First cut on the terrific Italian Cafe CD that’s been getting a lot of spins at El Rancho Roedeo. And what a nice discovery to see a c. 1958 “video” from the crooner Fred Buscaglione:
Inspired by Hollywood icons Clark Gable and Mickey Spillane, and a devotee of American jazz and swing, Buscaglione personified the laid-back, devil-may care spirit of postwar Italy.
And can you not love these lyrics?
Per sentire una canzone con te ed averti solamente per me il mio braccio ti darò e con me ti porterò in un piccolo e nascosto caffè
Che e la macchina dei dischi che và tanta musica per noi suonerà con Sinatra e Johnny Rave Franky Lane e Doris Day ogni cuore suonerà
Juke Box e una magica invenzion Juke Box pochi soldi una canzon Juke Box un gettone la felicità
After the posts of about the fiery Prokofiev concerto performance from Symphony Hall, thought I’d share another side of the remarkable artistry of the young violinist Xiang “Angelo” Yu. Last year we invited him into the Fraser Performance Studio at WGBH, where he not only shared the story of his Mongolian origins with host Cathy Fuller, he also played this breathtakingly beautiful version of the Meditation from Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs…for solo violin alone.
Soon afterwards, Angelo was invited to be a Young Artist in Residence at Performance Today, a series that I’m proud to say continues after we launched it at NPR in the late ’90s with pianist Mia Chung, and has over the years featured such terrific ensembles and artists – all preparing live-for-radio recital programs – as guitarist Jason Vieaux, the Sejong Soloists, the Borromeo and Pacifica Quartets, pianist Jeremy Denk, and many, many more!
If you haven’t got 25 minutes to spare for the complete performance of the Prokfofiev Violin Concerto posted yesterday, check out what Angelo Yu does with the scorched-earth Scherzo second movement!
This was the performance at the Symphony Hall concert by Hugh Wolff and the NEC Philharmonia (which happened to take place on Sergei Prokofiev’s birthday) that got the rock’n’rollers in the control all excited — this no-holds-barred performance by NEC Artist Diploma candidate Xiang “Angelo” Yu of the Violin Concerto No. 1. A piece that Prokofiev wrote around the time of the Russian Revolution (e.g., 1917), but not premiered until several years later in Paris.
The story goes that Prokofiev’s concerto took a while to catch on, particularly because despite the fact that the Paris premiere was led by no less a figure than Serge Koussevitsky, the soloist was not one of the major virtuosi of the day. As the late Michael Steinberg put it in his invariably-excellent program notes:
Marcel Darrieux, Koussevitzky’s Paris concertmaster, was a solid musician and an able violinist, but he lacked the spark to make a convincing case for the piece,
Might’ve been a different story if Angelo had played it!
Check out his thoughtful comments at the start of the piece, too, skillfully brought out by my co-conspirator James David Jacobs….
For your Friday enjoyment: A pianist for the ages, and a quintessentially French composer….
First, check out this fabulous performance from 1997 of the seemingly-ageless Alicia (74 at the time) playing the Ravel Piano Concerto in G with Jesus Lopez-Cobos and the Cincinnati Symphony. As someone learning the ropes in the television world, I’m coming to appreciate really great camera work in shooting orchestras – far easier said than done! After a little rooting around on the Interwebs I discovered it was the handiwork of Brandenburg Productions, in tandem with Cincinnati’s PTV Station WCET 48. (Turns out it was the CSO’s national television debut.) For an example of the terrific camerawork, check out the beautiful harp close-up at about 5 minutes in.
Then there’s De Laroccha. Her usual ferocious technique, but at her age it’s also economical and elegant. No wasted movements or theatrics from this stately Queen…but utterly faithful to the energy and verve embedded in Ravel’s music!
As for Jean Françaix (1912-1997). I had always admired the froth and effervescence in his music (and he wrote for virtually every combination of instruments known to man), as well as the man’s craft, wit, and unpretentiousness. Then I got to know it a lot better when I got involved executive-producing a CD devoted to his complete piano works with pianist Nicole Narboni. (You can also check out her video about the project here.) Like his Cinq Bis (“Five Encores”) – wherein the composer offers a tongue-in-cheek Chinese Menu of choices for pianists to play, depending on the success of the recital. As Nicole explains in her liner notes:
Perhaps the most comical of all the works contained on this disc are the Cinq Bis, or Five Encores, from 1965. In the preface, Françaix quotes the 18th-century French author Nicolas de Chamfort …Quand vous êtes sur une scène, si vous n’êtes pas un peu charlatan, l’assemblée vous jette des pierres… (“When on the stage if you are not a little of a charlatan, the crowd will stone you.”)
These pieces have all the elements of great encores. Pour Allecher l’auditoire(“To entice the audience”) is a sarcastic warm-up; Pour les dames sentimentales (“For romantic ladies”) is a wonderful combination of silly and serious. The last three Bis are best saved for a third or fourth curtain call: En Cas de succès and En cas de triomphe – no translation required!. The fifth and final of the Bis, En cas de délire (“In case of delirium”) suggests a scene from a Victor Borge concert…
Besides Nicole, the only pianist I know who plays these “Cinq Bis” with any regularity is the excellent Aussie pianist Simon Tedeschi…the acclaimed “stunt double” for actor Geoffrey Rush in the David Helfgott biopic Shine. (Those were Simon’s hands you saw tickling the ivories in the close-ups!) Here you can watch his fingers fly through all five of the Françaix encores!
Today’s birthday to celebrate is that of American original Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Check out the nice web piece my WGBH colleague Cathy Fuller put together a couple of years ago, pairing up Gottschalk’s iconic (and, I would say, groundbreaking) 1855 composition The Banjo with Gloucester, Mass., painter Fitz Henry Lane’s New York Harbor, “composed” during the same year, and now hanging at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. As Cathy puts it,
The year is 1855, and the two artists come from very different circumstances. One of them was forced to stay in one place all his life; the other was famous for globetrotting.
The painter Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) lost the use of his legs before his second birthday. The paralysis was thought to have come from ingesting poisonous jimsonweed. He would never recover.
The musician Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) became America’s first traveling virtuoso – a pianist/composer who did an unbelievable amount of touring. He gave uncountable concerts in Europe, Central America, South America and Cuba. Sometimes called the “Chopin of the Creoles,” he worked into his music the syncopations of Louisiana and the Caribbean, creating pieces that anticipated jazz and ragtime. His music really had little to do with Chopin’s, but his spectacular control of the instrument was caricaturized by images of a wild pianist with hundreds of flying fingers.
Actually, there IS a pretty significant connection between Chopin and Gottschalk, as we discovered in one of our Radio Chopin episodes called “Chopin Comes to America.” Sample grab:
When Gottschalk was 13, his father packed the young piano prodigy off to Paris to study at the world-famous Conservatoire which at first REJECTED his application, his examiner declaring, “America is a country of steam engines.”
But Gottschalk chugged through and by 1845, he was making his Paris debut at the Salle Pleyel. On the program: Chopin’s Piano Concerto in E minor. In the audience: the composer himself.
Chopin met Gottschalk after the concert, and heaped praise on the young American, predicting a brilliant future for the teenaged pianist. Hector Berlioz was there too, and spoke of Gottschalk’s “exquisite grace, brilliant originality, and thundering energy.”
The whole episode is here … and as for his signature piece, it’s amazing what a wide range of interpretation it gets, and if YouTube is any indication, how much it represents “America” to foreign audiences as much as any work by Copland, Gershwin, or Bernstein. I first discovered Gottschalk through the mid-70s by pianist Ivan Davis, a few of which you can find on YouTube. Later, in DC, I was blown away by the sound and incredibly solid playing by pianist Lambert Orkis, who recorded a lot of Gottschalk on the composer’s instrument of choice: a 9-foot Chickering, made right here in the Hub of the Universe.
As for recordings of more recent vintage…. I usually admire the unusual repertory – and performances by the eccentric Cypriot pianist Cyprien Katsaris. But he seems to take the “Serenade Grotesque” subtitle a little too much to heart, dropping and adding notes as he pleases while he buzzes through it like he’s on a bullet train to Bejing. Irish pianist Philip Martin, on the other hand, gives it an almost ponderous opening at this performance in Mexico City. And then there is this highly nuanced (and nicely shot) performance by Dutch pianist Regina Albrink. I’d never heard her playing before but i’ll be listening for more after hearing this!
Extraordinary. Dr. George Horner, Terezin and Auschwitz survivor, performing music he played at at the Terezin concentration camp seven decades earlier. Only this time, he’s at Symphony Hall in Boston, joined by no less a figure than Yo-Yo Ma. The 90-year old Horner says quite simply: “Without music, I wouldn’t be here.” Thanks to the Terezin Music Foundation for posting this video.
Passion, devotion, and a wealth of invention…at Easter time I am drawn to the remarkable set of the 15 “Mystery” (sometimes called “Rosary”) sonatas by the 17th-century composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. It’s a collection of 15 short sonatas chronicling key moments in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary, organized into five “Joyful Mysteries,” five “Sorrowful Mysteries” and five “Glorious Mysteries.” And I find the final Passacaglia to be some combination of all three.
Which makes it all the cooler that uber-cool violinist Johnny Gandelsman (of Brooklyn Rider and Silk Road Ensemble fame) included this ancient marvel in his solo recital debut in NYC…at Le Poisson Rouge (“serving art and alcohol”). Go, Johnny Go! And if you’re hooked, you can read more about the intricacies of Biber’s sonatas here.
16 pianists playing a single Chopin Polonaise, with even a few clams thrown in. A tour-de-force of editing, and a remarkable seven-minute-and-nineteen-second tutorial on, oh, I don’t know…technique, style, fingering, cinematography, lighting, dress, culture…. Enjoy!
And a second consecutive day of referencing Liberace, too!
PS – for another mashup involving this Polonaise, check out the 24 pieces crammed into two minutes that chronicles Chopin’s affinity for his favorite key signature.
Rummaging around in the proverbial shoebox of old photos from an old Euro vacation, i ran across a Throwback Thursday-worthy shot of me tickling the ivories on Antonín Dvořák’s own ivory-colored piano.
Did Dvorak actually own this gilded white grand?
The photo was taken at the Dvorak Museum in a leafy section of Prague, in a restored Baroque mansion called – and, no, I’m not making this up – “Villa Amerika” – appropriate for the composer who became so famous in the New World, I suppose! I recall it was in a different location when I visited there in the late ’90s, but today, the white piano now gets pride of place in a small concert hall on the second floor, perched below an ornate frescoed ceiling.
But it got me to wondering about the Museum and more still about its Liberace-esque gilded white grand. Did Dvorak really live there? Did he actually play that instrument? And what kind of a piano was it, exactly?
Villa Amerika – the Dvorak Museum in Prague
The White Piano at home
The answers: 1) No, Dvorak actually lived in a small place not far away, on Zitna street. But the Museum holds a lot of his various artifacts, including his viola.
2) Doubtful. Since I visited, the Museum has subsequently acquired Dvorak’s actual piano, a beautiful mahogany 1879 Bösendorfer, built in Vienna.
3) The piano, it turns out, is a Petrof, the storied family-owned Czech manufacturer run by a fifth-generation descendent of founder Antonin Petrof, born just two years before Dvorak. And therein lies a tale!
It turns out that the company went into business in 1864 in the central Czech town of Hradec Králové, about two hours east of Prague, after young Antonin returned from an apprenticeship in Vienna and persuaded his father to turn their cabinet-making business into a piano factory. And the apogee of success happened for both “Tonys” at about the same time: Just as Dvorak was returning from “Amerika” and about to take up the directorship of the Prague Conservatory, Antonín Petrof is appointed by the Emperor as the court piano-builder for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
But after that the story becomes a tale of booms, busts, war, and then the advent of the Iron Curtain. In 1948, the Petrof factory was nationalized, and became a state-run factory of a profoundly diminished reputation until the Petrof family got their company back in 1993. And if you do the math, that means that the Petrof company is 150 years old this year!
Read more about the Petrof Piano Saga here: “an amazing story of courage, determination, and a family’s extraordinary commitment to exemplary piano building tradition...and check out this video visit to the Petrof Piano factory below, replete with the roll call (with a few hilarious misspellings) of Petrof piano artists,including Ray Charles (who even had one in his home), Count Basie, Bill Evans, Mal Waldron, Lynne Arriale, Richard Clayderman (!), and Jacques Loussier.
Ray Charles’ favorite piano brand?
Further research reveals that the Petrof pianos have long been the house-supplied instruments in the storied Rudolfinum in Prague, where their rather heavy action and even regulation was preferred by such luminaries as Rudolf Firkusny, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and Ivan Moravec. (One of Moravec’s great recordings: a 1963 disc of pieces by Chopin, Mozart, and Beethoven, was recorded on a Petrof.)
Then there’s the Petrof on display in the glittering concert hall in Prague Castle. Check out this video of violinist Josef Suk and pianist Jan Panenka playing Dvorak, natch:
But I was still curious to hear what that gilded white Petrof in the Dvorak museum sounded like. So, after a lot of interet scouring, I did come up with a grainy video containing Dvorak Romance for violin and piano, Op. 11, as well as Chopin’s Ballade No. 3. Incomplete performances, sadly, but complete enough to reveal that Dvorak’s white Petrov looks far better than it sounds…
Roedeo Productions 
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