After a full year of Mahler and Liszt, what does 2012 hold in store for anniversaries fans? We’ll see if presenters catch on, but it will be the 150th anniversary of Debussy’s birth , the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and the 250th of the premiere of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

And who should we watch for in the rising stars department? Cellist Stéphane Tétreault, according to The Gazette. To read…

On December 1791,the musical world lost one of its giants: Mozart. We may never know how he died, though several theories are still considered: cerebral commotion, food poisoning, undiagnosed illness… Of course, we must forgot the silly theory of an assassination sponsored by Salieri who, even at the height of his fame, was certainly well aware that he would never be considered in the same league as Mozart.

We may think that Mozart wrote music as others breath or eat. It’s not entirely true.  He wrote a friend:

“I didn’t take time to consider work or pain… One is mistaken when he thinks my art comes to me without effort. I’m telling you, dear friend, no one has spent so much effort as myself when it comes to studying composition.”

The year 1791 was a difficult one for Mozart. His health was not good and his honeymoon with Constanze defintely a thing of the past. Nevertheless, at the end of the year, fame came once more knocking at the door, as his last opera The Magic Flute became an instant hit.

On December 4, though still weak, he felt better and called upon his friends to share with them parts of the Requiem he was working on. His health took a turn for the worse that evening and he passed away on December 5, short after midnight, alone with his music.

To better understand the composer, why not listen to his Piano trios, as performed by the Gryphon Trio on its latest 9 CD box set devoted to the great piano trios of the repertoire.

November 22 is Saint Cecilia’s Day. Several composers have written music inspired by the musicians’ patron saint, including Purcell and Haydn. You can discover  some of those works in this documentary.

Happy day to all musicians and music lovers!

Two days before Halloween and, already, tonight, we may see quite a few witches and ghouls on our streets. Time then to revisit a scary music classic, Night on Bald Mountain.

The work was composed in 1867 by Modest Mussorgsky, who drew his inspiration for this symphonic poem from Nicolai Gogol’s short story, St. John’s Eve. Mussorgsky revised the piece several times, ending up with one choral version and an orchestral interlude for inclusion in one of his operas. Other composers, including Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, liked the work so much that they decided to reorchestrate it. The conductor Leopold Stokowski arranged the version in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

The composer left a program. Night on Bald Mountain opens with the subterranean sounds of unearthly voices, followed by the appearance of the Spirits of Darkness and then Chernobog, the god of night and darkness. His name means “the Black God.” The second section depicts the glorification of Chernobog and the witches’ Sabbath, or black mass. This was a nocturnal ceremony performed by witches, held at an isolated, often elevated, location, like the setting of Bald Mountain. At the end of the piece, the sound of a church bell in the village announces the dawn and causes the spirits to vanish.

It is on October 22 , 1811, that Franz Liszt took his first breath. He would transform irrevocably the concept of the concert as it was known until then, at least for pianists. He was the first performer to bet on the pyrotechnical abilities of the instrument, to change the angle the pianist would sit (profile facing the audience rathen than back turned), to play without a score, to take part in duels between pianists. No wonder he could state: “I am the concert!” Rock star before his time, cherished by duchesses and countesses alike, he soon would “wise up” and work on pushing back the limits of the tonal system rather than setting fire to the instrument. He said:

“The character of instrumental music… lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.”

and

“Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.”

You can listen to the first of his Years of Pilgrimage, as performed by André Laplante or in his titanesque B Minor Sonata, with Nareh Arghamanyan.