{"id":8284,"date":"2019-02-26T16:11:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T15:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=8284"},"modified":"2019-02-26T16:15:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T15:15:41","slug":"inside-the-music-3rd-march-hereford-shirehall-mozart-tchaikovsky-kapralova-and-martinu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2019\/02\/26\/inside-the-music-3rd-march-hereford-shirehall-mozart-tchaikovsky-kapralova-and-martinu\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE THE MUSIC \u2013 3RD MARCH HEREFORD SHIREHALL, MOZART, TCHAIKOVSKY, KAPR\u00c1LOV\u00c1 AND MARTIN\u016e"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here’s an attempt to comb through\u00a0some of the threads which join together the four works on this weekend\u2019s programme in Hereford\u2019s beautiful Shirehall.<\/strong>
\nBook your tickets here.<\/a>\u00a0Phone Booking\u00a0\u00a001905 611427<\/strong>
\nIn person at the Huntingdon Hall Box office\u00a0CrownGate\u00a0Worcester, WR1 2ES<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There is a love story at the heart of today\u2019s programme.<\/p>\n

Bohuslav\u00a0Martin\u016f\u00a0was, alongside Dvo\u0159\u00e1k, Smetana and Janacek, one of very greatest of all Czech composers. Like his near contemporary from Hungary, B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k, Martin\u016f thrived as a composer on integrating the most exciting musical developments of the early 20th<\/sup>\u00a0Century with a strong grounding in folk music, particularly the rustic folk melodies of Eastern Europe. Perhaps the biggest influence on Martin\u016f\u2019s very unique voice was that of Stravinsky\u2019s neo-classical music. Martin\u016f\u2019s music never strays far from its roots in melody and dance rhythm, but also shows an uncommon mastery of modern harmony and a genius for instrumentation. He was an exceptionally prolific composer whose output includes fifteen operas, fourteen ballets and a remarkable cycle of six symphonies.<\/p>\n

His\u00a0Partita for Strings<\/em>\u00a0comes from 1930. It\u2019s an engaging work which highlights Martin\u016f\u2019s sense of humour as well as his astonishing sense of adventure in writing for strings. It is a piece that manages to somehow be both quirky and virtuosic.<\/p>\n

Martin\u016f and V\u00edt\u011bzslava Kapr\u00e1lov\u00e1\u00a0first met in Prague in 1937. Martin\u016f\u00a0was living in Paris at the time and had come back for a production meeting ahead of the premi\u00e8re of his opera,\u00a0Julietta<\/em>. This fateful encounter was to have life-changing ramifications for both composers. Following her move to Paris as a result of the German occupation of Prague, Martin\u016f\u00a0would become Kapr\u00e1lov\u00e1\u2019s friend, teacher and champion, and later her lover and soulmate. When she died from tuberculosis, aged only 25, on 16 June 1940, her last words were \u201cIt is Julietta,\u201d recalling the title of the opera which had originally brought them together.<\/p>\n

\n

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V\u00edt\u011bzslava Kapr\u00e1lov\u00e1 conducting<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

However, to remember Kapr\u00e1lov\u00e1\u00a0only for her association with Martin\u016f would be to do a grave disservice to one of the most talented musicians of the 20th<\/sup>Century. She was equally at home as composer and conductor, and in her early twenties had already made historic debuts with orchestras like the BBC Symphony and the Czech Philharmonic. Had she lived longer, the history of women on the conductor\u2019s podium might have been very different indeed.<\/p>\n

Her\u00a0Partita for Piano and Strings<\/em>\u00a0was very much a result of Kapr\u00e1lov\u00e1\u2019s time in Paris with Martin\u016f. She began work on the piece in March 1938 and finished it in June 1939. It is a work of astonishing quality, strength and originality, a remarkable achievement for a composer of just twenty-four. She didn\u2019t live to hear it performed. The work was premi\u00e8red in 1941 in Brno, but Kapr\u00e1lov\u00e1\u2019s music fell into shadow during the rest of World War II and was shockingly neglected for most of the rest of the twentieth\u00a0Century. It was only in the 1990s that musicians and scholars began to urgently re-examine her legacy and that new editions of most of her remarkable output were printed<\/p>\n

Mozart\u2019s Piano Concerto no. 13 in C major K 415 was one of three concerti he wrote in 1782-3 for his subscription concerts in Vienna. Mozart was, at the time, perhaps more acclaimed as a pianist than even as a composer, and his output of 27 concerti for the piano illustrates not only his affection for the genre, but its value to him as a way of making a living. Like the two concerti which preceded it, K415 was composed so as to be performable in the widest possible range of performance situations. It was originally scored for a relatively large orchestra, notable for the inclusion of trumpets and timpani, but Mozart also made it possible for the piece to be played by piano and string orchestra (the version you will hear today) or even piano and string quartet. Like many other masters of the past, including Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar, Mozart was extremely pragmatic about arranging both his own music and that of others for either larger or smaller forces.<\/p>\n

Another composer with a pragmatic outlook to arrangements was Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky composed relatively little chamber music, but his First String Quartet yielded a huge hit, the Andante Cantabile, based on a folk song Tchaikovsky had heard while visiting his sister. Tchaikovsky quickly saw the commercial potential of this movement as a stand-alone item when Leo Tolstoy burst into tears at the work\u2019s premi\u00e8re: \u201cProbably never in my life have I been so moved by the pride of authorship as when Lev Tolstoy, sitting by me and listening to the\u00a0Andante\u00a0<\/em>of my Quartet, burst into tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tolstoy, for his part, wrote to Tchaikovsky a few days later, \u2018Never have I received such acute pleasure in the rewards of my literary works as on that wonderful evening.\u201d\u00a0Andante Cantabile<\/em>has since been arranged and orchestrated for dozens of different combinations of instruments, including one for solo cello and strings by the composer.<\/p>\n

Fond as I am of Tchaikovsky\u2019s First String Quartet, I have come to believe he got even better with the two which followed it, and, for whatever reason, his Third String Quartet has had very special place in my heart for many years. Having known of Rudolf Barshai\u2019s fantastic string orchestra versions of Shostakovich\u2019s 8th<\/sup>\u00a0and 10th<\/sup>\u00a0String Quartets and Mahler\u2019s orchestrations of quartets by Beethoven and Schubert, I\u2019ve long been fascinated by the possibilities of arranging quartets for larger forces. This work seemed to be a particularly fitting candidate for expansion to string orchestra forces. It is a work of truly symphonic scale which is perhaps closer in spirit to Tchaikovsky\u2019s last three symphonies than to the more delicate world of his other previous two string quartets.<\/p>\n

The Third String Quartet is dedicated to the memory of violinist Ferdinand Laub. Laub had been the violinist for the premi\u00e8res of Tchaikovsky\u2019s first two quartets and had died suddenly at the age of 43. The work is in the unusual and exceptionally dark key of E-flat minor.<\/p>\n

The first movement begins and ends slowly and tragically. In between comes one of those epic Tchaikovsky-an music dramas that he seemed to do better than anyone, in which almost the whole human experience is embraced with desperate intensity. There is joy and desperation, tragedy and ecstasy. The second movement is a complete contrast, a mercurial, playful Scherzo, full of rhythmic surprises. The third movement, described by Tchaikovksy as \u201cfunebre e doloroso<\/em>\u201d (\u201cfunereal and painful\u201d) is the part of the work in which Laub\u2019s loss is most poignantly mourned.<\/p>\n

Finally, as he had in the Fourth Symphony, the work closest to this one in spirit, Tchaikovsky shakes off the tragic mood all at once and finishes the work with an exuberant and uplifting Finale. Once all the tears have been shed and the grief poured out, life goes on.<\/p>\n