Adagio – Molto allegro
Andante
Vivo 

Bacewicz wrote this Trio when she was in her mid-twenties. It was started during a stay in Paris (where she studied with Nadia Boulanger) and completed in November 1935. The first performance followed in March 1936 at a concert of contemporary chamber music which was also attended by Prokofiev. From a stylistic point of view, its Neoclassical language owes a good deal to Boulanger’s influence, and, by extension, to Boulanger’s friend Stravinsky. At the same time, there is a distinctly Polish colour to the introductory Adagio in which an improvisatory oboe melody unfolds over a drone. The Molto allegro that follows sounds firmly in the Neoclassical mainstream, but there is more individuality and character in the lyrical second theme. The central Andante is dominated by a mood of quiet anxiety, starting with a rather hesitant oboe theme heard over uneasy string undulations. A sense of disquiet pervades the movement, with moments of relief quickly extinguished until, in the very last bars, some kind of consolation is found. The short finale is a complete contrast: quick, witty and elegantly crafted, it brings the Trio to an ebullient conclusion.   

© Nigel Simeone, 2022 

In Howards End, E.M. Forster wrote that “it will be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it.” For scholar Scott Burnham, writing in Beethoven Hero, the composer has “arguably been to music what Socrates was to ancient philosophy: his music is heard as a direct expression of human values.” Yet, if there’s one transition that’s notable in a twenty-first century classical music culture, where Beethoven was a previous generation’s unquestionable genius, another might be set to replace him. In 2019, BBC Music Magazine polled 174 composers for their favorite composer of all time. Bach came out on top.  

Much as the porcelain busts, music festivals, and ample representation on concert programmes would lead us to believe, our musical heroes aren’t permanent, and are subject to constantly shifting forces. The fact that we know about Bach’s music at all is mostly thanks to Felix Mendelssohn, who revived Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829. (Because of his influential practice of historicism and revivalism—ideas that have fundamentally underpinned classical music culture ever since—there’s a fair argument to be made that Mendelssohn was the world’s most influential classical musician.) 

By shining a light on the way these histories are invented and constructed is not to deny the quality of the music. If anything, by showing the workings of these histories—in peeking behind the curtain—these towering world-historical figures become altogether more approachable, and we’re better placed to find ourselves amid their sometimes impenetrable legacies.Shani Diluka’s programme is not just an attempt to make sense of her own relation to Bach, but also how composers of diverse traditions and lineages are drawn to different parts of his artistry. Diluka chairs a big musical discussion, shining light that reflects back and all around. 

First comes a quartet of compositions all grouped around a single type of movement—the arpeggio, and its relation, the broken chord. Philip Glass is the modern-day king of the arpeggio; later in the programme, it’s hollowed out and hammered into shape in his Étude No. 9, but it first appears in a more incantory, scalic form in his Étude No. 2, creating something approaching the sound of Chopin. The kind of movement and atmosphere continues what’s been established in Alexander Siloti’s arrangement of Bach’s BMV855a; originally in E minor, Siloti transposes the piece down a fifth, darkens it, and adds pianistic flourishes that really enhance this romantic, watery version of Bach’s original. This section concludes with J.S. Bach’s son Charles Philipp Emanuel, and his Solfeggietto in C Minor, a fast, flourishing and popular toccata-style miniature, almost like a minor-key inversion of the Prelude in C Major by his father that precedes it. 

Later in his career, Keith Jarrett made the decision to return to Bach, a formative influence, and commenced a series of recordings on the ECM label of works like the Goldberg Variations, the Sonatas for Violin and Piano, the French Suites and both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Listening to My Wild Irish Rose, a song by Chauncey Olcott, and you’ll hear traces of that in the intricate contrapuntal underlay moving methodically under a serene, cantabile melody. That serenity continues in John Cage’s Dream, a gently hovering work originally used as music for a dance piece by Merce Cunningham. 

Two short pieces on shape follow. Bach’s Prelude in F Minor slowly builds harmonic shapes through arpeggiated movement, while Bill Evans’ arrangement of Danny Boy starts with unusual shapes, appearing in single gestures with a confidence, before expanding rhythmically into intricate part-leading around the second verse’s climax. 

From a pair of pieces on shape, to two pieces with a sense of procession. Mad Rush, a piece by Philip Glass originally for organ, was composed the Dalai Lama’s first public address in North America, in 1979 at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It’s made into an open score with multiple repeats to accommodate the leader’s entrance into the cathedral, and is quintessential Glass; almost all the material is made up of arpeggios of contrasting rhythm, whirring elliptically against one another. Though it comes from a cantata rather than a coronation, the slow-walk rhythms of Bach’s Sheep May Softly Graze give it a stately underlay. This version for solo was arranged by Egon Petri. 

During the 1960s, New York’s musically curious would be hard-pressed to miss Moondog: a blind, counter-cultural guru-like figure, dressed like a fantasy Viking and tethered to Manhattan’s 6th Avenue and 53rd Street, here was a gifted composer with a lifelong ambition to realise his particular vision in music. Two pieces by Moondog—a canon in the manner of a Bach Two-Part invention, then Barn Dance—are heard here. The latter is reminiscent particularly of Glass, who let Moondog stay on his couch for a year in exchange for an idiosyncratic musical education; it’s said that Glass learned more from Moondog than he did at Juilliard. In between these Moondog excursions come three songs of sorts: a sweetly melodic Sicilienne by Bach, Jarrett’s take on Be My Love (made popular by Mario Lanza) and Railroad, a short, insistent piece by Meredith Monk subtitled Travel Song. Two more Jarrett arrangements, of I Loves You Porgy from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and the traditional American song Shenandoah. 

The hollowed-out arpeggios from Étude No.9 returns in the opening of Glass’s Glassworks, a project in which the composer sought to create a more “Walkman-friendly” type of writing. This kind of movement also characterises the Tirol Concerto, between which comes a section of Bach’s Oboe Concerto in D Minor, an example of Bach’s resourcefulness as a musician: this reconstructs a section of Marcello’s Concerto for Oboe and Strings, and parts of his own cantata BMV35. Diluka concludes with a work that synthesises all these broken-chord visions: Bach’s tempestuous Prelude in C Minor. 

It wasn’t until the Bach revival movement in the early 19th century—of Johann Forkel’s Bach biography of 1802, and Felix Mendelssohn’s performance of the St Matthew Passion in 1829—that the name Bach began to mean J.S., rather than C.P.E. This Bach, his second surviving son, was a prolific composer, who, in 1740, gained employment at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin as a harpsichordist. 

C.P.E. Bach is one of those composers who falls between the cracks of periodised musical history. Yet, his influence is constantly understated, perhaps because his most influential work was not a composition, but an aesthetic treatise: On The True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, which was essential in shaping performance practices in the early Classical period. In particular, Philipp Emanuel was important in suggesting performers should align themselves emotionally with the music they are performing. (“A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved,” he wrote, such as in sad passages, where “the performer must languish and grow sad.”) He also helped codify some performance trends that we still come across today. “Ugly grimaces are, of course, inappropriate and harmful, but fitting expressions help the listener to understand our meaning,” he wrote. If you’ve ever remarked on why performers regularly perform with unsightly or unusual facial expressions, blame Philipp Emanuel! 

Bach was a prodigious composer both in the concerto form, and for the flute, a particularly popular instrument at the time—especially in the court of Frederick the Great—which Bach often rearranged existing concerti for. This concerto in D minor, written as early as 1747, is no different. Versions exist for harpsichord and flute, with contrasting scholarly arguments as to which came first. Spanning three movements—fast, slow, fast—the first is declamatory and technical, the second lilting (with liberal uses of ornamentation) and the third comes with a fluttering, nervous vitality. With its darting runs, juddering repetitions, crunching discords and loud ensemble exclamations, the concerto’s conclusion seems to prefigure some of the Sturm und Drang tempestuousness that Mozart and Haydn would deploy so effectively later that century. 

Hugh Morris 2024 

Few composers can have delighted more than Bach in patterns of all kinds. Those in today’s programme fall into several overlapping categories. One is canon, the technical device where a tune fits neatly with itself played at the same time but slightly later (and possibly upside-down, or at a different speed). There is Bach’s systematic exploration of fugal technique, the ‘Art of Fugue’, written right at the end of his life; and there is symbolism of various kinds: pictorial representation of theological truths in chorale preludes, or numerological symbolism such as that referring to the Trinity.  

Today’s programme is framed by the mighty Prelude and Fugue in E flat, movements written to bookend Bach’s great 1739 series of chorale preludes, Part III of the Clavierübung (or ‘Keyboard Exercises’). That collection is based around the Lutheran catechism, the exposition of religious faith as Bach professed it, and central to it is the declaration of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus the number 3 plays a major role: partly in the unusual key signature of three flats, but also in the structure of the music – there are 3 ‘blocks’ of music in the Prelude, which cycle around, and three sections to the Fugue (thus a ‘triple fugue’). This is music of grandeur, profundity and brilliance, opening in the march-like ‘French overture’ style that was used for the entrance of a monarch (in this case, the divine King. 

Next, two chorale preludes from within the collection. Christ unser Herr is a setting of a hymn about Christ’s baptism in the River Jordan. Bach uses pictorial representation here: running semiquavers in the LH to depict the stream, two overlapping parts in the RH using a ‘cross’ shape to represent Christ himself, and the tune through the middle, played in the pedals. At the moment that the tune enters, the ‘cross’ figure (Christ) briefly descends below the waves! Dies sind is concerned with the Ten Commandments and it is therefore perhaps no surprise that the tune, when it enters in the LH, is treated in canon, that ‘rule-based’ technique. However, one might conclude that Bach considered the commandments to be the route to a happy and fulfilling life, since he encloses this canon within three more parts of delightfully relaxed and pastoral serenity. 

Canon finds perhaps its most thorough treatment in the remarkable Canonic Variations on the Christmas hymn ‘Vom Himmel hoch’ (‘From heaven above’) written by Bach in 1747 for the ‘Learned Society’ of his former pupil Lorenz Mitzler. There are five variations employing all manner of intricate canonic devices, beginning with the fluttering down of the angels with the Christmas news, and ending with joyous pealing of bells. The last variation alone uses canon in multiple different ways; and along the course of the variations Bach more than once weaves in his musical ‘signature’ (the notes B-A-C-H equalling B flat-A-C-B natural in English notation). 

Bach’s magisterial treatise on fugal technique, Die Kunst der Fuge, was written towards the end of his life and left tantalisingly incomplete at his death in 1750, breaking off at the climactic moment. No particular instrument is specified, but the work lies well for keyboard and lends itself to arrangement. Today we hear three contrasting movements: the opening one, the most straightforward, on the theme of the whole piece; then a canon on a decorated version (the Art of Fugue, needless to say, includes several canons); and finally an athletic fugue on a different theme (in running quavers) which before long combines in various ways with the main theme. 

After such intellectual rigour, a couple of gentle chorale preludes from his collection Orgelbüchlein (‘Little Organ Book’) from much earlier in his career, which presents settings of chorales for use throughout the church year. Both are for Passiontide, the season commemorating Christ’s suffering and death. In O Lamm Gottes (‘O Lamb of God, sinless’) the tune is again treated in canon (between the pedals and the alto voice) but the mood is set by the other parts which employ the ‘seufzer’ or ‘sighing’ figure traditionally associated with melancholy and suffering. O Mensch, bewein (‘O Man, bewail your great sin’) is one of the most celebrated of Bach’s chorale settings, being of the utmost expressivity and, in the closing bars, remarkable chromaticism (including a rising bass in which some have seen Christ’s walk to the cross). 

And so back to the E flat Fugue to finish: overall, a variety of forms and genres, whether practical or theoretical in aim, and a glimpse into Bach’s rich and distinctive world of pattern, order and meaning.  

David Goode (c) 2026 

The fifth of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos represented a historic landmark. These “Concertos for Several Instruments”—collectively called the Brandenburgs after the works’ recipient, Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg—were formally radical in their expansion of the concerto grosso form as far as it could go, with wildly different results in terms of length, instrumentation, style, and compositional techniques used. 

The fifth, probably the last of the set to be composed, elevates the harpsichord, transplanting it from a continuo role to the concertino group of solo instruments. Bach elevates the instrument further still, with an elaborate, cadenza-like passage for solo harpsichord at the end of the first movement of the piece. Many see this piece as the first keyboard concerto accordingly.  

The second movement, Adagio affettuoso, is a soloists-only moment. The combination of flute, violin and harpsichord was a common one in the form of the trio sonata, but here, the harpsichord plays more of a soloistic role, contributing its own lines of woven counterpoint. In the lively finale, the harpsichord once again dominates, this time the solo episodes between the tremendously elaborate fugal writing. 

Hugh Morris 2024 

The fourth part of Bach’s elaborate Clavierübung, better known as the Goldberg Variations (1741), is, as many of Bach’s larger works, well appreciated by both music lovers and academic music researchers. Bach had the special talent of being able to employ mathematical and structural means for an emotional plea, a skill he shares with very little composers in the history of music. The emotional plea is here however not filled with high-flown drama; rather, it is a game on the human perception of music. The Goldberg Variations form a collection of 32 pieces, founded on a 32-bar bass line which is used in all variations. The different parts vary in character: short and passionate, short and light-footed, long and melancholy etc, but the whole set does radiate a sense of light joy and playfulness. The piece ends in the way it began: with the aria.

The present popularity of the Goldberg Variations can possibly be explained by the fact that this piece does not make use of variations on a theme, which is common, but of variations on a bass line. This can be compared with the variation tradition in pop and jazz music. There is in fact question of a range of pieces based on a chord scheme. Bach himself found the variation form in general (and therefore the theme & variations too) unsatisfactory and unrewarding. For that reason, he never got beyond one variation piece – but a piece that three centuries later still proudly embodies the perfect example of variation technique. What should further be mentioned about the form, is that the middle of the piece is marked by an overture in the French style and that each segment of three variations ends in a canon (with a literal repetition of the melody, as in Brother John), of which the second voice starts one tone higher each time. In the first canon, this voice therefore starts on the same tone as the first voice; in the second canon it starts a tone higher, in the third canon two tones higher, et cetera. Where one expects the final canon (variation 30), Bach places, as if to stress the light-footedness of the whole, the famous Quodlibet, a potpourri of then well-known folksongs (comparable to our Itsy Bitsy Spider and Candle in the Wind), which must surely have curled the lips of the listeners into a smile.

There have been a lot of speculations on the lightness of the Goldberg Variations. Bach had (according to his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach) written the piece for Count von

Kayserlinck’s personal harpsichordist, a young man named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756). For a short period of time, Bach was the teacher of this Mr Goldberg, who regularly stayed in Bach’s place of residence, Leipzig, together with Von Kayserlinck’s household. The count suffered from several diseases and was an insomniac. He sought relief during the nights by asking Goldberg to play the harpsichord in the adjoining room. The story goes that Von Kayserlinck assigned Bach to compose pain relieving and calming music for these specific, but very frequent occasions. Whether Bach’s Variations actually had the relieving effect on the pains of the grateful count (he later continuously referred to the variations as “my variations”) can only be guessed, but certainly not all of them are calming. On the contrary: the virtuosity of some of the variations is so far beyond the technical achievements of those days, that many have wondered whether a boy of no more than fourteen years of age could, even under the supervision of a mentor such as Bach, have been able to play even part of the variations. It is however possible that the more virtuoso parts still had a calming effect – due to Goldberg’s playing.

Raaf Hekkema 2011

The Partitas are very different in terms of their structures. While each is, broadly speaking, a suite of dances, Bach treats this idea with considerable freedom. The First Partita presents four dances – Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabande and Tempo di borea (i.e. Bourée) – but each of them is followed by a ‘Double’, a kind of variation which Bach uses either to create contrast (as in the Allemanda and Corrente) or to intensify a particular mood, something he does to memorable effect in the Sarabande and its ‘double’, or to create still greater musical momentum, as in the Tempo di borea and its double.  

After Bach’s death, a few expert performers continued to play the Sonatas and Partitas from manuscript copies, notably Haydn’s friend Johann Peter Salomon. The whole collection was published for the first time in 1802. In the nineteenth century, Mendelssohn and Schumann both felt the need to ‘enhance’ Bach’s original by adding piano accompaniments. Joseph Joachim was perhaps the first great virtuoso since Salomon to present Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas in concerts, and even in the recording studio (some extraordinarily evocative records from 1903). Thanks to Joachim’s efforts and those of his successors such as Georges Enescu, the Sonatas and Partitas finally came to be recognised as creative pinnacles of the violin repertoire. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

On Bach’s autograph fair copy of the Sonatas and Partitas he calls them ‘Six Solos for violin without bass accompaniment’. They were completed in 1720, the date Bach added beneath his signature on the title page, though it is likely that he had been working on them before then. These magnificent pieces stand as one of the greatest monuments of Baroque instrumental music, but it is worth considering some of the precursors that might have inspired him – all works with which Bach was almost certainly familiar. First, a suite for solo violin without bass and a set of six partitas by Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656–1705), the movements based on dance forms, making extensive use of ‘multiple-stops’ (playing more than one string at the same time) to create the illusion of a solo instrument in dialogue with itself. Westhoff spent his last few years as a violinist at the court in Weimar where Bach met him in 1703, and this encounter may well have given Bach the idea of trying something similar. The unaccompanied Passacaglia which Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) composed as an epilogue to his Rosary Sonatas in about 1676 could well have provided a model (particularly for the Chaconne of the D minor Partita), and Biber’s pupil Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr (1663–1722) published a set of Six Partitas for solo violin in 1715. In 1717, Vivaldi’s pupil Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755) showed Bach his Sonata for solo violin without bass – and later performed Bach’s sonatas and partitas.

The overall design of Bach’s Six Solos alternates Sonatas with Partitas. Each Sonata is in four movements, with a slow opening movement followed by a faster fugue. The finales are characterised by fast, continuous writing full of the kind of kinetic energy that fuels so much of Bach’s music. The third movements are more varied – and each is in a different key from the rest of the sonata. In the First Sonata (in G minor), Bach’s third movement is a gently lilting Siciliano in B flat major. But some of Bach’s most innovative writing in this work is to be found in the fugue (second movement), a marvel of ingenuity which demands from the player a combination of virtuosity and musical insight: Bach was writing here for extremely skilled musicians and may have played the Sonata and Partitas himself (he was a fine violinist as well as a superb keyboard player). There’s a brilliant kind of musical conjuring trick involved in the fugue: the violin is essentially a melodic instrument intended to play a single line, but here, through the use of double-stops and incredibly ingenious part-writing, Bach presents two or more musical lines at once. The result is a compositional sleight of hand with the violin functioning as more than one part, sometimes supported by bass lines that it also supplies itself. The G minor Sonata demonstrates Bach’s ability to create music of the greatest imagination within quite a strict, formal structure: at its most expressive in the first and third movements (Adagio and Siciliana), at its most technically brilliant (and demanding) in the fugue, and at its most energetic and direct in the Presto finale.

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

On Bach’s autograph fair copy of the Sonatas and Partitas he calls them ‘Six Solos for violin without bass accompaniment’. They were completed in 1720, the date Bach added beneath his signature on the title page, though it is likely that he had been working on them before then. These magnificent pieces stand as one of the greatest monuments of Baroque instrumental music, but there were earlier unaccompanied violin pieces that may have inspired Bach to write his own: in particular, the six partitas by Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656–1705); the unaccompanied Passacaglia which Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) composed as an epilogue to his Rosary Sonatas in about 1676; and the six partitas by Biber’s pupil Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr (1663–1722), published in 1715.  

The Second Sonata is in four movements, with a slow opening movement followed by a faster fugue. The finale is characterised by fast, continuous writing full of the kind of kinetic energy that fuels so much of Bach’s music, while the third movement is a flowing Andante in C major. Some of Bach’s most innovative writing is to be found in the fugue – a marvel of ingenuity that also allows players to demonstrate virtuosity. Bach was writing for players of the greatest skill: he may have performed them himself and it is known that Johann Georg Pisendel – one of the finest players of the age – also performed Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas. There’s a brilliant kind of musical sleight-of-hand involved in the fugue: the violin is essentially an instrument designed to play a single melodic line, but here Bach requires the violin to play two or more lines at once, sometimes supported by bass lines that it also supplies itself.  

The Second Partita, in D minor, begins with an Allemanda that sets quite an austere tone and is notable for its absence of multiple-stopping. The Corrente that follows is largely unadorned, as is the fourth movement, a Gigue. However, in the third, a Sarabanda, Bach produces rich chordal writing (including quadruple-stopping) which provides not only a complete contrast of tempo and mood, but also of instrumental texture. But the pinnacle of the Second Partita is its closing Ciaconna (Chaconne) – aptly described by Nicholas Anderson as ‘a veritable Goliath of the violin repertory, built on a noble and declamatory theme.’ This broad and imposing initial idea is then treated to no fewer than sixty-four developing variations which seem to explore every possible facet of the theme with apparently effortless brilliance, the character of the music changing constantly (including an extended section in D major), before finally returning to the opening idea, and ending on two repeated Ds, finishing this mighty structure with the same two notes as the whole Partita began.   

After Bach’s death one notable exponent of these works was Haydn’s friend Johann Peter Salomon (1745–1815). Johann Friedrich Reichardt recalled Salomon in 1774 playing ‘the splendid solos without accompaniment by Seb. Bach, in which the setting is often developed in two or three parts, but also in one voice delightfully invented, so that any further accompaniment seems superfluous.’ The fugue from the Second Sonata that was the first movement to appear in print, published in 1798 as one of the examples in Jean-Baptiste Cartier’s L’Art du violon. The whole collection appeared for the first time in 1802, issued by the Bonn firm of Simrock. For most of the nineteenth century violinists regarded these works as technical exercises, until Joseph Joachim presented the Sonatas and Partitas in concerts, and even in the recording studio – in 1903, he made records of several movements that are extraordinarily evocative. It was largely thanks to Joachim’s efforts that the Sonatas and Partitas finally came to be recognised as one of the creative pinnacles of the violin repertory. 

Prélude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Menuett I
Menuett II
Gigue

Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9) and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance. Bach sets the tone of the First Suite with a Prelude made of undulating arpeggios. The Allemande meanders purposefully until it arrives at a strong final cadence in the home key. Downward leaps and rather playful decorations characterize the Courante. Using multiple stopping, the Sarabande is noble and understated. It is in two sections; the first ends on D (the dominant) and the second moves to E minor before returning to the tonic, G. The pair of graceful Minuets contrast major and minor and both are marked by flowing movement. The Gigue brings the suite to a joyful conclusion.

Nigel Simeone 2018 © 

Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9) and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance. Bach sets the tone of the First Suite with a Prelude made of undulating arpeggios. The Allemande meanders purposefully until it arrives at a strong final cadence in the home key. Downward leaps and rather playful decorations characterize the Courante. Using multiple stopping, the Sarabande is noble and understated. It is in two sections; the first ends on D (the dominant) and the second moves to E minor before returning to the tonic, G. The pair of graceful Minuets contrast major and minor and both are marked by flowing movement. The Gigue brings the suite to a joyful conclusion.

Nigel Simeone 2018

Cello Suite No.5 in C minor, BWV 1011 

Prelude 
Allemande 
Courante 
Sarabande 
Gavotte I / II 
Gigue 

Cello Suite No.6 in D, BWV 1012 

Prelude 
Allemande 
Courante 
Sarabande 
Gavotte I / II 
Gigue 

Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9), and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance. 

© Nigel Simeone  

Cello Suite No.2 in D minor, BWV 1008

Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Minuet I / II
Gigue

Cello Suite No.4 in E flat, BWV 1010

Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bouree I / II
Gigue

Bach’s Cello Suites were probably composed in about 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. It isn’t known for whom Bach wrote them, though there are at least two likely candidates working in Cöthen at the time: Christian Ferdinand Abel (1682–1761), a great friend of the composer for whom Bach wrote the three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027–9), and Carl Berhard Lienicke (d. 1751), the leading cellist of the Cöthen orchestra. Whether either of them was the player Bach had in mind is a matter of pure speculation since no documentary evidence has come to light. Equally uncertain is why Bach wrote them. The likeliest explanation is that they were intended – like much of his keyboard music – for private performance.

© Nigel Simeone

‘On one stave, for a small instrument, Bach writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.’ This is how Johannes Brahms described Bach’s gigantic Chaconne to his friend Clara Schumann. It is the last movement of Bach’s D minor Partita, composed in about 1720. Probably the greatest single movement ever written for unaccompanied violin, it is an extended set of variations on a short, four-bar idea announced at the start. Bach uses all his ingenuity to create a structure in which unity (the basic theme) and diversity (the astonishingly imaginative variations) are held in perfect balance over a long (256-bar) span. The outer sections are in D minor, while Bach provides tonal variety by modulating to D major for the central section. As Brahms suggested, the result is quite simply one of the marvels of Baroque music.  

Nigel Simeone, 2022 

Bach’s English Suites were completed by 1717 during his time in Weimar and Bach himself called them ‘Suites with Preludes’ but his early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel stated that they were composed for ‘an Englishman of rank’. There’s no solid evidence for this, though a copy written by Bach’s son Johann Christian (then living in London) noted that they were ‘written for the English’. The English Suite No.2 in A minor begins with an extended prelude, fugue-like in texture, dominated by the leaping three-note figure heard at the start. What follows is a succession of contrasting dance movements: a measured Allemande, a lively Courante, a chordal Sarabande, a pair of Bourées (one in A major) and a lively Gigue.  

Nigel Simeone

Bach originally wrote the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, and this was one of the very few works published during the composer’s lifetime, by the firm of Baltasar Schmid at Nuremberg in 1741. The original title page describes the work as ‘Clavier-Übung [Keyboard Practice], consisting of an Aria, with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals, prepared to delight the souls of music-lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach.’ There was no irony here: Bach, as a devout Lutheran, was deeply conscious of the spiritual dimension of music, and its aspiration to enrich the soul as well as to divert and entertain. But the work was also an extraordinary feat: if we count each prelude and fugue of the Well-Tempered Clavier as self-contained pairs of works, then the Goldberg Variations is by far the largest piece of keyboard music published in the eighteenth century and it attracted international attention early on. Bach is often thought of as a composer whose music was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century (thanks in large part to Mendelssohn and Schumann), but his keyboard music was the exception to this. In his pioneering General History of the Science and Practice of Music published in 1776, Sir John Hawkins devotes several pages to Bach, thanking Johann Christian Bach (then in London) for supplying some of the information. But he then goes on to quote three full pages of music examples comprising the Aria (‘Air’), Variation 9 and Variation 10 from the Goldberg Variations, making this one of the first pieces of Bach to appear in print in England.

But where is Goldberg in all this, and who was he? In 1741, Bach stayed with Count Keyserlingk in Dresden, who employed a young musician called Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. According to Johann Nikolaus Forkel in his 1802 biography of Bach, the story goes as follows: ‘The Count was often unwell and had sleepless nights. On these occasions, Goldberg had to spend the night in an adjoining room so that he could play something to him during this sleeplessness. The Count remarked to Bach that he would like to have a few pieces for his musician Goldberg, pieces so gentle and somewhat merry that the Count could be cheered up by them during his sleepless nights. Bach thought he could best fulfil this wish with some variations … The Count henceforth referred to them only as his variations. He could not get enough of them, and for a long time, whenever sleepless nights came, he would say, Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations. Bach was perhaps never rewarded so well for one of his compositions. The Count bestowed on him a gold beaker filled with one hundred Louis d’or.’

It’s a fine tale – and the source for the famous legend of these variations as a cure for insomnia – but it’s mostly fictitious. As Peter Williams has demonstrated, Goldberg was only born in 1727 (and was thus in his early teens at the time of Bach’s visit to Keyserlingk), so it’s wildly improbable that Bach wrote the variations for him to play. Moreover, they had actually been published before Bach’s visit to Dresden, so the chances are that he presented the Count with a

copy having been asked about the possibility of composing some suitable music. This also explains the absence of either the Count’s name or Goldberg’s on the title page of the first edition of the score – and the presence of the Aria in Anna Magdalena’s Notebook, most of which was compiled years earlier. Williams has also speculated that the player Bach most probably had in mind for the variations was his son Wilhelm Friedmann, a brilliant performer and who had worked as organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden since 1733.

The variations constitute a virtual encyclopaedia of what was possible in terms of imaginative harpsichord writing, and is even more remarkable for Bach’s brilliant manipulation of the theme. As a master of transcribing his own music for different instrumental combinations, the arrangement of the Goldberg Variations for string trio is an idea that would surely have appealed to Bach. Just as Mozart arranged some of the keyboard fugues for string quartet, and others have arranged The Art of Fugue for the same forces, so Sitkovetsky has taken up the challenge of re-thinking Bach’s music for entirely different instruments – as Bach himself had done not only with his own music but also with other composers such as Vivaldi. This arrangement was made in 1985 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, and it is dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould, whose astonishing 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant bestseller and introduced a whole generation to this extraordinary music.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

i. Preludio
ii. Loure
iii. Gavotte en Rondeau
iv. Menuets (I and II)
v. Bourrée
vi. Gigue

Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin were composed at Cöthen in 1720 (the date on Bach’s beautifully written fair copy of the set), at about the same time as the Cello Suites. The three Sonatas follow the pattern of the sonata da chiesa, with four movements, alternating slow and fast, while the three Partitas are suites of dances. Even though they were not published until 1802, Bach’s contemporaries recognized his superlative achievement in these pieces. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote that his father ‘understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments. This is evidenced by his solos for the violin and violoncello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect for learning to be a good violinist.’ Which violinist Bach may have had in mind when he first wrote the pieces is not known. The E major Partita – the last of the six solos – is the most exuberant of the set, starting with a brilliant Preludio in continuous rapid notes (Bach later rearranged this thrilling material for orchestra, as the introduction to his Cantata No. 29, Wir danken Dir, Gott). The dances that follow include an elegant ‘Loure’, a memorably melodic ‘Gavotte en Rondeau’, two contrasting Minuets, a lively ‘Bourée’ and an exultant ‘Gigue’ that recaptures the flamboyant mood of the Preludio.

This prelude and fugue forms part of a quintet of works in a succession of keys C-D-E-F-G. It is unknown whether Bach wrote them for teaching or as part of a larger project similar to The Well Tempered Clavier but there is no manuscript with possible answers. The two-part work starts with a prelude filled with fugue elements. In just eighteen bars, Bach manages to squeeze in three sections, each closing with a string of fast notes. The fugue itself is less complex than you might expect from Bach, which may explain the term ‘fughetta’ – as the diminutive does not apply to the length of the piece. The theme builds up tension with surprising pauses, which are later filled in spiritedly by the counter theme. In its final entrance, the main theme itself is also ornamented, as the introduction to a powerful ending.

Composing 48 keyboard pieces in all 24 keys was the sort of challenge Bach enjoyed. In each of the two parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier he brought together the musical couple prelude and fugue 24 times; twelve in minor keys and twelve in major. In the preludes, he gave free rein to his imagination, and demonstrated mathematical tours de force in the fugues. In contrast to the iron discipline Bach had to apply to his church compositions, here he could abandon himself without worrying about deadlines. This Prelude and Fugue in F is from the first part of the work and dates from 1722, although it contains some music that was written in the preceding five years. Bach described the target group for this collection of pieces as follows: “For both the education of the industrious musical youngster and the enjoyment of those well-versed in this material”.

i. Adagio 
ii. Fuga 
iii. Largo
iv. Allegro assai 
 
Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin grow in complexity from the 1st Sonata and Partita set to the 3rd. Sonata No.3 in C major is considered one of the most complex works in the entire Baroque repertoire. Made up of four movements, it gives an insight into Bach’s technical mastery of the violin, as only someone who played the violin to performance standard would have been able to create something so intricate.  The Fuga in particular is impossible to play exactly as written on a violin, which leaves a lot of room for a player’s own interpretation. The Sonata follows the typical Baroque movements-pattern of slow-fast-slow-fast, and alternates with sections clearly displaying the musical subject, and sections that are written as a deliberate contrast, allowing the listener to easily follow the different ‘voices’. 

Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin were composed at Cöthen in 1720 (the date on Bach’s beautifully written fair copy of the set), at about the same time as his Cello Suites. The three Sonatas follow the pattern of the sonata da chiesa, with four movements, alternating slow and fast, while the three Partitas are suites of dances. Even though they were not published until 1802, Bach’s contemporaries recognized his superlative achievement in these pieces. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote that his father ‘understood to perfection the possibilities of all stringed instruments. This is evidenced by his solos for the violin and violoncello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect for learning to be a good violinist.’ Which violinist Bach may have had in mind when he first wrote the pieces remains unknown. 

© Nigel Simeone 

Präludium. Presto
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bourrée
Gigue

There are four suites by Bach which in the 20^th century became commonly known as ‘Lute Suites’. They were adapted for classical guitar and popularised in best-selling recordings by Julian Bream and John Williams. But were they even written for the lute? Bach certainly knew Sylvius Leopold Weiss, the great German lutenist who once challenged him to an improvisation duel – Weiss at the lute, Bach at the organ. Bach also included beautiful continuo parts for lute in works like the St Matthew Passion and some of his cantatas. But four suites for solo lute? That seems increasingly unlikely, and modern scholarship demonstrates that Bach almost certainly composed these suites for the lautenwerck, a harpsichord with gut strings. Although none of those instruments has survived, there is evidence that Bach owned two at the time of his death.

Nevertheless, with some modification, they work wonderfully well on both lute and guitar, and the Suite in E minor is the earliest of the suites having been composed by at least 1712. Like so much of Bach’s keyboard music from the time, the six movements are in the French style, with many similarities to the Toccatas he was writing for harpsichord.

© Tom McKinney 2022

Bach specified no instrumentation for The Art of Fugue and ever since its publication in 1751, there has been a lively discussion about the scoring Bach might have had in mind. Some (including Gustav Leonhardt) has argued that it was intended for the keyboard (harpsichord or organ) while others have performed versions for instrumental ensembles (the very first recording, made in 1934, used a transcription for string quartet by the American composer Roy Harris). Donald Francis Tovey believed that such arrangements of The Art of Fugue ‘succeeded in demonstrating its beauty’. Hans-Eberhard Dentler is a medical doctor and also a cello pupil of Pierre Fournier. His fascination with The Art of Fugue goes back many years and his intention in this arrangement was to change as little as possible of what Bach left and to ensure transparent textures. His express intention has been to avoid any intervention by the arranger apart from selecting appropriate instruments.

Bach’s contrapuntal masterpiece The Art of Fugue is shrouded in mystery: no instrumentation is specified, and the last fugue – Contrapunctus XIV – was left unfinished. The structure is also highly unusual as the work is monothematic: each of its canons and fugues representing a different treatment of the same theme. The surviving autograph manuscript appears to date from the early 1740s, and the first edition of the score appeared in 1751, a year after the composer’s death. In spite of the uncertainty of how to play the work, or what forces Bach might have had in mind, the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff has summarised its importance as ‘an exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject.’  

© Nigel Simeone

The Well-Tempered Clavier follows the overall plan of a prelude and fugue in each of the 24 major and minor keys, starting in C major, then C minor, rising by semitones to finish in B major and B minor. It’s a structure that demonstrated the feasibility of the ‘well-tempered’ tuning method for the keyboard, which enabled music to change key without sounding out of tune, while showing the varying characteristics of the different keys. Nowadays we use ‘equal-temperament’, so the contrasting colours of the different keys are less apparent.  

It took Bach most of his creative life to write the two Books, with the first Book of 24 preludes and fugues completed in 1722 and the second Book in 1742, combining to make ‘The 48’. 

Despite its apparently formulaic structure, the expressive range of these pieces is astonishing, and was eloquently summarised by the harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick:  

Much that is really idiomatic to the keyboard appears in many of the preludes and some of the fugues, but much is designed to stimulate the imagination to desert the confines of the keyboard for other media and for the larger dimensions of polyphonic orchestra and choir. Some pieces are sketches for jewelled miniatures; some for vast frescos. Some are intimate and lyrical; some quiver with the intensity of a passion that is just as intensely controlled; some fringe on the pedantic; and some are frankly sublime.  

The stylistic differences between the two Books of The Well-Tempered Clavier are subtle but significant: in general the Preludes in Book II are conceived on a larger scale, with about half of them in binary form. As for the Fugues in Book II, they are all in either three or four parts but their variety is extraordinary. In part this is determined by the way in which Bach works out his ideas, but the most important factor is the different character of the fugue subjects themselves. 

After Bach’s death, the two Books of ‘The 48’ circulated in manuscript copies and a few isolated pieces were published by Bach’s pupil Johann Kirnberger (who published the B minor Prelude from Book II in 1773 as a musical example in a harmony book), Johann Friedrich Reichardt (the F minor Fugue in 1782) and Augustus Friedric Christopher Kollmann, organist of the German Chapel in London, who published the C major Prelude and Fugue in his Essay on Practical Musical Composition (1799). 

Kollmann was one of the first to recognise Bach’s lasting significance: in a ‘Sun’ diagram of composers, published in the ‘Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung’ in October 1799, Bach is at the centre, surrounded by the likes of Haydn, Handel, Mozart and Gluck. It was only in about 1801 that The Well-Tempered Clavier was finally published complete, in three different editions: Hofmeister in Vienna, Simrock in Bonn and Nägeli in Zurich. Others soon followed, including Carl Czerny’s edition (1837) purported to demonstrate his memories of how Beethoven played the preludes and fugues. However far-fetched its claims might have been, Czerny’s edition – which sold extremely well – did much to establish the work in the standard repertoire. Countless editions followed, some with distinguished editors including Busoni, Bartók and Donald Francis Tovey (whose edition also includes his insightful analyses of each prelude and fugue and which was the first to use the autograph manuscript acquired by the British Library in 1897).  

Nigel Simeone

Of all J.S. Bach’s famous children, Wilhelm Friedrich, the eldest son and half-brother of C.P.E Bach, has the most colourful reputation, as the black sheep of the Bach family. But is this reputation deserved? As scholars like David Schulenberg have pointed out, Friedrich has suffered historically thanks to the unfortunate combination of scant biographical detail, and uncharitable actors filling in the blanks. Albert Emil Brachvogel’s novel on Wilhelm Friedrich, turned into a 1941 film, framed Friedrich as the talented son trying to move out of his father’s shadow, and focused heavily on his capacity for immodesty, belligerence and drunkenness. Matters were not helped by a rakish, widely circulated portrait by Wilhelm Weitsch that is almost certainly not of Wilhelm, but instead of a relative. 

The style is an interesting compound. The opening movement retains a melancholic character, despite a stand-out harpsichord part, which emerges as a truly solo voice, rather than a member of concertino. Still, inbetween the sections of dazzling solo passagework, there’s still room for long stretches of rigorous counterpoint. The middle movement is a Cantabile, in stately triple time, ripe for ornamentation in the increasingly ornate solo part. The finale, Allegro, ma non molto, returns to the melancholy air of the opening, with repeated “sighing” gestures and downward figures passed around the ensemble. It’s disrupted, once again, by more harpsichord fireworks, before a resolute conclusion. 

Hugh Morris 2024

It’s an amusing accident of history that Barber’s Adagio, one of the totems of American music, was composed in Austria (where Barber was spending the summer and autumn with Gian-Carlo Menotti) and first performed on 14 December 1936 at a concert in Rome (as the slow movement of the String Quartet Op.11). Barber was delighted with this movement, describing it to his friend Orlando Cole as ‘a knockout!’ While finishing the whole quartet, he arranged the Adagio as an independent movement for string orchestra and this was first performed in 1938 in a broadcast concert in New York given by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Barber’s fellow composer Aaron Copland spoke about the piece in 1982 for a BBC radio programme, praising ‘the sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch … from beginning to end. It’s gratifying, satisfying, and it makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it.’

Nigel Simeone 2014

Originally composed for oboe and string orchestra, and here presented in a new chamber arrangement by Ensemble 360’s oboist, Adrian Wilson, Samuel Barber’s Canzonetta for Oboe and Strings was meant to be the slow movement of an oboe concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. However, soon after starting work on the piece (in 1978) Barber was diagnosed with cancer. The other two movements of the concerto were never completed, and this was to be the composer’s final work (Barber died in 1981). The piece was orchestrated posthumously by Barber’s longtime friend and former student, Charles Turner, and was premiered on December 17th, 1981, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta. Principle oboist of the New York Philharmonic (and a former classmate of Barber’s at the Curtis Institute of Music), Harold Gomberg played the solo part. 

In many ways, the Canzonetta is typical of Barber’s style, with a tendency towards vocal lyricism and neo-romantic tonality. In this regard, Historian and Barber specialist Barbara Heyman calls the Canzonetta an “appropriate elegy to the conclusion of Barber’s career.” The work, like others in Barber’s oeuvre, combines elements of post-Straussian chromaticism with what we might think of as a typically American lyrical simplicity. A simple, meandering melodic line is at times presented in a strictly diatonic context, and at others with a highly chromatic harmonisation. Throughout, the oboe’s melody floats above the string texture, seemingly weightless with Barber showing the instrument at its best. Indeed, Turner quotes Barber (in the preface to the 1993 edition of the work for oboe and piano) as having said, “I like to give my best themes to the oboe”. 

Dr. Benjamin Tassie

Allegro ma non troppo 
Adagio 
Allegro appassionato 

Samuel Barber’s Cello Sonata is one of his first major works, composed as he was finishing his studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. The Sonata was started during an Italian holiday in the summer of 1932, while Barber was staying with fellow-composer Gian-Carlo Menotti near Lake Lugano. He returned to Curtis that Autumn and showed his unfinished Sonata to the cellist Orlando Cole (whose suggestions Barber gratefully accepted) and it was finished in December 1932. A month later, Barber and Cole gave a private performance in Philadelphia, and the public premiere took place on 5 March 1933, at a concert by the League of Composers in New York. 

Barber shows himself to be a thoroughly individual composer in this work: happy to draw on the influence of earlier works such as Brahms’s cello sonatas, and by the music of composers such as Debussy. In short, even at the early stage in his career, it was clear that Barber was not going to sound like his American contemporaries. Instead there is a sureness of touch – and great technical command – of a musician whose language was entirely his own: reinvigorating tonal harmony with a sensitivity and character that was to mark out the works that followed. Fastidious and self-critical, Barber was a lyrical composer, and much of the Cello Sonata has a passionate, song-like eloquence that is ideal for the instrument.  

© Nigel Simeone 2013

In 1953, Samuel Barber was commissioned to write a new work for the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the fee to be paid for not in the usual way but by contributions from the Detroit Symphony audience. Originally, he was asked for a septet (three wind, three strings and piano) but settled on the scoring for wind quintet after hearing performances and attending numerous rehearsals by the New York Wind Quintet who offered a great deal of technical advice about writing for this instrumental combination. In spite of this close collaboration, the first performance had been promised to Detroit and was given there by Detroit Symphony principals on 26 March 1956 when it was enthusiastically received, one local critic noting that the audience was delighted by ‘its mood of pastoral serenity.’ Following the premiere, Barber again worked with the New York Wind Quintet, making some cuts and putting Summer Music into its final shape. After performances in Boston and on a tour of South America, the New York ensemble played it at Carnegie Hall on 16 November 1956. Since then, the work has become established as cornerstone of the twentieth-century wind quintet repertoire. Cast in a single movement, the mood is mostly quiet and rhapsodic, and as for the title, Barber wrote that ‘it’s supposed to be evocative of summer – summer meaning languid, not killing mosquitoes.’ 

© Nigel Simeone 

Written for the renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s (1881-1945) Sonata for Solo Violin is widely considered one of the most challenging and expressive works for the instrument. It sits well in this programme, inspired, as it was, by Menhuin’s performance of Bach’s solo violin sonatas. Indeed, Bartók blends elements of the Baroque – the striking triple- and quadruple ‘stops’ of the opening, for example, in which the violinist plays three or four notes simultaneously – with the composer’s signature folk-inspired melodies; angular, sometimes discordant tunes drawn from the folk traditions of Eastern Europe, for which he is perhaps best known. The Sonata is in four movements: the intense and lyrical Tempo di ciaccona, the haunting Fuga, the delicate Melodia, and the virtuosic Presto. Each movement explores the violin’s capabilities, demanding both technical mastery and profound musicality.

Prima parte. Moderato –
Seconda parte. Allegro –
Recapitulazione della prima parte. Moderato –
Coda. Allegro molto

Composed in 1927, Bartók’s Third String Quartet was written for a competition launched in 1925 by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia for a new piece of chamber music, with three prizes totalling $10,000. When the competition closed at the end of 1927, 643 compositions had been submitted to a panel that included the conductors Willem Mengelberg and Fritz Reiner. The judges awarded the $6,000 first prize jointly to Bartók (for this quartet) and the Italian composer Alfredo Casella. The quartet was premiered at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia on 30 December 1928 and given for the first time in Europe a few weeks later, in Budapest on 19 February 1929.

The work is played without a break, but falls into two large sections, each one slow–fast. The quartet fuses a Beethoven-like sense of interweaving musical lines and extremely economical use of musical ideas with rhythmic elements and melodic contours that derive from Bartók’s study of Hungarian folk music, expressed in a harmonic language that is uncompromisingly of its time. For the first time in this quartet, Bartók uses techniques (including playing with the bow as close as possible to the bridge, and the ‘Bartók’ pizzicato where the string hits the fingerboard) that become familiar devices in his later quartets. Despite the contrasts between different sections, it is a work of fierce intensity that reaches a a pulverizing conclusion.

Allegro
Adagio molto
Scherzo – alla bulgarese
Andante
Finale. Allegro vivace

Bartók composed his Fifth Quartet quickly: between 6 August and 6 September 1934. It was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and dedicated to her. The first performance was given at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. by the Kolisch Quartet on 8 April 1935. The opening uses emphatically repeated B flats to introduce a closely-argued first movement. The repeated notes return, this time on E naturals and the music becomes increasingly animated. At the close, all four instruments converge on a B flat. The second movement is a magnificent example of Bartók’s ‘night music’, full of mysterious trills and whispered flourishes over sustained chords, rising to a climax before sinking again into the darkness, ending when the cello slithers down a scale into silence. The third movement is a lively dance in a rhythm derived from Bulgarian folk music – in this case 4+3+2/8. The Andante is another piece of ‘night music’, this time punctuated by unexpected pizzicatos and gently shuddering repeated chords. As in the second movement, there is an intense fortissimo climax before the shuddering chords and pizzicato cello glissandos and a solitary violin B natural bring the movement to an enigmatic close. The fifth movement has similar energy and tension of the first, and the whole quartet can be seen as a gigantic arch form. To underline this, the final flourish brings all four instruments to the B flat from which the work began.

Nigel Simeone © 

Marion Bauer was born in Washington State, and in 1906 she became the first American to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, one of the last century’s greatest composition teachers. Boulanger struck a deal with Bauer: she’d teach her composition if Bauer would give her English lessons in return. Back in America, Bauer became one of the country’s most important musical figures, as both composer, teacher, and a mover-shaker behind the scenes.

Bauer often visited the Macdowell Colony, an artists’ residency in New Hampshire, which is where she composed this suite, inspired by the local landscape, in 1929.

© Music in the Round

Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato – Tempo primo
Lento espressivo
Allegro giocoso – Più lento – Vivace

Bax wrote his Oboe Quintet in 1922, just after completing the first of his seven symphonies. The inspiration for writing a work for oboe and strings was the playing of the great oboist Leon Goossens, to whom the work is dedicated. Bax’s biographer Lewis Foreman has drawn attention to the Irish elements in the music of this work: not only the jig-like final movement, but also in some of the atmospheric writing earlier in the work. The first movement begins with some richly harmonized string chords, and the oboe’s first entrance is rhapsodic, and rather melancholy. The main Allegro moderato has a strong, muscular drive and also demonstrates Bax’s brilliant instrumental technique, drawing a remarkable range of colours from the strings. A wistful recollection of the opening music brings the movement to a serene close. The slow movement opens with a beautiful first violin melody (again, suggestive of Irish folk music). The oboe enters with something rather different: a wistful, cadenza-like passage that is then developed with the strings. While there is plenty of veiled lyricism in this movement, Bax always remains a little questioning, and there’s a slightly uneasy calm at the close. The finale begins in overtly Irish high spirits, but this movement isn’t quite the romp that the opening might suggest. As Lewis Foreman put it, ‘all too soon clouds cover the sun and the spectres return’ in a passage that is slower and more reflective. The dance-like music returns but even at the close there is a brief moment of reflection before the final cadence.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

I wrote this piece while also working on Knotgrass Elegy, an oratorio which uses a text by Donald Goodbrand Saunders describing the threat that modern farming methods pose to birds. The birds’ Latin names are chanted by a children’s chorus. While making the sketches for this large scale piece, I became fascinated by the close relationship that the Latin names (and often common names too) have with the actual sound of the bird. I began to notate the birdsongs with that in mind, and these five short movements for wind quintet emerged, each featuring a different member of the quintet as a soloist. 

Perdix perdix (the partridge) horn 

Vanellus vanellus (the lapwing) oboe 

Carduelis cannabina, emberiza calendra (the linnet, the corn bunting) flute/piccolo 

Tyto alba (the barn owl) bassoon 

Pyrrhula pyrrhula (the bullfinch) clarinet 

The work was commissioned by the Reykjavik Wind Quintet, and first performed at the Matt Thompson Hall, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, on 27th April 2001. 

Sally Beamish 2001 

This piece was commissioned by the Trio Gaspard to sit alongside Haydn’s piano trios. The sound of these wonderful players was in my head as I wrote. Haydn’s trios famously give a pretty subordinate role to the cello, so my first idea was to make the cello a soloist in my piece. My relationship with Haydn’s F sharp minor trio goes back to childhood, when my mother, violinist Ursula Snow, performed it many times with her trio. I must have heard hours of rehearsal.  This led me to think of my mother, and how much I miss her, and feel I understand her better as I get older. This short piece is dedicated to her memory.  

I took F sharp as my starting point, and threaded in occasional notes taken from Haydn’s Andante cantabile movement. The harmonies, which form a repeated chaconne-like pattern in the piano part, are also derived from the Haydn, but in my own way, and not necessarily audible to the listener. The music is like a series of fragmented memories; the violin at first ghost-like, while the cello has an improvisatory line; the violin then drawing the cello into its falling 5th motif, while the piano has the solo line. The three instruments become equal as the music comes to a head, before dissolving into a quiet final statement of the chord sequence.  

The melancholic nature of Haydn’s trio affected my approach, combined with memories of my mother and her gradual disappearance into dementia. The title, Trance, indicates a meditative state, but also a ‘passageway’, or departure – the confusing journey of my relationship with my mother as her personality shifted, changed and faded. 

Trance was commissioned by the Trio Gaspard, and first performed at the West Cork Festival on 28th June, 2023. 

© Sally Beamish 

This beautiful quartet is known as ‘the harp’ because in the first part, all four musicians have sections where they pluck the strings their instruments rather than using the bow. Can you hear the difference?

Adagio sostenuto 
Allegretto 
Presto agitato 
 

In 1801 Beethoven was preoccupied for two reasons. The first was the increasing problem he was having with his hearing. The second was altogether happier: “a dear, magical girl who loves me and whom I love”, as he told an old friend in a letter. In the same letter he even spoke of marriage: “this it is the first time that I have felt that marriage might make one happy.” The “magical girl” was Giulietta Guicciardi who had met Beethoven in 1800 when he started to give her piano lesson. Alas, the magic was not to last as Giulietta married a Count in 1803 – but the musical result is one of Beethoven’s most famous piano sonatas. 

The second of his Op.27 sonatas subtitled “quasi una fantasia”, has become universally known as the “Moonlight” – a nickname that derived from a description in 1832 by the critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab who likened the first movement to moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne. The form is unusually free: after the dreamy, slow opening movement, the second is a moment of repose before the angry outburst of the finale – clearly it’s not a portrait of Giulietta, even if Beethoven’s “magical girl” had been the inspiration for this highly original masterpiece. 

Nigel Simeone © 2012 

In 1796, the young Beethoven set out on a concert tour (the only one of his career) that took him to Prague, Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin. While in Berlin, he visited the court of the Friedrich Wilhelm II, the King of Prussia. During this visit, Beethoven composed several works for cello and piano, including the two Op. 5 Sonatas, and this set of variations on the famous tune ‘See the conqu’ring hero comes’ from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus. Beethoven once described Handel as ‘the greatest composer that ever lived’ and copied out Messiah in order ‘to unravel its complexities’. His choice of theme is therefore no surprise, and the words of the tune may have seemed an appropriate tribute to King Friedrich Wilhelm. The first performance was probably given by Beethoven and Jean–Louis Duport in Berlin in 1796, at the same time as the premiere of the Op. 5 cello sonatas. The theme is presented on the piano, modestly accompanied by the cello. The twelve variations that follow explore the tune with great wit and ingenuity, including a plaintive version of the theme in G minor (Variation 4), great dramaitc intensity in Variation 8 (the other variation in a minor key), presenting the theme in canon between the two instruments (Variation 10) and, following a rhapsodic Adagio, reworking it as an invigorating dance to end the work in suitably triumphant mood.

Nigel Simeone 2016

Beethoven’s Bagatelles,Op.33, were first published in 1803 and they serve as a wonderful demonstration of his mastery of small forms. The A major Bagatelle, the fourth of the set, is a quiet, tender piece, its mood of calm entirely unruffled by drama. Though eminently Beethovenian in terms of its musical language, the serene feeling of this Bagatelle certainly seems to point the way forward to some of the music Schubert was to write more than two decades later.  

Nigel Simeone

Short but sweet and sounding like a musical smile: this cheerful piece was written by Ludwig van Beethoven, a German composer who changed music forever, writing huge symphonies for massive orchestras and tiny musical gems like this one.  Like the Scott Joplin piece, this was first written for a piano (which you can hear in the clip on this page) but takes on its own character when played by five wind musicians. How does changing the instruments but playing the same notes change this lovely piece?

i. Allegro ma non tanto
ii. Scherzo. Allegro molto
iii. Adagio cantabile – Allegro vivace
On 14 September 1808, the publisher Gottfried Christoph Härtel signed a remarkable contract with Beethoven for his most recent works: the document signed by the two of them that day shows that Breitkopf and Härtel had acquired the rights to the Fifth Symphony, the Pastoral Symphony, the two Piano Trios Op.70 and the Cello Sonata in A major. The Cello Sonata had been written in the winter of 1807–8 and by the time of its publication it bore a dedication to Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein, a friend of the composer who helped him with financial matters as well as a being a talented amateur cellist. The first performance was given in Vienna on 5 March 1809, at a concert by the cellist Nikolaus Kraft with Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann (to whom Beethoven later dedicated his Piano Sonata Op.101). As in the Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano, Beethoven begins this Cello Sonata with the string soloist unaccompanied, introducing the simple but utterly memorable opening idea, answered by the piano. The spacious melodic material of this movement shows Beethoven at his most flowing and song-like. The Scherzo, in A minor, is full of tense syncopation, followed by an Adagio that begins as if it is to be one of Beethoven’s most serene slow movements, but it turns out to be a mere eighteen bars long, leading straight into the finale – a brilliant combination of structural tension and sunny lyricism.

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Beethoven’s two cello sonatas Op.102 (in C major and D major) were composed in 1815 and dedicated to Beethoven’s friend, Countess Anna Maria Erdödy. They were published in Vienna (by Artaria) and Bonn (by Simrock) in 1817. The first of the two sonatas is one of Beethoven’s most unusual structures, consisting of two fast movements, each of them preceded by an extended slow introduction.  

The first movement opens gently, with a lyrical melody in the upper register of the cello, to which the piano responds with an answering phrase, establishing the instrumental dialogue that is so often a feature of this sonata. After subsiding on to a C, the lowest note of the cello, there is an abrupt change of mood and tempo with the arrival of a stern idea in A minor, marked by dotted rhythms. The movement remains in A minor for most of the movement, ending tersely. The second movement begins with an elaborate slow introduction which gives way to a radiant recollection of the first movement – an unusual procedure that Beethoven was to use again in the finale of his Ninth Symphony. The main theme of the Allegro begins strangely, with a four-note rising fragment and a held note, but this idea quickly develops dramatic momentum, interrupted on several occasions by passages where the cello plays sustained notes and the piano is silent. The movement ends by appearing to fizzle out (using the four-note idea), before a triumphant closing flourish. 

© Nigel Simeone

Cello Sonata No.1 in F, Op.5 No.1 

Adagio sostenuto. Allegro 

Rondo. Allegro vivace 

Cello Sonata No.2 in G minor Op.5 No.2 

Adagio sostenuto ed espressivo – Allegro molto più tosto presto 

Rondo. Allegro 

In 1796 Beethoven travelled from Vienna to Prague, Dresden and Berlin. In Berlin he heard the cellist Jean-Louis Duport at the court of Friedrich Wilhelm II. The King himself was also an enthusiastic amateur cellist to whom Mozart had dedicated his ‘Prussian’ Quartets, and though it was Duport who gave the first performance of the Op.5 sonatas, Beethoven was eager to attract aristocratic patronage and dedicated them to ‘His Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia’. He was rewarded handsomely, with a gold box full of gold coins, but no commissions followed, since the musical monarch died a year later. In his 1838 reminiscences of Beethoven, his pupil Ferdinand Ries wrote that ‘Beethoven played several times at the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm II, where he played the two grand sonatas with obbligato violoncello, Op.5 which he had composed for Duport, first violoncellist of the King, and himself. On his departure he received a gold snuffbox filled with Louis d’Or. Beethoven told me with pride that it was no ordinary snuffbox, but one of the kind that are presented to ambassadors.’  

The two sonatas were published in 1797 and they were innovative in terms of the instrumentation – neither Haydn nor Mozart had written sonatas for cello and piano. But their significance goes far beyond the scoring, since some of Beethoven’s boldest early musical ideas are to be found here. 

The 1st Sonata in F major opens with a slow introduction in which cello and piano creep in with a theme in octaves, but as the musical argument develops so does the distinctive role of each instrument. Billed – as was the custom of the time – as a ‘Sonata for Piano and Cello’, Beethoven establishes a sophisticated dialogue between the two musical partners. The main Allegro theme is introduced by the piano, with the cello providing the accompaniment, and the roles are then reversed for the second statement of the tune. The second (and last) movement begins with the cello and piano mirroring each other’s every gesture, and with only brief moments of respite, the music works towards a dramatic close.   

The 2nd Sonata in G minor begins with a slow introduction that presents a dramatic dialogue between the instruments. A more lyrical melody is heard on the cello, echoed by the piano, and the ideas already introduced are woven into a texture dominated by the descending scale from the opening, but now mirrored by an ascending scale, in an impassioned interchange between cello and piano. The slow introduction sinks into uneasy silences before the main Allegro molto più tosto presto. Here the principal theme is introduced by the cello, quickly answered by the piano. There are moments of repose (including a dancing theme introduced in the development section), but for most of this movement, there’s a powerful feeling of energetic momentum. Beethoven already demonstrates in this early work an ability to create a startlingly vivid musical landscape with the greatest economy – something he was to do in so many later works – by developing a few terse ideas to the fullest possible extent. For the concluding Rondo, Beethoven moves to G major, in a movement with a certain formal elegance at the start, and interrupted with a few darker outbursts, but above this finale is an affirmative celebration of instrumental virtuosity. 

 © Nigel Simeone  

The Trio in B flat Op.11 for clarinet, cello and piano is one of Beethoven’s least-serious works. By 1798 he had settled in Vienna and had become so successful as a composer that the majority of his works were being written in response to commissions. A couple of years later Beethoven admitted that he had been receiving more commissions than he could fulfil.

The scoring is very unusual and although Beethoven may not have divined the soul of the clarinet with the unerring instinct of Mozart, the alternative version that Beethoven made for violin – a shrewd piece of salesmanship – is less colourful.

The unison opening of the first movement is arresting and the approach to the second theme is also striking, recalling as it does a comparable passage in Haydn’s Symphony No.102, also in B flat. The Adagio highlights the cello in a reflective theme which is related to the minuet of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in G, Op.49 No.2 and indeed to the Septet of 1800.

In Beethoven’s hands the decidedly trivial could become a catalyst for the most imaginative art of transformation – the Diabelli Variations is perhaps the most extreme example – and for the finale of his Trio, Op.11, Beethoven took one of the popular tunes from a recent opera for his inspiration. In fact it is the only one of Beethoven’s major instrumental works to contain a set of variations on a theme by another composer. Joseph Weigl’s comic opera L’amor marinaro (“Love at sea”) was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna in October 1797, and the aria “Pria ch’io l’impegno” was an instant success. In addition to Beethoven, this frequently-hummed tune was also used by Joseph Eybler, Hummel and Paganini, who wrote an elaborate concert piece for violin and orchestra based on it.

Beethoven’s Op.11 acquired the nickname of Gassenhauer or “Street song” Trio as the result of his use of this theme, and the idea of using Weigl’s melody seems to have come from the clarinettist for whom Beethoven wrote the trio, Joseph Bähr. Although Beethoven considered writing another finale he never did so, presumably because he thought this finale too lightweight, but the nine variations are among the young Beethoven’s most inspired, witty and amusing. After the surprise of the opening variation being for piano solo, it stays silent in the second one, a duet for clarinet and cello. The fourth and seventh variations are in B flat minor – the latter’s dotted rhythms and blocks of chords reminiscent of a funeral march. After the last variation there is an amusing diversion from the home key of B flat to G major and to six-eight, the situation being saved and the original tempo regained just in the nick of time.

Jeremy Hayes © 2010

1. Allegro
2. Polacca [Polonaise]
3. Largo
4. Theme and Variations: Allegretto

The authorship of this substantial flute sonata remains a mystery. But even if the identity of the composer remains uncertain, its association with Beethoven is genuine enough: a manuscript copy was found among the composer’s papers after his death. This found its way into the manuscript collection of the publisher Artaria and in their catalogue it appears as a ‘Sonata for piano and flute in B flat. Score. Autograph? Unpublished, probably from Beethoven’s early years.’ By 1970, when the Berlin State Library published a catalogue of its Beethoven holdings, the manuscript was described as a ‘fair copy’ and the attribution to Beethoven as ‘doubtful’. Even so, the title page has a note in pencil ‘Sonata fecit di Bethoe’ (i.e. Beethoven). If it is by Beethoven, then it is certainly an early piece, from his time in Bonn, before he moved to Vienna in 1792. The Beethoven scholar Willy Hess argued that Beethoven would not have kept a copy of the work in his library unless he had some sort of personal connection with it. This is a very fair assumption it gets us no closer to establishing the identity of the composer. It may have been by another pupil of Beethoven’s teacher Christian Gottlob Neefe, or by one of Beethoven’s colleagues from the court orchestra in which he played the viola. A further complication is that it might be a transcription of an as-yet-unidentified sonata for violin and piano, something suggested by the unidiomatic flute writing at the very start.  

Whatever the facts about its attribution, the Flute Sonata is a work of considerable charm, with some attractive ideas. In place of a minuet, the second movement is a Polonaise, the slow movement a song-like Largo and the finale a set of variations. 

The Scottish publisher and folksong collector George Thomson (1751–1851) – a friend of Robert Burns and Walter Scott – first approached Beethoven for some arrangements of Scottish songs as early as 1803, and eventually 25 of them (Beethoven’s Op. 108, for which the composer was well remunerated) were published by Thomson in 1818. Two years earlier, Thomson had written asking for some instrumental variations ‘in an agreeable style, not too difficult’. When he formally commissioned them in June 1818, Thomson also requested ad lib. flute parts, explaining that ‘we have a large number of flautists but alas, our violinists are few’, reminding Beethoven that the music should be ‘in a familiar, easy and slightly brilliant style.’

Thomson received the variations from Beethoven on 28 December 1818, and the National Airs with variations for the piano-forte and an accompaniment for the flute were published in July 1819, in a handsome edition that included a portrait of Beethoven on the title page. As musicologist and museum archivist Pamela Willetts has observed, they were not a commercial success. In 1820, Thomson wrote to Beethoven, grumbling that ‘the variations were not selling and that his outlay was a complete loss.’

© Nigel Simeone

Allegro
Andante
Minuet
Presto

The high opus number of Beethoven’s Octet for two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and two horns is misleading since it is one of the composer’s earliest pieces from his Vienna years: he started it while still in Bonn – and finished it in 1793, shortly after his arrival in the Austrian capital. It was reworked two years later as the String Quintet Op.4. Woodwind chamber music was all the rage in the late eighteenth century, nowhere more so than in Vienna, and it was usually written for performance outdoors. Like Haydn, Mozart and many others, the young Beethoven fulfilled the late eighteenth-century taste for Harmoniemusik (music for wind band) with cheerful, relatively undemanding works, of which his most substantial was this Octet.

Beethoven’s Octet was completed just when he started to take lessons from Haydn – and the wisdom and subtlety gained from those can be heard in his string quintet transcription (despite Beethoven’s far-fetched claim that he ‘learned nothing’ from his sessions with Haydn). But the Octet in its original version is one of Beethoven’s freshest early works. He clearly had good players in mind – the orchestras in Bonn and Vienna at the time evidently had wind sections with a taste for virtuosity, as can be heard especially in the delightful finale of this four-movement work. The first movement is engaging and straightforward, while the lyrical Andante has particularly prominent parts for oboe and bassoon. The Minuet is interesting: it’s already a long way from the courtly dance of its title, and an early example of what Beethoven would soon develop into the scherzos familiar from his symphonies.

© Nigel Simeone

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Introduzione: Adagio molto (attacca)
iii. Rondo. Allegretto moderato – Prestissimo
Count Ferdinand Ernst von Waldstein was a leading figure in Bonn’s political life at the end of the eighteenth century, and it was Waldstein who arranged for the young Beethoven to be given a scholarship to study with Haydn. In 1792, he wrote to Beethoven: “You go to realise a long-desired wish : the genius of Mozart is still in mourning and weeps for the death of its disciple … Receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” Waldstein was a talented amateur musician and a generous patron, and he also encouraged an old friend from Military Academy to support Beethoven: Prince Lichnowsky soon became Beethoven’s most important Viennese patron. In short, Beethoven had ample reason to be grateful to Waldstein, and dedicated one of the greatest works of his middle period to him. The Waldstein” Sonata was composed in 1803–4, and first published in 1805. Originally Beethoven wrote a conventional slow movement, but substituted it with “Introduzion” that leads to the finale. He quickly published the original movement as a stand-alone piece that we now know as the Andante favori. It was an inspired revision: among the many moments of heart-stopping beauty in this masterpiece, none is more magical than the pianissimo emergence of the Rondo theme.

Nigel Simeone © 2013

i. Adagio sostenuto 
ii. Allegretto 
iii. Presto agitato 
 

In 1801 Beethoven was preoccupied for two reasons. The first was the increasing problem he was having with his hearing. The second was altogether happier: “a dear, magical girl who loves me and whom I love”, as he told an old friend in a letter. In the same letter he even spoke of marriage: “this it is the first time that I have felt that marriage might make one happy.” The “magical girl” was Giulietta Guicciardi who had met Beethoven in 1800 when he started to give her piano lesson. Alas, the magic was not to last as Giulietta married a Count in 1803 – but the musical result is one of Beethoven’s most famous piano sonatas. 

The second of his Op.27 sonatas subtitled “quasi una fantasia”, has become universally known as the “Moonlight” – a nickname that derived from a description in 1832 by the critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab who likened the first movement to moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne. The form is unusually free: after the dreamy, slow opening movement, the second is a moment of repose before the angry outburst of the finale – clearly it’s not a portrait of Giulietta, even if Beethoven’s “magical girl” had been the inspiration for this highly original masterpiece. 

Nigel Simeone © 2012 

i. Allegro
ii. Andante
iii. Scherzo. Allegro vivace
iv. Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo
The so-called ‘Pastoral’ Sonata was composed in 1801, and the nickname is justified by the generally sunny mood of parts of the work, especially its finale. In fact it could hardly have been written at a more traumatic time in Beethoven’s life: this was the year in which he confessed to a few of his closest friends that he was losing his hearing. Published by the Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie in Vienna, it was described as a ‘Grande Sonate’ and dedicated to Joseph Freiherr von Sonnenfels (1732–1817), a friend of Mozart and a liberal thinker whose chief claim to fame was bringing about the abolition of torture in Austria in 1776. After a first movement that shows signs of real stress and tension in the turbulent development, the slow movement, in D minor, is restrained and rather despondent. The Scherzo is a startling contrast to this – playful in parts and also dramatic in the central Trio section. The last movement is a gentle and bucolic Rondo.

Nigel Simeone ©2014

Adagio sostenuto
Allegretto
Presto agitato
In 1801, Beethoven was preoccupied for two reasons. The first was the increasing problem he was having with his hearing. The second was altogether happier: “a dear, magical girl who loves me and whom I love”, as he told an old friend in a letter. In the same letter he even spoke of marriage: “this it is the first time that I have felt that marriage might make one happy.” The “magical girl” was Giulietta Guicciardi who had met Beethoven in 1800 when he started to give her piano lesson. Alas, the magic was not to last as Giulietta married a Count in 1803 – but the musical result is one of Beethoven’s most famous piano sonatas. The second of his Op.27 sonatas subtitled “quasi una fantasia”, has become universally known as the “Moonlight” – a nickname that derived from a description in 1832 by the critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab who likened the first movement to moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne. As with its companion piece Op.27 No.1, the form here is unusually free: after the dreamy, slow opening movement, the second is a moment of repose before the angry outburst of the finale – clearly it’s not a portrait of Guilietta even if Beethoven’s “magical girl” had been the inspiration for this highly original masterpiece.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

Vivace ma non troppo – Adagio espressivo
Prestissimo
Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo

In February 1820, Beethoven’s friend Friedrich Starke asked him for a ‘little piece’ for a piano tutor he was writing, with contributions from leading composers. Beethoven wrote the piece, but then received a commission from the Berlin publisher Schlesinger for a set of three sonatas – and Beethoven conceived the last three sonatas as a trilogy. He quickly decided that his ‘little piece’ would work very well as the first movement of the E major Sonata (and Starke was instead given five of the Bagatelles Op.119). The structure is certainly unconventional for the first movement of a sonata, alternating between fast and slow sections, in different time signatures and with sharply contrasted moods. In a way, this procedure recalls Mozart’s keyboard fantasias, except that the three sections of fast music in this movement could run continuously were they not interrupted by the Adagios, explaining why some Beethoven scholars have described the form as ‘parenthetical’. The second movement, in E minor, is fast and stormy, while the finale is a spacious and exalted set of variations on a theme in triple time that has been likened to a Sarabande – indeed Carl Czerny wrote that ‘the whole movement [is] in the style of Handel and Seb. Bach.’ At the end of June 1820 Beethoven told Schlesinger that the new work was ‘ready’, though in September he was still making revisions, and wrote again to say it was ‘almost ready’. It was completed soon afterwards and published by Schlesinger in 1821, with a dedication to Maximiliane Brentano. In a letter to her dated 6 December 1821, Beethoven wrote to her: ‘A dedication!!! – and not one that is misused as so often’. He recalled his love and admiration for her family, noting that ‘While I am thinking of the excellent qualities of your parents, there are no doubts in my mind that you have been striving to emulate these noble people. … May heaven always bless you in everything you do. Sincerely, and always your friend, Beethoven.’

Nigel Simeone © 2015

Moderato cantabile molto espressivo
Allegro molto
Adagio ma non troppo – Arioso dolente – Fuga: Allegro ma non troppo

During the first few months of 1821, Beethoven was laid low by illness, and was unable to do any composing for weeks on end. It was not until September that he was able to make a serious start on the Piano Sonata Op.110, and even in November he was grumbling to friends that he was still suffering from constant bouts of illness. However, the work was finished on Christmas Day 1821, and quickly sent to Schlesinger. The firm published it in 1822 and unusually, it appeared without dedication, though Thayer speculated that Beethoven intended to dedicate it to Antonie Brentano.

George Bernard Shaw considered Op.110 the most beautiful of all Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The first movement is moderate and elegantly proportioned, leading Charles Rosen to describe it as ‘Haydnesque’. The pithy Scherzo (in F minor) has a slightly folksy roughness – it actually uses a couple of folk tunes – while the Trio is in D flat major and marked by an idea that seems to cascade down the instrument. The reprise of the Scherzo ends in F major and leads straight into the Adagio ma non troppo – initially a recitative that leads to a deeply profoundly expressive Arioso dolente. For many musicians, it is the concluding Fugue (based on a subject built on rising fourths) that places it at or near the summit of Beethoven’s achievements. A sudden interruption of the fugue brings a poignant and tender recollection of the Arioso before the Fugue begins again, the subject now inverted, working towards a climax that is both sublime and majestic. Tovey wrote that ‘this fugue absorbs and transcends the world’, while Stravinsky considered it ‘the climax of this sonata … its great miracle lies in the substance of the counterpoint and it escapes all description.’

© Nigel Simeone

Maestoso – Allegro con brio ed appassionato
Arietta: Adagio molto, semplice e cantabile

The final sonata in Beethoven’s late trilogy was composed in 1821–2, straight after Op.110, and it was dedicated to his pupil and patron Archduke Rudolph, familiar as the dedicatee of the ‘Archduke’ Trio, and also the person to whom Beethoven inscribed the Missa solemnis, work on which was interrupted to compose the three late piano sonatas. Op.111 is in two movements, the first a turbulent and tempestuous Allegro preceded by a dramatic introduction notable for its extensive use of diminished seventh chords. The driving intensity of the main Allegro finds a moment of repose with the arrival of the second theme, in A flat major. At the end of the movement it is as if all rage has been spent as the music works towards a serene pianissimo conclusion in C major. The second movement is based on a hymn-like theme heard at the start of the movement and treated to an astoundingly diverse series of variations and a coda drenched in trills that seem to take the music to a strange and wonderful expressive world. Alfred Brendel has said of this movement that ‘perhaps nowhere else in piano literature does mystical experience feel so immediately close at hand’.

Nigel Simeone © 2015

Allegro
Adagio cantabile
Scherzo. Allegro assai
Finale. Presto

Beethoven’s first piano trio – his Op.1 No.1 – was composed at almost exactly the same time as Haydn’s A major Trio. It was first performed at a private concert in Vienna in 1794 at the house of Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, to whom the whole set of three trios Op.1 was dedicated. This private concert turned out to be an extremely important event in Beethoven’s early career: the audience included many of the great and good of Viennese musical life, including Beethoven’s teacher Haydn. According the Ferdinand Ries, in his biographical sketch of Beethoven published in 1838, ‘The three trios by Beethoven were to be played to the artistic world for the first time at a soirée held at Prince Lichnowksy’s. Most artists and music lovers had been invited, in particular Haydn, whose pronouncement was eagerly awaited by all. The trios were played and caused a great stir. Even Haydn said many nice things about them.’ A year later the Viennese publisher Artaria put out an announcement for the first publication of the set: ‘Subscription for Ludwig van Beethoven’s Three Grand Trios for Pianoforte, Violin and Bass, which Artaria will engrave and publish within the next 6 weeks, and which, if previously indicated, can be purchased from the composer on handing back the [subscription] bill. The price of a complete copy is 1 ducat. The subscribers’ names will be printed at the beginning and they will have the advantage that this work is only available to others two months later, maybe even at a higher price. In Vienna subscriptions can be bought from the composer … in Kreuzgasse no. 35 behind the Minoriten Church on the first floor.’ The list of subscribers reads like a Who’s Who of Viennese patrons – and many of them were to play a crucial role in Beethoven’s subsequent career, including Count Appony (who first suggested to Beethoven that he should write a string quartet) Countess Anna Maria Erdödy (dedicatee of the two piano trios Op.70 and the cello sonatas Op.102), Prince Lobkowitz (dedicatee of both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies), Count Rasumovsky (the Russian Ambassador in Vienna and dedicatee of the three String Quartets Op.59) and Prince Lichnowsky, to whom Beethoven dedicated his Op.1 and in whose home the pieces had first been played. The subscribers’ list shows that he ordered no fewer than 20 copies of the Op.1 Trios, a remarkable vote of confidence for the young composer.

© Nigel Simeone

Allegro
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto –
Thème Russe. Allegro
The first of Beethoven’s three quartets written for Prince Rasumovsky was composed in 1806 and performed the next year. It marks a departure from the Op.18 set in several respects, one of which is its sheer scale: like the “Eroica” Symphony (1804–5) it shows Beethoven expanding the possibilities of the form to produce something on an epic scale while retaining the essential intimacy of a string quartet.
The first movement is introduced by a cello theme which Lewis Lockwood describes as “opening up a musical space of seemingly unbounded lyricism and breadth.” The Scherzo, in B flat major, is an unsual movement: while it has no distinct Trio section, it is also Beethoven’s longest Scherzo to date, even though Beethoven removed a large repeat while revising the work. The slow movement has the unusual marking mesto – “mournful” – and is cast in the tragic key of F minor. It ends on a trill that leads seamlessly into the finale. This is based on a Russian theme – a charming and appropriate choice since Rasumovsky was the Russian Ambassador to Vienna at the time.

© Nigel Simeone

Grave – Allegro ma non troppo
Andante cantabile
Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

Beethoven completed his Quintet for Piano and Wind in 1797, five years after his arrival in Vienna, taking Mozart’s quintet for the same instrumental combination as his model, and it’s probably no coincidence that one of Beethoven’s closest friends – Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz – owned the autograph manuscript of Mozart’s work at the time. Yet despite some obvious parallels in terms of structure and even some of the thematic material, the Beethoven Quintet sounds very individual. As Cliff Eisen has written: ‘Beethoven [remained] true to his own voice, some obvious modellings of his quintet on Mozart’s notwithstanding: their keys and unusual scoring are identical, and both begin with elaborate slow introductions. At 416 bars, however, the first movement of Beethoven’s quintet far exceeds Mozart’s in scale: as in so many of his chamber and solo works, Beethoven aspires to the symphonic, something that is alien to Mozart’s greater intimacy and concision.’

Nigel Simeone © 2011

Grave. Allegro ma non troppo
Andante cantabile
Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

Beethoven completed his Quintet for Piano and Wind in 1797, five years after his arrival in Vienna, taking Mozart’s quintet for the same instrumental combination as his model. It’s probably no coincidence that one of Beethoven’s closest friends – Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz – owned the autograph manuscript of Mozart’s work at the time. Yet despite some obvious parallels in terms of structure and even some of the thematic material, the Beethoven Quintet sounds very individual. As the Canadian musicologist Cliff Eisen has written: ‘Beethoven [remained] true to his own voice, some obvious modellings of his quintet on Mozart’s notwithstanding: their keys and unusual scoring are identical, and both begin with elaborate slow introductions. At 416 bars, however, the first movement of Beethoven’s quintet far exceeds Mozart’s in scale: as in so many of his chamber and solo works, Beethoven aspires to the symphonic, something that is alien to Mozart’s greater intimacy and concision.’

© Nigel Simeone

Adagio – Allegro con brio 
Adagio cantabile 
Tempo di menuetto 
Tema con variazioni. Andante 
Scherzo. Allegro molto e vivace 
Andante con moto alla marcia – Presto 
 

Beethoven’s Septet was written in 1799. It was first performed at a concert given by Beethoven at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 2 April 1800 and was published – after a typically querulous exchange between Beethoven and his publisher – in 1802. Aiming for the top in terms of potential supporters, Beethoven dedicated it to Maria Theresa – the last Holy Roman Empress and the first Empress of Austria. The Septet’s success was enduring, something Beethoven came to resent since he felt the public should take more interest in his later music. 

The first movement is a genial sonata form Allegro with a slow introduction. The Adagio cantabile opens with a clarinet melody that is taken over by the violin, while clarinet and bassoon play a counter-melody, all supported by a gentle accompaniment on the lower strings. The bucolic Minuet demonstrates Beethoven the recycler, using the same theme as the Piano Sonata Op.49 No.2. The relaxed mood is maintained in the charming theme and variations. The Scherzo is launched by a horn call from which much of what follows is derived. Even the start of the Trio has thematic links with this tune, but a cello theme provides an effective contrast. The finale begins with one of the few significant uses of a minor key in the Septet: a stern march that quickly gives way to a rollicking Presto, its mood unclouded and its themes deliciously memorable. 

© Nigel Simeone 2014 

Adagio. Allegro
Adagio
Menuetto. Quasi Allegretto
Rondo. Allegro

When Beethoven sent the score of his Sextet to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in 1809, he was modest about it: ‘The Sextet is from my early days and, moreover, it was written in a single night. There is really no other way to say that it written by a composer who produced some better works.’

Scored for pairs of clarinets, bassoons and horns, it was composed in 1796 (the high opus number is misleading). The Sextet is an elegantly crafted piece in which the young Beethoven also explores some unusual sonorities, not least the rich lower registers of all six instruments in the Adagio where the bassoon presents the main theme. The vigorous Minuet and Trio is launched by the sound of hunting horns, while the Rondo is a spirited movement, bringing this little-known work to a cheerful close.

© Nigel Simeone

Allegro con brio
Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto
Allegro – Allegro fugato

Beethoven’s last two cello sonatas were composed in 1815 dedicated to the Countess Anna Maria Erdödy. The initial critical response was one of bewilderment, one critic declaring that “these two sonatas are definitely among the strangest and most unusual works … ever written for the pianoforte. Everything about them is completely different from anything else we have heard, even by this composer.” Indeed, the D major Cello Sonata Op.102 No.2 is a work that points forward to some of Beethoven’s final instrumental works – the late piano sonatas and quartets – in significant ways. The Beethoven scholar William Kinderman has suggested that the solemnity and austerity of the slow movement (in D minor) has pre-echoes of the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ from the Quartet Op.132, while fugal finale is the one of a series of such movements in Beethoven’s late instrumental pieces (followed by the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and the Grosse Fuge among others). The whole sonata, from the brusque opening of its first movement, to the extraordinary culmination of the fugue, is characterized by wild emotional contrasts: the stern, profoundly serious Adagio is flanked by two faster movements that are dominated by a fiery, even angry, dialogue between the two instruments.

Nigel Simeone © 2012

i. Assai sostenuto–Allegro
ii. Allegro ma non tanto
iii. Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart. Molto adagio (‘A Holy Song of Thanksgiving offered by a convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode’)
iv. Alla Marcia, assai vivace (attacca)
v. Allegro appassionato–Presto
‘I have the A minor Quartet on the gramophone, and I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly, or at least more than human gaiety, about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.’ These were the words of T.S. Eliot, writing to his friend Stephen Spender in 1931. Whether any or all of the Four Quartets, started in 1935, were inspired by Beethoven’s Op.132 is open to speculation, but given the letter to Spender and the fact that each of Eliot’s Quartets is in five parts, the evidence is certainly intriguing. (Incidentally, in 1931 Eliot had a very limited choice of recordings to have on his gramophone; the Léner Quartet recorded Op.132 in 1924, and the Deman Quartet recorded it in 1927). In a lecture delivered in New Haven in 1933, Eliot spoke again of his quest ‘to get beyond poetry, as Beethoven, in his later works, strove to get beyond music’, a remark prompted by D.H. Lawrence’s comment that ‘the essence of poetry’ was its ‘stark, bare, rocky directness of statement’. This phrase could equally well be applied to Beethoven’s late works. Composed in 1825, Op.132 is an extraordinary work even by the standards his late music.

William Kinderman has described the whole work as ‘laden with pathos of a particularly painful, agonized quality’ and at its heart is long central movement, in which Beethoven gives thanks for recovery from a serious illness. This ‘Song of Thanksgiving’ is interrupted by a ray of hope and recovery, marked ‘with renewed strength’, and on either side of it there are short, dance-like movements to provide contrast – though until a very late stage in the work’s composition Beethoven planned to use what became the ‘Alla danza tedesca’ movement familiar from Op.130 as the fourth movement of Op.132, before deciding to move it (and transpose it down a tone). There was equally intriguing traffic the other way, importing an idea into Op.132 from another work: the main theme for the finale was originally intended as a possible instrumental finale for the Ninth Symphony, and was only once Beethoven decided to write a choral movement and subsequently used in this astonishing string quartet.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

Allegro ma non tanto
Andante scherzoso quasi allegretto
Menuetto. Allegretto
Allegro – Prestissimo

C minor was a key that Beethoven used for some of his most dramatic music – works like the Fifth Symphony, the Pathétique Sonata, and the Coriolan Overture – and Sir George Grove wrote that “the pieces for which he has employed it are, with very few exceptions, remarkable for their beauty and importance.” The fourth of the Op.18 quartets has something of the turbulent mood of other pieces in C minor. The first movement is uneasy, though surprisingly, perhaps, this is especially apparent in the so-called Minuet third movement that has a particularly dark, brooding kind of energy. But there’s something paradoxical about this work: Beethoven has no real slow movement, and instead he has written a playful Andante in C major. The rondo finale is reminiscent of Haydn, written in the ‘Hungarian’ style he often used (but a rarity in Beethoven). An exciting minor-key main theme is interspersed with gentler episodes, culminating in a wild dash to the finish.

Nigel Simeone 2013

i. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
ii. Allegro molto vivace
iii. Allegro moderato
iv. Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile
v. Presto
vi. Adagio quasi un poco andante
vii. Allegro 
 

Beethoven himself considered the C sharp minor Quartet to be his finest work: an immense single span comprising seven movements that are performed without a break. When Richard Wagner heard the work performed by the Maurin-Chevillard Quartet in Paris, he was overcome with admiration. It’s always fascinating to read one great composer writing about another, and despite the purple prose, Wagner’s remarks are a wonderful tribute. He likens the Quartet to a “Beethoven day”, and describes the music as follows:  

“I should designate the long introductory Adagio – than which, probably, nothing more melancholy has ever been expressed in sound – as the awakening on the morning of a day … It is, at the same time, a penitential prayer, a conference with God. The introspective eye views (Allegro, 6/8) there, too, the comforting phenomenon in which Desire becomes a sweet, sorrowful play with itself: the innermost dream-image awakens in a most charming reminiscence. And now (in the short transitional Allegro moderato) it is as though the Master, recollecting his art, addressed himself to his magic work. He employs (Andante, 2/4) the revived power of spells peculiarly his own, to charm a graceful shape … in order that he may enrapture himself by ever new and unprecedented transformations … We now fancy (Presto 2/2) that we see him who is so completely happy, cast a glance of indescribable serenity upon the outer world. … Everything is rendered luminous by his inner happiness. … He now reflects on how he must begin (Adagio, 3/4), a short but troubled meditation … He awakens, and now strikes the strings for a dance, in such a way as the world has never yet heard (Allegro Finale). It is the dance of the world itself: wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture … and sorrow: suddenly, lightning quivers, the angry tempest growls; and above all this, the mighty player … smiles at himself, for the incantation was to him, after all, only a play. Night beckons to him. His day is finished.”

Nigel Simeone 2013 

Allegro
Andante con moto
Allegro
Presto

The Quartet Op.18 No.3 is a landmark in Beethoven’s career: it’s his first string quartet. He began it in the Autumn of 1798, finishing it early the following year, and eventually placed it as the third of the Op.18 set. As a preparation, Beethoven immersed himself in quartets by other composers, especially Mozart and his teacher Haydn – he copied out two of Mozart’s Haydn quartets just as he was beginning work on his Op.18.

The first movement opens with an arching theme (characterised by a leap of a minor seventh between the first two notes). The slow movement, in B flat major, begins with a luxuriant presentation of the main theme, but the texture soon becomes more spare and fragmented, with numerous dramatic contrasts. The Scherzo-like third movement has a minor key Trio section, while the final Presto is notable for its unquenchable energy. Composer Robert Simpson wrote that this music ‘flies at once into the sky, alighting when and where it wishes’ – from the stormy development section to the unexpectedly quiet ending.

© Nigel Simeone

Maestoso–Allegro teneramente
Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile
Scherzando vivace
Finale. Alla breve

Beethoven had not written a string quartet for well over ten years when the Russian Prince Nicholas Galitzin – a talented amateur cellist – asked Beethoven to write three new quartets. That commission came at the end of 1822, but Beethoven was unable to make any serious progress as he needed to complete the Ninth Symphony first. This he did in February 1824, and after the score of the symphony had been sent to the Philharmonic Society in London (who performed it in March 1825), Beethoven was able to get down to his new commission for Prince Galitzin. The Quartet Op.127 was started in April 1824 and finished by February 1825, swiftly followed by Op.132 in July and Op.130 in November. The first performance of Op.127 was given on 6 March by the Schuppanzigh Quartet and was not a success, partly because Beethoven had only given the parts to Schuppanzigh two weeks before. Still, the composer was angry and for the next performance he asked Joseph Böhm (who was later to teach Joseph Joachim) to lead the quartet. It didn’t fare much better. At a concert on 23 March, where Böhm performed the work twice in the same concert, while there were passionate enthusiasts, others we unconvinced and one critic described the work as ‘an incomprehensible, incoherent, vague, over-extended series of fantasias – chaos, from which flashes of genius emerged from time to time like lightning bolts from a black thunder cloud.’

This may seem a bizarre judgement almost two centuries later, but from the very start, this is music of extraordinary boldness. The quartet opens with six bars of loud, sonorous chords that return twice more in the movement, each time in a different key (in E flat major at the beginning, then in G major, and finally in C major). What follows is in quick triple time, as is the music after each subsequent statement of the stirring chords, but Beethoven takes the music in different directions each time, inserting unexpected silent bars, fragmenting ideas, and producing effects that must have seemed beyond strange in the 1820s, since their sheer daring is still just as palpable now. The French composer Vincent d’Indy (a pupil of César Franck) described the theme on which the variations of the slow movement are based as ‘so radiant in splendour that on reading it one feels … at once transported with joy and bewildered with admiration.’ The Scherzo opens, like the first movement, with loud tonic–dominant–tonic chords, but what follows is a thematic idea in dotted rhythms that is passed from player to player until all four instruments play it together in a fortissimo climax, before the dotted rhythm and the trills which accompany it are further developed, fragmented, and transformed. The central section of the movement is quick and spooky, beginning in the key of E flat minor, growing through a series of long crescendos before leading back to a brilliantly varied reprise of the opening material. About the lilting but idiosyncratic tune that dominates the finale, d’Indy wrote that it ‘would reawake the pastoral impressions of [the Sixth Symphony] did not the development of the dream which ends it, elevating the almost trivial phrase of the beginning to incommensurable heights, remind us that this is … altogether in the poet’s soul.’

Nigel Simeone © 2010

Allegro 
Molto Adagio. Si tratta questo pezzo con molto di sentimento  
Allegretto. Maggiore (Thème russe)  
Finale. Presto 

“Demanding but dignified” was how the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung described Beethoven’s new quartets dedicated to Count Rasumovsky when they were first heard in 1807. Composed in 1806, and including Russian melodies from a collection of folk tunes edited by Ivan Prach (published in 1790), these quartets were a major development in the quartet form. But though they were longer and more challenging than any earlier quartets, they were an immediate success. Before the Rasumovsky Quartets were played, Beethoven offered them to publisher Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig – in a job lot with the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Fourth Symphony and Fidelio, but the deal fell through and the quartets were first published in Vienna by the Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie and in London by Clementi. 

While the first of the Rasumovsky Quartets is unusually expansive, the second is more concentrated. From the opening two-chord gesture establishing E minor as the home key, the first movement is tense and full of rhythmic ambiguity. The hymn-like slow movement has a combination of richness and apparent simplicity that blossoms into a kind of ecstatic aria: Beethoven himself is reported to have likened it to “a meditative contemplation of the stars”. The uneasy rhythms of the Scherzo are contrasted by a major-key Trio section in which Beethoven quotes a Russian tune that famously reappeared in the Coronation Scene of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov. The finale begins with a surprise: a strong emphasis on the note C that is tantalising and unexpected in a movement that moves firmly towards E minor.  

© Nigel Simeone 

i. Allegro 
ii. Allegretto 
iii. Rondo. Allegro comodo 
 

String Quartet in F major is an unusual work, in that it is the only piece that Beethoven arranged from his own works. The original piece, Piano Sonata no.9 in E major, was composed in 1798 and dedicated to Baroness Josephine von Braun who was wife of the manager of the Theater and der Wien. He later arranged it for string quartet in 1801 and transposed it from the key of E major to F major, to better fit the open strings on the viola and cello. Beethoven displays great skill by knowing, not only what to add, but also what to leave out when re-imagining piano music for strings, transforming the piece but not replicating it directly. There is great drama in the contrast between the lyrical passages and the lively thematic sections, showcasing that the piece has just as much flair on the strings as it does the piano. 

Allegro con brio
Allegretto ma non troppo, attacca subito
Allegro assai vivace ma serioso. Più allegro
Larghetto espressivo. Allegretto agitato. Allegro

‘The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.’ Thus wrote Beethoven to Sir George Smart in October 1816. The kind of public concerts he had in mind – mixed programmes of vocal and instrumental music – would indeed make an odd setting for a work of such concentrated intensity. Composed in 1810 and revised for publication in 1815, Beethoven dedicated it to his friend, Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovetz, a talented amateur cellist who worked as Hungarian Court Secretary in Vienna.

One of Beethoven’s shortest and most tautly argued quartets, it was the composer himself who called it Quartetto serioso on the autograph manuscript. The Beethoven expert William Kinderman sums up its character as ‘dark, introspective, and vehement’, and it’s no surprise that Beethoven takes a similarly pithy approach to form: a much-shortened recapitulation in the first movement, a slow movement that eschews lyricism in favour of a chromatic fugal section, and a prickly Scherzo (more of an anti-Scherzo really, since it is not only completely lacking in any kind of humour, but is even marked ‘serioso’). The finale sustains this tension and agitation until the last moment – then something extraordinary happens: the music takes a sudden turn to F major, and there’s a dash to the finish. The American composer Randall Thompson commented that ‘no bottle of champagne was ever uncorked at a better time.’

© Nigel Simeone

Allegretto
Vivace
Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo
Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß [The difficult decision]. Grave, ma non troppo tanto (Muss es sein? [Must it be?]) – Allegro (Es muss sein! [It must be!]) – Grave, ma non troppo tratto – Allegro

Beethoven’s final string quartet (only the replacement finale of Op.130 is later) was completed in October 1826. After an awful summer during which his nephew Karl had attempted suicide and been imprisoned, Beethoven was able to escape to the tranquillity of Gneixendorf, a village near Krems about fifty miles from Vienna. He arrived at the end of September and his last masterpiece was finished in the following month, much of it composed outdoors (the locals were amused to observe Beethoven singing and waving his arms as he worked). It is dedicated to his friend and supporter Johann Nepomuk Wolfmayer, who was originally to have been the dedicatee of the C sharp minor Quartet Op.131. The F major Quartet Op.135 is much the shortest of the late quartets, and there’s a conciseness and simplicity that perhaps point forward to the direction Beethoven might have pursued in his music had he lived longer. Its less serious mood can also be explained by the circumstances in which it was written: at the end of his tether after his nephew’s problems in the summer, the composer could at last be refreshed. Op.135 seems to be imbued with this new sense of well-being, and within a relatively conventional movement structure (unlike several of the other late quartets), Beethoven expresses both humour and the deepest seriousness with amazing brevity. The expressive heart of the work was probably the first part to be composed: the Lento assai, barely fifty bars long, was originally intended for the Op.131 Quartet. The finale has the famous superscription “The difficult decision”, based on a question-and-answer motif: “Must it be? – It must be!” The origins of this are a canon jotted down at the end of July 1826, “half-humorous, half-philosophical” as Barry Cooper puts it, providing the ideal theme for a movement that seems to encapsulate the “difficult decisions” that marked out Beethoven as a timeless genius.

© Nigel Simeone 2013

Allegro con brio
Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato
Scherzo. Allegro molto
Allegro

Beethoven’s String Quartets Op.18 were written between 1798 and 1800 – his first exploration of the genre in which his teacher Haydn had excelled. Beethoven was commissioned to write the quartets by Prince Lobkowitz. The F major Quartet Op.18 No.1 was the second of the set to be composed, in January–March 1799. The first movement gave Beethoven a good deal of trouble. An early manuscript shows the state of the work before extensive revisions were made in the summer of 1800. In a letter to Carl Amenda dated 1 July 1801 (in which he also confides about his increasing deafness), he begs his friend not to show anyone the first version of the quartet as “it’s been reworked very thoroughly … I’ve only now learned how to write quartets properly”. The results of Beethoven’s revisions in the first movement were especially effective in increasing tension and momentum in the development section. A conversation reported between Amenda and Beethoven is revealing about the Adagio. Amenda said “it pictured for me the parting of two lovers”, to which Beethoven apparently replied: “Good! I thought of the scene in the burial vault in Romeo and Juliet.” After the emotional intensity of the slow movement, the Scherzo comes as a relief, before a swirling scale-like theme launches the finale.

Nigel Simeone 2013 © 

Allegro
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto – attacca
Thème Russe. Allegro

The first of Beethoven’s three quartets written for Prince Razumovsky was composed in 1806 and performed the next year. Like the ‘Eroica’ Symphony (1804–5) it shows Beethoven expanding the possibilities of the form to produce something on an epic scale while retaining the essential intimacy of a string quartet. The first movement is introduced by a cello theme which musicologist Lewis Lockwood describes as ‘opening up a musical space of seemingly unbounded lyricism and breadth.’ The Scherzo, in B flat major, is an unusual movement: while it has no distinct Trio section, it is also Beethoven’s longest Scherzo to date, even though Beethoven removed a large repeat while revising the work. The slow movement has the unusual marking mesto – ‘mournful’ – and is cast in the tragic key of F minor. It ends on a trill that leads seamlessly into the finale. This is based on a Russian theme – a charming and appropriate choice since Razumovsky was the Russian Ambassador to Vienna at the time.

© Nigel Simeone

1. Allegro von spirito
2. Adagio con espressione
3. Scherzo. Allegro molto e vivace
4. Finale. Presto

Beethoven’s three String Trios Op. 9 were finished by March 1798. The C minor trio is the most intense and closely argued of the three. The first movement opens with a hushed idea in octaves, soon followed by a more overtly melodic contrasting theme. Both are used in the terse development section and are heard again in the recapitulation before the movement ends with a stern affirmation of the home key of C minor. For the slow movement, Beethoven turns to C major, though the main theme soon takes a few unexpected harmonic turns, rather in the manner of Beethoven’s mentor Haydn. An early example of Beethoven’s ability to create seemingly endless melody with plenty of dramatic episodes, this movement ends with hushed chords. Back in C minor, the Scherzo is fast and angular, with only a charming major-key Trio section providing a moment of calm, though this uneasy movement ends quietly. The finale is notable for music that has a plain-speaking gruffness, and the whole work is notable for the imagination with which Beethoven writes for the three instruments at his disposal.

Nigel Simeone

Allegro
Adagio
Tema andante con variazioni

Composed between 1786 and 1790, while Beethoven was still living in Bonn, the manuscript of this early work described it as a “Trio concertant à Clavibembalo, Flauto [e] Fagotto”. Whether it was ever played with a harpsichord is unclear, but it was composed for domestic music-making by the family of Baron Friedrich von Westerholt-Gysenberg, Equerry to the Elector of Bonn. The Baron himself was a bassoonist, his son Wilhelm was a flautist, and his daughter, Maria Anna Wilhelmine, was a fine pianist – according to Beethoven’s own teacher Neefe, her playing was “fiery” and of “marvellous accuracy”. For a time she was adored by the young Beethoven, who taught her the piano for several years before her marriage in 1792 and even sent her poetry declaring that “My heart will never change, and I will cherish you forever!”

Nigel Simeone © 2012

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Variations on God Save the King were written in 1803 for the Scottish music publisher George Thomson. The composer sent them with a note that they were not too difficult and hoping that they would be a success. He also hoped to show the English ‘what a blessing they have’ with the tune, one which certainly seems to have fired his musical imagination.  

(C) Nigel Simeone

1. Adagio – Allegro con brio
2. Adagio cantabile
3. Tempo di menuetto
4. Tema con variazioni. Andante
5. Scherzo. Allegro molto e vivace
6. Andante con moto alla marcia – Presto

 Beethoven’s Septet was written in 1799. It was first performed at a concert given by Beethoven at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 2 April 1800 and was published – after a typically querulous exchange between Beethoven and his publisher – in 1802. Aiming for the top in terms of potential supporters, Beethoven dedicated it to Maria Theresa – the last Holy Roman Empress and the first Empress of Austria. The Septet’s success was enduring, something Beethoven came to resent since he felt the public should take more interest in his later music. The first movement is a genial sonata form Allegro with a slow introduction. The Adagio cantabile opens with a clarinet melody that is taken over by the violin, while clarinet and bassoon play a counter-melody, all supported by a gentle accompaniment on the lower strings. The bucolic Minuet demonstrates Beethoven the recycler, using the same theme as the Piano Sonata Op.49 No.2. The relaxed mood is maintained in the charming theme and variations. The Scherzo is launched by a horn call from which much of what follows is derived. Even the start of the Trio has thematic links with this tune, but a cello theme provides an effective contrast. The finale begins with one of the few significant uses of a minor key in the Septet: a stern march that quickly gives way to a rollicking Presto, its mood unclouded and its themes deliciously memorable. 

 Nigel Simeone 2014 

And we end where we began, another ‘scherzo’ or musical joke this time from the monumental Ludwig Van Beethoven! Seven instruments all working together to bounce us out of the concert and into a world filled with music.

i. Allegro
ii. Adagio molto espressivo
iii. Scherzo. Allegro molto
iv. Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo

The ‘Spring’ Sonata was written in 1800 and first published the following year, originally as the second of a pair of sonatas. Both are dedicated to Moritz von Fries, a banker with an expensive lifestyle (leading to his eventual bankruptcy) and excellent taste in music and art. Beethoven was a regular guest at Fries’s home and as well as the Op. 23 and Op. 24 Violin Sonatas, Fries was also the dedicatee of the Seventh Symphony. The origins of the nickname are obscure, but ‘Spring’ is a very apt choice for this genial work. After the lyrical first movement, the Adagio molto espressivo is a deeply felt song without words, including some elaborate decorations. The Scherzo lives up to its name: a clever and tricky rhythmic joke that plays with the audience’s expectations – and it is also one of Beethoven’s shortest sonata movements. The Rondo is one of Beethoven’s most gentle and unhurried finales, bringing this most radiant of his violin sonatas to an amiable close. The ‘Spring’ Sonata is the first of Beethoven’s violin sonatas to be in four movements (its four predecessors are all in three movements) and it is a work of effortless ingenuity as well as boundless charm.

© Nigel Simeone

The playful and almost cheeky opening to ‘A Furiosa’ is slightly deceptive as to the character of the rest of the piece. What ensues is a wonderfully catchy and fun melody based around the energetic dance rhythm of the Brazilian Maxixe. Bellinati wrote this piece as a tribute to the incredibly virtuosic and talented street musicians of Brazil, known affectionately as ‘The Furious Ones’ on account of their astonishing technique and speed. This fun dance is full of rhythmic excitement and flair.

Regarded as one of the leading Brazilian guitarists of the younger generation, Bellinati is hailed by many as successor in the lineage of great Brazilian guitarist/composers such as Jobim, Powell and Gnattali. In his compositions, he recreates Brazilian styles such as Baião, Maxixe and Frevo, blending influences from contemporary jazz and classical music. Baião de Gude draws its inspiration from a game of marbles called ‘Bolos de Gude’, which is played in the street by the children of Brazil.

New Dance 
Lady Day 
The Mulberry Garden 
Nobody’s Jig 
 

Richard Rodney Bennett’s Four Country Dances for saxophone and piano are part of larger series of pieces inspired by tunes found in John Playford’s The English Dancing Master first published in 1651, with numerous later editions which changed the title to The Dancing Master and added new tunes. Bennett has taken these folk-like melodies and added piano accompaniments of his own to create pieces that have a very individual character. This is particularly apparent in the last dance, where the piano part is at first spiky, then enters into a dialogue with the saxophone with fragments of the melody. The results are fresh, spirited and charming. 

© Nigel Simeone

Alban Berg first met Schoenberg in 1904 and continued to study with his until 1910. It’s not certain exactly when he composed the Piano Sonata, but towards the end of his studies Berg started to work on exercises in sonata structures and it is likely that the work emerged from these in 1907–8. Published in 1910 by Schlesinger in Berlin and Haslinger in Vienna, the first public performance took place in Vienna on 24 April 1911, given by Etta Werndorff, another member of the Schoenberg circle who also gave the premiere of Schoenberg’s Klavierstücke Op. 11 (Schoenberg also painted her portrait twice). Douglas Jarman (in New Grove) described Berg’s Sonata as ‘the last work he wrote directly under his teacher’s guidance … in effect his graduation piece, the work in which he set out to demonstrate what he had learned from both Schoenberg’s teaching and Schoenberg’s music.’ The Sonata is a single movement, highly concentrated, in which Berg generates a number of distinctive ideas from short motifs (heard at the start) which serve as the musical seeds for a work of powerful originality. Following the precepts of his teacher, Berg is not afraid to look to the past for inspiration and the structure is broadly in sonata form (exposition–development–recapitulation). The musical language is more uncompromising, stretching the possibilities of post-Wagnerian harmonies to breaking point, but always with a highly expressive trajectory that is as much emotional as it is architectural. Berg’s Sonata is an outstanding ‘Opus One’, the young composer’s creative voice emerging more or less fully formed. 

Nigel Simeone 2024

Nacht [Night] (Carl Hauptmann) 
Schilflied [Song among the reeds] (Nikolaus Lenau) 
Die Nachtigall [The nightingale] (Theodor Storm)  
Traumgekrönt [Crowned in a dream] (Rainer Maria Rilke)  
Im Zimmer [Indoors] (Johannes Schalf) 
Liebesode [Ode to love] (Otto Erich Hartleben) 
Sommertage [Summer days] (Paul Hohenberg) 
 

Berg composed these songs during his time as a student of Schoenberg (between 1905 and 1908) – so they are almost exactly contemporary with Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet. Altogether during this period, Berg wrote more than eighty songs. The present selection was assembled by the composer in 1928 when he also made versions with orchestral accompaniment. Three of the songs were performed at a concert of music by Schoenberg’s pupils in 1907 – the first public hearing of any music by Berg. Stylistically they owe much to the legacy of Wolf and Mahler as well as Schoenberg’s earlier songs, and the influence of Wagner, Strauss and Debussy. But even though they are student works, they reveal a composer with a superb natural affinity with the human voice: Berg went on to write several mature sets of songs, as well as the operas Wozzeck and Lulu, and that understanding of the expressive potential of the voice can already be heard in the Seven Early Songs. They range from relatively simple writing to almost expressionistic music which borders on atonality. Often intoxicating, sometimes shimmering, the ravishing opulence of these songs have love as their central obsession, so it is no surprise that Berg later dedicated the set to his wife Helena – recalling the blissful time when they first got to know each other. The soprano Diana Damrau has commented that the songs are ‘about a great love, and also physical love … the happiness of fulfilled togetherness. You don’t need anything else, and the circle closes with the last song, ‘Sommertage’. There he goes back to nature and what particularly characterises the romantic soul: the quest for freedom’. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

Sigurd Berge (1929-2002) was a Norwegian composer known for his contributions to music education and his interest in Norwegian folk music. His works span a variety of styles, from traditional tonal music to electronic music and multi-media compositions.

Berge’s Horn-lokk is an unaccompanied horn solo composed in 1972 for fellow Norwegian Frøydis Ree Wekre. It consists of four sections and incorporates melodies inspired by Norwegian folk music. The piece showcases the horn as an instrument and is challenging for the performer due to its tessitura and required techniques.

The Horn-lokk contains traits reminiscent of traditional horn calls but with more complex tonality and dissonant intervals. The piece lacks the heroic quality of popular horn call melodies and instead presents a haunting and repetitive melody that grieves, with a cathartic outburst of fury at the climax.

Luciano Berio was a musical inventor who loved turning everyday sounds into music. This is the last part of his ‘musical zoo’ where each section is a different animal! In this piece, our wind players have to use different sorts of musical voices: speaking as well as playing.  It’s like a musical cartoon of a pair of Tom Cats. How do they instruments bring the fighting cats to life?And what do you think happens in the end?

Adagio
Allegro molto
Poco adagio
Prestissimo
Poco adagio
Finale: Allegro con spirito

The influence and popularity of Beethoven’s Septet spread across Europe and the work was regularly performed in Berwald’s native city of Stockholm. Now widely regarded as the most important Swedish composer of the nineteenth century, during his lifetime Berwald was seldom able to earn a living from his music, working instead as a successful physiotherapist and, later, manager of a glass works. None of this should lead us to underestimate either Berwald’s creative talent or his imaginative handling of musical form. Both are apparent in this Septet. Completed in 1828, it may have been a reworking of an earlier piece for the same forces. Even so, it is a relatively early work, composed two decades before his best-known pieces such as the Symphonie sérieuse and Symphonie singulière. The musical language is consistently appealing, owing something to contemporary opera and to composers such as Spohr, but the melodies and harmonies have an idiosyncratic character that is entirely Berwald’s own (as at the start of the Allegro molto in the first movement, or the opening of the finale). In terms of the Septet’s design, the most striking innovation comes in the second movement which has a very quick Scherzo embedded within a seemingly conventional slow movement.

Fourteen virtuoso instrumentalists arrange themselves into a semicircle and a number of them hand round from one to another a continuous, but changing solo line, many of the players thus exploring the roles of both soloist and accompanist within this one piece. A central position on the stage is reserved for whoever is carrying the solo at any one time, creating a fascinating drawn-out dance as players move to the front of the stage and then peregrinate around the outer semicircle as others fill the physical and musical space they have just vacated. 

Such an original ritualised game in sound immediately suggests the pre-eminent hand of Sir Harrison Birtwistle, who has made such a specialisation of combining ritual, theatre and music through more than half a century of spectacular output. Cortege, written to celebrate the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall, is based on a previous piece, Ritual Fragment (1990) – will become a signature piece for the London Sinfonietta. This is only fitting: both pieces are dedicated to the memory of Michael Vyner, the tireless, visionary idealist who was the London Sinfonietta’s first Artistic Director and who died in 1989 at the age of 46. Those who knew Michael well will recognise much of him in Cortege: the restless and almost exotic intensity, the constant concern with talent, dedication and modernity; all these qualities will surely be present in conjuring his memory from the sounds of this world premiere. 

Marshall Marcus © 

In addition to being one of the most beloved and enduring operas of all time, this work has found a home on the symphonic stage, most notably with an orchestral suite of some of its most popular excerpts. In this arrangement of six movements from Carmen for guitar quartet, a special emphasis was put on retaining the distinctly Spanish sound of the music, which finds a natural home on the guitar.

The current suite begins with the Aragonaise, with strumming fanfares and imitations of castanets. Next is the timeless Habanera, a sensual aria based on a melody by Iradier that explores the lyric possibilities of a single line melody on the guitar. It is followed by the flamenco-inspired Seguidilla, which explores a wide range of articulations and colors available on guitar quartet. The ever-popular Toreadors features boisterous strummed chords and extended trills, while the delicate Entr’Acte is a gradually unfolding masterwork of lyric counterpoint. The final Gypsy Dance creates a slowly building tension with repeated staccato figures, finally erupting in the famous and furious coda.

© William Kanengiser

Manhã de Carnaval is the principal song in the 1959 Brazilian film Black Orpheus. It became one of the first Bossa Nova compositions to gain popularity worldwide and it is considered one of the most important songs of that style.

1. Allegro molto moderato
2. Lento
3. Allegro molto

Henriëtte Bosmans had a successful career as a pianist in the Netherlands in the 1920s and 30s, appearing as a soloist with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. She was less fortunate as a composer, initially running into the prejudice against female composers that was prevalent at the time. Later on, her performing career was curtailed: as a half-Jewish woman she was registered as a ‘Jewish case’ in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. After the war, Bosmans wrote a number of songs, and was awarded the Royal Order of Orange Nassau in 1951 – a recognition that came too late: she was always very ill and died the following year.

Bosmans’s String Quartet is in three movements. It was composed in 1927, the year in which she began studying with the outstanding Dutch composer of the time, Willem Pijper. She dedicated it to Pijper, noting on the manuscript that it was completed in time for his birthday on 8 September 1927. The Allegro molto moderato opens with a haunting idea in unison which blossoms into a movement full of unusual harmonies. A new faster section (in 7/8 time) is launched by the cello. After a recollection of the opening idea, the movement ends quietly with two plucked chords over a low cello note. The central Lento opens with a violin lament over sustained chords, its mood serious but with gentler, pastoral moments. The finale is marked by driving rhythms which make for an urgent and exciting close. Throughout the work, the influence of the quartets by Debussy and Ravel is often apparent, but this in not derivative music: even in a work from quite early in her composing career, Bosmans has an individual creative voice.

The first performance of this remarkable quartet was given on 28 January 1928 by the Amsterdam String Quartet, all members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Lili Boulanger – younger sister of the great teacher Nadia Boulanger – was an astonishingly gifted child: Fauré (who later taught her composition) discovered that she had perfect pitch when she was two years old, and at the age of 19, Lili became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for musical composition, but throughout her life she was dogged by ill health – the consequence of pneumonia when she was a child – and had to return early from Rome. 

D’un matin de printemps exists in three versions: for violin or flute and piano, for orchestra, and for piano trio. The autograph manuscript of the trio version is headed ‘Pièces en trio’ alongside D’un soir triste, which was composed at the same time. Apart from a poignant and beautiful setting of the Pie Jesu (possibly intended as part of a projected Requiem) these are the last two compositions of Boulanger’s tragically short creative life. She died at the age of 24 leaving a remarkable legacy including some memorable Psalm settings, the marvellous song cycle Clairières dans le ciel and a handful of instrumental works such as this trio. 

© Nigel Simeone 2026 

The phenomenal gifts of Lili Boulanger were recognised when she was in her teens, and in 1913 she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for composition with her cantata Faust et Hélène. She was nineteen at the time, but her musical language was already distinctive. D’un soir triste (‘Of a sad evening’) was one of her last compositions, finished in 1918 and it demonstrates the more harmonically adventurous and austere style that Boulanger had developed in works such as her Psalm settings made in 1914–17. D’un soir triste exists in an orchestral version, but the original scoring for violin, cello and piano is the only one for which an autograph manuscript survives (the orchestral version is in the hand of Lili’s sister Nadia). Subtitled ‘pièces en trio’, the opening melody (first on cello, then violin) unfurls over solemn piano chords and the harmonies darken as the musical argument becomes more complex and works towards an intense climax and an anguished central section. Though the later part of the work seems to be seeking some kind of repose, it never really comes until settling on the final open fifths. Lili Boulanger died on 15 March 1918 at the age of twenty-four: a brilliant musician whose surviving works are all the more poignant for their hints of what might have been. 

© Nigel Simeone

This is one of Lili Boulanger’s first pieces, written in 1911, two years before her victory in the Prix de Rome for composition. Her early death at the age of twenty-four robbed the world of a composer whose mature music – from the last five years of her short life – is notable for its startling originality and stark beauty. That mixture of sensuousness and austerity can be heard even in this early work with its hints of Debussy and of the elegant restraint of her teacher, Fauré.

© Nigel Simeone

The phenomenal gifts of Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) were recognised when she was in her teens, and in 1913 she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome for composition at the Paris Conservatoire with her cantata Faust et Hélène. She was nineteen at the time, but her musical language was already distinctive. The Nocturne was one of her earlier pieces, originally entitled ‘pièce courte pour flûte et piano’, the manuscript dated 27 October 1911. It was subsequently reworked for violin and piano and is here arranged for trumpet. The Cortège, which is often paired with it, dates from June 1914 when it began as a piano solo which was then arranged for violin and piano and later transcribed for trumpet. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

Lili Boulanger was the sister of the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger who taught Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter and Philip Glass amongst others. She was a composer for the last 10 years of her tragically short life – she died at 25 – and her music stands in the main line of French music exemplified by Faure, somewhat tinged with the influence of Debussy’s Impressionism. It is generally beautiful, delicately coloured, and touching. These challenging ‘Two Pieces for Violin and Piano’ exemplify these qualities.

The Nocturne begins sparsely, with bare octave figures wound about with a theme built from a repetitive rise-and-fall figure. As the texture becomes thicker the violin becomes more virtuosic and begins to climb. There is no harmonic resolution until the final ppp note in the top register, which is answered by an low octave from the piano.

The Cortege is more lively without being fast. Shifting rhythmic accents, tricky runs and contrasting dynamics make this an exciting piece.

From Boosey.com

Moderato
Sans vitesse et à l’aise
Vite et nerveusement rythmé 

Nadia Boulanger, teacher, conductor, early music pioneer and trusted adviser to the likes of Stravinsky and Poulenc, was also a gifted composer. Fiercely self-critical, she always claimed her own music was nothing like as significant as that of her brilliant younger sister, Lili, but with the rediscovery of Nadia’s music it has become clear that she was a remarkable talent in her own right. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of nine and subsequently studied composition with Fauré. Most of her music dates from between 1904 and 1918 (the year Lili died), including the Three Pieces for cello and piano, composed in 1914 and first published the following year. The first, in E flat minor, presents a song-like melody on the cello over a hushed piano part marked doux et vague. After a brief climactic central section, the opening music returns for a serene close in E flat major. The second piece, in A minor, treats a deceptively simple tune – almost a folksong – in an ingenious canon between the cello and the piano. The last piece, in C sharp minor, is quick, with a middle section that provides a contrast in both rhythm and texture to the playful but muscular mood of the rest.   

Nigel Simeone © 2022 

Pierre Boulez, composer, conductor, and arch polemicist, described the intention of his 1952 piece Structures I as follows: 

“I wanted to eradicate from my vocabulary absolutely every trace of the conventional, whether it concerned figures and phrases, or development and form; I then wanted gradually, element after element, to win back the various stages of the compositional process, in such a manner that a perfectly new synthesis might arise, a synthesis that would not be corrupted from the very outset by foreign bodies—stylistic reminiscences in particular.” 

It’s interesting, then, to compare this sentiment with Dialogue de l’ombre double, a piece from three decades later which is indelibly linked to a particularly pungent “foreign body”: the theatre. The inspiration for the piece came from a scene in Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de Satin, an eleven-hour verse epic written in 1929. Boulez’s title, meaning “dialogue of the double shadow,” comes from a moment in Claudel’s thirteenth scene when a man and a woman are projected together onto a wall. The piece uses this as its jumping off point; live clarinet plays with its sonic shadow, a pre-recorded clarinet spatialized around the concert space using loudspeakers. 

The piece is not theatrical, but has a certain literary feel, like one of the long unbroken multi-voiced monologues you might find in the works of James Joyce. The music contrasts between “stanzas” (played live) and “transitions” (prerecorded), and dialogue between the two parts, though this aspect is better imagined as two forks of a split personality than a conversation between two different voices. Dialogue is full of a darting and rhythmic vitality, and serves as a great inroad into Boulez’s art. 

Hugh Morris 2024 

As flute players, our creative life is forever bound in the air we breathe and blow – this wonderful invisible resource that is the foundation of our Art. I first performed …And The Wind Whispered… in Botswana and Zimbabwe in February 2009, but it took until 2011 before it was written down. Taking its inspiration from the wind, …And The Wind Whispered… seeks to make a statement about our fractured world… I have always been very weary of organized nationalism, religion and politics because they fragment and diminish our Humanity. At one point in my piece, the flute player says “and the wind never shows its passport, when it crosses the border.” Sit back and let the wind take you on a journey of its own choosing. This piece carries a wish with it – that humanity can one day rid itself from its self-imposed spiritual prisons.

© Wissam Boustany

This piece sees the string players joined by a clarinet. This woodwind instrument takes us on a lovely journey. What do you think of as you hear the flowing tune; a river winding through a beautiful scene, a song being sung by a wonderful singer… or something else?

i. Andante, after the Scottish ballad ‘Edward’
ii. Andante, espressivo e dolce – Allegro non troppo
iii. Intermezzo. Allegro
iv. Andante con moto
Brahms composed this set of four Ballades in Düsseldorf in 1854 (when he was 20), at a time when Robert and Clara Schumann were promoting the young Brahms’s career. The poetic ballad on which the musical form was based involved a verse narrative with refrains. Chopin’s famous group of Ballades had been written between 1831 and 1842 and treated this idea very freely. As Charles Rosen has pointed out, Brahms was more faithful to the medieval origins of the poetic form, describing his approach as ‘more thoroughly neo-Gothic’. The four Ballades are in two pairs, linked by related keys. The first two are in D minor and D major, while the third and fourth are in B minor and B major. The first Ballade was directly inspired by an ancient Scottish ballad that had been published in German by the poet Johann Gottfried Herder. It is a gruesome tale of Edward’s sword dripping with the blood of his father and ending with him cursing his mother, though Brahms’s piece – although stormy and passionate in the middle section – does not really evoke the mood of the poem. Instead, there’s a sense of its formal qualities and its symmetry. The second Ballade begins slowly, but the main Allegro non troppo section is dramatic, dominated by an obsessive rhythm of four quavers that returns later to provide a kind of ghostly knocking. The third Ballade is headed ‘Intermezzo’ and it is a Scherzo-like piece in B minor, with a central Trio section that introduces an ethereal idea in F sharp major. The final Ballade begins as sweeping triple-time movement, but Brahms introduces a remarkable contrasting idea, with a marking worthy of late Beethoven: Più lento. Col intimissimo sentimento, ma senza troppo marcare la melodia (Slower. With most intimate feeling, but without heavily marking the melody)

Allegro
Adagio
Andantino. Presto non assai, ma con sentimento
Con moto

In 1890, while only in his late fifties, Brahms declared that he was retiring: the String Quintet Op. 111 was to be his farewell from composition. A few months later he heard Richard Mühlfeld, clarinettist of the Meiningen Orchestra, and wrote to Clara Schumann that ‘the clarinet cannot be better played’. It inspired him to carry on composing. In the summer of 1891 Brahms went to stay at Bad Ischl in the Salzkammergut where he wrote the Clarinet Trio and Clarinet Quintet. Mühlfeld gave the premieres of both works on 12 December 1891 in Berlin. On hearing a performance in London the following year, George Bernard Shaw wrote that ‘it surpassed my utmost expectations’, and when the conductor Arthur Nikisch heard the Quintet, he fell to his knees in front of Brahms.

It has a rare and hypnotic beauty, thanks to its pervasive mood of melancholy, occasionally interrupted by quiet rapture, or by fiery gypsy figurations. The opening is played by the strings alone (like Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet), from which the clarinet emerges as if through the mists. Ideas gradually become more fully formed, and Brahms uses the tension between the home key (B minor) and its relative major (D major) to great expressive effect. The slow movement is a song-like Adagio, interrupted by a clarinet outburst in which Brahms evokes the improvisations of gypsy players. The third movement is a gentle interlude, with a more animated central section, and the finale is a theme and variations in which music from the opening movement is recalled at the end, to magical effect.

© Nigel Simeone

Allegro  
Adagio  
Andantino grazioso – Trio 
Allegro  
 

When Brahms first heard the playing of Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinettist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had not written any chamber music involving the clarinet. But after a meeting in March 1891 he was inspired – following more than a year of creative silence – to write two major works for his new-found muse. On 24 November 1891, Mühlfeld, the Joachim Quartet and Brahms himself played both the Trio and the Clarinet Quintet at a private concert for the Duke of Meiningen. The first public performances followed on 12 December 1891, in the Berlin Singakademie. For the Trio Mühlfeld was again joined by the cellist Robert Hausmann and Brahms. 

The four movements of the Trio are concise and clear in design, without quite the mystery or the rapturous spirit that pervades the Quintet. However, the writing for the three instruments is unusually closely integrated, intertwined even – prompting Brahms’s friend Eusebius Mandyczewski to write in a letter to the composer that ‘it was as if the instruments were in love with one another.’ Brahms’s technical prowess can also be seen at its most ingenious: the second theme of the first movement is introduced as a canon in inversion, a procedure that can also be found in Haydn, and perhaps this was a nod from Brahms to one of the composers of the past he most admired. As well as the Trio and Quintet, Brahms went on to write the two Clarinet Sonatas Op.120 for Mühlfeld – all late masterpieces inspired by this great clarinettist.  

© Nigel Simeone 

Brahms wrote his first two books of Hungarian Dances in autumn 1868 for piano four hands, and followed this with two more books in March 1880. In 1874 he orchestrated three of the 1868 dances for symphony orchestra (the others were later orchestrated by Dvořák and others). The idea of using Hungarian gypsy themes came after Brahms heard his friend Joseph Joachim’s Violin Concerto ‘in the Hungarian style’ – completed in 1860, and dedicated to Brahms. The present arrangement for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, two violins, viola, cello, double bass and piano is very much in the spirit of Brahms: this was music he arranged for violin and piano and for solo piano as well as the original piano duet and orchestral versions. Brahms always enjoyed playing these pieces, and the Hungarian Dance No.1 was the work he played on his one and only recording: an Edison cylinder made on 2 December 1889 – he was one of the very first composers to make a recording of his own music.

Nigel Simeone © 2010

The idea of arranging dances based on Hungarian gypsy themes probably came after Brahms heard his friend Joseph Joachim’s Violin Concerto, “in the Hungarian style”, published in 1861 and dedicated to Brahms. Though this was a style Brahms already knew well from his earliest concert tours as a pianist with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi in the early 1850s. Although later arranged for various combinations of instruments (including full orchestra), Brahms originally wrote these short pieces for piano four hands. The first two books (Nos.1–10) were finished in Autumn 1868, and the third and fourth books (Nos.11–21) in March 1880. The first performances were all given at private concerts, first in Oldenburg on 1 November 1868 (Nos.1–10) and then in the Bonn suburb of Mehlem on 3 May 1880 (Nos.11–21). On both occasions the players were the dream-worthy piano duet partnership of Clara Schumann and Brahms himself. 

Nigel Simeone © 2012 

Allegro non troppo 
Andante, un poco adagio 
Scherzo. Allegro 
Poco sostenuto – Allegro non troppo – Presto non troppo 
 

In 1862, Brahms sent Clara Schumann the incomplete manuscript of a quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos. He must have been delighted by her reaction: ‘What richness in the first movement … I can’t tell you how moved I am by it, and how powerfully gripped. And what an Adagio – it sings and sounds blissful right up to the last note!’ A few months later, he asked the great violinist Joseph Joachim for his opinion. He was very positive about the work, but mentioned that ‘the instrumentation is not energetic enough to my ears to convey the powerful rhythmic convulsions.’ Brahms rewrote the piece as a Sonata for Two Pianos (and destroyed the manuscript of the string quintet version). Clara Schumann gave the first performance with the conductor Hermann Levi. She felt something was missing in the two-piano version: ‘Please, dear Johannes, do agree just this time, and rework the piece once more.’ So he did, producing a version that combined the best of both earlier versions. The result is one of Brahms’s greatest chamber works. 

But while it was immediately recognised as an important new piece, there was hardly a stampede to play it in public. It was performed privately (with Clara Schumann) in November 1864, and published in December 1865, but a Viennese première in February 1866 was abandoned at the last moment. There were early performances in Leipzig (22 June 1866), and Paris (24 March 1868). It had to wait until 1875 for a public hearing in Vienna. It subsequently enjoyed considerable success, notably when Clara Schumann, Joachim and others played it in London on 3 April 1876. 

The first movement opens with a dark-hued theme in octaves that soon develops into a turbulent drama – the music remaining in a minor key for the second theme. The slow movement has a radiance that provides a complete contrast with what has gone before. The Scherzo begins uneasily, full of suppressed energy and tense syncopations, but then bursts out into C major, and its central Trio section is one of Brahms’s most rapturous themes. The finale begins slowly, brooding and mysterious, until the main fast theme emerges. This movement’s coda hurtles towards an intense, uncompromising finish.   

Nigel Simeone © 2011 

Brahms composed the first movement of the C major Piano Trio at Bad Ischl in Austria’s Salzkammergut region in June 1880. It was always one of the composer’s favourite spots, where he was able to compose in peace. The other works to emerge from the 1880 visit were Brahms’s two concert overtures: the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture, and when he returned in 1882, his summer produced not only the rest of the C major Trio, but also the String Quintet Op.88 and the Song of the Fates Op.89 for chorus and orchestra. 

Brahms’s earlier piano trio (in B major, Op.8) was a large-scale and rhapsodic work from his early years (to which he returned in 1889, making extensive revisions), but the C major Trio shows the composer in a much more concise frame of mind. The striding opening theme – first heard in octaves on the violin and cello – has a strong sense of rhythmic energy that is used to propel much of the first movement. The ‘Andante con moto’ similarly opens with a theme in octaves on the strings, but this time it’s a plangent melody in the minor which becomes almost defiant at the movement’s climax. The ghostly ‘Scherzo’ is complemented by a radiant swaying theme in the central Trio section. The main theme of the finale is marked by the use of a sharpened fourth note of the scale (F sharp in C major) that gives it a particular character, and this memorable tune drives the movement to a thrilling conclusion. 

The first performances were given in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main in December 1882, with Brahms himself at the piano in the Frankfurt concert.  

© Nigel Simeone 

This Scherzo formed the third movement of a sonata written jointly by Robert Schumann, Albert Dietrich and Brahms as a surprise for their friend Joseph Joachim when he visited Düsseldorf in October 1853. The three-note motto F–A–E (‘Frei aber einsam’ – ‘Free but lonely’) was associated with Joachim and is used in all the movements of what Schumann called ‘the FAE Sonata surprise’. Dietrich wrote the first movement, Schumann and second and fourth, and Brahms the third. Joachim played it through for the first time – with Clara Schumann at the piano – on 28 October 1853 and, as they played the work, he had to guess the composer of each movement. This Allegro by a very young Brahms already has hints of the mature musician to come. It was only published posthumously, but as one critic wrote when it was issued by Brahms-Gesellschaft in 1906, ‘it shows a few characteristic traits of the master [and] people will be interested to take note of it.’ 

Nigel Simeone 2024

Allegro Molto
Scherzo: Allegro non troppo
Adagio non troppo
Minuet
Scherzo: Allegro
Rondo: Allegro

Brahms’s D major Serenade is well known as his first orchestral work – but, like the D minor Piano Concerto from the same period, it had a complicated genesis. It was first conceived in 1857 as a Serenade for eight instruments in three or four movements, and a year later it had become a work in six movements, now scored for nine instruments. By 1860, it had been rewritten for full orchestra – the version that survives today (though Brahms even considered developing that into his first symphony, but decided to leave well alone). The nonet version was performed in public on 28 March 1859 at a concert in Hamburg, and a year later the orchestral version was given its premiere in Hannover. Whether Brahms destroyed the chamber version, or whether the material simply vanished is not known, but a skilful reconstruction reveals something of Brahms’s original conception: a work much closer in spirit to the serenades and divertimentos of Mozart than the reworked orchestral version.

© Nigel Simeone 2013

1. Allegro nontroppo
2. Allegretto quasi Menuetto
3. Allegro

Brahms began his E minor Cello Sonata in the summer of 1862, but it was not until 1865 that he completed the work. The main themes of both the first and third movements allude to Bach’s Art of Fugue, but Brahms’s treatment of these ideas is firmly in the Romantic tradition. The first movement opens with the cello introducing the principal theme, accompanied by tentative piano chords played off the beat, before the same theme passes to the piano. The second group of themes ends with a particularly lyrical idea in B major that closes the exposition. A turbulent development section leads to a return of the main theme, this time accompanied by a melancholy falling motif in the piano as well as the off-beat chords. The coda brings the movement to a tranquil close in E major. Brahms originally wrote two central movements: the present Allegretto quasi Menuetto in A minor, and an Adagio which he abandoned. The Allegretto has a kind of folkish charm, as well as an ingenious Trio section derived from the same musical idea. The finale opens with the grandest of fugues, though the movement is broadly in sonata form. Whereas the first movement ended with a mood of consolation, the finale is dark, dramatic and intense to the end. The work was published in 1866 by Simrock (Brahms had sold him the sonata by telling him it was easy to play). The first public performance was given in Basel on 12 February 1867, by Moritz Kahnt and Hans von Bülow.  

© Nigel Simeone 2016 

Allegro
Romanze. Poco adagio
Allegretto molto moderato e comodo
Allegro

The string quartet was a form that gave Brahms a great deal of trouble and the masterpieces of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven meant that Brahms was especially critical of his efforts at quartet writing. The C minor Quartet was finished in the mid-1860s, but Brahms revised it extensively over the next decade and re-wrote it during the summer of 1873. The first performance took place in Vienna in December 1873 by the Hellmesberger Quartet. The work is dedicated to Brahms’s friend Theodor Billroth, one of the most innovative surgeons of his time and a keen amateur musician. There’s a very close relationship between the main themes in each of the four movements, each of which grow from the same basic idea, and the overall structure sees two intimate miniatures framed by the more symphonic outer movements.

Nigel Simeone ©2014

1. Allegro non troppo
2. Scherzo: Allegro non troppo
3. Poco adagio
4. Poco allegro

Brahms’s G major Sextet was written at Lichtental, near Baden-Baden and finished in 1865. Richly scored for two violins, two violas and two cellos, this intensely lyrical work opens with a soaring, yearning theme, but in the second subject Brahms reveals part of the work’s inspiration: his engagement to Agathe von Siebold which had ended badly (for both of them) rather than in marriage, as had been intended. In one phrase, often repeated, the notes A-G-A-H-E (with ‘H’ the German musical spelling for ‘B’) are used to spell out Agathe’s name. Brahms wrote of this passage: ‘Here I tore myself away from my last love.’ The Scherzo is reflective rather than playful, while the slow movement opens with chromatic lines which dominate much of the movement either side of a more animated central section. The finale, though playing with contrasts of major and minor – giving it a slightly ambiguous flavour – ends in sonorous rapture.

Nigel Simeone 2014

Andante moderato
Andante non troppo e con molto espressione
Andante con moto

These three short pieces were composed at the Austrian spa town Bad Ischl in 1892 and first performed in Berlin on 6 January 1893 by the pianist Heinrich Barth. Like the first of the Ballades Op.10, the first Intermezzo is based on a Scottish poem printed in Herder’s collection, this time a lullaby (and, informally, Brahms sometimes called the whole set ‘Lullabies’). Clara Schumann was enchanted by these pieces when she first saw them, telling Brahms that ‘In these pieces I at last feel musical life stir once again in my soul’. When Brahms’s publisher Simrock suggested using Lullabies instead of Intermezzi as the official title, Brahms’s response was endearingly curmudgeonly: ‘It should then say, lullaby of an unhappy mother or of a disconsolate bachelor’.

© Nigel Simeone

Andante
Scherzo (Allegro)
Adagio mesto
Allegro con brio 

Composed in May 1865 at Baden-Baden, Brahms’s Trio was written for piano, violin and natural horn. It was first performed on 28 November 1865 at a concert in Zurich, with Brahms at the piano, the violinist Friedrich Hegar and a horn-player called Mr. Gläss. It was – and remains – an extremely unusual instrumental combination, and Brahms adapts the sonata form of the first movement to the exigencies of the natural horn (without too many excursions into remote keys), evoking a mood that seems to capture something of the shadowy romantic forests that surrounded Brahms in Baden-Baden when he wrote the piece. The second movement exploits the ‘hunting’ characteristic of the horn to memorable effect, with a darker contrasting section in the unusual key of A flat minor. The Trio is at its most personal in the slow movement, with its rare marking of mesto (sad, or melancholy). Brahms’s mother had died three months before he composed this piece, and it is easy to hear this heartfelt movement as a lament for her. Just before the end, the horn, then the violin, play a melody that is a premonition of the main theme of the finale. The finale itself is a bucolic delight, galloping to a joyful conclusion.  

Nigel Simeone © 2014 

Brahms composed the Handel Variations in 1861, when he was in his late twenties. The dedication is to Clara Schumann to whom Brahms presented the variations as a birthday present. Comprising twenty-five concise variations and a much more expansive closing fugue, the work is ingeniously structured in what Nicholas Cook described as ‘a series of waves, both in terms of tempo and dynamics, leading to the final fugue.’ The theme was drawn from the third movement of Handel’s Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B flat. Intriguingly, this is entitled ‘Aria con varizioni’: in other words, Brahms created a new set of variations on a theme that was originally intended to be treated that way. Brahms wrote that for him the most important feature of a variation theme was not the melody but the bass line: ‘it is the firm foundation on which I can build my stories … Over the given bass, I invent something new and discover new melodies about it.’ The essential point here is not that the bass line should be unchanged (Brahms makes plenty of changes) but that he viewed it as the way to control the overall structure. The expressive range of the Handel Variations – their emotional ebb-and-flow – is remarkable: the first five variations move from the lively syncopated accents of Variation 1, to the sinuous lines of Variation 2, the elegance of Variation 3, the powerful octaves of Variation 4 and the lyrical minor-key contrasts of Variation 5. These are all wonderful examples of the ‘new melodies’ Brahms was able to discover in Handel’s theme, and the process is continued with astonishing imagination in all the variations that follow, culminating in the magnificent final fugue, its subject derived from the opening phrase of Handel’s theme. Combining pianistic virtuosity and the most imaginative handling of counterpoint, it is a heroic peroration. 

Nigel Simeone 2024 

Allegro appassionato
Andante un poco adagio
Allegretto grazioso
Vivace

When Brahms wrote his two clarinet sonatas for his muse Richard Mühlfeld during a summer at Ischl in 1894, he always conceived alternative versions of them with a viola in place of the clarinet. He made careful alterations to create idiomatic viola parts and when the two sonatas were published in June 1895 they were issued with both clarinet and viola parts (Brahms also made versions for violin as well).

The viola is certainly ideally suited to the darker hues of the F minor Sonata. The differences in the viola version are mostly to do with passages taken down an octave, the occasional addition of appoggiaturas and double stoppings as well as changes to expression and dynamic markings, while the piano part remains completely unchanged. The viola versions present the same music in subtly different instrumental colours and in both works this provides a distinctive alternative view.

The F minor Sonata is in four movements: the first is often stern and dramatic, though there are some heart-stoppingly beautiful moments of repose. The movement ends quietly in F major. The Andante un poco adagio that follows (in A flat major) has a restrained eloquence that makes a profound but extremely poetic impact. With the Allegretto grazioso the mood genial – a scherzo substitute that serves as a kind of lyrical intermezzo. Robust and forthright, the finale opens in F major – its expressive intentions made clear from the three repeated notes that begin the main theme – and brings the work to an impassioned conclusion.

© Nigel Simeone

The modernist abstract painter Yves Klein writes about his work L’aventure monochrome: ‘Blue has no dimensions. It exists beyond all dimensions, whereas other colours all have a dimension. They are psychological spaces… All colours are associated with concrete, material and tangible ideas, but blue recalls, if anything, the sea and the sky, the most abstract elements of touchable and visible nature.’ 

The title of the quartet is taken from Ezra Pound’s Canto CX: 

“waves under blue paler than heaven 

over water bluer than midnight” 

Both sources merged to form the inspiration behind Bluer than Midnight, a piece which explores a close connection with nature, its abstraction and simplicity. A slow, intimate first movement reflects this. Intensely quiet, the movement feels timeless with pulse suspended. Melodic and flowing, a duet-based central movement is the most narrative part of the piece. The third movement is alive and buzzing with nervous energy. 

© Charlotte Bray 

One of Bridge’s most characterful early works, this Piano Quartet from 1910 was played at the 1948 Aldeburgh Festival with Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten at the piano. Britten also supplied a note on the piece: ‘Finished in June 1910, this work is written in Bridge’s early style – sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound – Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.’

The work is in three continuous sections: a Barcarolle, a Scherzo and Trio, and a recitative leading to a reprise of the opening. Writing about the short coda, Britten says that it ‘suggests the deep red afterglow of a sunset.’

Nigel Simeone 2014

Andante con moto – Allegro vivace – Andante con moto

Bridge had already been successful in Walter Wilson Cobbett’s competition to write a ‘Phantasy’ – Cobbett’s reinvention of the Elizabeth Fantasy as new single-movement chamber works – and in 1910 he (along with Vaughan Williams and others) was commissioned by Cobbett to compose a Phantasy Piano Quartet. It’s a work in a satisfying arch form based on free-flowing musical ideas all of which derive from the powerful opening gesture. Bridge’s most famous pupil, Benjamin Britten, wrote in a programme note for the Aldeburgh Festival about this piece. He described the music as ‘Sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound—Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.’

Nigel Simeone 2013

1. Poco presto ed agitato
2. Variations: Andante lento
3. Tarantella: Presto vivace

Britten was already a very prolific composer by the time he gave this work its designation as his official Opus One. Dedicated to his teacher, Frank Bridge, it was written when Britten was 18 years old, and it already demonstrates his extraordinary imagination. The influence of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony is apparent in places, and the instrumental writing in all three movements has a fluency and flamboyance that quickly became hallmarks of the young Britten’s music. The first public performance was given on 31 January 1933 at the Mercury Theatre, London, in one of the Macnaghten-Lemare concerts played by the English Wind Players and the Macnaghten String Quartet, conducted by Iris Lemare. Britten’s music has always been more enthusiastically received abroad, and on 7 August 1933, the Sinfonietta was broadcast on Radio Strasbourg, conducted by the great Hermann Scherchen. The first British broadcast was a month later, by members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Clark.

© Nigel Simeone 2013

1. Poco presto ed agitato
2. Variations: Andante lento
3. Tarantella: Presto vivace

Britten was already a very prolific composer by the time he gave this work its designation as his official Opus One. Dedicated to his teacher, Frank Bridge, it was written when Britten was 18 years old, and it already demonstrates his extraordinary imagination. The influence of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony is apparent in places, and the instrumental writing in all three movements has a fluency and flamboyance that quickly became hallmarks of the young Britten’s music. The first public performance was given on 31 January 1933 at the Mercury Theatre, London, in one of the Macnaghten-Lemare concerts played by the English Wind Players and the Macnaghten String Quartet, conducted by Iris Lemare. Britten’s music has always been more enthusiastically received abroad, and on 7 August 1933, the Sinfonietta was broadcast on Radio Strasbourg, conducted by the great Hermann Scherchen. The first British broadcast was a month later, by members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Clark.

Nigel Simeone 2013

1. Dialogo. Allegro
2. Scherzo–pizzicato. Allegretto
3. Elegia. Lento
4. Marcia. Ernergico5. Moto perpetuo. Presto

Britten sat next to Shostakovich at a concert in the Royal Festival Hall on 21 September 1960 – the occasion of the first British performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, played by Mstislav Rostropovich. Britten was electrified by Rostropovich’s playing (Shostakovich later told Rostropovich that at the end of concert he was covered in bruises from being poked in the ribs by Britten: ‘As he liked so many things in the concerto, I am now suffering!’). Britten was delighted when Rostropovich asked him to write a piece for him. He planned the Sonata on a holiday in Greece and completed it in December 1960 and January 1961. Rostropovich and Britten gave the first performance on 7 July 1961 at the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh. In his programme note for the premiere, Britten wrote short descriptions of each movement. The first is ‘a discussion of a tiny motive of a rising or falling second. The motive is lengthened to make a lyrical second subject which rises and falls from a pizzicato harmonic.’ The demanding pizzicato second movement is ‘almost guitar-like in its elaborate right-hand technique’ while the third is ‘a long tune … developed by means of double, triple and quadruple stopping, to a big climax, and sinks away to a soft conclusion.’ The short march has the cello playing ‘a rumbustious bass to the jerky tune on the piano’, which returns after the central section ‘very softly, with the bass (now in the treble) in harmonics. The closing moto perpetuo includes an allusion to the D-S-C-H theme that Shostakovich used extensively in the Cello Concerto No. 1 – something Britten does not mention in his note, which describes the treatment of the dance-like theme as ‘now grumbling, now carefree’.

Nigel Simeone (C)

Allegro calmo, senza rigore
Vivace
Chacony: sostenuto 

Britten composed his String Quartet No. 2 in September and October 1945 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Purcell’s death. It was given its premiere by the Zorian Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 21 November 1945 in one of a pair of concerts  where music by Purcell was performed alongside two new works by Britten (this quartet and the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, first performed the following evening). Though the first movement is, broadly, in sonata form, as Michael Kennedy has pointed out, ‘there seems to be more of the free fantasia about it than adherence to classical precepts.’ The opening presents three ideas, all based on the wide interval of a 10th, and what follows is an almost continuous development of these ideas, until, at last, C major is established in the coda. The second movement is a strange and rather disturbing Scherzo, the strings muted throughout. The Chacony (its title a clear homage to Purcell) is much the longest of the three movements. A grandly-conceived set of variations (interspersed with solo cadenzas), it reaches a triumphant climax with repeated C major chords.  

© Nigel Simeone, 2022 

Britten planned these movements as part of a five-movement Quartetto serioso with a subtitle from Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale: “Go play, boy, play!” An earlier version of the opening March was written for a suite inspired by the film Emil and the Detectives (the children’s novel by Erich Kästner was a great favourite of Britten’s), but this was never completed. Eventually he settled on a work in three movements, and the first performance was given by the Stratton Quartet at the Wigmore Hall on 25 February 1936. The audience response was chilly and a hurt Britten withdrew the Three Divertimenti, which were only published after his death. His brilliant gift for idiomatic quartet writing is already apparent in this early work – from the arresting rhythms and textures of the March to the beguiling central Waltz, and the driving energy of the closing Burlesque.

© Nigel Simeone

Bruch composed these pieces in 1908 for his son, Max Felix, who was a clarinettist. Three of the pieces were originally written with an additional harp part, but by the time the work was published in 1910, Bruch had settled on a trio of clarinet, viola and piano. Discussing publication with Simrock in February 1910, Bruch wrote that the pieces had been ‘met with great approval where they were played from the manuscript’ and it’s easy to see why. Bruch always intended separate performances of individual pieces (indeed, he advised against playing all of them together), and selections can be used to make an effective suite.

© Nigel Simeone

Henry (Harry) Burleigh was born in Pennsylvania in 1866 – his grandfather had been emancipated from slavery in the 1830s and his father fought for the Union Navy during the American Civil War. As a child, Burleigh’s grandfather taught him the melodies that were commonly sung by enslaved African-Americans. In his teenage years he developed into a fine classical singer, making regular solo appearances at churches and synagogues.

At the age of 26 he moved to New York to study at the National Conservatory of Music, which coincided with the arrival of the Conservatory’s new director, Antonín Dvořák, who’d been brought to America with the specific role of laying the foundations of an authentic national musical style. Dvořák was thrilled by Burleigh’s voice, and there’s some evidence to suggest that it was Burleigh who introduced certain melodies to Dvořák which would find their way into the ‘New World’ Symphony and ‘American’ String Quartet.

Burleigh’s long career was centred around performing and publishing his arrangements, helping to popularise Swing Low, Deep River and Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. He died at the age of 82 and his body is interred in Erie, the town where he was born and which celebrates his music and wider legacy with a week-long annual festival.

© Tom McKinney

This is a traditional song created by enslaved Africans in America. The composer and singer Harry Burleigh was the grandchild of slaves who became a famous musician and helped share music by black people with the rest of the world. This simple song looks forward to a better time when injustices like slavery and racism will end. Perhaps you can hear both the sadness and the hope in this beautiful music.

After starting to learn the trumpet at the age of ten, Britta Byström soon started to compose her own music. Most of her output is for orchestra, but her quest for new and surprising sonorities can also be heard in chamber works including a string quartet (Letter in April), and a piano trio (Symphony in Yellow) as well as the present horn trio. Byström’s Kinderszenen borrows its title from Schumann’s famous piano work and its scoring from Brahms’s Horn Trio, but the music is entirely original in colour and substance. Bystöm says that before starting a composition she always has a clear picture in her mind of the musical world she wants to create, and this is apparent from the first notes of Kinderszenen where fragmentary themes on violin and horn are set against repeated notes on the piano, suggesting perhaps that Byström’s childhood scenes are those of a Swedish winter. The form of this single movement and its contrasting episodes seem to evolve naturally: a fast section is notable for its rhythmic energy but fizzles out on a sustained horn note, giving way to a passage of eerie calm with the violin playing pizzicato against piano trills. A brief return to the vigour of the fast music leads to a recollection of the opening before Kinderszenen dissolves into silence. 

Nigel Simeone © 2022