This week our spotlight is on those in the spotlight. We're looking at the concerto, a genre known for giving musicians center stage. It's a show we're calling "In The Spotlight." Here's a list of some of our favorite concertos (or at least, some that we find interesting):
- Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943), Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 – Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto is among the most famous in the concerto genre, known for its sweeping Romantic melodies. But it almost didn't happen, except for the help of one man. Right around the turn of the 20th century, Sergei Rachmaninoff was in a rut. His first symphony received some bad press, and it sunk the composer into a mixture of writer's' block and depression for several years, unable to complete his second piano concerto. Seemingly at the end of his rope, Rachmaninoff went to see Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who specialized in hypnosis. Now, some say that Dahl's hypnotherapy cured Rachmaninoff's writers' block; other say that simple conversations with the doctor about music and art had put Rachmaninoff in a better mood. Regardless, Rachmaninoff returned to composition with this concerto, which he later dedicated to Dr. Dahl.
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- Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 – Bach wrote six concertos for the Margrave of Brandenburg, Christian Ludwig. Bach was mostly likely seeking employment from the Margrave, but didn't receive any. Having assumed that Christian Ludwig would have plenty of musicians in his Berlin ensemble, Bach had composed the concertos for seventeen performers, the exact number he had at his disposal while director of church music in Köthen. Unfortunately the Margrave was not much of a patron of the arts, and did not employ enough musicians to perform the concertos. Instead, the manuscript (which Bach, rather than a copyist, had prepared himself) was squirreled away in a private library in Brandenburg and not rediscovered until 1849. We just listened to the beginning of the third concerto, which is likely a reworked version of a concerto Bach wrote a decade earlier. Around that time, he was discovering the music of another famous composer of concertos, George Frideric Handel.
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- Béla Bartók (1881–1945), Concerto for Orchestra – In a concerto, a soloist takes the spotlight accompanied by a full orchestra. So how can you have a Concerto for Orchestra? How can you feature an orchestra as a soloist with orchestral accompaniment? Wouldn't that just be a symphony? Bartok explained this puzzle by saying that throughout the piece, different sections of the orchestra are featured as soloists, hence a "Concerto for Orchestra." He wasn't the first to use this contradictory title, but his Concerto for Orchestra is certainly the most famous of the works that bear this title. Serge Koussevitsky, the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commissioned this work in 1943. He also premiered the work in Boston the following year. At the time, Bartok had just emigrated to the United States to escape the war, and thought living in the U.S. would be his retirement. But this commission sparked a late career Renaissance for the composer, writing about five more pieces before he died in 1945.
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- Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), Violin Concerto in E minor – The Violin Concerto in E minor, the last major orchestral work written by Mendelssohn, remains to this day one of the hallmarks of the genre. With a written out cadenza, it was fairly innovative for the time, when the virtuosic cadenzas were usually left up to the discretion of the individual performer. Violinist Joseph Joachim, a close friend of Brahms and a protege of Mendelssohn, called this particular work the "heart's jewel" of the German violin concerto repertoire. In 1948, this piece was involved in an important musical first. It was the first piece of music distributed on a long-playing record, a brand new piece of technology from Columbia Records. This 33 ⅓ rpm microgroove vinyl LP was a game changer for the industry, holding 44 minutes of music instead of the usual 5-10. That first recording of this work featured violinist Nathan Milstein, alongside Bruno Walter and the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York.
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- Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), Concerto Grosso for 10 Instruments, RV 562A – Antonio Vivaldi was one of the most prolific concerto composers of all time. He composed over 500 concertos, about half of which were for his favored instrument, the violin. The abundance of concerto writing in Vivaldi's overall output is linked to his employment at the Conservatorio dell'Ospedale della Pietà ,* a combination convent, orphanage and music school where Vivaldi directed an orchestra for young women and girls. The students of the Ospedale were renowned for their musical skill, and performances featuring the orchestra were frequently scheduled to raise money for the conservatory. Between 1723 and 1733, Vivaldi was required to produce two concerti a month for the orchestra. Most of these are traditional concertos, highlighting a solo instrument accompanied by the orchestra, but several are Concerto Grossi, meaning that a whole group of instruments is featured rather than a single soloist.
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- Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983), Harp Concerto, Op. 25 – Harps have a rich and varied musical history, both as accompaniment instruments and featured soloists. However, there are relatively few concertos written for them. One of the earliest examples is a concerto by Handel written for the Welch baroque harpist William Powell. By the mid 20th century, the harp had received an innovative pedal system that allowed it to quickly change keys. It became a staple of modern orchestral music, and took front and center in this beautiful concerto by Alberto Ginastera. This work was written at a time when Ginastera was redefining his style, moving away from more traditional music from his home country of Argentina towards more abstract forms. As a result, it took him a little longer to complete than expected. It was commissioned by Edna Phillips, the harpist for the Philadelphia Orchestra, although once Ginastera completed the work 8 years later, she had already retired!
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- Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), "Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich?" (Motet) SWV 415 – Although Arcangelo Corelli codified the term "concerto" in the Baroque era to indicate a solo instrument accompanied by an ensemble, the original late-Renaissance use of the term was slightly different. The term appears frequently in the music of Giovanni Gabrieli and his student who composed tonight's selection, Heinrich Schutz. Both composers wrote polychoral music, a style that consisted of small groups of mixed instruments and voices interacting with one another within the same composition. A distinct feature of this music is the use of independent instrumental voices as opposed to instrumental doubling of the vocal parts. Because Renaissance musicians and composers worked from part books rather than scores, the term "concerto" was included in a part to let the instrumentalist know that their melody line was different from the voice parts of the ensemble that shared the same register. This way, they could perform that particular portion of the music more soloistically.
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- Eric Ewazen (b. 1954), Concerto for Bass Trombone and Orchestra – Eric Ewazen, born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1954, has been on faculty at Juilliard since 1982. He studied at Eastman and Juilliard under such noted composers as Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt, and Gunther Schuller. Ewazen is a originally a trombonist, and he's written a number of works for solo brass instruments, brass ensembles, and band. In fact, if you've ever listened to election night coverage on NPR, you've heard Ewazen's music: a movement from his Symphony In Brass is used as NPR's election night fanfare. His trombone background served him well when he wrote this Concerto for Bass Trombone in 1997. He wrote it for trombonist Stefan Sanders, who at the time was one of Ewazen's students at Juilliard. Now, Sanders is a conductor for the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra, the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra, and the Spartanburg Philharmonic.
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- The Toys, "A Lover's Concerto" – A concerto, as we've learned, is a showcase for solo instrument with some kind of orchestral accompaniment. But the songwriters behind "A Lover's Concerto," a 1965 hit for the girl group Toys, either a) didn't know what the word meant, or b) assumed that their audience wouldn't, but that they would know it had something to do with "classical music." And this piece, as it turns out, does have something to do with classical music: this simple love song borrows an older "classical" melody. The tune is an unapologetic borrowing of the famous "Minuet in G" from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, something that every young pianist has had to perform. While most people assume that it was J.S. Bach who wrote this easy melody for his second wife, most scholars agree it was written by a different 18th-century composer, a man named Christian Petzold.
