt, but somewhat bleak. Things get underway when cellos and double basses pick up the figure that viola started. By the time the flute echoes the same figures, I find myself entirely entranced in this world, one that’s expressive and lyrical, but also dark and somewhat hard-edged, morose.

More than Sibelius or Shostakovich, Allan Pettersson comes to mind in the way the work unravels from these single few gestures, barren, exposed, but so passionate and full of depth. In contrast with this first section, but still related to it, is one in which long pauses hold the tension in the air, punctuating a conversation between flute and bassoon. The string voices that interrupt here and there remind me of some of the death shrieks in Mahler’s music, like the second symphony (the only one that is actually referred to that way), or third or tenth. This section seems to act like a scherzo, being notated in 9/4, the first time I’ve ever seen that time signature.

In little fragments and bits, I hear what seem like references to the Dies Irae, and what was originally an airy, arctic sounding passage has filled out to one of greater body and complexity, generating immense amounts of tension, afforded partly by woodblock, snare and bass drum pounding out an almost unnerving heartbeat.

As if coming off the near-unbearably tense energy of this central scherzo-like passage, glockenspiel, bells and vibraphone fall into a triplet-figured rhythm, something that has the feeling that it’s going to be what drags us, haunts us through to the end of the work.

Surprisingly, though, and immensely satisfying, is that the figure from the very opening, what the flutes echoed out across the barren landscape at the very opening, returns in violins as cellos echo a similar, nearly triplet-feeling rhythm. It seems to develop into a march, something with the haunting, almost ostinato-like persistence of Shostakovich, a plodding, painful march, nothing triumphant. The timpani thunders out the first beat of every 3/4 bar, and snare answers on the subsequent two.

Ultimately, the opening theme does not return for a reprise, but the march-like passage cools off, as if dimming away, disappearing to leave wailing horns, fluttering flutes, and serene, almost sacred, organ-like strings for a still finish to this absolutely magical, epic-sounding but very compact 14-minute symphony.

Of all the works we’ve discussed in this series, this is one that I find (along with Kokkonen and Aho) to be one of the most strikingly powerful. It has a sharpness to it, a focus and clarity in its expression that gets right to the heart of the listener and the subject matter. It’s absolutely breathtaking, and so easy to hear and give a few listens to with how brief this intense work is.

This really is the joy of spending a little time to dig through and find something truly special to enjoy, isn’t it?

We’re nearing the end of our Finnish series, but there’s still a little bit left. This is, however, the last symphonic work we’ll discuss in 2017, and I’d say it’s a fantastic one to be the last. We’ve got two more works left this year, very interesting chamber pieces, so do stay tuned for those. Thank you so much for reading.

Full article: https://fugueforthought.de/2017/12/28/aulis-sallinen-symphony-no-1-op-24/

Evgeny Svetlanov - Piano Sonata No. 3 (1953)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-18 | Yevgeny Fyodorovich Svetlanov (Russian: Евгéний Фёдорович Светлáнов; 6 September 1928 – 3 May 2002) was a Russian conductor, composer and a pianist.

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Piano Sonata No. 3 (1952-53)

I. Allegro tranquillo (0:00)
II. Andantino (4:57)
III. Allegro con moto (10:30)

Evgeny Svetlanov, piano
digitized LP by Theodore Servin

Svetlanov was born in Moscow and studied conducting with Aleksandr Gauk at the Moscow Conservatory. From 1955 he conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre, being appointed principal conductor there in 1962. From 1965 he was principal conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra (now the Russian State Symphony Orchestra). In 1979 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Svetlanov was also music director of the Residentie Orchestra (The Hague) from 1992 to 2000 and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 1999.

In 2000 Svetlanov was fired from his post with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra by the minister of culture of Russia, Mikhail Shvydkoi. The reason given was that Svetlanov was spending too much time conducting abroad and not enough time in Moscow.

Svetlanov was particularly noted for his interpretations of Russian works – he covered the whole range of Russian music, from Mikhail Glinka to the present day. He was also one of the few Russian conductors to conduct the entire symphonic output of Gustav Mahler.

His own compositions included a String Quartet (1948), Daugava, Symphonic Poem (1952), Siberian Fantasy for Orchestra, Op. 9 (1953), Images d'Espagne, Rhapsody for orchestra (1954), Symphony (1956), Festive Poem (1966), Russian Variations for harp and orchestra (1975), Piano Concerto in c minor (1976) and Poem for Violin and Orchestra "To the Memory of David Oistrakh" (1975). He composed Siberian Fantasy in 1953/54, in collaboration with Igor Yakushenko [1932-1999].

Svetlanov was also a competent pianist, three notable recordings being Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Trio No. 2 in D minor and Cello Sonata op. 19, and a disc of Nikolai Medtner's piano music.

Richard Rodney Bennett - Percussion Concerto (1989)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-17 | Sir Richard Rodney Bennett CBE (29 March 1936 – 24 December 2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.

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Percussion Concerto (Nov. 1989, New York)

1. Molto vivo (0:00)
2. Presto (7:18)
3. Interlude . Moderato (13:00)
4. Con brio (17:36)

Tibor Novotny, percussion &
MÁV Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tamás Gál
Live performance

commissioned by and first performed at St Magnus Festival, Orkney, soloist Dame Evelyn Glennie, 1990

Bennett was a pupil at Leighton Park School. He later studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Howard Ferguson and Lennox Berkeley. Ferguson regarded him as extraordinarily brilliant, having perhaps the greatest talent of any British composer in his generation, though lacking in a personal style. During this time, Bennett attended some of the Darmstadt summer courses in 1955, where he was exposed to serialism. He later spent two years in Paris as a student of the prominent serialist Pierre Boulez between 1957 and 1959. He always used both his first names after finding another Richard Bennett active in music.

Bennett taught at the Royal Academy of Music between 1963 and 1965, at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, United States from 1970 to 1971, and was later International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music between 1994 and the year 2000. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1977, and was knighted in 1998.

Bennett produced over 200 works for the concert hall, and 50 scores for film and television. He was also a writer and performer of jazz songs for 50 years. Immersed in the techniques of the European avant-garde via his contact with Boulez, Bennett subsequently developed his own dramato-abstract style. In his later years, he adopted an increasingly tonal idiom.

Bennett regularly performed as a jazz pianist, with such singers as Cleo Laine, Marion Montgomery (until her death in 2002), Mary Cleere Haran (until her death in 2011), and more recently with Claire Martin, performing the Great American Songbook. Bennett and Martin performed at such venues as The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, and The Pheasantry and Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London.

Despite his early studies in modernist techniques, Bennett's tastes were eclectic. He wrote in a wide range of styles, including jazz, for which he had a particular fondness. Early on, he began to write music for feature films. He said that it was as if the different styles of music that he was writing went on 'in different rooms, albeit in the same house'. Later in his career the different aspects all became equally celebrated – for example in his 75th birthday year (2011), there were numerous concerts featuring all the different strands of his work. At the BBC Proms for example his Murder on the Orient Express Suite was performed in a concert of film music, and in the same season his Dream Dancing and Jazz Calendar were also featured. Also at the Wigmore Hall, London, on 23 March 2011 (a few days before his 75th birthday), a double concert took place in which his Debussy-inspired piece Sonata After Syrinx was performed in the first concert, and in the Late Night Jazz Event which followed, Bennett and Claire Martin performed his arrangements of the Great American Songbook (Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart and so on). See also Tom Service's appreciation of Bennett's music published in The Guardian in July 2012.

He wrote music for films and television; among his scores were the Doctor Who story The Aztecs (1964) for television, and the feature films Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) and Equus (1977). His scores for Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), each earned him Academy Award nominations, with Murder on the Orient Express gaining a BAFTA award. Later works include Enchanted April (1992), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1999) and Gormenghast (2000). He was also a prolific composer of orchestral works, piano solos, choral works and operas. Despite this eclecticism, Bennett's music rarely involved stylistic crossover.

Eduard Tubin - Violin Concerto, No. 2 (1945)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-16 | Eduard Tubin (18 June [O.S. 5 June] 1905 – 17 November 1982) was an Estonian composer, conductor, and choreographer.

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Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor (1945)

I. Andante (0:00)
II. Allegro marciale vivace (6:46)
III. Adagio, quasi recitativo - Allegro non troppo, ma energico (13:11)

Gustavo Garcia, violin and the Göteborgs Symfoniker conducted by Neeme Järvi

Tubin often used Estonian folk music in his works, for instance in the Sinfonietta on Estonian motifs. His ballet Kratt is entirely based on folk tunes. In 1938 Tubin had visited the Estonian island of Hiiumaa to collect folk songs. Tubin was also a very good orchestrator, and this can be heard particularly in the Third and Fourth symphonies.

A change took place in Tubin's style at the end of the 1940s; the music became harmonically more astringent. The finale of the seventh symphony makes much use of a theme with all twelve notes, though it is tonal. The shift to a less nationalistic and more international style came after Tubin had fled Estonia to Sweden.

Tubin is perhaps not better known because of his displacement. Although Estonia claims him as one of their greatest composers, most of his composing was done in Sweden, which never gave him the attention he was due. Tubin is gaining recognition, however, particularly for his later symphonies and the Second Piano Sonata, which are recognised as masterpieces. Most of his works have been recorded (there are two complete recorded sets of his symphonies, conducted by Neeme Järvi and Arvo Volmer). In June 2005 the city of Tallinn observed the centennial of his birth with a festival where all of his symphonies and much of his piano and chamber music was performed. A statue of Tubin was erected in Tartu.

Read more here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Tubin

Harald Genzmer - Trombone Sonata (1974)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-15 | Harald Genzmer (9 February 1909 – 16 December 2007) was a German composer, pianist, clarinetist and academic.

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Sonata for Trombone and Piano (1974)

1. Allegro (0:00)
2. Adagio (3:15)
3. Finale. Allegro (6:04)

Roger Verdi, trombone & Martha Locker, piano
from their album "Looking Ahead; Works for Trombone"

The son of the legal historian Felix Genzmer [de], Genzmer was born in Blumenthal, near Kiel, Germany, he studied composition with Paul Hindemith at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin beginning in 1928.

From 1938 he taught at the Volksmusikschule Berlin-Neukölln. During the early part of the Second World War he served as a military band clarinetist. When his pianistic abilities were noticed by the Musikmeister, he was put on detached duties as a pianist/accompanist for "Lazarettenkonzerte", concerts for recuperating wounded officers. He was based for some time near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he made the acquaintance of Richard Strauss. When the war ended, he was offered a post at the Musikhochschule München. This was blocked by the American authorities, and so, from 1946 to 1957 he taught at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg im Breisgau.

From 1957 to 1974 he taught at the Musikhochschule München. He hung a framed review from the Süddeutsche Zeitung above his piano, which stated after the premiere of his 1955 Sinfonietta for Strings that it was a work destined only for oblivion. Sharing the frame was a cutting from a few years later, reporting that in the previous year it had been the most performed work for string orchestra in Europe.

Carl Maria von Weber - 5 Deutsche Lieder, Op. 25 (1812)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-14 | Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18 or 19 November 1786 – 5 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school.

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5 Deutsche Lieder, Op. 25 (1811-12)

1. Liebe-Glühen ("In der Berge Riesenschatten") (0:00)
Librettist: Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz (1786–1870)

2. Über die Berge mit Ungestüm ("Der arme Minnesänger") (3:55)
Librettist: August von Kotzebue (1761–1819)

3. Lass mich schlummern, Herzlein, schweige (5:40)
Librettist: August von Kotzebue (1761–1819)

4. Bettlerlied ("I und mein junges Weib") (6:43)
Traditional, from Deutsche Volkslieder (Büsching and Von der Hagen)

(5. Umringt vom mutherfülltem Heere Not recorded by Peter Schreier
Librettist: Cäsar Max Heigel (1783–1847))

Peter Schreier, tenor & Konrad Ragossnig, guitar

Harald Genzmer - Piano Concerto (1948)

Bartje Bartmans 2024-08-13 | Harald Genzmer (9 February 1909 – 16 December 2007) was a German composer, pianist, clarinetist and academic.

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Piano Concerto (1948)

1. Moderato - Vivace (0:00)
2. Adagio (9:45)
3. Rondo. Allegro (19:16)

Oliver Triendl, piano and the Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Werner Andreas Albert.

The son of the legal historian Felix Genzmer [de], Genzmer was born in Blumenthal, near Kiel, Germany, he studied composition with Paul Hindemith at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin beginning in 1928.

From 1938 he taught at the Volksmusikschule Berlin-Neukölln. During the early part of the Second World War he served as a military band clarinetist. When his pianistic abilities were noticed by the Musikmeister, he was put on detached duties as a pianist/accompanist for "Lazarettenkonzerte", concerts for recuperating wounded officers. He was based for some time near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he made the acquaintance of Richard Strauss. When the war ended, he was offered a post at the Musikhochschule München. This was blocked by the American authorities, and so, from 1946 to 1957 he taught at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg im Breisgau.

From 1957 to 1974 he taught at the Musikhochschule München. He hung a framed review from the Süddeutsche Zeitung above his piano, which stated after the premiere of his 1955 Sinfonietta for Strings that it was a work destined only for oblivion. Sharing the frame was a cutting from a few years later, reporting that in the previous year it had been the most performed work for string orchestra in Europe.