Obviously, we all know the works of JS Bach (although maybe not rendered by a harp), Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré but I wonder how many of you, like me, were a little hazy about Messers Piazzolla, Glière, Tournier and Rota? So here is a very brief primer….
Astor Piazzolla (1921-92) was an Italian Argentinian who spent many of his formative years on the tough streets of lower East Side New York. His first introduction to music was via a second hand bandoneon (a kind of large German concertina widely used in tango orchestras) that his father picked up in a pawn shop. But, according to the Astor Piazzolla site, his introduction to classical music came when he heard, coming from the next door house in his street, the sound of the Hungarian pianist Bela Wilda playing Bach. Piazzolla went on to study with Wilda – who taught him to play Bach on his bandoneon!
By the late 1930s Piazzolla had returned to Argentina where he played in and led a number of tango orchestras until, in the early 1950s he abandoned tango in favour of classical composition, studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Under her guidance he started to meld his classical studies with his tango roots in due course creating a nuevo tango style which, according to Argentine psychoanalyst Carlos Kuri ‘fused tango with this wide range of other recognizable Western musical elements so successfully that it produced a new individual style transcending these influences’. (Thank you Wikipedia.) Over a long life he was amazingly productive writing, it is estimated, around 3,000 pieces and recording over 500.
To learn more check into the comprehensive Wikipedia site – or the rather quirky Astor Piazzolla site
Very different is the career of Reinhold Glière (1875-1956). Born in Kiev into family of instrument makers, his was always going to be a musical career. A child prodigy violinist, he studied first in Kiev and then at the Moscow Conservatoire where he went on to teach.
Throughout his career Glière remained totally Russian focused. He never travelled to Western Europe spending many years touring the vastness of the Soviet Union and studying the music and folklore of Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and his native Ukraine. As ‘the last genuine representative of the pre-revolutionary national Russian school Glière was immune to the standard reproach of “formalism” – mostly equivalent to “modernity” or “bourgeois decadence” ‘ (thank you, again, Wikipedia) – and thus managed to escape the purges and disgrace that either muzzled or drove so many of his contemporaries into exile in the 1940s and 50s.
Rather crushingly even his own site says that ‘his work seems to lack originality when compared with some of the more progressive Soviet composers, but will for years hold the affection of the Russian people. When the musical historians of the future review the twentieth century, it will probably be found that Gliere’s greatest service to his art was in his work as a teacher of composition.’
For more see either Wikipedia or the Reinhold Glière site.
Marcel Tournier (1879-1952) was also born, in Paris, into a family of instrument makers but while his father was a luthier, from an early age Tournier was drawn to the harp. At 16 he enrolled at the Paris conservatoire where, along with his wife Renée Lénars, also a virtuoso harpist, he was to spend much of his life, both teaching and writing music.
Although he composed choral and stage works, chamber and piano pieces Tournier’s main output was for the harp. ‘His music is largely Impressionistic, though his melodies were often tinged by a Romantic spirit’ says Robert Cummings on All Music.
For more (although not much more…) see Wikipedia or All Music.
With Nino Rota (1911-79), best known as the composer of an amazing array of film scores, we we are in very different territory.
Born in Milan into another musical family, Rota too was a child prodigy composing a three act lyrical comedy when he was only 13. He went on to study and teach in Milan and in Bari where he was director of the Liceo Musicale for nearly 30 years.
Although Rota wrote numerous orchestral works as well as piano, chamber, choral music and opera, he is best known for the film scores – over 150 of them from the 1930s until his death in 1979 – especially for those created for fellow Italians, Fellini, Visconti and Zeffirrelli. Fellini, with whom he worked for decades, called him ‘the most precious collaborator I have ever had…… between us, immediately, a complete, total, harmony.’
For more see Wikipedia.
And then of course we have the Andante from J S Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 2, Debussy’s Première Arabesque and Fauré’s Une Chatelaine en sa tour – not to mention lots of wine and a delicious buffet supper.
All included in the cost of the ticket – a bargain at only £28.
To book for 7th March – go here.
Upcoming concerts:
Sunday 2nd April – Highgate Society Lunchtime concert
Jonah Phillips and his group – piano, bass & drums
Book here.
Sunday 7th May – evening – The Hanover Square Quartet
Music by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn and Emilie Mayer.
Book here.
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