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Untitled Document
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ROMANCE |
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Composer: |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johan Svendsen, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, Carl Stamitz, Fryderyk Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonin Dvorak |
Artist: |
Idil Biret, Jascha Heifetz, Jeno Jando, Ilya Kaler, Dong-Suk Kang, Norbert Kraft, Henning Kraggerud, Takako Nishizaki, Ilona Prunyi, Istvan Szekely, Balazs Szokolay, Elisabeth Westenholz, Oxana Yablonskaya, Zhou Qian, Arthur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau, Edmund Battersby, Rudolf Serkin, Jose Iturbi, Alfred Brendel, Martha Argerich, Ivan Moravec, Graf Murzha, Katarina Andreasson, Ewa Kupiec, Zuzana Paulechova, Richard Tognetti, Peter Breiner, Wilhelm Kempff, Christian Benda, Eldar Nebolsin, Lars Vogt, Roberto Cappello, Annerose Schmidt, Olga Kern, Ursula Schoch |
Conductor: |
Jose Iturbi, Christian Lindberg, Alexander Schneider, Neville Marriner, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Kurt Masur, Wolfgang Sebotka, James DePreist, Theodore Kuchar, Herbert von Karajan, Ivor Bolton, Kenneth Jean, Camilla Kolchinsky, Adrian Leaper, Konrad Leitner, Antonello Gotta, Klaus-Peter Hahn, Otto Klemperer, Otakar Trihlik, Thomas Dausgaard, Bjarte Engeset, Andras Ligeti, Gyula Nemeth, Michael Schonwandt, Wolfgang Sobotka, Robert Stankovsky, William Steinberg, Petter Sundkvist, Iona Brown, Antoni Wit, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Alfred Wallenstein, Christian Benda, Wilfred Bottcher, Karl Melles, Witold Rowicki, Max Pommer, Heiko-Mathias Forster |
Ensemble: |
Capella Istropolitana |
Orchestra: |
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Collegium Musicum, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra , Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Saarbrucken Radio Symphony Orchestra, Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, Kosice, Budapest Symphony Orchestra, Concentus Hungaricus, Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Orchestra, Razumovsky Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Cassovia, Capella Istropolitana, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Malmo Symphony Orchestra, RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Westphalia New Philharmonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Mozart Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Volksoper Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Nordic Chamber Orchestra, Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, Compagnia d'Opera Italiana Orchestra |
Label: |
Naxos |
Catalogue No.: |
8.553216 |
Format: |
CD |
Barcode: |
0730099421621 |
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Romance
Disappointingly enough the word
romance, in the history of music, has often held a more prosaic meaning than its modern
connotations imply. By the eighteenth century, however, earlier poetic meanings had
largely given way to the descriptive use of the term to denote a lyrical slow movement.
Romance most aptly describes the slow movement of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night-Music),
modestly titled and written in 1787. Equally apt is the use of the word to describe the
two slow movements for solo violin and orchestra written by Beethoven in the following
decade, intended, it has been suggested, for an early violin concerto that was never
completed. The Romance in F major, the
second of the pair, is marginally better known than the first. Mozart used the term
earlier to head the slow movement of his fine Piano Concerto
in D minor, K. 466, one of the only two concertos he wrote in a minor key,
composed during the optimistic earlier years of his last decade, spent in precarious
independence in Vienna, where he at first established a reputation as a composer and
keyboard- player. Carl Stamitz, here represented by the slow movement of his Cello Concerto No.2 in A major, was eleven years
Mozart's senior. His father, Johann Stamitz, had been responsible for the pre-eminence of
the Mannheim orchestra, a strong influence on Mozart, who visited the place in 1777 and
1778. By then, however, Carl Stamitz, having earlier established himself in Paris, with
his brother Anton, had moved to London. A prolific composer, he wrote some sixty concertos
that reflect, in their clarity of texture, contemporary style, and did much to help the
popularisation of the viola, an instrument on which he won a wide reputation as a
performer.
The nineteenth century might seem to
be above all the age of romance, with the independence of its musicians and artists, now
generally freed from earlier reliance on rich patrons. The Polish composer and pianist
Fryderyk Chopin, son of an emigre French father in Warsaw, might seem typical of the
period. He spent the greater part of his career in Paris, where, for some nine years, he
enjoyed a liaison with the romantic novelist George Sand (Aurore Dudevant), although their
relationship clearly brought less romantic moments, as her children by her husband became
older, finding in Chopin either a rival or an ally in family quarrels. The slow movement
of the first of Chopin's two piano concertos is characteristic of his style of writing for
the piano alone, a dreamy nocturne. His concertos belong to the 1820s, before his
departure from Warsaw, when it seemed that he would need compositions for piano and
orchestra in furtherance of a proposed career as a virtuoso pianist.
From the second half of the nineteenth
century, Tchaikovsky has come to occupy an unrivalled position in romantic musical
repertoire, not least through his three colourful ballets, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. His inspiration is essentially Russian,
although he was never a member of the group of nationalist composers nick-named the Mighty
Handful and dominated by Balakirev. His Romance in F
minor is one of those short piano pieces that brought nineteenth-century
composers more money than their more ambitious works.
Nationalism of another kind is an
essential part of the music of Dvorak, a Czech composer, born in a village of Bohemia and
later in life director of the Prague Conservatory, after a stint at the American National
Conservatory in New York. Dvorak's Romance in F minor,
for violin and orchestra, is an extended and colourful work, if less overtly
Czech than some of his music.
The Norwegian violinist and composer
Johann Svendsen, a contemporary of Grieg, occupied an important position in the music of
Scandinavia, with his Romance in G major remaining
an essential part of the repertoire of music for violin and orchestra.
Also included in the present progamme
are the anonymous Romance d'amour, familiar
from a recent French film and the Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich's Romance from his score for the 1955 film The Gadfly.
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