Carl Nielsen - Clarinet & Flute Concertos; Wind Quintet

"Nielsen's first instrument was the violin. He was playing a miniature fiddle in his father's village band and composing dance tunes for it by the age of nine. In his teens Nielsen played bugle and trombone with the Odense regimental band. He therefore knew stringed and brass instruments inside out, so it is interesting that some of his most distinctive and treasured contributions to the solo instrumental repertory are for the woodwin family.

"It all started with the Wind Quintet. Apparently Nielsen was talking on the telephone to a friend, in whose house four members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet were rehearsing Mozart's Sinfonia for wind instruments and orchestra. Hearing the performers discussing - or occasionally arguing over - details gave Nielsen the idea for a new piece, in which the kind of intimate dialogue one firneds in the chamber music of Mozart and Haydn might be translated into contemporary Danish terms.

"At first Nielsen seems to have seen the work as a relaxation after composing the Fifth Symphony (1921-2), but the Quintet soon acquired a life of its own. Light and humorous in flavour, the Quintet is also a sophisticated piece of musical construction, with something of Haydn's ability to surprise the ear while maintaining an underlying sense of what Nielsen's contemporary Sibelius called 'profound logic'.

"After an opening movement which sounds like an animated but essentially convivial instrumental conversation comes a beautifully stylised Minuet, in which Mozartian poise and the contours of Danish folk music are combined without a hint of contrivance. A shadow falls across the following Præludium, with its astringent harmonies and the melancholy tang of the cor anglais (temporarily replacing the brightly pastoral oboe); but the mood brightens with a Lutheran hymn in 3/4 composed by Nielsen himself: 'My Jesus, make my heart to love Thee'. In the following variations such harmonious togetherness gives way to individualism - sometimes good-natured, sometimes less so. The ensemble comes back together at the end for a return of the hymn, now in 4/4; it is as though something of the essence of this tune has changed through being pulled apart by the players.

"Writing the Wind Quintet changed Nielsen's attitude to orchestration. While composing the the Sixth Symphony (1924-5), he remarked, 'I think through the instruments - as though I had crept inside them.' And after the success of the Wind Quintet's premier, Nielsen announced his intention of composing a concerto for each member of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. Alas, he had only written two - for flute and clarinet - when he died aged 66." (From the liner notes.)

Performers: Berliner Philharmoniker, Simon Rattle, Sabine Meyer, Emmanuel Pahud

1. Flute Concerto: I. Allegro Moderato

2. Flute Concerto: II. Allegretto

3. Clarinet Concerto: I. Allegretto Un Poco

4. Clarinet Concerto: II. Poco Adagio

5. Clarinet Concerto: III. Allegro Non Troppo

6. Clarinet Concerto: IV. Allegro Vivace

7. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: I. Allegro Ben Moderato

8. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: II. Menuet

9. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: III. Praeludium: Adagio

10. Wind Quintet In A Major, Op.43: IV. Tema Con Variazioni: Un Poco Andantino

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Alexander Scriabin - Mazurkas

"Alexander Scriabin was born in Moscow on Christmas Day of 1871, according to the Julian calender (also called Old Style), which was used in Russia until early 1918, when the country joined the rest of the world in adopting the Gregorian calendar.

"Scriabin's musical talent was discovered early; he studied piano with the famous teacher and menot Nikolay Zverev, also a teacher of Rachmaninoff, and was destined to become one of the Moscow Conservatoire's most famous graduates. Only three years after his graduation, he was already a hot topic: the prominent music critic, writer, and editor Nikolay Findeizen wrote that Scriabin's name was on everyone's lips, from Rimsky-Korsakov to Stasov, and much was expected of him. Mitrofan Belayev, a wealthy industrialist, music publisher, and philanthropist who supported many promising Russian musicians, committed to publishing Scriabin's works, no matter what they were. Although Scriabin looked like a young boy at the time, aged 24, Findeizen remembered that he already was speaking like a true and mature artist, pronouncing that to sell his works would mean to 'sell off his own inspiration.' However, the lifeline provided by Belayev (and later other publishers) was not something the young composer could do without.

"As an artist, Scriabin developed in the musical environment in Moscow where Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky were revered and diligently studied, where Wagner's music influenced even the staunchest defenders of traditional harmony and melody (like Sergey Taneyev), and where the virtuoso genius of Anton Rubinstein reigned supreme. Scriabin's composition teacher at the Moscow Conservatoire, Sergey Taneyev, was himself a student of Tchaikovsky, but he struggled to find common language with his talented student. Having never really understood Scriabin's creative genius, he could only offer comments on the rules of composition, and shake his head in disbelief at Scriabin's adventurous departure from them. Taneyev sarcastically noted that for the first time in his life he met a composer who, instead of giving his compositions tempi indications, gave them praises instead: 'divine', 'grandiose', 'sublime', etc.

"When in 1902 Scriabin visited Taneyev and spoke about his philosophical views, the astonished Taneyev noted Scriabin's pronouncements in his diary: 'I am I', 'the world is my creation', and 'I am above God'. The music of Scriabin's Third Symphony, however, which was performed in Moscow at the same time, left Taneyev feeling 'as if beaten up by sticks'. Later, Scriabin would develop his aesthetic philosophy and devotion to mysticism into a kind of Messianic vision, and an actual belief that he was destined to bring about the dissolution of the world itself through his mutli-media creation, 'Mysterium'. This he did not finish, having died rather prosaically at the age of 43 from sepsis caused by a sore on his lip.

"Scriabin composed prolifically and predominantly for the piano. Only a handful of works were written for orchestra, although these remain as popular as his piano compositions.

"As a performer, he was described by one of his contemporaries, Leonid Sabaneyev, as a 'magician of sounds'. Although Scriabin insisted on playing in large hall, his pianism was most suited to smaller venues, and ideally to an intimate circle of a salon. He simply did not have enough physical power, a result of his small stature and frailty and also due to a recurring strain in his right hand caused by the over practice of Liszt's 'Don Juan Fantasy' for his graduation recital in 1892, but he more than compensated for it with the mesmerising brilliance and imagination of his tonal nuances. It was as if this alchemist of sounds possessed a secret with which he was able to transform the sounds of the piano into a variety of orchestral timbres.

"Scriabin was close to the family of Boris Pasternak, whose younger brother remembered the impression left by his playing: it was as if, against all physical laws and the mechanics of the instrument, he did not press the keys down, but rather appear to be extricating himself from the keyboard. This appearance of fluttering of the fingers above the keyboard created the unique sound for which Scriabin was remembered by so many of those who heard him play.

"As for performing his own works, Sabaneyev believed that no one could compare with him in being able to transmit 'his own delicately sensuous, erotic moments in his compositions'. Scriabin never performed the same piece in the same way, as if the work was an independent entity, plastic and living and breathing on its own accord, allowing Scriabin to interpret varied nuances of its existence on the piano.

"In the beginning of his professional career as a pianist and composer Scriabin was drawn to, and influenced by, the music of Chopin - the undisputed poet of the piano. And Chopin, in turn, was inspired and drawn to the mazurka - the only form in which he composed regularly throughout his short life, and which he elevated into an intensely personal and nostalgic art form.

"The mazurka, orginally a Polish country dance, developed from the ancient 'Polska' and its descendants, 'kujawiak', 'oberek' and 'mazurek', a folk dance in triple time with strong accents on the second or third beat. The mazurka was popular in Mazovia, the area around Warsaw, and from there conquered European ballrooms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even reaching America in the nineteenth century. Throughout the vastness of nineteenth-century Russia, the mazurka was a very popular dance, not least in glittering ballrooms in the estates and palaces of the nobility. Although today the mazurka in classical music is first and foremost associated with Chopin, it was explored by various composers from Glinka to Balakirev, through Debussy and Scriabin, and is still cherished in Poland, in the works of Szymanowski, Maciejewski, Gradstein and other.

"Scriabin composed his 'Ten Mazurkas, Op. 3' between 1888 and 1890, publishing them in 1893. Although often compared in style or at least in inspiration to the musical language of Chopin and Schumann, Scriabin's voice is unmistakable here. It is not surprising to hear these influences - virtually every Russian composer (especially if he was also a pianist) of that period grew up on a diet that included a large of these composers' music. But there is also Wagner, whose music Scriabin may have first encountered at the home of Taneyev, and who influenced many Russian composers of the period. These pieces show that, despite his youth, Scriabin already possessed the very special talent of being able to distil a mood or a sentiment in just a few pages. Many of his mazurkas found their way into his concert programmes throughout his performances career. For example, Op. 3 No. 4 already charmed Anton Rubinstein who had come specially to hear the young Scriabin perform at his final exam at the Moscow Conservatory in 1892.

"The 'Nine Mazurkas, Op. 25' were composed between 1898 and 1899. Bursting with harmonic and melodic invention, these pieces show Scriabin's imagination taking flight with chords already often built on fourths and not thirds. Here, the composer is starting to push harmonic and melodic invention to their extremes, delaying harmonic resolution, blurring the lines between the distinct lilt of the mazurka and often entering the realm of a dream waltz, or a tone poem. Scriabin further enhances the form with the use of unsual and innovative pedalling and also his very distinctive polyrhythmic and polyphonic writing, often in a single hand. In the mazurkas Op. 25 Scriabin goes further than before in his aim to be able to capture a fleeting dream, a mood, a scent, into sounds that take flight and are burning with an inner flame - something that Scriabin wanted his music to encapsulate. In his last ever public performance in St. Petersburg on 2 April, 1915 Scriabin included his mazurka Op. 25 No. 4 into the programme.

"The 'Two Mazurkas, Op. 40', published in 1903, are more economic and concise in their means of expression, and show the spiritual, intimate, distilled light of Scriabin's sound world. Written around the same time as the prophetic Fourth Sonata these mazurkas are already pointing to completely new harmonic and philosophical directions that were to dominate Scriabin's mind from then on.

"The 'Mazurkas in B minor and F major, although published in 1893, with the date of composition given as 1889, were most likely composed between 1884 and 1886, when Scriabin had barely entered his teenage years. These two pieces had to wait half a century before they were included into Scriabin's collected works, edited by Konstantin Igumnov (a pianist well known as one of the important Scriabin interpreters). These are two contrasting pieces, with the dreamy and lyrical B minor, to the jubilant and full of youthful exuberance in F major. However, the F major mazurka could also be interpreted in a subtler, more melancholy and introverted way, despite its brightness and openness.

"'Op. 2 No. 3 (Impromptu à la mazur)' was published in 1889, and strictly speaking, this is not a mazurka but rather an improvisation on and contemplation of the form. This charming work shows just how personal a form the mazurka had already become to the young composer, about to take flight into the far reaches of his very own musical universe." (Anastasia Belina. From the liner notes.)

Performer: Peter Jablonski

1. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 1 In B Minor

2. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 2 In F-Sharp Minor

3. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 3 In G Minor

4. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 4 In E Major

5. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 5 In D-Sharp Minor

6. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 6 In C-Sharp Minor

7. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 7 In E Minor

8. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 8 In B-Flat Minor

9. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 9 In G-Sharp Minor

10. 10 Mazurkas, Op. 3: No. 10 In E-Flat Minor

11. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 1 In F Minor

12. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 2 In C Major

13. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 3 In E Minor

14. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 4 In E Major

15. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 5 In C-Sharp Minor

16. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 6 In F-Sharp Major

17. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 7 In F-Sharp Minor

18. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 8 In B Major

19. 9 Mazurkas, Op. 25: No. 9 In E-Flat Minor

20. 2 Mazurkas, Op. 40: No. 1 In D-Flat Major

21. 2 Mazurkas, Op. 40: No. 2 In F-Sharp Major

22. Mazurka In F Major

23. Mazurka In B Minor

24. Impromptu À La Mazur In C Major, Op. 2 No. 3

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Alexander Scriabin - Symphony No. 1; Prometheus: The Poem of Fire

"Come, all peoples of the world,

Let us sing the praise of Art!

Glory to Art,

Glory forever!"

(Excerpt of the words in the final movement of Alexander Scriabin's 'Symphony No. 1'.)

"There was no doubting the young Russian composer Alexander Scriabin's (1872-1915) high ambitions when he presened his first symphony to the public. With its six-movement, hour-length duration, incorporating a grandiose choral final, complex chromatic harmonic language and self-composed text paying tribute to the universal greatness of art, Scriabin made a grand entrance on the international symphonic stage. Beethoven's ninth might well have served as a mode, but the symphony's harmonic language owes more to Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and above all, Wagner. For Scriabin, this grand symphonic project was the start of an even greater artistic plan. His ambitions reached far beyond the traditional boundaries of music and into the realm of philosophy and existentialism.

"Russian composer, philosopher and mystic Alexander Scriabin was one of the most eccentric and mystic figures of the age of modernism. His innovative sounds and utopian ideas challenged not only performers and audiences of the time, but also the boundaries of our thinking, the categories of history, and the limitations of art. His apparently egocentric view of the world, his megalomania and delusions have been psycho-analyzed, ridiculed and dismissed. He genuinely believed that art in general, and his own music in particular, could change the world and raise humankind to a higher level of awareness. His plan was that his musical oeuvre would culminate with 'Mysterium', a workd in which all art forms came together, time and space dissolved and all present participated in a spectacular transendence.

"One of the first steps towards this utopean moment was the 'Symphony No. 1' which Scriabin began drafting in 1899 and completed in 1900. By that time, he had discovered two of his most important conceptual bases. The first of these was Russian symbolism, especially the symbolism associated with the ideas of Alexander Soloviov in which art plays a defining role as a builder of bridges between extreme contrasts in life and the world, taking on almost religious functions. In many ways, 'Symphony No. 1' gives voice to Soloviov's 'theurgical' understanding of art - implicitly in the first five movements and explicitly in the final movement's verbal tribute to the unfathomable greatness of art. Although the words are not Soloviov's own, Scriabin has captured a similar spirit and world of ideas.

"Scriabin's second conceptual basis was the music and ideas of Richard Wagner. In Wagner's concept of the 'Gesamtkunstwerk' Scriabin found a cautious variant of what he himself so strongly believed in. Of perhaps greater relevance in this context was the fact that Wagner's harmonic language provided a decisive point of departure for Scriabin around 1900. He was one of the few Russian composers who took Wagner seriously, incorporating chromaticism and extended traditional harmony within his own musical style, eventually taking both to their very extremes. Scriabin was so deeply engrossed in Wagner's ideas that between 1902 and 1903 he planned a grandiose, philosophical opera based on the myth of Eros and Psyche, the inspiration for which undoubtedly lies in Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde'. Scriabin eventually abandoned the project but carried Wagnerian compositional techniques and stylistic elements forward into his first two symphonies.

"It is particularly in the two Allegro movement, and in parts of the final choral movement, that certain harmonic and melodic elements point towards 'Tristan' and other Wagner operas as possible influences. Scriabin operates within a similar late romantic, expressive idiom with extensive use of chromaticism and chord progressions on the very brink of conventional tonality. The symphony also offers lyrical passages in the spirit of Tchaikovsky, such as in the introductory Lento movement which more or less serves as a prelude. The concluding choral movement is perhaps the most special and gripping moment for many, particularly at the point where art is extolled in words and music in a complex fugal section preceding the mighty finale. In this final movement the orchestra is extended wiht soloists and a choir; the reference to Beethoven's ninth is as obvious as it is bold. By ending his first symphony in this way, Scriabin indicated his intention to take up competition with the musical giants of the past, and that his approach to art was both profound and ambitious to the extreme.

"Contrary to Scriabin's wish, the final movement was ommitted at the symphony's first performance in 1900, the publishers claiming that the choral part was 'impossible to sing'. In 1901, however, the workd was performed complete under the leadership of Vasily Safonov in Moscow. It never became part of the standard repertoire, but has gained renewed interest in recent years, parallel to Scriabin's growing international popularity. For Scriabin, the work was without a doubt a major step along the road to the Himalayas and the great mystery he envisioned for the future. He never made it that far, however, and when he died of blood poisoning at the age of 43, he left the world and humanity more or less unchanged. His output is nonetheless regarded one of the most fascinating in the history of western music; in the absence of the 'Mysterium', it is 'Prometheus - The Poem of Fire', his last symphonic work, and often referred to as his fifth symphony, that remains Scriabin's greatest musical legacy.

"It is quite incredible to contemplate the stylistic development that Scriabin's music underwent between the first symphony and 'The Poem of Fire'. One a decade separates the two works, yet they appear to inhabit two entirely different musical worlds. Not only have all traces of Wagner and Soloviov vanished from the harmonic language in 'Prometheus'; Scriabin has set aside the entire tonal fundament and diatonic key system. Instead, he uses octatonic and whole-tone scales and avoids the sensation of major and minor. From the very first chord, it is clear that we are in new and unfamiliar terrain. The distinctive, dissonant chord is Scriabin's musical signature and consists of the notes A, D-sharp, G, C-sharp, and F-sharp, known as the 'mystic chord'. A large portion of the work is built around the chord and its constituent notes in various forms and constellations.

"The mystic chord and all that came with it was not, however, the only innovation that Scriabin introduced in 'Prometheus'. Scriabin was blessed - or perhaps cursed - with a condition called synesthesia in which stimulation of one sense is experienced by a different sensory area of the brain - such as, in Scriabin's case, seeing colour when hearing music. In 'Prometheus' Scriabin took his multi-modality out of the orchestra to create and independent part for 'Luce' - a 'colour organ' or 'chromola'. Despite the title, Scriabin's work is only loosely based on the myth in which Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans. Scriabin envisaged a colour organ in which two 'colour parts' were to be performed with the orchestra. One of the parts follows the chords, illustrating Scriabin's synesthetic linking of specific chords with specific colours; the other colour part has a slower rhythm. Even though the colour organ can only be experienced in the listener's imagination on this recording, it is testimony to Scriabin's innovative and original ideas.

"There can be little doubt that the audience found the music modern and unfamiliar when Serge Koussevitzky conducted it for the first time in Moscow in 1911. Scriabin's mystic harmonic universe is so distinctive that it still jogs listeners out of their comfort zone into uncharted waters. And even if a state of transcendence is not achieved, Scriabin never came closer to sublimity than he did at the conclusion of 'Prometheus - The Poem of Fire'. Choir and orchestra, sound, light, and colour all come together as the mystic chord finally resolves in a powerful and consonant major triad - a hint of the grand transformation that Scriabin had planned for us all, from the primeval dark of mysticism to the ecstatic enlightenment of a greater awareness. (Thomas Erma Møller. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Oslo-Filharmonien, Vasily Petrenko, Kirill Gerstein

1. Symphony No. 1, Op. 26: I. Lento

2. Symphony No. 1, Op. 26: II. Allegro Dramatico

3. Symphony No. 1, Op. 26: III. Lento

4. Symphony No. 1, Op. 26: IV. Vivace

5. Symphony No. 1, Op. 26: V. Allegro

6. Symphony No. 1, Op. 26: VI. Andante

7. Symphony No. 5, Op. 60 'Prometheus: The Poem Of Fire'

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Nicola Porpora - Passio: Music on the Passion of the Christ

"At the beginning of the 50s of the Eighteenth century, the artistic route of Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686-1768) seems to have come to its natural end: after being - with Leonardo Leo and Leonardo Vinci - one of the major proponents and promoters of the universalisation of the Neapolitan 'new style', after a career played in the most prestigious theaters of the time (in his hometown and in Venice, London, Milane, Rome, etc.), after creating as a singing teacher stars such as Farinelli, Caffarelli and Porporino, after receiving assignments of primary importance in the Venetian 'Ospedali Grandi' and in the Neapolitan 'Conservatori', Porpora was hired hired at the Dresden court in 1747, being appointed Kapellmeister the following year (with Hasse's great scorn). In 1752/3 he retired to private life, leaving the court of Saxony-Poland with the guarantee of an unusual rich annual pension of 400 tallers.

"The composer then elected Vienna as his city of residence: here he appears to seek no more continuous assignments of absolute important, but only to teach singing and composition (among his students, Franz Joseph Haydn), writing sometimes a few pages of church music. However, in the 1756 the Prussian invasion of Saxony disrupted the life of the old musician, leading to the immediate termination of his pension and bringing Porpora to a state of great economical need: in a poignant letter to Farinelli, Metastasio portrays the composer as 'ridotto alla positiva mancanza del pane quotidiano' ('reduced to a substantial lack of daily bread'). Given the situation and the absence of main patrons in Austria, Porpora went back to Italy - old and tired - to find some job to earn money to support himself. As it is known, the musician died in total destitution, after twelve difficult years.

"In the midst of his stay in Vienna, however, the unlucky composer gave birth to two of his highest masterpieces: two collections that can be read as a kind of musical guidance of his abilities, his taste and his inventiveness. In 1754 the 'Sonate XII di violino e basso' were printed with a dedication to Princess 'Maria Antonia Walpurga di Braviera' (his patroness in Dresden); dated the same year are also the six duets 'da cantarsi nelli venerdì di Quaresima nella Cappella di Sua Altezza Serenissima l'Elettore di Sassonia' ('to be sung on Lent Fridays in the Chapel of His Most Serene Highness, the Electoral Prince of Saxony').

"These six vocal pieces on Latin text form an autonomous cycle, very different in shape and use from the 'Passions' from the Protestant and German-speaking areas, and also from the Italian Oratorios on the Passion of Christ: we have to think of these duets as an organized set of compositions designed to accompany step by step (presumably one for each Friday) the personal reflections of the members of the Saxon royal family in the most crucial period of the liturgical calendar. The collection, known under various titles, had considerable success among some of the greatest admirers of the 'stile antico' music in the late Eighteenth century and at the beginning of the Nineteenth, even leading to a full printed edition by Gaetano Nava (1802-1875) for Breitkopf & Härtel. Mistakenly believed to be the offspring of a commission for the singers of Charles VI of Hapsburg (who died fourteen years before their composition), these duets charmed key personalities in the movement for the rediscovery of early music, such as Fortunato Santini (1768-1861) and Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (1773-1850), both promoters of their performance in private concerts.

"Kiesewetter especially showed great enthusiasm, writing on a manuscript copy of the music the Virgil quotation 'Sic itur ad astra!' ('So you climb to heaven!'). The composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818), among the last Porpora students, described the duets as being made 'di musica divina' ('of divine music'). In Germany during the Nineteenth century, printed editions of the individual pieces of the collection, with piano accompaniment, tailored to the needs and tastes of the time, were in circulation. The first major encyclopedias of music mentioned as some of the main points of Porpora's output the so-called 'Duetti latini sulla Passione di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo' ('Latin duets on the Passion of Jesus Christ, Our Lord') or 'Duetti per la Quaresima' ('Duets for Lent'). To fully understand the choices made by the composer in creating these musical treasures one must first pay attention to two key points: the historical moment in which the 'Duetti' were conceived, and the musical genre they belong to.

"As already mentioned, they are contemporary to the printing of the 'Sonate XII', organized according to a precise plan, clearly stated in the dedication by Porpora: in it the Neopolitan musician proclaims that he wanted to give a demonstation of its technical background and his ability to write in different styles (ancient and Italian, modern and French), mixing them and dedicating two different attitudes (conservative and free) to the two sections into which the volume is divided. Thus the first six sonatas show a more severe attitude compared to the remaining ones, and have complex fugues as second movements, including that well known example of shameless virtuosity: a Diatonic Enharmonic Chromatic fugue, in the 'Sonata VI'. These pieces impressed very much the contemporary counterpoint connoisseurs, as we can see thanks to some Neapolitan manuscript copies of the fugues made by composition pupils and the to the most famous keyboard adaption by Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), who published them within the first volume of his 'Selection of Practical Harmony' (1801).

"Porpora, by signing the 'Sonate XII' volume and bearing the most prestigious title of Kapellmeister of the Elector of Saxony, was consciously not only giving life to a monumental and elegant collection of violin sonatas, but also publishing a monument to the various styles and technical aspects he elaborated during his entire life. The duets can also be seen in the same light. These six songs fit perfectly into the definition of the genre of the Italian Chamber Duet (Italianische Kammerduette), with the only peculiarity of presenting a Latin text. Written as 'da capo' arias for two voices and continuo, at this time the Italian Chamber Duets are usually intended as the refined genre par excellence, difficult to perform, requiring listeners able to grasp the subtleties that were expected to characterize it (poignant counterpoint, audacious harmony, and melodies very tied to the lyrics, sometimes almost 'madrigalistic'). The Chamber Duets, for Porpora and his contemporaries were the perfect theater of technical ability of a composer, of the intelligence and skill of the performers in showing the details of his writing, and of the competence of the selected audience that attends to the performance: an aesthetic game of the highest intellectual and performative kind.

"The materical and formal shape of the Latin lyrics of the 'Duetti' by Porpora shows that they probably were not born for this kind of musical treatment. It is likely that his choice should be attributed to an autonomous idea by the composer: to adopt a 'high' musical genre for texts related to the highest topic of Christianity, in order to please his very musically competent patrons. The six duets show between them very different stylistic aims, and thus appear to be designed, as well as the violin sonatas, to show the absolute versatility of the composer: the first one is a magnificent example of sever and strict counterpoint; the second one shows an ivdence initial reference to the model of the 'French' duet, as carefully defined by Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) in his 'Der vollkommene Capellmeister', with two voices involved in parallel running of the test and vocalizations. The third duet makes a strong use of chromaticism, devoting harmony delays to expressive purposes. The fourth seems to makr the abandonment of 'severe' writing, proclaiming the glory of the holy cross with long passages of coloratura in triplets, imitation of writing for trumpet, references to the ancient use of the so-called 'nomina sacra', and a remarkable simplification of the harmonic texture. The fifth duet even becomes a little dramatic scene, completely disrupting the assumption of the imitative writing of the genre: partially different texts (in the first verse of the lyrics) are assigned to the bass and to the soprano, which then are used to describe two different emotional attitudes with contrasting vocal styles (pathetic for the soprano, 'di segno' - 'of anger' - for the bass). The sixth duet, finally, provides a partial concertante role for the organ, for which Porpora also defined the precise registration (octave): here the voices sing music stylistically very far from that exemplified by the first duet, music open to some of the main stylistic features of the so-called Viennese Classicism.

"At the end of this CD you will find an unpublished anonymous 'Miserere' for two voices and basso continuo, in many ways conceptually opposed to the 'Duetti'. Porpora's devotional duets are 'musica reservata' par excellence, written by a famous Neopolitan composer for private devotional use of a strongly competent German court: on the other hand, this 'Miserere' represents a perfect example of 'everday' music; written for the same liturgical season, but for a public performance during vespers in a town church of the remote prince of the Kingdom of Naples (presumably Campobasso or, maybe, the tiny Civitacampomarano). Copied for Lent of 1772, the music combines charming modern stylistic features to deliberately stereotyped archaic ones, resolving itself in a fair and strictly functional satisfaction of the small splendor required by those country holy services, with a vocal cast forcibly restricted for economic reasons and not necessarily technically founded as the one needed to the performance of chamber duets.

"Thanks to the Eighteenth-century devotional expectations of the people, the work of professional but less known composers also inclucded this: to bring the good taste and style encoded by revered masters of the rank of Porpora, Vinci, Leo, Hasse, even in the small villages which constituted the majority of the urban centers of the kingdom of Naples.

"In performing the 'Duetti', we followed the evidences emerging from the score and the context for which it was born: it wasn't difficult to establish that the instrument used at the time for the basso continuo playing was an organ, to which we added as small bow bass instrument the cello. Given the esthetical nature of chamber duets, we choose to flourish very few of the vocal lines, changing in the 'da capo' more emphases, attitudes to pronunciation, expressive colors given to individual words, dynamics, than pitches, making only brief cadenzas where required.

"In the 'Miserere', following the usual practice, the composer scored only the odd lines, leaving the other ones to be sung in chant. For the performance practice of the latter, it was considered appropriate to refer at closely as possible to the nearer geographically and chronologically relevant composition that has been given to analyze: the autograph of the 'Miserere concertante a due cori' (1739) by Leonaro Leo, held at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples. The composer wrote here also the 'Gregorian' chant verses of the text, providing them with basso continuo and with the exact duration of individual values. So, observing the criteria used in a very standardized way by Leo, we performed all the ommitted verses of the Psalm to give a complete picture of the score and its function." (Stefano Aresi. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Stile Galante, Stefano Aresi

1. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto I. Crimen Adae Quantum Constat!

2. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto II. Rigate Lacrimis Facies Populi

3. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto III. Mortis Causa Tu Fuisti

4. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Fuga V

5. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto IV. In Hoc Vexillo Crucis

6. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto V. Tamquam Agnus Immolatur

7. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto VI. Ab Imo Pectore Ede Suspiria

8. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Fuga VI. Diatonico Enarmonico Cromatico

9. Anonymous - Miserere

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Carl Nielsen - String Quartets Vol. 2

"Although most of a decade separates the two string quartets by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) recorded here, like the other two quartets in his official worklist they belong to the more youthful end of his oeuvre. As a mature composer he did at one point in the 1920s consider plans for yet another quartet. But he abandoned them in the middle of bar 31 of what was presumably to have been a first movement, and threw himself into other projects.

"The F minor quartet is from 1890, when the young, still unmarried composer was able to enjoy a regular salary again, now as a violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, something he had not done since stopping as a regimental musician in Odense to go to the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. There had also been another stroke of luck: applying for the second time, he had been awarded the biggest grant in Danish cultural life, 'Det Ancherske Legat', worth DKr 1800 – by comparison his annual salary as an orchestra musician was DKr 1200.

"With leave of absence from the Royal Theatre, Nielsen was able to set his course for Germany on 3rd September 1890. In his trunk he had a letter of recommendation from the composer Niels W. Gade, whose name was at least as famous in Germany as in Denmark, as well as the manuscript of the F minor quartet. He had begun work on it that spring, and had in fact meant to finish it before his departure. He had even worked on it in his summer holidays with his parents in the Funen village of Nørre Lyndelse. Nevertheless only the first movement was really finished.

"The remainder of the work was written amidst a tumult of new impressions, for on this first journey outside the borders of his native country the 25-year old composer was hungry for all kind of artistic impulses, and received them in Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin in turn. In Dresden, for example, he was at the 'Gemäldegalerie' on 5th September, where according to his diary he was greatly taken with Rembrandt's 'The Gold Weigher' and Juspe de Ribera's 'Diogenes with His Lantern'. And in the rough draft of the fourth movement of the quartet we find a handwritten remark that clearly documents that he himself felt there was a connection between the two arts: 'The 2nd time the secondary subject does not come; a snatch of the coda in the first part appears as such, but with many odd harmonies. Remember 'odd', little Carl. Think of Ribèra!!' The inspiration could also be of a more outward kind; after an elevated soirée on 26th September at the 'Böhmischer Bahnhof' Nielsen went home and composed an expansion of the first subject of the last movement, which had occured to him on the way.

"More or less finished with the quartet, and armed with Gade's introduction, Nielsen now looked up one of the leading musical personalities of the day in Berlin, the conducter and composer Joseph Joachim (1831-1907). He had known Gade since their youth and promised to listen to and comment on the new work. So after five rehearsals, an ad-hoc ensemble (Nielsen himself, Fini Henriques, Frederik Schnedler-Petersen and the American cellist Paul Henry Morgan) gave the work its informal christening on 18th December at the 'Hochschule für Ausübende Tonkunst', where Joachim was a highly esteemed teacher.

"'It is extremely difficult to play well, since there are so many modulations and often enharmonic affairs that have to be played so purely that the half of it would have been enough. If you add to this the fear of playing for Joachim, you can imagine that it did not go all that well,' Nielsen wrote back afterwards to his old theory teacher from the academy years, Orla Rosenhoff. In other words Nielsen knew very well what made - and still makes - his quartets difficult to play.

"The old master responded with both praise and criticism; he recognized both imagination and talent in the music, but on the whole it was too radical for him, and he wanted to suggest some changes. Nielsen replied that he was afraid the work would lose its character, and the good-natured Joachim seems to have retreated: 'Well, my dear Mr. Nielsen, perhaps I am after all an old philistine. Write as you will, just as long as that is how you feel it.'

"The young Nielsen stood his ground. The Danish newspaper reviewers, who otherwise often scolded him, were nevertheless surprisingly positive when the quartet was given its first public performance in Copenhagen on 8th April 1892. Most unreserved was 'Politiken's Charles Kjerulf: 'Carl Nielsen is clearly a considerable talent; none of his works has shown him as assured as this quartet, which besides the most youthful dauntlessness exhibits a will and skill matched by very few of the works of our other very young composers.

"The F mionor quartet was printed by the publisher Wilhelm Hansen in 1892 and could now be performed by ensembles who did not first have to borrow the manuscipt music from the composer. In October 1894 when Nielsen, in the company of the music publisher Alfred Wilhelm Hansen, ran into the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) in the railway station in Leipzig after hearing him play earlier that evening in the Gewandhaus, the latter immediately declared that Nielsen was not wholly unknown to him - he had recently heard the F minor quartet performed at Nice, had liked it and had procured the music. As proof he hummed the beginning of the first movement! Ysaÿe may have later done more than simply hum: the four string players in one of the top ensembles of the day, the 'Quatuor de Bruxelles', had a shared point of departure in master classes with Ysaÿe, and a few years later they put the F minor quartet on their repertoire. They first played it at a concert in Copenhagen on 13th February 1909, then later the same year they presented it in Mexico City and Buenos Aires. Thus it also became the only one of the four string quartets ever to cross the Atlantic during the composer's lifetime.

"The E-flat major quartet (composed in 1897-98) is associated with a tragicomic episode that meant that the birth of the work was drawn out longer than anticipated. The composer himself was given an account of it, but only far later, in a retrospective article marking his sixtieth birthday in 1925:

"'I had composed a string quartet. The first two movements had already been copied by the music copyist; I had tried them out with my comrades, and we agreed that it was a work with which I had made a great effort. Now I also had the last two movements finished, so I packed it all into a large roll, took my bike and set off along Gothersgade towards Nørrevold, where the music copyist lived. When I got to Rosenborg Brøndanstalt [a mineral water factory], I saw a vehicle with two horses, one of which had fallen over and lay floundering with its legs over the pavement. The driver looked very helpless, as the horse had ended up lying in a strange lopsided position. Since as a young man I had worked with horses and had often myself been a driver, I jumped off my bike, put it up against the Brøndanstalt, shoved my music roll into the hands of a boy who was standing in the crowd, and asked him to hold it for a moment. It was only the work of a couple of minutes to cut one of the traces to the cart over, get a horse blanket under the forelegs of the horse and get it up on its legs; but when I got back the boy had vanished, probably into the Vognmagergade area, with my great work. I rode home in despair and told my wife about my loss. The she got the idea that we should go up into the neighbourhood and arouse some attention about the matter among the young people of the streets, and in time we succeeded in gathering a very large crowd to whom we announced that whoever could find the boy with the roll of music would get a large reward [...] However, I never got my work back, but had to reconstruct it laboriously from various notes and sketches and from memory.

"The episode must have taken place in the autumn of 1898, but cannot be directly documented by contemporary sources. They only mention the preceeding work: 'Finished the work on the first movement of a quartet in E-flat major in December '97. Am work on the andante at present,' the composer had noted in his diary on 6th January 1898. Nevertheless a good part of the year evidently passed before he was ready to saddle up his bicycle with the finished score. He had met his wife Anne Marie, who was a sculptress, in 1891 in Paris, during the above-mentioned study trip. Now in this very year, in the summer of 1898, they had one of their periods of friction, for reasons that are not hard to understand. He spent his holiday from the Royal Theatre on her family's farm in Jutland, where he tried at one and the same time to keep the farm going and to write a string quartet, while she stated at home in Copenhagen to take care of her sculptural work - she was modelling a red stallion - and their three small children. 'Can't you see and get you final movement done and I'll be busy with my horse and we'll never again spend a summer like this year's, will we, my own dearest?' she had written to him on 2nd August in a clear attempt at reconciliation.

"We do not know exactly how long it took Nielsen to reconstruct the last two movements of the quartet, for it is unlikely to have been true when he described the work as in the process of publication in an application for a ministerial composer subsidy dated 7th November 1898. He did not hand in the score to Wilhelm Hansen until the early summer of 1899, and the printed edition was not available until December 1900. On the title page the work was then dedicated to his older colleague Edvard Grieg, who was among the family's circle of friends.

"By then the quartet had already seen a semi-private first performance on 1st May 1899 in the relatively newly-founded 'Vor Forening'. The public one was given by the newly-formed Høeberg Quartet on 4th October 1901, also in Copenhagen. The latter elicited a very clear-sighted review in 'Illustreret Tidende', written by the almost ten-years-older Hother Ploug, who alongside a career in the central administration also worked as a music write and composer:

"'A strange work, like everything that has come from his hand, but more a work for connoisseurs than for the general public. In particular, the energetic first allegro with its enclosed structure and the highly convoluted contrapuntal work proved caviare to the general... Here we meet a young Danish composer with a sense of form and the sculptural not strongly evident in many others at present than perhaps Johan Svendsen and people are repelled by it. In a way this is explicable enough: when one is bottle-fed day in and day out with 'romances' and romance-like music, in the end one forfeits the feeling for stronger fare.'

"Caviare to the general or not - during the composer's lifetime the E-flat major quartet remained the most critically acclaimed, but also the least performed of the works!" (Knud Ketting, 2008. From the liner notes.)

Performers: The Young Danish String Quartet

1. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: I. Allegro Non Troppo Ma Energico

2. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: II. Un Poco Adagio

3. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: III. Allegretto Scherzando

4. String Quartet In F Minor, Op. 5: IV. Allegro Appassionato

5. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: I. Allegro Con Brio

6. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: II Andante Sostenuto

7. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: III Allegretto Pastorale - Presto - Allegretto Pastorale

8. String Quartet In E-Flat Major, Op. 14: IV Allegro Coraggioso

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Carl Nielsen - String Quartets Vol. 1

"Would we have wished it otherwise? Well, yes, it would have been exciting if Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) had composed another string quartet at the mature age when he created masterpieces like the 'Wind Quintet' (1922). But we are not poorly served either with the four string quartets that are in his official worklist, complete with opus number etc., three of which were composed as far back as pre-1900.

"While today it is hard to draw any great distinctions among these four Nielsen quartets in terms of popularity, it was a different matter in his own, time, when the earliest, the G minor quartet, was by far the least frequently performed, while the next one, in F minor, and the last, in F major, vied for a definitive first place, probably because they both belonged to the regular repertoire of well established ensembled like the Breuning-Bache Quartet and the Thorvald Nielsen Quartet. Both these ensembles also took them with them abroad.

"The G minor quartet was not published until 1900, and therefore bears the opus number 13, although it was written before opus 1 'Suite for Strings'. It was one of the two great private Copenhagen chamber music societies of the day, Privat Kammermusikforening, that gave the work its musical christening. This was on 26th March 1889, and the quartet was to see at least a further four performances in the second of these societies, Kammermusikforeningen of 1868 and in the newly founded Vor Forening, before it was played for the first time in public at Nielsen's composition evening on 3rd February 1898 in the smaller hall of what was then known as Koncertpalæet, because it had not yet been taken over by the Order of Odd Fellows.

"The work was the oldest in the all-Nielsen programme, and before this it had been subjected to a critical revision, perhaps prompted by an agreement with the music publisher Wilhelm Hansen to print it. The revision involved abridgements in the transitions between the various formal sections, not so much in the fundamentals of the structure, which remained the quite conventional one for the epoch, with a single exception: in the last movement, between the recapitulations of the first and second subject, Nielsen feature a section entitled 'Resumé', where he contrapuntally combines thematic material from the first, third and fourth movements and thus underscores the unity of the work.

"The reviews were mainly positive, perhaps especially in their comparisons with more recent works in the programme: 'Undoubtedly the most important, most beautiful and in all respects most appealing piece of music one heard at the concert, and finally, first and foremost, the most direct and wholesome. Unfortunately its genesis lies about a decade in the past' ('Dannebrog)'. 'The ten-year-old quartet provided a breath of youth and freshness that did the heart good. There was a pace and power in this beginner's work that delighted the audience' ('Vort Land').

"On publication the quartet was furnished with a dedicated to the composer Johan Svendsen (1840-1911), whome Nielsen admired greatly, and who in his capacity as principal conductor at the Royal Danish Theatre also did his bit to procure the best opportunities for the young orchestral musician Nielsen to see to his composing work alongside his duties as a musician at the Theatre.

"Carl Nielsen's only string quintet was written in 1888, on the heels of the G minor string quartet. It was given its first performance at a concert on 13th February the next year in the society Kammermusikforeningen of 1868. The composer himself played second violin, and did the same in the next performance on 28th April in the newly founded society Symphonia, which held its concerts in the Hornung & Møller concert hall.

"On this particular early spring Sunday the 23-year-old violin-playing composer had in fact stretched himself almost to breaking-point. For at 4 p.m. he appeared in one of the so-called 'Folkekoncerter' ('Popular Concerts'), where, along with his old academy classmate Julius Borup, he was the soloist in a concerto grosso by Händel, as well as conducting his own 'Suite for Strings', which had been performed for the first time late in the previous summer in the Tivoli Concert Hall. And then at 8 p.m. he had to take the stage in Symphonia, where the programme consisted exclusively of newly composed Danish music and - fortunately for him - was for mixed ensembles, such that at least he only had to appear in his own quintet.

"Not only would it have pleased Nielsen that the two great names of Danish musical life then, Niels W. Gade and J.P.E. Hartmann, where both present; he also had reason to be satisfied when he read the Monday papers: 'As a whole, judging from a first performance, this work makes a beautiful impression with its appealing melodiousness, its rounded form and no ordinary inventiveness in harmonic respects' ('Berlingske Tidende'). 'An extraordinarily fresh and pleasing string quintet in G by the very young composer, Mr. Carl Nielsen, testified to a healthy, fertile talent for instrumental composition' ('Politiken').

"One might think that the new quintet would then gradually become established in the standard repertoire. But that simply did not happen - perhaps because it was overtaken and sidelined by new string quartets: the above-mentioned G minor quartet, already composed before the quintet, but given its first performance later than it, and an F minor quartet, written in 1890. In addition it was always a little more difficult to get a quintet performance together, even though Danish musical life before 1900 was typified more by ad-hoc ensembles than by firmly established string quartet ensembles.

"At all events the G major quintet was afterwards only played privately in Berlin during Nielsen's study trip in 1890 (where he himself called it 'overloaded') and in Copenhagen in a couple of times more in 1892 and once in 1911. Prior to the extensive festivities in connection with Nielsen's 60th birthday in 1925, the violinist Thorvals Nielsen asked about the possibility of a new quartet and was instead furnished with the more than 35-year-old quintet, which still only existed in manuscript form. There were a further couple of performances, after which Nielsen showed his gratitude by giving the work a dedication to the young man with the same surname as himself (to whom he was not related).

"In 1905 Nielsen took his leave as a violinist at the Royal Danish Theatre. His violin-playing would never have reached the soloist standard, but friends described him as an amusing and characterful quartet first violinist, and he still occasionally engaged in quartet playing, especially in the company of the Dutch musicians of the Röntgen family, whom he met regularly at the estate Fuglsang in beautiful natural surroundings on the island of Lolland.

"Nielsen's F major quartet was composed in Copenhagen in 1906, at a time when he was busy with the opera 'Maskarade'. It has the same gaiety and grace as the opera, and - although written in a quite different musical idiom - it is clear evidence of Nielsen's profound admiration of Mozart. It was performed for the first time privately at a chamber music evening at Fuglsang on 10th August. To his good friend the pianist Henrik Knudsen, Nielsen wrote the day before the rehearsal work:

"'Today we have played my new quartet and it sounds as I had expected. After all I am now close to complete familiarity with the true nature of the bowed instruments. Incidentally it is strange how many years one must coax and caress such a delicate creature as a string quartet before she gives in. Only now do I think I have got more or less to grips with its coy, chaste character.'

"The first public performance took place on 30th November 1907 at a Nielsen composition evening in Copenhagen. At this time the quartet bore the opus number 19 and the by-name 'Piacevolezza' ('Delight'), which he was later to scrap. And perhaps this is just as well, for there is no eagerness to please in this highly modulated music. We are not meant to feel sure of very much: the first subject of the first movement is only nine bars long, but begins firmly in F major only to end just as firmly a semitone higher in G-flat major. If that can happen, anything can happen!

"And indeed the composer was rewarded with a lecture from 'Politiken's Charles Kjerulf: 'If what the four gentlemen on strings sat up there and played is seriously to be understood as good, beautiful music, then Messrs. Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and associated, including Wagner and Tchaikovsky - the whole gang, on our own too, with Hartmann and Gade at their head - have all been pulling the wool over our eyes, indeed indulging in false advertising. And in that case sciatica is also a musical pleasure. For that is very unpleasant too.'

"The slow movement of the work, 'Adagio con sentimento religioso', in fact clearly points forward, with its hymn-like introduction, to Nielsen's above-mentioned last great chamber music work, the 'Wind Quintet'. In the quartet, though, there is no question of varying the hymn theme, rather of something that can be described as a gradual metamorphosis.

"In a partly new shape, the F major quartet was played a few times in 1919 and the presumably further revised before Carl Nielsen finally succeeded in having his string quartet swan song published in 1923 by Edition Peters in Leipzig, now without a by-name and with opus number 44. (Knud Ketting, 2006. From the liner notes.)

Performers: The Young Danish String Quartet, Tim Frederiksen

1. String Quartet In G Minor, Op. 13: I. Allegro Energico

2. String Quartet In G Minor, Op. 13: II. Andante Amoroso

3. String Quartet In G Minor, Op. 13: III. Scherzo: Allegro Molto

4. String Quartet In G Minor, Op. 13: IV. Finale: Allegro (Inquieto)

5. String Quartet In F Major, Op. 44: I. Allegro Non Tanto E Comodo

6. String Quartet In F Major, Op. 44: II. Adagio Con Sentimento Religioso

7. String Quartet In F Major, Op. 44: III. Allegretto Moderato Ed Innocente

8. String Quartet In F Major, Op. 44: IV. Finale: Molto A    dagio - Allegro Non Tanto, Ma Molto Scherzoso

9. String Quintet In G Major: I. Allegro Pastorale

10. String Quintet In G Major: II. Adagio

11. String Quintet In G Major: III. Allegretto Scherzando

12. String Quintet In G Major: IV. Finale: Allegro Molto

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