IN RECITAL

BRUNO MONTEIRO - Violino

JOÃO PAULO SANTOS - Piano

I-Tunes:

The word “recital” means, within the scope of music and since the middle of the XIX century, a public presentation of a solo performer or of a small group of musicians. Previously connoted with a speech or a narrative, or even an execution or an interpretation of a specific musical work, the recital as a new form of public presentation by an artist came to revolutionise the European musical life, from the moment Franz Liszt created his own prototype, in the seasons that took place between 1837 and 1840, dispensing most of the collaborators with whom it was frequent for a certain interpreter to conceive and execute programmes of wide dimensions (usually centred upon opera areas and fantasies built upon them) with which they presented themselves before the public with the goal of divulging the quality of their projects and thus raise both students and patrons. Liszt, who sometimes appeared solo during those seasons, namely in London, was perfectly aware of the boldness such an attitude represented; so being, he opened an important precedent for the creation of a musical institution based upon the person and the individuality of the artist, normally a pianist or a violinist, around whom a true cult came to be developed.

Initially centred upon works by the interpreter himself, the recitals began to include, from the 1860s onwards, the “classical” repertoire, whose core comprised the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but also Schumann and Brahms. Virtuosos such as Joseph Joachim, Henry Vieuxtemps (violin) and Anton Rubinstein (piano) adopted such formula. With the development of musical teaching of the second half of the XIX century, the recital also became a time of excellence for the assessment of the performance of emergent artists and therefore became a determinant factor in the prosecution of musical careers.

The recital suffered, from the 1960s onwards, several vicissitudes related to the reduction of the number of amateur musicians who made up the core of their audience and to the development of competing forms of entertainment. On the other hand, however, it was revitalized by the eased dislocation the new means of transportation allowed for and by the stimuli important international instrument competitions began to promote. Bruno Monteiro and João Paulo Santos integrate this tradition as they present works of virtuoso character which became, in their own time, milestones of the violin repertoire.

Details:

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

1. Biographical Note

Johannes Brahms occupies an enhanced place in the history of the Western music, not only for the intrinsic quality of his compositions, but also for its attitude in favour of the so called “pure music” (i. e., independent of extra musical and literary associations), therefore distinguishing himself from the current which, in his time, stood by the “future music”, represented by personalities such as Franz Liszt.

The son of a bass player at the Hamburg State Theatre Orchestra, he studied violin with his father, piano with Otto Cossel and composition with Eduard Marxsen. From his early teenager years he was taken to play in order to make a living on several occasions, including theatres and taverns.

The relationship built with two renowned violinists substantially altered the direction of his career, decisively contributing for the full development of his artistic potential. Firstly, in 1853, Brahms was hired to accompany the virtuoso Hungarian Ede Reményi on a concert tour; the displacements he then underwent promoted the time to contact with several personalities of the musical world, including Joseph Joachim, another violinist of grand reputation who recommended him to Liszt and Robert Schumann.

Between Brahms, the latter and his wife Clara a relationship of true friendship came to life followed by a strong artistic connivance; the article Neue Bahnen (“New Paths”), which Schumann wrote about him on the famous publication Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (“The New Music Newspaper”), in October 1853, undoubtedly contributed for the establishment of his reputation as a composer. 

In the final years of the 1850s, Brahms directed a choir on the court of Lippe-Detmold and was also the piano teacher of Princess Friederike. The première of his 1st Concert for Piano and Orchestra, in Leipzig, in 1859, revealed itself a notorious failure, which only ten years later would be repaired with the public success of the work Ein Deutsches Requiem. 

After 1862 he settled in Vienna, where he directed the Singakademie during the following season and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde between 1872 and 1875. His activity during the following years and the year of his death, which took place in Vienna, was divided between composition and performance of concert tours as a pianist.

Having left a legacy of works of an indisputable value in all musical genres practiced of this time, except the opera, he worked on classical formal settings deeply innovating at a motivational-thematic, harmonic and rhythmical level. Systematically renouncing programmatic music, he tried to perpetuate the symphonic inheritance of Beethoven, whose work he profoundly admired, with his symphonies (from which the first was deeply matured between 1855 and 1876).

2. Scherzo for Violin and Piano in C minor WoO2 

This work witnesses the friendship, collaboration and connivance relationship which grew between Brahms and the violinist Joseph Joachim, who he met in Göttingen, in 1853, during a concert tour he was with Ede Reményi, on in the north of Germany.

Composed in October 1853, the Scherzo for Violin and Piano in C minor WoO2 was premièred in Düsseldorf, on October 28th of that same year and was posthumously published in 1906. It initially corresponded to the 3rd movement of a collective work, of the responsibility of Brahms, Robert Schumann (who composed the 2nd and 4th movements) and Albert Dietrich, a disciple of the latter (who contributed with the 1st movement). This sonata, designated by the initials F. A. E. (“Frei, aber einsam” or “free but lonely”, the motto of the interpreter for whom it was conceived) came to give room to Schumann’s 3rd Sonata for Violin and Piano, who ended up writing two supplementary movements in order to replace the initially composed by his two collaborators.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

1. Biographical Note

Gabriel Fauré is considered by several authors the most original French musical personality of his time. Distinguishing himself form the current classicist supported by some of his countrymen and the exacerbated chromatism of Richard Wagner and César Franck, he developed a personal style which would affect several composers during the first decades of the XX century. His researches within the harmonic and melodic domains also had a remarkable and lasting influence on the pedagogical practice of composition in his own country.

Born in Pamiers (Ariège), Fauré expressed his musical gifts at a very early age; on October 1854 he entered the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse which Louis Niedermeyer had founded in Paris on the previous year. There he took his musical training for eleven years, during which he collected important influences which would come to define key elements of his language, namely as far as the Gregorian modality and the study of the German masters of the past, such as J. S. Bach, were concerned. From 1861 onwards, his piano studies were oriented by Camille Saint-Saëns, whose advice soon extrapolated into the composition domain; through him, Fauré came to know the music of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner.

While organist, he developed a career throughout thirty years on Churches such as Saint Sauveur (Rennes), Notre Dame of Clignancourt, Saint Honoré d’Eylau, Saint Sulpice and Madeleine (Paris). In 1872 he began to be a regular at Pauline Viardot’s saloon; there he met important names of the Parisian musical world ( d’Indy, Lalo, Duparc, Chabrier, among others) with whom he would found, the following year, the Société Nationale de Musique, in the setting of which several of his work were presented. In 1896 he was named composition teacher at the Paris Conservatory, which he directed between 1905 and 1920; among several disciples he oriented at that institution, names such as Maurice Ravel, Charles Koechlin, Florent Schmitt e Nadia Boulanger may be found. The deafness which affected the last years of his life determined the isolation in which he passed away; acknowledged as one of the most important French composers of his time, he had national honours on his funeral. 

2. Sonata n.1 for Violin and Piano in A Major Op.13

The Sonata n.1 for Violin and Piano in A Major Op.13 by Gabriel Fauré consecrates, together with his two quartets for piano Op. 15 and Op. 45, the reputation of the composer in the scope of chamber music. Several authors see in it the beginning of a specifically French tradition which would not take long to develop, namely with the famous Sonata for Violin and Piano by César Franck (1885) and with the subsequent works of the very same genre by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, among others.

Written mostly in Normandy during a summer stay at the house of some friends of the composer, in 1875, the work was completed during the following year and debuted in one of the concerts by the Société Nationale de Musique at the Pleyel Room, in Paris, on January 27th 1877; the interpreters were the violinist Marie Tayau and Fauré himself. The critic, lead by Camille Saint-Saëns, did not fail to profusely admire the innovative quality of the work, reflected in the search for new forms, modulations, sonorities and rhythms, also noticing that the result of such search was wrapped in a “charm” which assured its success with the public. Even so, the work was constantly refused by French editors who feared the aesthetical audacities it comprised. It was finally published in Germany, by Breitkopf und Härtel, under the condition that the author would renounce the commercial rights he naturally had upon it.

Biographically speaking, the Sonata n.1 for Violin and Piano in A Major Op.13 reflects the joys, the freshness and the flaming of one of the happiest periods in the life of the composer, which corresponds to the short engagement with Marianne Viardot, daughter of Pauline Viardot and sister of the violinist Paul Viardot, to whom the work is dedicated.

According to Harry Halbreich, this work in four movements includes contradicting influences, such as those of Robert Schumann and Camille Saint-Saëns, but also conclusively states essential stages of the artistic personality of its author, which subsequent works would come to reveal, develop or confirm. Until today it keeps its enhanced place in the repertoire of varied interpreters of chamber music.

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

1. Biographical Note

Born in Bologna, Ottorino Respighi began his musical studies (violin and piano) during his childhood; later, at the Liceo Musicale in his hometown, he continued his instrumental training (violin and viola) with Frederico Sarti, also having studied composition under Luigi Torchi (who stimulated upon him a profound and lasting interest for antique music) and Giuseppe Martucci.

In the years 1900-1903, he spent several months in Russia, playing viola in orchestras such as the Saint Petersburg Opera and deepening his knowledge with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who decisively influenced him in matters of orchestration. In Berlin, he benefited from another brief (and apparently unsuccessful) study period with Max Bruch, in 1902.

Back to Bologna, in 1903, he kept his activity as an orchestral musician, as composer and performing amendments on works from the XVII and XVIII centuries. From 1911 onwards he centred his instrumental activity on the domain of the piano accompaniment and in 1913 he was named composition teacher at the Liceo Musicale di S. Cecilia. Between 1923 and 1926 he directed the Conservatorio di S. Cecilia; and apart from that, he taught composition until 1935 at the Academia di S. Cecilia.

In the last years of his life, he travelled a lot, directing and interpreting his own works; in his home country he received several distinctions, having been admired by Mussolini, despite his neutral political posture. Health problems prevented him from composing after 1933. His reputation rests mainly upon his orchestral works and amendments on instrumental music of the Baroque and of the transition for Classicism. Although in the beginning of his career he attained some success with some of his operas that did not happen again when he revisited that genre at he end of his life.

2. Sonata for Violin and Piano in B minor

This work, written in Rome in 1916-1917, dates from a period when the author wavered between esthetical possibilities sometimes contradicting; along with a fundamentally experimental attitude revealed in works such as the song cycle Deità silvane, also from 1917, and the orchestral play Ballata delle gnomidi, from 1919, the Sonata for Violin and Piano in B minor seems to betray the influence of Giuseppe Martucci and aim for the models of the eight hundredth of that same genre, including the above mentioned Sonata for Violin and Piano by César Franck.

Premièred in Bologna, on March 3rd 1918, by the violinist Frederico Sarti with Respighi himself at the piano, this work of wide proportions does not use themes based upon Gregorian models, as it happened on several ulterior works by the same composer; nevertheless the adoption of the Passacaglia as a formal structure on the last movement of the sonata constitutes an eloquent testimony of the interest which the composer had for the music of the past, since the years of his training.

The interaction between the two instruments in textures which demand great virtuosity from both interpreters contributes for the truly cameristic character of the work and probably results from the fact that Respighi was a proficient performer on both instruments.

Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908)

1. Biographical Note

Pablo de Sarasate represents the ideal of the virtuoso violinist of the XX century, having composed some works for his instrument which still integrate today the repertoire of important interpreters.

Born in Pamplona, in 1844, he started his instrumental training when he was five years old, thus giving his first recital at the age of eight. Two important helps (firstly the Countess of Espoz y Minal and the Queen Isabella herself) allowed him to pursue his studies in Madrid, with M. R. Saez and in Paris, with Delphin Alard; at the conservatory of this town he achieved his “first awards” (maximum reward) in violin, music instruction and harmony between 1857 and 1859. He then initiated an intense international career, which lead him to the most important stages in Europe and America, thus having stimulated composers such as Max Bruch, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edouard Lalo, Antonin Dvorak, Joseph Joachim and Henryk Wieniawski into writing for him.

His instrumental qualities, frequently praises by several commentators, were consigned in nine phonographic registries performed in 1904 and recently reedited in CD. His reputation as a composer rests upon 54 opus numbers, from which works such as Zigeunerweisen op. 20 n.1 and Spanische Tänze (Op. 21, 22, 23, 26) may be highlighted.

2. Zigeunerweisen Op. 20 n.1

The composition of a vast number of pieces characteristic for the violin (and orchestra or piano) throughout the XX century came to enrich considerably the instrument’s repertoire. Among the most important of those works, one may find Zigeunerweisen Op. 20 n.1, by Pablo de Sarasate.

Composed in 1878 and debuted in Leipzig on that same year, this work is based upon Hungarian popular themes, namely the rhythms of the csárdás, a traditional dance popularized by music bands associated to the gipsy ethnic group and diffused on neighbour countries such as Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia among others. 

In only one movement which comprises four sections with different tempi, this work is undoubtedly the most popular of its author, having kept itself on the repertoire of concerts and recordings until today; Sarasate left us in his legacy his own interpretation of it, in one of the phonographic registries he made in 1904. Zigeunerweisen Op. 20 n.1 has also raised the attention of several cinematographic producers, from which one must highlight the film Zigeunerweisen, which Seijun Suzuki directed in 1980, from the novel “Sarasate’s record”, by Hyakken Uchida.

Ana Telles

(Translation by Manuela Styliano Costa)

IN RECITAL

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)

Scherzo para Violino e Piano em Dó menor Wo02

Sonatensatz for Violin and Piano in C minor Wo02

1 Allegro 05’29’’

GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924)

Sonata n.1 para Violino e Piano em Lá Maior Op.13

Sonata n.1 for Violin and Piano in A Major Op.13

2 Allegro molto 10’01’’

3 Andante 06’43’’

4 Scherzo: Allegro vivo 04’15’’

5 Finale: Allegro quasi Presto 05’18’’

OTTORINO RESPIGHI (1879-1936)

Sonata para Violino e Piano Si menor

Sonata for Violin and Piano in B minor

6 Moderato 09’14’’

7 Andante espressivo 07’59’’

8 Passacaglia: Allegro moderato ma enérgico 07’02’’ 

PABLO DE SARASATE (1844-1908)

9 Zigeunerweisen Op.20 n.1 07’48’’

total: 64’05’’

BRUNO MONTEIRO Violino/ Violin

JOÃO PAULO SANTOS Piano

Ref.: NUM 1179