“I began my musical training with Alberto Ginastera. From him I learned the importance of grasping music. On this basis I began to make new arrangements. I composed even string quartets for the members of my tango orchestra. My arrangements were however, ahead of their time, and I soon had to realize that my music was not appreciated by all. This is the same today. In Argentina one can change everything, only not the tango. That was so back then, as if I had taken on another faith, as if I had converted from Christianity to Islam or Buddhism. But I had the idea, lucky for me, above all, of changing the tango¿ I enjoy composing. I do not limit myself to writing concertante or symphonic music, I write everything with pleasure¿ Whoever wants to write contemporary music must not lost his identity. I am Argentine and my music has to be Argentine. My music has to breathe the air of my country. Luckily one has always told me: Your music comes from Buenos Aires.” (Astor Piazzolla)
Mozart, Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments in E flat major, K. 452
Beethoven, Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments in E flat major, op.16
Shostakovich, Symphony No.6 in B minor, op.54
In early October 1986, Leonard Bernstein conducted a benefit concert for the restoration of Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal. In this program he led the Vienna Philharmonic in Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony and Sibelius’s Second Symphony.
Sibelius, Symphony No.2 in D major, op.43
Written not long after his celebrated tone poem “Finlandia,” Sibelius’s Second Symphony is a work that is still unabashedly in the romantic vein and soon became considered by the Finns as a battle hymn against the Russian oppressor and the musical expression of their nationalist aspirations. It was premiered in Helsinki on 8 March 1902. In the mid 1980s, Unitel began recording a complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies with Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. Bernstein’s death in 1990 unfortunately cut short this project after the release of Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 5 and 7. They were recorded live at Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal and were the object of stellar reviews. Bernstein, in the words of a leading Austrian daily, “painted a canvas of late-romantic splendor with the Philharmonic’s sound – the incomparable brilliancy of the strings, the glowing intensity of the brass – in a way that only the greatest conductors can.” (Symphony No. 1) And in its review of the Second Symphony, a major Viennese newspaper wrote: “For the sake of Jean Sibelius, Leonard Bernstein leaps with fanatical zeal into the heaving waves of late romantic emotions. “It is not surprising that Leonard Bernstein felt so passionately about Sibelius’s music. In many respects, it strikingly parallels that of Gustav Mahler. In fact, Sibelius’s oeuvre is seen along with Gustav Mahler’s as the most important symphonic legacy between late romanticism and modernity. And as Mahler’s glowing advocate, Bernstein was suited like none other to disseminate the music of his great colleague Jean Sibelius. In early October 1986, Leonard Bernstein conducted a benefit concert for the restoration of Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal. In this program, recorded by Unitel, he led the Vienna Philharmonic in Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony and Sibelius’s Second Symphony.
Bernstein, Chichester Psalms
Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” were recorded live with the London Symphony Orchestra during the Leonard Bernstein Festival which took place at London’s Barbican Centre in May 1986. In the presence of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, Leonard Bernstein conducted a gala concert on 6 May with three of his most important works: the Chichester Psalms, the Serenade for Violin and Orchestra, and the Second Symphony, entitled “The Age of Anxiety”. The soloists in these concerts were Gidon Kremer (violin), Krystian Zimerman (piano) and Aled Jones (voice).
Die Schöpfung (The Creation) Hob.XXI:2
Haydn began writing the oratorio “Die Schöpfung” (The Creation) in 1795; it was given its first performance at the palace of Prince Schwarzenberg in Vienna in 1798. Haydn’s life’s work reached its climax and its conclusion in The Creation and in the oratorio The Seasons, written in 1801. Shortly before his death in 1808, Haydn attended another gala performance of The Creation which was received by the audience with wild enthusiasm. Leonard Bernstein’s recording of this work was made at the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren in 1986 with the chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio with soloists Judith Blegen, Thomas Moser, Kurt Moll, Lucia Popp and Kurt Ollmann. Bernstein himself said of The Creation: “In the beginning of this awesome musical version, Haydn created one of the supreme music dramatizations of all time: the depiction of chaos, as he entitled it – that pre-terrestrial chaos depicted in Genesis by the single line: ‘And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the Deep’. This musical depiction is of a beauty almost frightening in its chromatic and dissonant texture – something outside of Time, and certainly outside of the 1790s, when it was written. … Haydn’s The Creation gives us time to remember – and rejoice in – the purity and grace and fortitude of Nature, to saunter blissfully through that Garden of Gardens along with Adam and Eve; to restore our souls, to recover our moral strength, and to rediscover our power to praise.”
Monteverdi, Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin)
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) contributed more to the music of his time than any other composer: he perfected the art of the madrigal, gave decisive impulses to the young genre of the opera by his imaginative use of descriptive and dramatic effects and by giving each figure an individual character, and introduced the expressive language of secular music into the rigid sacred music of his time. In his “Marian Vespers,” composed in Mantua in 1610, Monteverdi combined elements from the traditional church music style with the new “stile concertato” and polychoral forms, but also boldly made use of Gregorian chant. Whether for solo voice and continuo, for chorus a cappella or for the mighty forces of the chorus and orchestra – Monteverdi cast each single piece in the Marian Vespers in its own mould, thereby obtaining an expressive diversity within a stylistically unified framework. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus musicus are the ideal interpreters of Monteverdi’s music. Their year-long specialization in the field of early music and original performance practice guarantees an authoritative and gripping interpretation. The concert was recorded at the Baroque Cathedral of Graz, Austria, in 1986.
Schubert, My Dream – Schubert’s “Great” C major symphony as a film by Norbert Beilharz
We see Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (The Great C-major Symphony) in Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal. Filming him is Norbert Beilharz. But what he is filming are also the thoughts which listening to the music arouses in him. Beilharz has atempted to transform the symphony into images. To emphasize the subjective nature of his vision, Beilharz conjures up an old man who, while attending the concert, is overtaken by memories. Schubert’s music evokes in him moments of joy and sadness, happiness and desperation, love and pain – all as changeable as the seasons. Harnoncourt, the member of the audience and his memories are woven into a triangle with such a dramatic tension that even Harnoncourt’s gestures seem to be in interplay with the old man’s images of the past. “My Dream” is the device which appears at the beginning of a story written in 1822 and attributed to Franz Schubert. In 1839, a signed manuscript was given to Robert Schumann by Franz’s brother Ferdinand Schubert. Norbert Beilharz chose the device to be the title of his filmed essay on Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major.
La Fille Mal Gardée (The Unchaperoned Daughter)
Premiered in Bordeaux two weeks before the storming of the Bastille, “La fille mal gardée” is the only classic 18th-century ballet still in the repertoire today. Critics found that the naturalness, sensitivity and humor of Heinz Spoerli’s 1981 staging make it superior to the benchmark staging by Sir Frederick Ashton, who brought the work back to life and worldwide fame in 1960.