Humphrey Searle Vídeos
compositor, musicólogo, compositor de bandas sonoras
Conmemoraciones 2025 (Nacimiento: Humphrey Searle)
- ópera, sinfonía
- Reino Unido
streaming
Última actualización
2024-05-09
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Antonio Vivaldi Searle Shepherd 1678 1725 1741 2015
performed at the Staunton Music Festival August 21, 2015 Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton, Virginia Violin solo: Minna Pensola Violins: Antti Tikkanen, Fiona Hughes Viola: Gesa Kordes Cello: Anna Steinhoff Violone: Anthony Manzo Theorbo: David Walker Keyboards: Mark Shuldiner Video by Stewart Searle NOTES Almost three centuries ago, Antonio Vivaldi +••.••(...)) com-posed his most famous works and the most significant examples of Baroque program music. The Four Seasons are the opening works in Opus 8, a set of concertos published in 1725. That set actually contains twelve violin concertos, but the brilliance and popularity of the first four have generally obscured the remaining works. Learning about Baroque music, there is simply no getting around The Four Seasons. They epitomize various aspects of Vivaldi’s mature concerto style, but they also were influential in celebrating the connections between program music and an accompanying narrative. Vivaldi chose to publish each concerto with a corresponding sonnet. Scholars believe Vivaldi himself penned these poems, though their authorship remains in doubt. We do know that, in his sketches, Vivaldi correlated passages from the sonnets to specific themes in the music. The musical year begins with Spring and continues around the cycle. Certain features are held constant as we make this journey, including the three-movement, fast-slow-fast arrangement that Vivaldi’s generation bequeathed to subsequent composers. Two are in major, two in minor. Two feature violin writing that is elegant and refined; the other two are virtuosic and feverish—even in the icy chill of Winter. What draws us to this music is certainly its animation and absolutely brilliant, idiomatic violin writing. It hardly needs pointing out that Vivaldi himself was one of the greatest violinists of the day. His improvisations, as entr’acte diversions in the theater, were legendary. And it was his technical skill, above all else, that attracted so many parents to seek a spot for their daughters in the Pieta—originally a home for foundlings. Sound effects range from broadly evocative (thunder and winds) to more directly mimetic (bird calls, dog barks). But rather than creating just a sequence of effects, Vivaldi conveys a sense of narrative progression by introducing the accompanying sonnets. There is an irony at work here. On one hand, Vivaldi so effectively captures moments from the sonnets in sound, that it would seem redundant to offer any kind of description in words. And yet musical pictorialism is never a one-to-one correspondence; rapid repeated notes, for instance, do not always signify winds, let alone something so precise as the North Wind. So there is a place for commentary, and the accompanying sonnets make that task both easier and more justifiable. SUMMER The second concerto, Summer, starts out where many of us end up around this time of year: “exhausted by the heat,” to quote the sonnet. In the slow introduction, Vivaldi employs falling lines and chromatically lowered tones (such as A-flat in place of the expected A-natural) to evoke drooping energy levels. What an effective foil for the much-too-vigorous cuckoo in solo violin that intrudes upon our impending slumber. Our next visitor is the turtledove, whose doleful cry also touches on the unexpected A-flat sitting a semitone above G. After twittering finches have their say, things get a bit more agitated as the winds pick up. Clearly a storm is in the offing. The shepherd feels it, too, and his fears elicit an operatic aria in solo violin. The sonnet suggests that such fears are symbolic of the boy’s trepidation about his future, generally speaking. Vivaldi paints the mood with a traditional lament bass progression, in which the harmonic foundation falls stepwise through the interval of a fourth. A level of unease continues into the Adagio. Now, despite a tender melody in the solo violin, flies and wasps compete for our attention with periodic thunder. The whole movement lasts just two minutes. Before we know it, the tempest is raining down upon us (the Finale). This Finale is one of Vivaldi’s very best, for it merges the two elements that have made his reputation in the concerto world: dazzling, idiomatic violin writing and significant use of harmonic sequence. (c) Jason Stell, 2015
Franz Liszt Carl Tausig Searle 1856 1871
“Festvorspiel”, alternatively known as “Preludio Pomposo”, is a piano piece written by Franz Liszt for his student, Carl Tausig. Tausig became a concert pianist in his own right, but died in 1871 at age 29. The piece is heavy in chords and contains some clashing dissonances between the hands. Liszt later orchestrated the piece, which occupied its own place in his oeuvre as S.356. Date: 1856 Dedicatee: Carl Tausig Catalogue: Searle 226 Thematisches Verzeichnis der Werke Franz Liszts [LW] A188 R**be 47 Performer: Ferenc Kerek on piano Note: This channel does not own the score or audio, and they are used for non-commercial purposes.
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- cronología: Compositores (Europa).
- Índices (por orden alfabético): S...