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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

Bach with his three sons,
Gottfried, Carl and Wilhelm

Is Bach the best composer who ever lived and could he also be the composer of the second millennium? It is interesting to note that in 1745, three years after the first performance of Handel’s Messiah, a German journal published a list of what it considered the 10 most important composers of the day. Handel was listed as fifth, and Bach seventh. None of the others have been heard of since. A monumental figure of the Baroque period, the German organist, harpsichordist and composer was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Thuringia. Bach summed up the musical knowledge and techniques that preceded him and then developed them further. A prolific composer, his work extended into all areas except opera and ballet. Bach was influenced by a broad range of styles from the German, French and Italian schools and was especially interested in works of Frescobaldi, Buxtehude, Handel and Vivaldi, Once, he walked the 300 miles to Lübeck and back to hear the Danish master organist Dietrich Buxtehude play the organ. Largely self-taught through transcribing earlier composers’ work, he was successively organist at Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, court organist at Weimar and Cöthen, cantor at the Thomaskirche and civic director of music in Leipzig from 1723 until his death on July 28, 1750.

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)

Beethoven

Beethoven was born in Bonn on December 17, 1770. His father, an impatient and aggressive man, was a little-known tenor who spent most of his time and money on alcohol. Often, upon coming home late at night, he is said to have dragged his young son out of bed to teach him music lessons or to force him to play the violin for the pleasure of his drinking companions. When only seven, Beethoven made his first public appearance. His precocious musical talent was spotted by the composer, Christian Gottleb Neefe who later became his teacher. From then on, Beethoven never looked back. In 1787 the young Beethoven visited Mozart in Vienna. Mozart was immediately impressed and later said, “Watch this young man’s progress; one day he will be the talk of the world.” In 1792 Beethoven went to Vienna where he studied briefly with Haydn, longer with J.G. Albrechtsberger, and possibly also with Salieri. Here he established his reputation as a keyboard virtuoso. By birth a very stubborn character, he was determined to survive as a free-lance musician. This task, however, became increasingly difficult by the gradual onset of deafness which proved to be incurable and eventually ended his career as a performer. In the early 1800’s, as his music grew ever greater, Beethoven’s romantic relationships suffered. Though all the time he was in love with one woman or another, usually of aristocratic or wealthy origin, they were always unobtainable and he never married. Increasingly he dedicated himself to composition and supported himself partly by public concerts where he presented his works and skills as an improviser. He also earned money through dedication fees, sales of publications, and generous gifts from wealthy patrons.

Beethoven’s creative life can be divided into three periods - the first covering his youth in Bonn and early years in Vienna (1782 - 1800), the middle period covering his more heroic and turbulent orchestral works (1800-1812) and the last covering the more serious and introspective works which include many of the string quartets (1812-1827). By March 1827, Beethoven’s health had seriously deteriorated and, in some way symbolising Beethoven’s own dramatic life, a violent storm raged on the afternoon of his death on March 26, 1827. In Beethoven’s large output of compositions in every genre are works of the greatest mastery. The finest of them are unmatched in originality and expressiveness. Beethoven revolutionized classical music. He broke many rules which had been considered sacred for centuries and thus influenced every major composer that followed. A complicated man, but a brilliant composer, perhaps he did not share the elevated ideals later generations have attributed to his music. However, at the height of his career he showed an incredible confidence in himself saying, “Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.” Beethoven’s life story was one of triumph over tragedy. In the face of considerable adversity, he became a musical legend in his own lifetime and his work - the most powerful and important music ever to be written by one composer - is eternal.

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Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg on May 7, 1833 to poor, but respectable, parents. His father was an orchestral double bass player who realised early his son’s musical talent. Brahms’ distinguished piano teacher, Eduard Marxsen, also immediately spotted his pupil’s great creative ability. However, it was not until Brahms met Robert Schumann and his pianist wife, Clara, in 1853 that his true genius was recognized and encouraged. Brahms was welcomed into the Schumanns’ home and a great friendship developed that was to change his life for good. Brahms and Clara Schumann felt an immediate affinity that, for Brahms, soon developed into a passionate form of heroine-worship.

Johannes Brahms

To Brahms, Clara became the epitome of the unobtainable beloved and when Schumann died a couple of years later, Brahms gave her great support, helping to take care of her seven children whilst she earned a living as a pianist.   Owing to Clara’s lasting loyalty to her diseased husband, her relationship with Brahms, however, is thought to have remained platonic. Nevertheless, it was to have a powerful and enduring effect on the life and work of Brahms.

Brahms first visited Vienna in the spring of 1863 and immediately felt the charm of the Austrian capital. He wrote to a friend, “The gaiety of the city, the beauty of the surroundings, the sympathetic and vivacious public – how stimulating these are to the artist! In addition we have in particular the memory of the great musicians whose lives and works are brought daily to our minds.” Later, in the early 1870s, he was to make his permanent home in the city of Beethoven and Schubert. Although, by now, he earned a comfortable living from his music, he preferred to live simply. Cautious and shy by nature, Brahms found it difficult to show his true feelings and it was only through his music that the depth and sincerity of his character shone through. In 1897 he died of cancer, only a year after the death of Clara Schumann- perhaps the source of his greatest inspiration.

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Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Chopin was born at Zelazova Wola, near Warsaw, on 1 March 1810. His French father Nicolas Chopin, born in Marainville, Voges came to Poland in search of fortune, served in the Polish National Guard and became a tutor of French in the Polish aristocracy. He married Chopin’s mother Justyna Krzyzanowska in June 1806. Chopin’s childhood was a secure and happy one. From an early age, ahead of any formal training, Chopin played duets with his elder sister Ludwika showing a great gift not only for music, but also for writing verses, devising comedies and drawing caricatures. At the age of six Chopin started having his first lessons from a local piano teacher Wojciech Zywny, violinist, composer and occasional conductor. Zywny guided Chopin into the German classical repertoire of Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as well as through pieces of contemporary composers such as Hummel, an early influence on Chopin’s own compositions, and the great virtuoso Kalkbrenner. Chopin constantly improvised pieces of his own and in 1817, only seven years old, a Polonaise in G minor was published. The Warsaw press commented on Chopin’s extraordinary, creative talent: “Geniuses are born in our country also, but the lack of publicity hides them from the public.” Chopin’s fame spread fast and in 1818, at the age of eight, he gave his first public performance at the Radziwill Palace.

Always physically frail Chopin spent his summer holidays in the village of Szafarnia. Here he heard the traditional Polish folk-music, which was to be a lifelong influence and wrote some of his first mazurkas. After three years at the Lyceum Chopin started at the Warsaw Conservatoire in 1826 and took composition lessons from the director Josef Elsner. Through Elsner’s sympathetic guidance, Chopin continued to write compositions with works such as the flamboyant Là ci darem la mano variations from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, op.2, later performed at his first professional debut at the Kärtnertortheater in Vienna. After brief visits to Berlin and Vienna meeting Zelter, Spontini and Mendelssohen, Chopin returned to Warsaw determined to find a way to establish his reputation abroad. His last year in Poland was mainly occupied with the composition of his two piano concertos No.1 in E minor and No.2 in F minor.

Encouraged by his success Chopin left Poland on the 11 November 1830, initially for Vienna, spending there eight rather frustrating months, giving only two performances but writing an impressive amount of compositions including mazurkas, waltzes, the Grande Polonaise in E flat and sketching his first ballade in G minor. In September 1831, Chopin arrived in Paris and soon became part of the influential circle of Liszt, Mendelssohn, Osborne and Hiller. Chopin’s national pride was strong and through his music he forged a spiritual link with his country that the years of exile could never destroy. Paris became his base until his death the 17 October 1849.

Chopin’s national identity asserts itself not only in the pieces based on Polish dances, but in the use of Polish folk music and through the melancholy that seems to linger beneath the surface of his work. More than any other composer, Chopin has become associated with the pianoforte and he was widely regarded as the leading piano virtuoso of his day, even in the company of contemporaries such as Moscheles and Liszt. Remarkably, however, because of his dislike of large audiences, Chopin gave only 30 public performances throughout his entire life. Always a kind, courteous and considerate person, no one, having met Chopin, could fail to like him and in spite of a tormented love life and frequent bouts of illness, Chopin has left us with many beautiful and memorable compositions.

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Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)

Antonin Dvořák was born in 1841 in the small village of Nelahozeves, north of Prague. Despite the fact that Dvorak’s musical talent was abundantly clear, his father intended that he should follow the family tradition and become a butcher. In order to improve his grasp of the German language and to continue his apprenticeship as a butcher, Dvořák, at age 13, was sent to Zlonice, the village where his Uncle Antonin Zdeněk lived. The German master at the school here was also the church organist and, under his guidance, Dvořák learned piano, organ, viola, violin and keyboard harmony. Dvořák’s uncle soon realised his nephew’s extraordinary talent and offered to finance his full-time musical studies. Eventually Dvořák’s father was persuaded to let his son follow a musical career and, upon completion of his apprenticeship in 1857, Dvořák set out for Prague to begin his studies at the Prague Organ School. When he graduated in 1859, he was awarded the second prize and told that “his work was excellent but his musical theory was less sound than his practical work".
Antonin Dvořák

After leaving the Organ School, Dvořák found his family still very poor and unable to support him. Fortunately, Karel Komzák, leader of a Prague orchestra, needed a viola player and Dvořák was hired. The orchestra was popular in restaurants in Prague and often played at balls and classical concerts. In his spare time, Dvořák composed and gave lessons to supplement his income. He told no one but his closest friends about his compositions, which included his first couple of symphonies. Until 1878 Dvořák continued to rely on teaching as his main source of income. Then, as the result of sending a copy of his Moravian Duets to Brahms, his reputation started to spread. Brahms sent the compositions to his publisher, Simrock, who published them and immediately commissioned the Slavonic Dances.

Dvořák’s first invitation to conduct his own work abroad came from the Philharmonic Society in London. At the first of three public performances on March 20, 1894, he conducted Stabat Mater at the Royal Albert Hall, giving him one of his greatest public triumphs. The English had indeed taken him into their hearts. After this great success, Dvořák was at last financially secure and he celebrated by realizing a long-cherished dream of buying a small house in the Czech countryside. Over the next nine years his success was consolidated and he was awarded an increasing number of honours and awards including the Austrian “Iron Crown” and a Doctorate of Music at Cambridge. In 1892, Mrs. Jeanette Thurber, the founder of the National Conservatory in New York, invited Dvořák to be its Director. Dvořák spent three years in America, mainly in New York. At the height of his career, Dvořák was feted from Moscow to the Mississippi, but he never forgot his bohemian peasant childhood or the Czech people who inspired his music.

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John Field (1782-1837)

John Field

John Field, Irish composer and virtuoso pianist, was born in Dublin in July 1782. As a young child he showed an exceptional musical talent and gave his first public performance at the age of nine. His family, realizing the talent of the young Field, decided to move to London where Field became a student of Muzio Clementi-- talented composer, pianist, teacher, and later, piano-maker and music publisher. At the age of seventeen, with considerable success, he gave the first performance of Piano Concerto No.1, the first of his seven piano concertos. When he was twenty, he embarked on a long tour together with Clementi that was to take them to Paris, Vienna and on to St. Petersburg where he arrived in 1802. Field was exceptionally well received in the musical circles of Russia, which could account for one of the reasons why he decided to spend most of his life there.

His importance as a musical innovator, especially for the keyboard, has generally gone quite unnoticed but should never be under-estimated as he is regarded as the creator and pioneer of the nocturne. Field introduced an expressive style of playing that anticipated Chopin’s. Indeed, Field’s nocturnal style was later taken up and developed extensively by Chopin. With Field’s unusual addition of technical devices and pedal effects, he won many admirers in Europe and Russia and became the inspiration for a number of famous names such as Liszt, Schumann, Debussy and Rachmaninov. In his relatively short life, Field produced a large volume of works for solo piano, piano duets and the seven piano concertos. Field, who was the first great virtuoso pianist to come to live in Russia, became adored by the Russians and had a large following there, but sadly, due to conducting a rather exhausting and unhealthy lifestyle, he died early in Moscow in 1837.

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Aldo Finzi (1897 - 1945)

Aldo Finzi was born in Milan onFebruary 4, 1897 into an old Jewish family that originally came from Mantua. The family had a traditional love for music and Finzi’s aunt was a celebrated soprano by the name of Giuseppina Finzi Magrini. After completing his classical studies at the Liceo Parini in Milan, he took a degree in law at the university in Pavia and simultaneously took his diploma in compositions as a private student at the Conservatoire of Santa Cecilia in Rome. Finzi soon gained success and celebrity among the young Italian composers. His works include lyrics, music “da camera,” symphonic music and the dramatic work, Shylock (unfinished), which was inspired by the anti-Jewish persecutions.

               Aldo Finz

In 1931, Finzi’s published works listed in Ricordi’s catalogue included: Il Chiostro (The Cloister) for female voices and orchestra, the symphonic poems, Cirano de Bergerac, and Inni alla notte (Hymns to the night), a sonata for violin and piano, a quartet for strings, various lyrics like Barque d’or and a comic opera, La Serenata al Vento, which is based on a libretto written by Veneziani. His most important works include a symphonic poem, L’infinito, written in 1933, a concerto for piano and orchestra, Interludio, written in 1934, and the symphonic poem, Nunquam, Sinfonia Romana, of 1937.
In 1937 the Scala Theatre announced a competition for a new opera to be performed during the following season. Aldo Finzi entered the competition with his work, La Serenata al Vento. Riccardo Pick-Mangiagalli, an older colleague to Finzi and a member of the jury informally advised Finzi ahead of the official announcement, that he had won the competition. However, the official letter, expected in the spring of 1938, never arrived. The reason given was that none of the works entered were considered worthy of being performed. Finzi realized that the judgement made in his favour, had been annulled by the intervention of the government and that he had been victim of the official anti-Semitism at the time.

During the Nazi occupation that followed, Finzi went into hiding, working anonymously or under an assumed name. For example, Finzi’s rhythmic translation to Italian of Béatitudes by Franck, is published under another name. In 1944 he wrote, under his own name, Preludio e fuga per Organo (Prelude and fugue for organ) and to express gratefulness to God for having brought him and his son unscathed through the war, he wrote a Salmo per coro e orchestra (Psalm for chorus and orchestra) in 1944-45. Aldo Finzi informed his son Bruno that the Psalm was dedicated to the Conservatory of Tel Aviv. The stress of having to escape from one place to another and his imprisonment - miraculously avoiding the mass deportations and house searching - altogether undermined his health and he died of a heart attack on February 7, 1945. Following Finzi’s death, his music lay undiscovered until recently. Only now performers and scholars have access to his output, a totally unique corpus in comparison to the Italian music of the period and only now can his heirs actually realise Finzi’s last wish, whispered to his beloved relatives on his deathbed “Let my music be performed”.

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bam 2015   bam 2019   bam 2029   bam 2033                            the belair collection                 Link to: www.aldo-finzi.com

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

George & Ira Gershwin

The story of Gershwin’s life is almost typical of the early 20^th century American “rags to riches” stories. From his rough and ready Lower East Side childhood, he rose, through his music, to become the toast of New York’s social elite. His music, both the songs he wrote for Broadway and the more serious concert works, brought him fame and wealth. Gershwin’s parents Rosa and Moishe Gershowitz migrated from St. Petersburg, Russia to New York in 1891 and the family name was subsequently changed and Americanized to Gershwin. Their first son Ira was born in 1896 and George was born in 1898.

George’s exceptional talent on the piano was soon recognized and in 1912 he became the pupil of Charles Hambitzer, a talented musician and gifted teacher. Inspired by his teacher, for a time George thought of becoming a concert pianist, however, in 1914 he persuaded his parents to allow him to leave school and take a job as a song salesman also called plugger, promoting the songs of the Tin Pan Alley song publisher Remick’s. For Gershwin it was an important step, as it put him in touch with popular music.

The job had long hours and consisted mostly of playing the piano in a little booth, either accompanying amateur singers or demonstrating the latest Remick songs to parlour pianists. He was successful and was soon in demand. His ambition was to have some of his own songs published by Remick’s and, although his employer at first was not interested, eventually he had his first song, a ragtime piano piece Rialto Ripples, published by Remick’s.

Gershwin left Remick’s in 1917 to make his way in what had increasingly become his main goal, the musical comedy world. He soon found work as an accompanist on small shows using the shows as a way to meet the right people and his confident personality together with his talent for improvisations made him very popular. Gershwin was noticed by Max Dreyfus, the head of Harms Publishing, and in 1918 Dreyfus gave him a contact of $35 per week just to write songs which lead to George’s fist collaboration with his brother Ira writing the lyrics for the song The Real American Folk Song. In 1919 he wrote his first complete Broadway score and his first big song hit. The show was the moderately successful La La Lucille and the hit song was Swanee. Although a flop at first, it was later picked up by Al Jolson who put it into his current show, Sinbad, and it quickly became a sensation. With the single biggest hit of his career, Gershwin had arrived. Al Jolson recorded the song in 1920 and sold millions of discs greatly boosting the sales of sheet music as well.

Gershwin’s attempts to combine Jazz and popular music with the concert hall were achieved with overwhelming success in 1924 by the work Rhapsody in Blue written as a concert piece in jazz style and Gershwin became recognized not only as a performer but also as a serious composer. The momentum generated a string of hits like the Broadway score Lady, be Good with some of his most memorable songs, his hit Tip-Toes in 1925 and he repeated his success as serious composer with Concerto in F. A trip to Europe followed in 1928 confirming his international success being honoured in London, Paris and Vienna. His tone poem for orchestra An American in Paris followed and many more compositions among them in 1934 the Variations for piano and orchestra I Got Rhytm and the opera Porgy and Bess in 1935. In June 1937, previously noticed warning signs that all was not well became more persistent and he began to experience frequent headaches and dizzy spells, they became more and more frequent and on 9 July he fell in a coma. After having a brain tumour removed he died on 11 July 1937. Two huge funeral ceremonies in Hollywood and New York illustrated the great loss felt by Americans.

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Edward Grieg (1843-1907)

Edward Grieg was born in Bergen in June 1843. His father Alexander Grieg had British ancestors and was the British Consul in Bergen. Gesine Judith Hagerup, Grieg's mother, was a talented musician and his first music teacher. However, Grieg's professional musical education did not really start until the age of 15, when Ole Bull, who was a leading personality within the nationalist school of music in Norway, heard the young Grieg play the piano and persuaded his parents to send him to the Leipzig Conservatoire.

Grieg

After a rather disappointing start, he was taught by E.F. Wenzel, who had been a close friend of Schumann. Grieg fell in love with the music of Schumann, and on one occasion he actually heard Clara Schumann perform her husband's piano concerto. When Grieg's course finished in 1862, he said that he "left the Conservatoire as stupid as he entered it" although his teachers were of a different opinion as they wrote of Grieg's "significant talent for composition" and called him" an outstanding pianist among the best of our students". In 1863 Grieg moved to Copenhagen where he met Hans Christian Andersen and Rikard Nordraak, who passionately believed in Norwegian nationalist music, and was to heavily influence Grieg's future interest in Norwegian folk music. In 1864, he became engaged to his cousin Nina Hagerup also from Bergen and a talented singer. Grieg wrote for Nina one of his most lyrical songs "Love Thee"; the setting verse by Hans Christian Andersen.

In 1868 he received a letter from Franz Liszt praising his Violin Sonata op.8 and inviting him to come and stay in Weimar. As much as he wanted to, Grieg could not go immediately, as he had to attend the premier of his recently completed Piano Concerto in A minor. Finally, in February 1870, Grieg visited Liszt, now in Rome. Liszt played the Piano Concerto at sight and after playing it a second time he went back and played the ending again, saying with great emotion "keep on, I tell you! You have what is needed and don't let them frighten you". Liszt's praise gave confidence and prestige to Grieg at home and abroad and in 1874 he received a letter from Henrik Ibsen commissioning him to write the incidental music to his drama "Peer Gynt"; an instant success. At the start of the new century, Grieg's health, never very good, was deteriorating, and in 1906 he wrote his last work "Four Psalms". He died in the summer of 1907. Always a gentle, kind and much loved man, Grieg was given the state funeral of a national hero.

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Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837)

Johann N. Hummel

Johann Nepomuk Hummel, virtuoso pianist, composer, conductor, and teacher was born in Austria in 1778 and, as a young child, was introduced to W.A. Mozart. After studying with Mozart for two years, Hummel toured widely as an outstanding child prodigy. Upon returning to Vienna in 1793, Hummel continued his studies of counterpoint, composition, and organ with Haydn, Salieri and Albrechtsberger. In 1804 Hummel became Konzertmeister to Prince Esterházy, composing for the chapel, teaching, and assembling the Haydn archives. He was Kapellmeister in Stuttgart from 1816 to 1818 and later moved to the same post in Weimar. Here he conducted the court theatre while making major trips to France, the Netherlands, Russia, Poland, and London.

He was a prolific composer producing 127 compositions with opus numbers, nine posthumous works, and 39 works without opus numbers-most of them unpublished. He composed in all genres, including operas and incidental music, ballets, sacred and secular vocal music, orchestralovertures and dances. However, it is his many works for solo piano, piano duets and most of all his piano concertos that really illuminate Hummel’s importance as a composer. Hummel composed his first two piano concertos, both clearly written in the Mozartean classical style, in 1813 and 1816. However, after his move to Weimar, Hummel, who had befriended Beethoven, wrote his first romantic works that clearly reflect Beethoven’s influence. This is especially noticeable in the piano concertos in A minor, Op. 85 and the B minor, Op .89. It has been suggested that the two larghetto movements in these works later influenced Chopin as models for his own larghetto compositions.

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                               bam 2011    bam 2044                                                  the belair collection

Franz Liszt (1811-1897)

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt, or Franciscus Liszt, as he was christened, was born in the village of Raiding in Hungary on October 22, 1811. His father, Adam Liszt, could play most instruments and bought his son a piano as soon as he was old enough to sit on a piano stool. Under his father’s strict regime, Liszt quickly made great progress and at the age of nine made his first public appearance to great applause. His father was so ambitious for his son that he uprooted his family and left Hungary for Vienna. Salieri and Czerny were engaged as teachers for Liszt and Czerny was so excited about the potential of the young boy that he offered to teach him free of charge. He noticed with astonishment that Liszt could play anything at sight and improvise brilliantly.

When Liszt was twelve, Czerny declared that there was nothing more he could teach him and suggested that he should continue his studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1824 Liszt made his London debut followed by exhausting tours in Ireland and France. By the time he was sixteen, Liszt had been performing in public for seven years. In 1830 Liszt met the three composers, Berlioz, Paganini, and Chopin, and all were to have a considerable influence on his music. In Berlioz, he met another tormented romantic who had extended the range of the orchestra as Paganini had extended the range of the violin. Liszt was inspired to do the same for the piano. The influence of Chopin was different, he was a great admirer of Liszt and once said: “I wish I could steal his manner of playing my etudes” and usually Chopin had a calming influence on his nervous virtuoso friend.

A passionate lover, a man of religion and a genius composer, Liszt “possessed” his female audiences with his inspired and scintillating performances. The sensational mass hysteria around him developed into sheer “Lisztomania” and his remarkable career exemplified the contradictions and achievements of the Romantic era. Liszt’s many female relationships were to have a lasting effect and have perhaps contributed to his decision to become an Abbé in 1865 after taking four minor orders of the Catholic Church. Towards the end of his life, Liszt spent his time mostly in Rome, Weimar and Budapest, devoting his time to music and religion. In 1886, on his way to Beyreuth, he became ill with pneumonia and died on July 31 in Beyreuth.

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   bam 9626   bam 2012                                             the belair collection

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Mozart

“Before God, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me.“ These were the words of Joseph Haydn upon meeting Mozart’s father. Eager to show the world the miraculous and precocious talent of his son, Leopold Mozart took the young Wolfgang Mozart – a child prodigy - on a series of exhibition tours which introduced him as a genius to the nobility of Europe.This “greatest composer” indeed went on to become the outstanding and most extraordinary musical genius of his time. Like his father, Mozart was employed by Count Colloredo, but this proved an unhappy relationship, and in 1781, he moved from Salzburg to Vienna. In 1782, Mozart married Constanze Weber and they were happy despite the rumours surrounding his exuberant social life. He became the Emperor’s Court Composer, but was frequently frustrated by his notoriously jealous rival, the composer Salieri, who used his position as Imperial Kapellmeister to delay the performance of much of Mozart’s work.

During his relatively short life, Mozart – impish, childlike and irrepressibly cheerful - maintained a staggering output of inspired composition; the ebullient Mozart never surrendered his artistic freedom, and it is due to this deep individuality of spirit that we are today blessed with music of such brilliance. Poor health, which had plagued Mozart since childhood, worsened with the onset of kidney disease and he died in early December 1791. Joseph Haydn, at the time directing Mozart’s famous last symphonies in London, wept upon hearing the news of his friend’s death.

The sublime and the beautiful. The concept of classical music conjures up images of symmetry, refinement and even delicacy but the music itself can in fact express much emotion, from the often violent expressiveness of Bach to the sublime melodies of Mozart. Dittersdorf, Mozart’s friend, once wrote: “He was so astonishingly rich in ideas I could only wish he had not been so extravagant with them. He gives the listener no time to draw breath; for when one wants to ponder one beautiful idea there is another even finer one to drive the first away, and so it goes on …” Such creativity both astonished and baffled many of Mozart’s contemporaries.

So did the logic with which he developed his ideas. Each feeds on and emerges from its predecessor with such inevitability that the music reflects unity as a skilfully cut diamond reflects light; each facet has its own fascination but is part of the majesty of the whole. Mozart gives an important clue to his intentions in a letter to his father when he says of some of his piano concertos that they are a “happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural without being too vapid. There are passages here and there from which connoisseurs can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.”

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Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1951)

Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev was born on April 23, 1891 at Sontsovka, in the Ukraine. Enjoying a happy childhood on the estate managed by his father, Sergei was introduced to the piano at a very early age by his mother, Maria. She was a good teacher and Sergei was immensely talented.   By the age of six, he could play the piano fluently and by age 11, had written two operas and many piano pieces. Upon realizing that Sergei needed additional tutoring, and on the advice of Sergei Taneyev, Maria engaged the young composer, Reinhold Glière, to teach Sergei the basics of composition. In 1904, at age 13, young Prokoviev entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory, taking with him four operas, two sonatas, a symphony, and many other pieces. His ten years at the conservatory were not without problems because he already felt himself a composer who needed little but polishing up. In 1910, his father died and it became necessary for him to make his own way. Fortunately in 1911 and 1913, he premiered his first and second piano concertos-each causing quite a sensation-and his music appeared in print for the first time. He graduated in 1914, winning the Rubinstein Prize for a performance of his Piano Concerto No. 1.

Prokofiev met his wife, Lina Llubera, on his first visit to America in 1920. After their marriage in 1923, the family moved to Paris where they had two sons Svyatoslav and Oleg. In 1929, Prokofiev returned to Russia in face of considerable hostility from the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. Even so, he began to think more and more about returning to Russia permanently. Although he continued to live in Paris for a while, he maintained an apartment in Moscow from 1933 until 1936 when decided to take up permanent residence there. During his last years, his musical output dropped rapidly and he died on March 6, 1953. Prokofiev had risen above the sometimes severe artistic limitations imposed on him by the state and, together with Shostakovich, was known as one of the twin giants of 20th century Soviet music.

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                bam 2017    bam 2023                                                  the belair collection

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Rachmaninov

Sergei Rachmaninov was born in 1873 into an aristocratic Russian family. Although musically precocious, he had an insecure and unstable childhood. His father, a handsome army officer, and his mother, Lubov Butakova, a wealthy general’s daughter, inherited several large country estates, however, due to bad management and financial setbacks, all the property was lost. When Sergei was only nine, his parents separated. Although his teachers thought highly of his musical talent, both as a pianist and composer, Rachmaninov sometimes lacked self-confidence and was not always “in tune” with the music of the time. Nevertheless, his works became greatly admired as some of the best examples of late romantic music. Educated at the Moscow Conservatory with Nikolai Zverev, he gained considerable success in his career as composer, pianist, and conductor. He made numerous tours in America playing mostly his own works in addition to a relatively small repertoire of other composers’ works. Rachmaninov married his first cousin Natalia Satina in 1902 and for the following ten years they had a happy life at her family estate in Ivanovka. However, in the summer of 1917, after a visit to Ivanovka, the hostile attitude of the peasants convinced Rachmaninov to look for a way to leave Russia.

By a stroke of luck he received an invitation for a concert tour in Sweden and managed to get passes for his wife and children. They crossed the Finnish border on December 23, 1917, never to see Russia again. At the time, still only in his forties, Rachmaninov had already written 39 of his total of 45 published works. After some months in Stockholm and Copenhagen, the Rachmaninovs finally decided to move to America arriving in New York in November 1918. Although he continued to live periodically in Switzerland and France, America became his base and he died in California on March 28, 1943. As the last of the great Russian romantic composers, Rachmaninov wrote some of the 20th century’s most loved music.

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bam9621      bam9622      bam2017      bam2020      bam2030    bam 2044           the belair collection

Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894)

Rubinstein

Russian pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein was born at Wychwantinez on November 28, 1829 to parents of Jewish descent. Under the guidance of a musically gifted mother, Rubinstein and his brother Nicolaj received their first piano lessons. At the age of eight Rubinstein became a student in Moscow under the French pianist Villoing and in 1839 gave his first public performance. In 1840 he travelled to Paris together with his teacher where he met both Chopin and Liszt-the latter inspiring him to further develop his technical skills. Rubinstein went on his first concert tour in 1843 to England, Holland, Scandinavia, Germany and Austria. He began his study of composition in 1844 under Sigfried Wilhelm Dehn in Berlin. Among Dehn’s notable students was also the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka. Because of the sudden death of his father in 1846, Rubenstein was forced to end his studies. He left for Vienna and later moved to Bratislava where he survived as a piano tutor. In 1848, Rubinstein returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg where he began composing operas such as The Siberian Hunters (performed by Liszt in Weimar 1854) and The Ocean Symphony. Under the patronage of the grand duchess, Helena Pawlowna, he received financial assistance that allowed him to undertake another educational concert trip. This tour firmly established his fame as one of the leading virtuosos of his time and, as a result, his compositions-especially his songs and piano works-became very popular.

In 1858 Rubenstein returned to St. Petersburg where he was appointed Court Pianist and Conductor and in 1859 he became the head of the Russian Musical Society. He founded the Royal Conservatory of St. Petersburg in 1862 and remained as director until 1867 when his restless spirit took him on another concert trip. During Rubinstein’s directorship of the conservatory, Tchaikovsky attended as student of composition. Rubinstein returned as a director of the Conservatory in 1887, remaining there until 1890, and died in Peterhoff on November 20, 1894. As a virtuoso pianist, Anton Rubinstein combined his masterful technique with his extremely sensitive and passionate expressiveness and became famous the world over. His compositions are romantic in style and he gained even greater worldwide fame with his opera The Demon. A prolific composer in all genres, his works includes operas, six symphonies, five piano concertos, five piano trios, and several piano works for two and four hands.

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bam 2030    bam 2044                                                                           the belair collection

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) was a student of Michael Holzer and Salieri and until 1818 he taught at a music school near Vienna, then became music master to the children of Count Johann Esterhàzy. After he left his Esterhàzy position he earned money from private publications of his songs and from contribution from dedicatees. The last years of his life finally saw his reputation begin to be established and more of his works accepted by such publishers as Artaria and Diabelli, but he never secured a permanent position at court.

Schubert was a prolific composer writing 16 Operas and Singspiels, incidental music to Rosamunde, 6 masses and other sacred vocal music; works for mixed male and female choruses, 9 symphonies, overtures, string quartets and trios; a string quintet, Die Forelle (a piano quintet), wind and string octet, violin sonatas, sonatas, and fantasies for piano solo; piano duets and more than 400 dances and 600 songs, including the cycles Die Winterreise and the posthumous collection Schwanengesang.

Many composers of the Classical and Romantic eras wrote intensely personal music, but few wrote music so endearingly human as Franz Schubert. With Schubert it is as if we were standing at his shoulder, watching him at work and sharing his innermost thoughts as a composer. Short, chubby and bespectacled, Schubert may have lacked glamour, but his musical talents were much respected and his warm friendly nature made him loved by all who knew him. The playwright Eduard von Bauernfeld, a close friend, remembered him as “the most honest soul and the most faithful friend”. In his short lifetime Schubert produced masterworks in many genres and established himself as one of the greatest song writers in musical history.

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bam 9725    bam 2032   bam 2035                                                 the belair collection

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Schumann

As a German composer, performer, critic and intellectual, Schumann was a complex character who lived a turbulent yet brilliantly creative life and he was influential in promoting the music of other young composers, including Chopin and Brahms. Strange as it may be, Schumann’s music was less known in his day than his talent as a writer.

As the precocious son of one of Zwickau’s leading citizens, young Robert Schumann starred easily at musical and literary gatherings in his hometown. Largely self-taught, de did not receive formal musical training until he was 18. By the spring of 1832, amid circumstances never properly explained, Schumann’s right hand became crippled, possibly as a result of disease, and this definitivelyexcluded a concert career. Instead, Schumann turned to composition and in 1834, he began his association with the new musical journal, Neue (Leipziger) Zeitschrift für Musik, which became his principal literary and critical outlet. Literary connections were always important to him, and they often appear in his musical work in his fondness for musical ciphers and in the fictional characters he invented for his imaginary anti-philistine organisation, Davidsbund.

In 1840, after a long and acrimonious courtship due to the resistance of her father, Schumann married Clara Wieck, at the time one of Europe’s most outstanding pianists. For a time he was musical director in Düsseldorf, but continuing problems with the chorus were aggravated by the onset of the neurological illness which would eventually cause his death. On 29 July 1856, he died in an asylum near Bonn at the age of 46. Although Robert Schumann ridiculed the conservatism of previous generations, his music did not break barriers and neither was he ahead of his time. His works include the opera Genoveva, incidental music for Byron’s Manfred, Das Paradies und die Peri, Der Rose Pilgerfahrt and other choral works for mixed voices, 4 symphonies, concertos for piano, violin and cello, overtures, chamber music, piano works, sonatas and songs.

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         bam 9909                                                                     the belair collection

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Saint-Säens

French Composer, organist, pianist and writer, was trained at the Paris Conservatoire from the age of 13. He was organist at the church of St. Merry and at the Madeleine in the period 1857-76, during which time he championed the cause of new music and the rediscovery in France of Bach, Mozart and Händel. He also co-founded the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871 to promote and perform new music by French composers. After 1888 he travelled widely in Europe and, in 1915, to America. His works includes many operas, ballets and incidental music, symphonies, tone poems, concertos for piano and other instruments, sacred and secular choral music, chamber music, songs and works for solo and duo piano and solo organ.

Saint-Säens is best remembered for his opera Samson et Dalila (1877) and for Le Carnaval des Animaux (1886), a trifle he wrote in a few days and which he suppressed during his lifetime. In this zoological fantasy, Saint-Säens illustrate with humour, through the sound of various animals such as “le lion, l’éléphant, tortues”, his perfect knowledge of the instruments and their potential in an effective and original way.

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   bam2002                                                                                            the belair collection

Borodin

Alexander Borodin (1833- 1887). Encouraged by his mother, Alexander Borodin displayed a great talent and interest for music from the age of eight, and in his early teens his interests spread to include chemistry, in which field he was to spent most of his working life. When Borodin graduated with great honour from the Medico-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg in 1856, he was appointed assistant in general pathology and therapy and he eventually became Professor of chemistry.

Throughout his life, Borodins' academic activity regrettably left him little time for composition and it was Rimsky-Korsakov, his forever energetic friend, who pushed Borodin onwards. No doubt the great musical project of Borodin's life was his vast heroic opera Prince Igor, which he began work on in 1869. At his death 18 years later, still unfinished, it was left to Rimsky-Korsakov to complete and orchestrate. In the early 1870's, inspired by the ancient Russian national character epitomized by Prince Igor, Borodin decided temporarily to abandon the work and concentrate on symphonic composition; thus the second Symphony was composed in the years 1869 -76.

In spite of the success of his first Symphony, the Symphony No. 2 in B Minor is even greater. Illustrating the powerful Russian heroic character embodied in the old heroic warriors The Bogatyrs. Borodin once told Vladimir Stasov that in the first movement he wanted to describe a gathering of Russian Bogatyr's, in the adagio the figure of an epic bard and in the finale a scene of heroic feasting to the sound of the twanging of strings. Borodin dedicated the Symphony to his wife Ykatherina Borodina and it was first performed the 26 February 1877 in St. Petersburg and revised in 1878. The full score was edited by Rimsky and Glazunov after Borodin's death in 1887.

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   bam 9724     bam 2044                                                                      the belair collection

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 -1908).

Rimsky-Korsakov

Rimsky-Korsakov was born on the 18 March 1844 into a highly musical family in the small town of Tikhvin. He was devoted to his brother Voin, 22 years his senior, and although he had a musical upbringing he wanted to join Voin in a naval career, and in 1856, at the age of 12, Rimsky went to St. Petersburg to enter the Corps of Naval Cadets. At the school he took music lessons from an indifferent teacher and made little progress. In 1859 he got a better music teacher in Theodore Canille who shared his pupil's admiration for Glinka, and it was Canille who in 1861 introduced Rimsky to one of the 'Mighty Handful' - M.A. Balakirev.

As a member of 'The Five', Rimsky-Korsakov was by far the most productive. Leaving a naval career for his real love, music, he wrote a number of striking compositions as well as orchestrating many works for his contemporary composers. From 1871 he taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, and in 1881 Rimsky took charge of organizing the late Mussorgsky's manuscripts, in the process 'improving' both the harmony and orchestration. In the final 15 years of his life he wrote 12 operas; among others "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", and many songs, as well as his highly influential "Principles of Orchestrations". Throughout his life Rimsky was a modest man idolized by his pupils and adored by his public. He died on the 12th of June 1908

In this recording we have included The Suite from the opera "The Tale of Tsar Saltan"(1899). Based on a Pushkin tale entitled The Fairy tale of Tsar Saltan, it captures the exotic nature of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov's later operas. The full title gives further clues to its fantastic nature: The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his son the famous and mighty hero Prince Gvidon Saltanovich and of the beautiful Swan Princess. The Opera was completed at the beginning of 1900 and first performed in November 1900.

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   bam 9724                                                                         the belair collection

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Shostakovich

Dmitry Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg - renamed Petrograd and later Leningrad - where he lived for most of his life. His father, also named Dmitry, was of Polish origin and had been born in an exiles‘ camp where his father had been sent for taking part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Consequently, Shostakovich grew up fully aware of the political issues of his time and was committed to the idea of revolution. In 1916, at the age of ten, he wrote his first composition interestingly titled, Soldier. During the revolution the following year, he wrote Funeral March in Memory of the Victims of the Revolution. When he composed these pieces, he had been studying piano for only little more than a year. In 1919, at the age of 13, he entered the conservatory in Leningrad where he studied with Glazunov, among others, and wrote his brilliant First Symphony as a graduation composition in 1924. His examiners were so impressed by its power that they arranged a full public performance. The première in Leningrad on May 12, 1926 was just the first of many successful Shostakovich premières to follow.

Shostakovich is best known for his symphonies, a number of which are directly related to major events in Soviet history. When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, Shostakovich was in Leningrad. Passionate in defence of his country, he insisted on staying in Leningrad until he was eventually evacuated from the besieged city a few months later. During those months he wrote the first three movements of the Seventh Symphony, which he later dedicated to Leningrad. The success of the Leningrad Symphony, as it became known, was remarkable - becoming the very symbol of Russian resistance. At the première in Moscow, the audience refused to interrupt their ovation to the composer even in the middle of an air raid. Later the Leningrad Symphony was smuggled out of Russia and broadcast on American radio in July 1942. It became a symbol to all allies of resistance to the evils of Nazism. Throughout his final years, Shostakovich remained continuously creative, even though he was often in poor health. He died on August 9, 1975 following a heart attack. During his distinguished career, Shostakovich had several major stylistic conflicts with the Soviet authorities but managed to reconcile his artistic requirements with those of the state. He rose above the sometimes severe artistic limitations imposed on him by the state to become, with Prokofiev, one of the twin giants of 20^th century composers, remaining throughout a dominant figure in Soviet musical life.

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    bam 2019     bam2023    bam 2044                                                             the belair collection

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky was exposed to music from the day he was born on the 17^th of June, 1882. His father, Fyodor Ignatievitch, was a famous opera singer with the Mariinsky Theatre and his mother, Anna Kyrillovna, also sang and played the piano well. As Stravinsky’s memoirs relate, it was from her he “inherited the valuable ability to read orchestral scores at sight.” At nine, Stravinsky began to study piano and music theory, but his interest in music was far from the consuming passion it was to be later. In 1901, Stravinsky followed his parents’ advice and enrolled in the St. Petersburg University to read law. Yet it was not long before he started serious experiments in composition and legal philosophy began to evaporate into the back of his mind as the idea of becoming a composer took strong preference.

It was at this time Stravinsky became friendly with a fellow student, Vladimir, the youngest son of the composer, Rimsky-Korsakov. On hearing Stravinsky play, Rimsky-Korsakov advised him not to go through the rather rigid approach of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. “Instead” as Stravinsky wrote later, “he made me the precious gift of his unforgettable lessons.” The master-pupil relationship developed into a close friendship, especially after the death of Stravinsky’s father in 1902. In 1905, he graduated in law from the St. Petersburg School, but he had no intention of following a legal career. Fortunately, he made the important decision of total commitment to music, resulting in a long and extremely distinguished career. As an intellectual cosmopolitan Russian émigré, Stravinsky was to rock the world with his startling, dynamic music and came to be acknowledged as one of the greatest 20^th century composers. Throughout his life he often made such declarations as, “I speak Russian, I think Russian, and, as you hear in my music, I am Russian.” After a long and extremely productive life, Stravinsky died at his home in New York on the 6^th of April, 1971.

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      bam2023                                                                                the belair collection

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)

Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 into a well-to-do middle class family in Kamsko-Votkinsk – a town in the remote Vyatka province west of the Urals. His father, Il’ya Petrovich Tchaikovsky, described by the composer’s younger brother, Modest, as being ‘jovial and straightforward,’ was a prosperous manager of an iron mine. The influence of the composer’s mother, Alexandra, proved to be long and profound. Tchaikovsky was eight when his family moved to St. Petersburg and, at the age of 21, he joined the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied, among other instruments, flute and organ. During these years, he supplemented his income by giving piano and music theory lessons. Graduating in 1865, he took a teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory the following year.The famous Tatyana letter scene from Tchaikovsky’s opera, Eugene Onegin, resembles a crucial incident in the composer’s own life. In May 1877, he received an unexpected love letter from Antonina Milyukova, a pupil at the Moscow Conservatory. More letters followed and Tchaikovsky eventually agreed to meet her. Moved by Antonina’s declaration of love for him, he married her in July 1877.

In the meantime, Nadezhda von Meck, a resourceful widow, commissioned Tchaikovsky to write an arrangement for violin and piano. She was enchanted with the result and, through her patronage, they began a curious relationship. Though they never met, their prolific correspondence became therapy for both of them and totalled 1100 letters. The beauty of the Russian countryside that Tchaikovsky loved since childhood remained paramount to him throughout his life. Echoes of the songs and dances of rural Russia are often heard in his music. Neurotic and deeply sensitive, Tchaikovsky led a rather tortured life and he died under mysterious circumstances - for long a source of great controversy. Whatever the truth, through his emotionally charged music emerged a genius that created some of the most beautiful romantic melodies loved by people the world over.

top of page               bam 9725    bam2002   bam 2017     bam2020    bam 2044                                       the belair collection