MUSIC SATURDAY - EDUARD FRANCK

“There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle 

Eduard Franck (5 October 1817 – 1 December 1893) was a German composer, pianist and music pedagogue. Franck was born in Breslau, the capital of the Prussian province of Silesia. He was the fourth child of a wealthy and cultivated banker who exposed his children to the best and brightest that Germany had to offer. Frequenters to the Franck home included such luminaries as Heine, Humboldt, Heller, Mendelssohn, and Wagner. His family's financial position allowed Franck to study with Mendelssohn as a private student in Düsseldorf and later in Leipzig.

As a talented pianist, he embarked upon a dual career as a concert artist and teacher for more than four decades during the course of which he held many positions. Although he was highly regarded as both a teacher and performer, he never achieved the public recognition of his better known contemporaries such as Mendelssohn, Schumann or Liszt. As fine a pianist as the first two and perhaps even a better teacher, the fact that he failed to publish very many of his compositions until toward the end of his life, in part, explains why he was not better known.

Said to be a perfectionist, he continually delayed releasing his works until they were polished to his demanding standards. Schumann, among others, thought quite highly of the few works he did publish during the first part of his life. He was the father of Richard Franck (3 January 1858 – 22 January 1938) who was also a pianist, composer and teacher. 

Eduard Franck’s chamber music is generally considered amongst his finest compositions. Of the works with opus numbers, there are 3 string quartets, 2 string quintets for 2 violins, 2 violas and cello, 2 string sextets, 4 piano trios, a piano quintet, 2 sonatas for cello & piano, and 4 sonatas for violin and piano. In addition to these, there are several other works without opus, including a piano sextet, 2 piano trios, a piano quintet, a sonata for violin & piano and an occasional piece for cello & piano. 

Wilhelm Altmann, one of the most important chamber music critics of the 20th century, writes of Franck’s chamber music: “This excellent composer does not deserve the neglect with which he has been treated. He had a mastery of form and a lively imagination which is clearly reflected in the fine and attractive ideas one finds in his works.” Of Franck’s Second Sextet, Altmann states: “This sextet belongs in the concert hall. It demonstrates that its composer was master of musical form and in possession of a gift which allows him to produce strong and noble melodies.” 

Here is his Violin Concerto in E-minor, Op.30, of 1855.
Mov. I: Allegro moderato 00:00
Mov. II: Andante con moto 16:39
Mov.III: Allegro molto vivace 26:08
Violin: Christiane Edinger Orchestra: Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken Conductor: Hans-Peter Frank.

MUSIC SATURDAY - JOSEF SUK

“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.” - Charles Baudelaire 

Josef Suk (4 January 1874 – 29 May 1935) was a Czech composer and violinist born in Křečovice, Bohemia. He studied under Antonín Dvořák, whose daughter he married. From a young age, Josef Suk was deeply involved and well-trained in music. He learned organ, violin, and piano from his father, Josef Suk senior, and was trained further in violin by the Czech violinist Antonín Bennewitz. His theory studies were conducted with several other composers including Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Karel Knittl, and Karel Stecker. He later focused his writing on chamber works under the teachings of Hanuš Wihan.

Despite extensive musical training, Suk’s musical skill was often said to be largely inherited. Though he continued his lessons with Wihan another year after the completion of his schooling, Suk’s greatest inspiration came from another of his teachers, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. Known as one of Dvořák’s favorite pupils, Suk also became personally close to his mentor. Underlying this was Dvořák’s respect for Suk, reflected in Suk’s 1898 marriage to Dvořák’s daughter, Otilie, marking some of the happiest times in the composer’s life and music.

However, the last portion of Suk’s life was punctuated with tragedy. Over the span of 14 months around 1905, not only did Suk’s mentor Dvořák die, but so did Otilie. These events inspired Suk’s “Asrael Symphony”. Because of a shared heritage (and the coincidence of their dying within a few months of one another) Suk has been closely compared, in works and style, to fellow Czech composer Otakar Ostrčil. Suk, alongside Vitezslav Novak and Ostrčil, is considered one of the leading composers in Czech Modernism, with much shared influence among the three coming in turn from Dvořák.

Eminent German figures such as composer Johannes Brahms and critic Eduard Hanslick recognized Suk’s work during his time with the Czech Quartet. Over time, well known Austrian composers such as Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg also began to take notice of Suk and his work. Although he wrote mostly instrumental music, Suk occasionally branched out into other genres. Orchestral music was his strong suit, notably the “Serenade for Strings”, Op. 6 (1892).

His time with the Czech Quartet, though performing successful concerts until his retirement, was not always met with public approval. Several anti-Dvořák campaigns came into prominence; criticism not only being directed at the quartet, but towards Suk specifically. The leftist critic Zdeněk Nejedlý accused the Czech Quartet of inappropriately playing concerts in the Czech lands during World War I. While these attacks diminished Suk’s spirits, they did not hinder his work. Suk retired in 1933, although he continued to be a valuable and inspirational public figure to the Czechs. Josef Suk died on May 29, 1935, in Benešov, Czechoslovakia. He is the grandfather of famed Czech violinist Josef Suk.

Suk’s musical style started off with a heavy influence from his mentor, Dvořák. The biggest change of Suk’s style came after he reached a dead end in his early musical style, just before he began a stylistic shift during 1897–1905, perhaps realising that the strong influence of Dvořák would limit his work. Melancholy was always a large factor in Suk’s music. For instance, he wrote his own funeral march in 1889 and it appears significantly also in a major work, the “Funeral Symphony, Asrael”, Op. 27. “Ripening”, a symphonic poem, was also a story of pain and questioning the value of life.

Other works, however, such as the music he set to Julius Zeyer’s drama “Radúz a Mahulena”, display his happiness, which he credited to his marriage with Otilie. Another of Suk’s works, “Pohádka” (Fairy Tale), was drawn from his work with “Radúz a Mahulena”. The closest Suk came to opera is in his incidental music to the play “Pod jabloní” (Beneath the Apple Tree).

Here is Suk’s “Serenade for Strings in E flat major”, Op. 6 (1892), performed by The Young Danish Chamber Orchestra:
1. Andante con moto (0:00)
2. Allegro ma non troppo e grazioso (4:57)
3. Adagio (10:38)
4. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo presto (19:29)

While Suk was studying under Antonín Dvořák at the Prague Conservatory, Dvořák noticed a melancholy strain in much of Suk’s music, and recommended he write some lighter and more cheerful music. Based on Dvořák’s suggestion, Suk produced this serenade for strings. Two movements were publicly conducted by Suk in late 1893 in Tábor. The first complete performance was on 25 February 1895, at the Prague Conservatory, conducted by Antonín Bennewitz, Suk’s violin teacher at the Conservatory. The Serenade soon brought Suk considerable fame and Dvořák’s longtime supporter, Johannes Brahms, endorsed its publication.

MUSIC SATURDAY - RACHMANINOFF

“Больше слушай, меньше говори.” (Listen more, talk less) – Russian proverb 

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (Russian: Серге́й Васи́льевич Рахма́нинов; 1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian pianist, composer, and conductor of the late-Romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular in the classical repertoire. Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at age four. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 and had composed several piano and orchestral pieces by this time.

In 1897, following the critical reaction to his Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff entered a four-year depression and composed little until successful therapy allowed him to complete his enthusiastically received Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1901. After the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia and resided in the United States, first in New York City.

Demanding piano concert tour schedules caused his output as composer to slow tremendously; between 1918 and 1943, he completed just six compositions, including Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Symphony No. 3, and Symphonic Dances. In 1942, Rachmaninoff moved to Beverly Hills, California. One month before his death from advanced melanoma, Rachmaninoff acquired American citizenship.

Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, and other Russian composers gave way to a personal style notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness and his use of rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output, and through his own skills as a performer he explored the expressive possibilities of the instrument.

Here are his 10 Preludes Op.23, played by Nikolai Lugansky. Rachmaninoff resembles Chopin very much in his skill and innovation in writing miniatures. His preludes are melodic, and wonderful examples of pianistic textural innovation. The harmonic imagination is admirable and the counterpoint masterful. More than anything, a sweeping lyricism is a feature and it often turns into an epic and lush song without words.

1. Largo, F-sharp minor -- 0:00

2. Maestoso, B-flat major -- 3:26

3. Tempo di minuetto, D minor -- 6:53.

4. Andante cantabile, D major -- 10:27.

5. Alla marcia, G minor -- 15:04.

6. Andante, E-flat major -- 18:52.

7. Allegro, C minor -- 22:04

8. Allegro vivace, A-flat major -- 24:28

9. Presto, E-flat minor -- 27:41

10: Largo, G-flat major -- 29:27

BELATED MUSIC SATURDAY - WIENIAWSKI

“If you put your hand on the piano, you play a note. It’s in tune. But if you put it on the violin, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. You have to figure it out…” -  Itzhak Perlman 

Henryk Wieniawski (10 July 1835 – 31 March 1880) was a violinist and composer, born in Lublin, Congress Poland. His father, Tobiasz Pietruszka (Wolf Helman), was the son of a Jewish barber named Herschel Meyer Helman, from the Jewish Lublin neighbourhood of Wieniawa, when barbers were also practising dentists, healers, and bloodletters. Wolf Helman, also known as Tobiasz Pietruszka, changed his name to Tadeusz Wieniawski, taking on the name of his neighbourhood to blend into his Polish environment better. Prior to obtaining his medical degree, he had converted to Catholicism. He married Regina Wolff, the daughter of a noted Jewish physician from Warsaw, and out of this marriage Henryk was born.

Henryk’s talent for playing the violin was recognised early, and in 1843 he was accepted by the Paris Conservatoire, where special exceptions were made to admit him, as he wasn’t French and was only nine years old. After graduation, Henryk toured extensively and gave many recitals, where he was often accompanied by his brother Józef on piano. In 1847, he published his first opus, a “Grand Caprice Fantastique”, the start of a catalogue of 24 opus numbers. When his engagement to Isabella Hampton was opposed by her parents, Wieniawski wrote “Légende”, Op. 17; this work helped her parents change their mind, and the couple married in 1860.

At the invitation of Anton Rubinstein, Wieniawski moved to St. Petersburg, where he lived from 1860 to 1872, taught many violin students, and led the Russian Musical Society’s orchestra and string quartet. From 1872 to 1874, Wieniawski toured the United States with Rubinstein. Wieniawski replaced Henri Vieuxtemps as violin professor at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles in 1875. During his residence in Brussels, Wieniawski’s health declined, and he often had to stop in the middle of his concerts.

He started a tour of Russia in 1879 but was unable to complete it, and was taken to a hospital in Odessa after a concert. On 14 February 1880, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadezhda von Meck took him into her home and provided him with medical attention. His friends also arranged a benefit concert to help provide for his family. He died in Moscow a few weeks later from a heart attack and was interred in the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

His daughter Régine Wieniawski, born in Brussels the year before his death, also became a composer. She published her early works as ‘Irène Wieniawska’, but after marrying Sir Aubrey Dean Paul and becoming a British subject, she used the pseudonym ‘Poldowski’. Another daughter, Henriette, would go on to marry Joseph Holland Loring in 1904, who was among the victims of the Titanic disaster. Wieniawski was a player in the Beethoven Quartet Society in London, where he also performed on viola.

Henryk Wieniawski was considered a violinist of great ability and wrote some very important works in the violin repertoire, including two technically demanding violin concertos, the second of which (in D minor, 1862) is more often performed than the first (in F-sharp minor, 1853). His “L’École moderne: 10 Études-caprices” is a very well known work for aspiring violinists. What is commonly called the ‘Russian bow grip’ is sometimes called the ‘Wieniawski bow grip’, as Wieniawski taught his students his own kind of very rigid bowing technique (like the Russian grip) that allowed him to play what he called a ‘devil’s staccato’ with ease. This ‘devil’s staccato’ was used to discipline students' technique.

Here is Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor (violinist, Midori, with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; Conductor: Leonard Slatkin - Live Radio Recording, 1988).
1. Allegro Moderato
2. Preghiera. Larghetto
3. Rondo. Allegro giocoso

ART SUNDAY - VIKTOR VASNETSOV

 “A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.” - Alan Watt

Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov, (born May 3 [May 15, New Style], 1848, Lopyal, Vyatka province, Russia—died July 23, 1926, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) was a Russian artist, designer, and architect whose monumental works include the façade of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. He was the older brother of the painter Apollinary Vasnetsov. Born into the family of a priest, Viktor received his first drawing lessons in the Vyatsky Seminary in the early 1860s.

In 1867 he moved to St. Petersburg and enrolled in the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, where he was mentored by Ivan Kramskoy of the Peredvizhniki (“Wanderers”) group, which rejected the classicism of the Russian Academy. Vasnetsov later finished his studies at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1868–75). He was awarded the academy’s Grand Silver Medal for his sketch “Christ and Pilate Before the People” (1870). In 1878 he himself joined the Peredvizhniki.

Vasnetsov’s first works were genre paintings typical of the Peredvizhniki. In paintings such as “Moving House” (1876), “News from the Front” (1878), and “A Game of Preference” (1879), he presented with evident affection closely observed domestic scenes and characters from an array of social backgrounds. From the 1880s on, Vasnetsov’s main theme was the world of folk poetry: Tales, epics, and legends. He discovered the means to give visual expression to legendary and epic verbal phrases and imagery. Dark forest wilds, fiery sunrises and sunsets, stormy clouds—all these elements of his works helped make the legendary episodes depicted in his paintings seem to be actual events in Russian history.

For that reason paintings such as “After Prince Igor’s Battle with the Polovtsy” (1880), “Ivan Tsarevich Riding the Gray Wolf” (1889), and “Alyonushka” (1881 –illustrated above) were extremely popular in Russia. They became, in a sense, surrogates for Russian history, and during the Soviet era many were reproduced in schoolbooks and on consumer goods such as calendars, posters, and boxes of chocolates. That one of his most important paintings, “Bogatyrs” (1898), on which he worked for more than a decade, with countless preparatory studies and sketches, had just this fate is quite characteristic.

His careful approach resulted in the transformation of his paintings into pseudohistorical fantasies based on themes of Russian history. Vasnetsov designed costumes and stage sets for Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Snegurochka” (The Snow Maiden) in 1886. He created a monumental panel, “Stone Age” (1883–85), for Moscow’s State Historical Museum. The church of Abramtsevo was also built according to his sketches, as was the Baba-Yaga Hut (1883; also called the Hut on Chicken Legs).

Shortly before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Vasnetsov created sketches of military uniforms for the Russian army, which were then used during Soviet times (such as the well-known budyonovka [initially bogatyrka] cap worn by the Red Army cavalrymen). After the revolution, Vasnetsov continued to paint folkloric themes. He died in Moscow in 1926.

ART SUNDAY - PUVIS DE CHAVANNES

“To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.” ― Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (in full Pierre-Cècile Puvis de Chavannes; born December 14, 1824, Lyon, France—died October 24, 1898, Paris) was the leading French mural painter of the later 19th century. He was largely independent of the major artistic currents of his time and he developed a style characterised by simplified forms, rhythmic line, and pale, flat, fresco-like colouring for allegorical pieces and idealisations of themes from antiquity. He was much admired by a diverse group of artists and critics, including Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Charles Baudelaire, and Théophile Gautier.

Puvis de Chavannes was born Pierre-Cécile Puvis in a suburb of Lyon, France. He was the son of a mining engineer. Being descended from of an old noble family of Burgundy, he later added the ancestral ‘de Chavannes’ to his name. Throughout his life, however, he spurned his Lyon origins, preferring to identify himself with the ‘strong’ blood of the Burgundians, where his father originated. Puvis de Chavannes was educated at the Amiens College and at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris. He intended to follow his father’s profession until a serious illness compelled him to convalesce at Mâcon with his brother and sister-in-law in 1844 and 1845, interrupting his studies.

A journey to Italy opened his mind to fresh ideas, and on his return to Paris in 1846 he announced his intention to become a painter. He studied first under Eugène Delacroix, but only very briefly, as Delacroix closed his studio shortly afterwards due to ill health. He studied subsequently under Henri Scheffer and then Thomas Couture. His training was not classical as he found that he preferred to work alone. He took a large studio near the Gare de Lyon and attended anatomy classes at the Académie des Beaux Arts. It was not until a number of years later, when the government of France acquired one of his works, that he gained wide recognition. Puvis de Chavannes made his Salon debut in 1850 with “Dead Christ”, “Negro Boy”, “The Reading Lesson”, and “Portrait of a Man”. In Montmartre, he had an affair with one of his models, Suzanne Valadon, who would become one of the leading artists of the day as well as the mother, teacher, and mentor of Maurice Utrillo.

Puvis de Chavannes’ work is seen as symbolist in nature, even though he studied with some of the romanticists, and he is credited with influencing an entire generation of painters and sculptors, particularly the works of the Modernists. One of his protégés was Georges de Feure. Puvis de Chavannes is best known for his mural painting, and came to be known as 'the painter for France.' His first commission was for his brother’s chateau, Le Brouchy, a medieval-style structure near Cuiseaux in Saône-et-Loire. The principal decorations take the four seasons as their theme. His first public commissions came early in the 1860s, with work at the Musée de Picardie at Amiens. The first four works were “Concordia” (1861), “Bellum” (1861), “Le Travail” (Work; 1863) and “Le Repos” (Rest; 1863).

Over the course of his career, Puvis received a substantial number of commissions for works to be carried out in public and private institutions throughout France. His early work at the Musée de Picardie had helped him to develop his classicising style, and the decorative aesthetic of his mural works. Among his public works are the later cycles completed at Amiens (“Ave Picardia Nutrix”, 1865), at Marseille, at Lyon and at Poitiers. Of particular importance is the cycle at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Lyon, which includes three significant works, filling the wall space in the main staircase. From left to right, the works are “Antique Vision” (1884), “The Wood Dear to the Arts and the Muses” (1884), and “Christian Inspiration”(1884).

Puvis’ career was tied up with a complicated debate that had been ongoing since the beginning of the Third Republic (1870), and at the end of the violence of the Paris Commune. The question at stake was the identity of France and the meaning of ‘Frenchness’. Royalists felt that the revolution of 1789 had been an immense disaster and that France had been thrown off course, while the Republicans felt that the Revolution had allowed France to revert to its true course. Consequently, works that were to be displayed in public spaces, such as murals, had the important task of fulfilling the ideology of the commissioning party. Many scholars of Puvis’ works have noted that his success as a ‘painter for France’ was largely due to his ability to create works which were agreeable to the many ideologies in existence at this time.

His first Parisian commission was for a cycle at the church of Saint Genevieve, which is now the secular Pantheon, begun in 1874. His two subjects were “L’Education de Sainte Geneviève” and “La Vie Pastoral de Sainte Geneviève”. This commission was followed by works at the Sorbonne, namely the enormous hemicycle, “The Sacred Grove” or “L’Ancienne Sorbonne” amongst the muses in the Grand Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne. His final commission in this trinity of Republican commissions was the crowning glory of Puvis’ career, the works “Summer” and “Winter”, at the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Paris. Many of these works are characterised by their nod to classical art, visible in the careful balanced compositions, and the subject matter is frequently a direct reference to visions of Hellenistic Greece, particularly in the case of “Antique Vision”.

Puvis de Chavannes was president and co-founder in 1890 of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (National Society of Fine Arts) founded in Paris. It became the dominant salon of art at the time and held exhibitions of contemporary art that was selected only by a jury composed of the officers of the Société. Those who translated best the spirit of the work of Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes in their own creations were, in Germany, the painter Ludwig von Hofmann and in France, Auguste Rodin. His easel paintings also may be found in many American and European galleries.

The illustration above is the fresco “Summer” painted in the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Paris, from the end of the artist’s career.

MUSIC SATURDAY - TCHAIKOVSKY

“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.” - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) is widely considered the most popular Russian composer in history. His work includes the The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. His work was first publicly performed in 1865. In 1868, his First Symphony was well-received. In 1874, he established himself with Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat Minor. Tchaikovsky resigned from the Moscow Conservatory in 1878, and spent the rest of his career composing yet more prolifically. He died in St. Petersburg.

Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka, Russia. He was the second eldest of his parents’ six surviving offspring. Tchaikovsky’s father, Ilya, worked as a mine inspector and metal works manager. When he was just 5 years old, Tchaikovsky began taking piano lessons. Although he displayed an early passion for music, his parents hoped that he would grow up to work in the civil service. At the age of 10, Tchaikovsky began attending the Imperial School of Jurisprudence, a boarding school in St. Petersburg.

His mother, Alexandra, died of cholera in 1854, when he was 14 years old. In 1859, Tchaikovsky honoured his parents’ wishes by taking up a bureau clerk post with the Ministry of Justice—a post he would hold for four years, during which time he became increasingly fascinated with music. When he was 21, Tchaikovsky decided to take music lessons at the Russian Musical Society. A few months later, he enrolled at the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory, becoming one of the school’s first composition students. In addition to learning while at the conservatory, Tchaikovsky gave private lessons to other students.

In 1863, he moved to Moscow, where he became a professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. He became a prolific composer and his work was first publicly performed in 1865, with Johann Strauss the Younger conducting Tchaikovsky’s Characteristic Dances at a Pavlovsk concert. In 1868, Tchaikovsky's First Symphony was well-received when it was publicly performed in Moscow. The following year, his first opera, “The Voyevoda”, made its way to the stage—with little fanfare. After scrapping “The Voyevoda”, Tchaikovsky repurposed some of its material to compose his next opera, “Oprichnik”, which achieved some acclaim when it was performed at the Maryinsky in St. Petersburg in 1874.

By this time, Tchaikovsky had also earned praise for his Second Symphony. Also in 1874, his opera, “Vakula the Smith”, received harsh critical reviews, yet Tchaikovsky still managed to establish himself as a talented composer of instrumental pieces with his Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat Minor. Acclaim came readily for Tchaikovsky in 1875, with his composition Symphony No. 3 in D Major. At the end of that year, the composer embarked on a tour of Europe. In 1876, he completed the ballet “Swan Lake” as well as the fantasy “Francesca da Rimini”.

Tchaikovsky resigned from the Moscow Conservatory in 1878 to focus his efforts entirely on composing. As a result, he spent the remainder of his career composing more prolifically than ever. His collective body of work constitutes 169 pieces, including symphonies, operas, ballets, concertos, cantatas and songs. Among his most famed late works are the ballets “The Sleeping Beauty” (1890) and “The Nutcracker” (1892).

Struggling with societal pressures to repress his homosexuality, in 1877, Tchaikovsky married a young music student named Antonina Milyukova. The marriage was a catastrophe, with Tchaikovsky abandoning his wife within weeks of the wedding. During a nervous breakdown, he unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide, and eventually fled abroad. Tchaikovsky could afford to resign from the Moscow Conservatory in 1878, thanks to the patronage of a wealthy widow named Nadezhda von Meck. She provided him with a monthly allowance until 1890; oddly, their arrangement stipulated that they would never meet.

Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893. While the cause of his death was officially declared as cholera, some of his biographers believe that he committed suicide after the humiliation of a sex scandal trial. However, only oral (no written) documentation exists to support this theory.

Here are all of Tchaikovsky’s six symphonies and the “Manfred” Symphony, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich.

Symphony No.1 in g-minor, Op.13 'Winter Reveries':

I. Allegro tranquillo - 00:00

II. Adagio cantabile ma non tanto - 12:23

III. Scherzo. Allegro scherzando giocoso - 24:34

IV. Finale. Andante lugubre - Allegro maestoso - 31:44

Symphony No.2 in c-minor, Op.17 'Little Russian':

I. Andante sostenuto - Allegro vivo - 45:17

II. Andantino marziale, quasi moderato - 56:37

III. Scherzo. Allegro molto vivace - Trio - 01:04:18

IV. Finale. Moderato assai - Allegro vivo - Presto - 01:09:27

Symphony No.3 in D-major, Op.29 'Polish':

I. Introduzione e Allegro - 01:20:17

II. Alla tedesca. Allegro moderato - 01:34:39

III. Andante elegiaco - 01:42:14

IV. Scherzo. Allegro vivo - 01:52:24

V. Finale. Allegro con fuoco - 01:57:49

Symphony No.4 in f-minor, Op.36:

I. Andante sostenuto - Moderato con anima - 02:06:55

II. Andantino in modo di canzone - 02:26:25

III. Scherzo. Pizzicato ostinato - Allegro - 02:36:58

IV. Finale. Allegro con fuoco - 02:42:29

Manfred Symphony, Op.58:

I. Lento lugubre - Moderato con moto - Andante - 02:51:42

II. Vivace con spirito - 03:09:36

III. Andante con moto - 03:18:15

IV. Allegro con fuoco - 03:30:29

Symphony No.5 in e-minor, Op.64:

I. Andante - Allegro con anima - 03:51:59

II. Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza - 04:08:47

III. Valse. Allegro moderato - 04:23:26

IV. Finale. Andante maestoso - Allegro vivace - 04:29:47

Symphony No.6 in b-minor, Op.74 'Pathetique':

I. Adagio - Allegro non troppo - 04:44:00

II. Allegro con grazia - 05:02:52

III. Allegro molto vivace - 05:10:42

IV. Finale. Adagio lamentoso - Andante - 05:19:43

MUSIC SATURDAY - RACHMANINOFF PRELUDES

“The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.” - Andrés Segovia

Sergey Rachmaninoff, in full Sergey Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (also spelled Rakhmaninov, or Rachmaninov) was born March 20 [April 1, New Style], 1873, Oneg, near Semyonovo, Russia and died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California, U.S.), was a composer who was the last great figure of the tradition of Russian Romanticism and a leading piano virtuoso of his time. He is especially known for his piano concerti and the piece for piano and orchestra titled Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934).

Rachmaninoff was born on an estate belonging to his grandparents, situated near Lake Ilmen in the Novgorod district. His father was a retired army officer and his mother the daughter of a general. The boy was destined to become an army officer until his father lost the entire family fortune through risky financial ventures and then deserted the family. Young Sergey’s cousin Aleksandr Siloti, a well-known concert pianist and conductor, sensed the boy’s abilities and suggested sending him to the noted teacher and pianist Nikolay Zverev in Moscow for his piano studies. It is to Zverev’s strict disciplinarian treatment of the boy that musical history owes one of the great piano virtuosos of the 20th century. For his general education and theoretical subjects in music, Sergey became a pupil at the Moscow Conservatory.

At age 19 he graduated from the conservatory, winning a gold medal for his one-act opera “Aleko” (after Aleksandr Pushkin’s poem Tsygany [“The Gypsies”]). His fame and popularity, both as composer and concert pianist, were launched by two compositions: the “Prelude in C-sharp Minor”, played for the first time in public on September 26, 1892, and his “Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor”, which had its first performance in Moscow on October 27, 1901. The former piece, although it first brought Rachmaninoff to public attention, was to haunt him throughout his life—the prelude was constantly requested by his concert audiences. The concerto, his first major success, revived his hopes after a trying period of inactivity.

In his youth, Rachmaninoff was subject to emotional crises over the success or failure of his works as well as his personal relationships. Self-doubt and uncertainty carried him into deep depressions, one of the most severe of which followed the failure, on its first performance in March 1897, of his “Symphony No. 1 in D Minor”. The symphony was poorly performed, and the critics condemned it. During this period, while brooding over an unhappy love affair, he was taken to a psychiatrist, Nikolay Dahl, who is often credited with having restored the young composer’s self-confidence, thus enabling him to write the “Piano Concerto No. 2” (which is dedicated to Dahl).

At the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Rachmaninoff was a conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre. Although more of an observer than a person politically involved in the revolution, he went with his family, in November 1906, to live in Dresden. There he wrote three of his major scores: the “Symphony No. 2 in E Minor” (1907), the symphonic poem “The Isle of the Dead” (1909), and the “Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor” (1909). The last was composed especially for his first concert tour of the United States, highlighting his much-acclaimed pianistic debut on November 28, 1909, with the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch. “Piano Concerto No. 3” requires great virtuosity from the pianist; its last movement is a bravura section as dazzling as any ever composed. In Philadelphia and Chicago he appeared with equal success in the role of conductor, interpreting his own symphonic compositions. Of these, the “Symphony No. 2” is the most significant: it is a work of deep emotion and haunting thematic material. While touring, he was invited to become permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony, but he declined the offer and returned to Russia in February 1910.

The one notable composition of Rachmaninoff’s second period of residence in Moscow was his choral symphony “The Bells” (1913), based on Konstantin Balmont’s Russian translation of the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. This work displays considerable ingenuity in the coupling of choral and orchestral resources to produce striking imitative and textural effects.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Rachmaninoff went into his second self-imposed exile, dividing his time between residences in Switzerland and the United States. Although for the next 25 years he spent most of his time in an English-speaking country, he never mastered its language or thoroughly acclimatised himself. With his family and a small circle of friends, he lived a rather isolated life. He missed Russia and the Russian people—the sounding board for his music, as he said. And this alienation had a devastating effect on his formerly prolific creative ability. He produced little of real originality but rewrote some of his earlier work. Indeed, he devoted himself almost entirely to concertising in the United States and Europe, a field in which he had few peers. His only substantial works from this period are the “Symphony No. 3 in A Minor” (1936), another expression of sombre, Slavic melancholy, and the “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” for piano and orchestra, a set of variations on a violin caprice by Niccolò Paganini. Rachmaninoff’s last major work, the “Symphonic Dances” for orchestra, was composed in 1940, about two years before his death.

Rachmaninoff’s music, although written mostly in the 20th century, remains firmly entrenched in the 19th-century musical idiom. He was, in effect, the final expression of the tradition embodied by Tchaikovsky—a melodist of Romantic dimensions still writing in an era of explosive change and experimentation. As such, his music and fame has remained in the forefront of the public’s hearts, while other “experimental” composers of his era have vanished into obscurity.

Here are his 10 Preludes for Solo Piano, Op.23 played by Nicolai Lugansky. These preludes are marvels of textural innovation, harmonic imagination, gorgeous counterpoint (Rachmaninoff's brilliance at counterpoint is really not noticed often enough), and lyricism in all its forms: Bleak, sweeping, stark, doleful, lush.

ART SUNDAY - KNUD BAADE

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” -  Oscar Wilde

Knud Andreassen Baade (28 March 1808 - 24 November 1879) was a Norwegian painter, mostly of portraits and landscapes. He was particularly known for his moonlight paintings which are characterised by strong and dramatic contrasts between light and shadow.

Baade was born in Skjold, a former municipality now in Vindafjord in Rogaland county, Norway. While still a boy he moved to Bergen with his family. He began his artistic education at the age of fifteen, under the Danish-Swedish painter, Carl Peter Lehmann (1794-1876). In 1827 he went to Copenhagen, where he studied at the Academy for about three years, until financial difficulties forced him to move to Christiania (now Oslo) and take up portrait-painting.

When his father became a magistrate in Sogn, he followed his family to the parish of Solvorn in Luster. The mountains, fjords and rocky bays offered ample subjects for his work. He also travelled northward to Trondheim and as far north as Bodø in search of material for his pictures. In 1836 he was persuaded by the well-known landscape painter, Dahl, to go to Dresden, where he studied for three years. There that he met Caspar David Friedrich and was strongly influenced by him.

He returned to Norway in 1839 due of a disease in his eyes. In 1846 he moved to Munich, where he soon earned a reputation as a landscape painter, producing views of his native country and the scenes around its coasts, mostly depicted with moonlight effects. Though but an invalid, he worked at Munich continually until his death there in 1879.

Baade was painter to the Court of Sweden, and a member of the Academy of Arts at Stockholm. He painted some fine portraits, especially in younger years, including portraits of his parents (1836). In addition to several trips to Sogn and Hardanger, Baade travelled widely in Germany. He also painted landscape scenes from Bavaria, Saxony, Tyrol and Switzerland. He is represented in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design with 52 paintings.

The painting above is “Coastal Landscape in Moonlight”, painted in 1852. The work is typical of Baade’s oeuvre and shows his affinity with Friedrich’s canvases. The darkness of night and effects of moonlight on both sea and land have been rendered painstakingly and would appeal to the Romantic ideals of Baade’s time.

MUSIC SATURDAY - LIEBESTOD

“Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.” - J.M. Barrie

In the early 1850s, Richard Wagner (1813-1883) began reading the works of the German philosopher Arthur Schoepenhauer (1788-1860). For Schoepenhauer, music occupied a station above all other arts, including poetry, which meant that the text of an opera was relegated to a supporting role. Wagner resonated to this ad he started to show evidence of his exposure to Schoepenhauer by the mid-1850s. “Tristan und Isolde”, the composer’s major operatic project of the decade reflected this influence and the music of the opera assumed an overarching role, soaring above and beyond the lyrics.

Until “Tristan und Isolde”, no one had quite imagined the extent to which music alone could embody drama. In one long musical utterance, Wagner lays bare the inner lives of the opera’s title characters, as their love, doomed from its beginning, finds fulfillment in death. The “Prelude and Liebestod” (Love-Death) comprise the beginning and ending of the opera.

The Prelude opens with the cellos softly playing four notes. The last note fades into an extraordinary chord played by oboes, bassoons, and English horn. This chord, the famous “Tristan chord,” sounds strange because it is an unresolved dissonance, an academic way of saying that it sounds like it is leading to something which our ear finds acceptable and “final”. But because Wagner, at this point, withholds resolution, the chord is, at this point, a beginning without an end.

What follows is a lush orchestral work that charts the psychology of the opera, which itself explores the unexplainable, primal nature of love. The chord returns during the course of the opera, but it is only resolved during the work’s final, ecstatic closing “Liebestod”. It is the culmination of the opera’s tragic events, set in motion when Tristan and Isolde drink a love potion. Tristan, though, has claimed Isolde on behalf of his lord, King Marke. When Marke discovers the lovers together, one of the king’s knights stabs Tristan, who returns to his fortress to die.

Isolde has just arrived to find Tristan dead when the “Liebestod” begins. Her worldly surroundings fade away as she contemplates sinking unconscious into supreme bliss and finally consummating her love with Tristan in death. The passage builds to a climax as “waves of refreshing breezes” begin envelop Isolde (at the words “Heller schallend, mich umwallend” i.e. “Sounding more clearly, wafting around me”) and again as she imagines expiring in “the vast wave of the world’s breath” (“in des Welt-Atems wehendem All”). She sinks down as the winds, over luminous violins, float to a final and satisfying resolution of the “Tristan chord” from the Prelude.

Here is the orchestral version of the “Prelude and Liebestod” played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Georg Solti.

And here is Stephen Fry exploring the “Tristan chord” and its significance to modern music.

And the painting above is “Tristan and Iseult” depicted by Edmund Blair Leighton (1853–1922).

MUSIC SATURDAY - SCHUMANN'S KINDERSZENEN

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” - Frederick Douglass

Robert Alexander Schumann (1810 - 1856) was the son of a bookseller, publisher and writer, and he showed early abilities in both music and literature, the second facility used in his later writing on musical subjects. After brief study at university, he was allowed by his widowed mother and guardian to undertake serious study of the piano with Friedrich Wieck, whose favourite daughter Clara was later to become Schumann’s wife.

His ambitions as a pianist were thwarted by a weakness in the fingers of one hand, but the 1830s nevertheless brought a number of compositions for the instrument. The year of his marriage, 1840, was a year of song, followed by attempts in which his young wife encouraged him at more ambitious forms of orchestral composition. Settling first in Leipzig and then in Dresden, the Schumanns moved in 1850 to Düsseldorf, where Schumann had his first official appointment, as municipal director of music. In 1854 he had a serious mental breakdown, followed by two years in the asylum at Endenich before his death in 1856. As a composer Schumann’s gifts are clearly heard in his piano music and in his songs.

The piano music of Schumann, whether written for himself, for his wife, or, in later years, for his children, offers a wealth of material. From the earlier period comes “Carnaval”—a series of short musical scenes with motifs derived from the letters of the town of Asch; this was the home of a fellow student of Friedrich Wieck called Ernestine von Fricken, to whom Schumann was briefly engaged. The same period brought the “Davidsbündlertänze” (‘Dances of the League of David’), a reference to the imaginary league of friends of art against the surrounding Philistines. This decade also brought the first version of the monumental “Symphonic Studies” (based on a theme by the father of Ernestine von Fricken) and the well-known “Kinderszenen” (‘Scenes of Childhood’).

“Kreisleriana” has its literary source in the Hoffmann character Kapellmeister Kreisler, “Papillons” (‘Butterflies’) has a source in the work of the writer Jean Paul, and Noveletten has a clear literary reference in the very title. Later piano music by Schumann includes the “Album für die Jugend” (‘Album for the Young’) of 1848, “Waldszenen” (‘Forest Scenes’) of 1849, and the collected “Bunte Blätter” (‘Coloured Leaves’) and “Albumblätter” (‘Album Leaves’) drawn from earlier work.

Here is his “Kinderszenen” (‘Scenes of Childhood’) op. 15, played by Martha Argerich. This is a set of thirteen pieces of music for piano written in 1838. In this work, Schumann provides us with his adult reminiscences of childhood. Schumann had originally written 30 movements for this work, but chose 13 for the final version. Nr. 7, Träumerei (Dreaming), is one of Schumann's best known pieces; it was the title of a 1944 German biographical film on Robert Schumann.

Schumann had originally labeled this work “Leichte Stücke” (Easy Pieces). Likewise, the section titles were only added after the completion of the music, and Schumann described the titles as “nothing more than delicate hints for execution and interpretation”.

ART SUNDAY - FOR FRANCE

“Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.” - Victor Hugo

Ferdinand-Eugène-Victor Delacroix was born on April 26, 1798, in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, France. His father, Charles, was a minister of foreign affairs and served as a governmental prefect in Marseilles and Bordeaux. His mother, Victoire Oeben, was a cultured woman who encouraged young Delacroix’s love of literature and art. Delacroix’s father died when he was 7 years old, and his mother passed away when he was 16.

He attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris but left school to begin his artistic studies. Sponsored by a helpful and well-connected uncle, he joined the studio of the painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. In 1816, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. Delacroix also made many visits to the Louvre, where he admired the paintings of such Old Masters as Titian and Rubens.

Many of Delacroix’s early paintings had religious subjects. However, the first work he exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon, “Dante and Virgil in Hell” (1822), took its inspiration from literature. For other works of the 1820s, Delacroix turned to recent historical events. His interest in the Greek War of Independence, and his distress at the atrocities of that war, led to “The Massacre at Chios” (1824) and “Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi” (1826).

Even at this early stage of his career, Delacroix was fortunate enough to find buyers for his work. He was hailed as a central figure in the Romantic era of French art, along with Théodore Géricault and Antoine-Jean Gros. Like these other painters, he portrayed subjects fraught with extreme emotion, dramatic conflicts and violence. Often inspired by history, literature and music, he worked with bold colours and free brushwork.

Delacroix continued to impress the critics and his clients with works such as “Death of Sardanapalus” (1827), a decadent scene of a defeated Assyrian king preparing to commit suicide. One of his most famous paintings was “Liberty Leading the People,” a response to the July Revolution of 1830, in which a woman holding a French flag leads a band of fighters from all social classes. It was purchased by the French government in 1831.

After travelling to Morocco in 1832, Delacroix returned to Paris with new ideas for his art. Paintings such as “The Women of Algiers in Their Apartment” (1834) and “Moroccan Chieftain Receiving Tribute” (1837) defined his Romantic interest in exotic subjects and faraway lands. He also continued to paint scenes borrowed from the work of his favourite authors, including Lord Byron and Shakespeare, and he was commissioned to paint several rooms at the Palais Bourbon and the Palace of Versailles.

From the 1840s onward, Delacroix spent more time in the countryside outside Paris. He enjoyed friendships with other well-known cultural figures such as the composer Frédéric Chopin and the author George Sand. In addition to his literary subjects, he produced flower still lifes and multiple paintings titled “The Lion Hunt.”

Delacroix’s last major commission was a set of murals for the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. They include “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel,” a scene of intense physical combat between two figures in a dark forest. This commission occupied Delacroix throughout the 1850s and into the following decade. He died on August 13, 1863, in Paris.

The painting above, “Liberty Leading the People” (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) commemorates the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman personifying the concept and the goddess of Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolour flag, which remains France's national flag – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne.

By the time Delacroix painted “Liberty Leading the People”, he was already the acknowledged leader of the Romantic school in French painting. Delacroix, who was born as the Age of Enlightenment was giving way to the ideas and style of romanticism, rejected the emphasis on precise drawing that characterised the academic art of his time, and instead gave a new prominence to freely brushed colour. Delacroix painted his work in the autumn of 1830. In a letter to his brother dated 21 October, he wrote: “My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I’ve embarked on a modern subject—a barricade. And if I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her.” The painting was first exhibited at the official Salon of 1831.

MUSIC SATURDAY - GLIÈRE HARP CONCERTO

“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” - Winston Churchill

Reinhold Glière, Russian in full Reyngold Moritsevich Glier (born December 30, 1874 [January 11, 1875, New Style], Kiev, Ukraine, Russian Empire [now Kyiv, Ukraine]—died June 23, 1956, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), was a Soviet composer, of German and Polish descent, who was noted for his works incorporating elements of the folk music of several eastern Soviet republics.

Glière was the son of a musician and maker of wind instruments. He attended the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied violin, composition, and music theory with such notable composers as Sergey Taneyev, Anton Arensky, and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov and from where he graduated in 1900. After teaching for a while in Moscow, he studied conducting in Berlin from 1905 to 1907, first appearing in Russia as a conductor in 1908, the same year his tone poem Sireny (“The Sirens”) was enthusiastically received. Glière taught at the Kiev Conservatory and was appointed director in 1914.

He returned to Moscow in 1920, taught at the conservatory there, and became involved in studying folk music, traveling widely to collect material. The opera Shakhsenem (first performed 1934) resulted from his study of the national music of Azerbaijan, and Uzbek elements appear in the opera Gyulsara (1936). Glière achieved a high status in the Soviet musical world after the Russian Revolution, largely because of his interest in national styles. He organised workers’ concerts and directed committees of the Moscow Union of Composers and Union of Soviet Composers.

At the end of the 20th century, Glière’s music was principally performed in countries formerly of the Soviet Union, although his ballet Krasny mak (1927; The Red Poppy) won wider international popularity for a time. Also well regarded were the ballet Medny vsadnik (1949; The Bronze Horseman) and his Symphony No. 3 (1909–11; Ilya Muromets). Although Glière was highly respected by many, his often politically motivated works—e.g., the overture 25 let Krasnoy Armii (1943; Twenty-five Years of the Red Army and Torzhestvennaya uvertyura (K 20-letiyu Oktyabrya) (1937; Solemn Overture for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution), were criticised by others for lack of depth and originality. Nevertheless, his influence on younger Soviet composers was profound. Among his pupils were Sergey Prokofiev, Nikolay Myaskovsky, and Aram Khachaturian.

Reinhold Glière wrote his Concerto for Harp and Orchestra in E-flat major, Op. 74, in 1938. It lasts about 25 minutes and is in three movements:

I. Allegro moderato in E-flat major

II. Tema con variazioni in C-flat major

III. Allegro giocoso in E-flat major

Glière sought the technical advice of the harpist Ksenia Alexandrovna Erdely (1878-1971). She made so many suggestions that he offered to credit her as co-composer, but she declined. The work was published as the work of Glière as edited by Erdely. The music is immediately accessible although it breaks no new ground in terms of compositional techniques or technical demands on the solo harpist. It combines features that are redolent of both the Viennese classical style and Russian romantic nationalism.

MUSIC SATURDAY - WIENIAWSKY VIOLIN CONCERTO No 2

“Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.” - John Lubbock

Henryk Wieniawski (Henryk also spelled Henri - born July 10, 1835, Lublin, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Poland]—died March 31, 1880, Moscow, Russia), was a Polish violinist and composer, one of the most celebrated violinists of the 19th century.

Wieniawski was a child prodigy who entered the Paris Conservatory at age 8 and graduated from there with the first prize in violin at the unprecedented age of 11. He became a concert violinist at age 13 and began touring Europe with his brother Joseph, a pianist. His wide-ranging concert tours brought him international fame. In 1860 he was appointed violin soloist to the tsar of Russia, and from 1862 to 1869 he taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1872–74 he toured the United States, playing with the pianist Anton Rubinstein, and he subsequently taught for a time at the Brussels Conservatory.

As a violinist Wieniawski was admired for his rich, warm tone, glowing temperament, and perfect technique. His own compositions for violin are Romantic in style and were intended to display his virtuosity. He composed two violin concerti, one in F-sharp Minor (Opus 14) and a quite popular one in D Minor (Opus 22). His other compositions include ‘Le Carnaval Russe’ (Opus 11), ‘Legende’ (Opus 17), ‘Scherzo-Tarantelle’ (Opus 16), and études, mazurkas, and polonaises.

The Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 22 may have been started in 1856, but the first performance did not take place until November 27, 1862, when the composer played it in St. Petersburg with Anton Rubinstein conducting. It was published in 1879, inscribed to his dear friend Pablo de Sarasate.

The work is in three movements:

Allegro moderato in D minor/F major

Romance: Andante non troppo in B flat major

Allegro con fuoco – Allegro moderato (à la Zingara) in D minor/D major

Both main elements of the first movement, its sombre, restless first subject, and its lyrical pendant (begun by a solo horn) are discussed freely and subject to dazzling embellishments by the solo violin. This movement includes a demanding variety of technique, including chromatic glissandi, double stops, arpeggios, sixths, octaves, thirds, chromatic scales, and artificial harmonics, not to mention a myriad of bowing techniques. The beat is based on a 4/4 or common time.

The first movement uses a half-sonata form where the orchestral coda after the exposition transitions into the second movement instead of a development section. The slow movement, a Romance, follows without a break. It is based on a lilting tune in 12/8 time and rises to an impassioned central climax. A rhapsodic passage marked Allegro con fuoco and mainly a solo cadenza, leads to the finale, a dashing rondo in the gypsy style, which quotes the first movement’s subsidiary theme in the course of its second and third episodes. The final movement implements a 2/4 time, which allows the violinists to emphasise certain notes in the beginning of some measures.

Wieniawski's second Violin Concerto remains one of the greatest violin concertos of the Romantic era, memorable for its lush and moving melodies and harmonies. Here it is played by soloist Ye Eun Choi at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Conductor: Christoph Eschenbach, in concert with the SHMF Orchestra.