CD Review June 2018: Perkins – Abbate, Mozart’s Piano Duets Vol. 1 & Vol. 2

Forget, for a moment, modern life.

Switch off the lights, light some candles and the laser light which will perform your music… Choose your most comfortable and favourite sofa, help yourself to some true 18th century punch (each house had its own recipe for their guests at their music soirées) and enjoy your perfect 18th century soirée… with the music by Mozart, his friend and mentor J.C. Bach, his beloved rival M. Clementi and two highly skilled and sensitive performers leading us through this charming journey on very beautiful historical instruments: Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate.

Julian Perkins & Emma Abbate CD1: Mozart: Piano Duets Vol. 1 (Resonus Classics) CD2: Mozart: Piano Duets Vol. 2 (Resonus Classics) Julian Perkins (Official Site) Founder Director of Sounds Baroque. Artistic Director of Cambridge Handel Opera. Emma Abbate (Official Site) Professor at Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Staff coach at Royal Opera House (Covent Garden).

CONTENTS

1. All the charm of brilliant and beautiful cantabiles…
    2. Mozart and a special demanding repertoire for the 18th
century soirées spent with his friends…
    3. Mozart: Piano Duets Vol. 1.
Dedicated to Nannerl and Franziska von Jacquin.
    4. Mozart: Piano Duets Vol. 2.
A masterpiece, again Nannerl and possibly Pichler’s (?)
fragments with a World Premiere Recording.
    5. J.C. Bach – M. Clementi: A wise and correct habit.
    6. Mozart & Clementi again… a curiosity from Spring 1786.

_______________________________________________________________

1. All the charm of brilliant and beautiful cantabiles…
As you can see from the special story behind these works for piano 4-hands (and especially those by Mozart), all the pieces (apart from K19d and, in part, K381) can be considered, in general, difficult or rather demanding pieces, even though at different levels, with K381 (for Mozart) probably an easier work and K521 and K497 the most difficult ones, also in consideration of the very careful interpretation needed here.

The first impression you’ll have by listening to this marvellous series of CD Albums by Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate is the absolute charming beauty of their cantabiles and the authentic brilliant and lively Mozartian verve and spirit which breathes from every note. Their singing and almost operatic style of playing these works 4-hands is finely endowed with a joyous sprezzatura, which this kind of music always always requires, to be correctly performed.

Moreover you will really enjoy the fine and delicious variations created by the two pianists at any ritornello. An art this even more appreciated, since, even though the two performers correctly never go too far, it gives a fine and vivid hint of what probably was the actual lively and a bit free performance practice, during the music gatherings of Mozart and his friends.

The interpretation of these pieces reaches a splendid fusion of intents, which, thanks also to the accurate choice of proper historical instruments rich in a marvellously warm sound (especially those used for Mozart’s piano duets), creates a much enjoyable 18th century atmosphere and is well co-ordinated between the two players.
The accurate work in rendering a beautiful, brilliant and refined fraseggio makes a few tracks of these CDs particularly remarkable for their interpretation. You’ll certainly enjoy, in particular, the sonatas K381, K521,  J.C. Bach’s and Clementi’s Sonatas and the magnificent monumental K497, with its 1st movement cantabiles and dynamics, the delicious fraseggio of its 3rd movement and, above all, both the Adagio and the Andante rendered with such a magical timbre and a series of soft nuances of expression which well paints the subtle musical texture of this piece… and all this under the masterly hands of the duo Perkins-Abbate, a duo that demonstrates too well how the music by Mozart, Clementi and J.C. Bach must really sing.

Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate perfectly master all the technical and mechanical characteristics of the historical pianos used for these recordings, so that they are capable of achieving those peculiar suggestive tones and that peculiar warmth and softness and delicacy of sound… id est all those interpretative subtleties which are especially demanded by the very nature of the pieces themselves, and, in particular, those Mozart’s passages in K497 piano and pianissimo will resound in all their fascinating velvety beauty.

The Mozartian interpretation given by the duo Perkins-Abbate can well be seen within that glorious tradition of a few great Mozart interpreters such as Edwin Fischer and Alicia de Larrocha.

This beautiful Series of CD Albums will make you appreciate, one more time, some beautiful masterpieces by Mozart, J.C. Bach and Clementi, from their very special convivial or Geselligkeit repertoire, and probably, thanks to the two brilliant interpreters and their fine choices… in the most authentic soirée atmosphere possible.

2. Mozart and a special demanding repertoire for the 18th century soirées spent with his friends…
The very interesting choice made by Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate offers the possibility of exploring a special repertoire for piano (and a particularly difficult one, since it was usually thought, in origin, for an elite category of extra-skilled interpreters) and to cast some light, through the music itself and Perkins-Abbate’s interpretation, onto the tradition of social music gatherings in the 18th century and on the forms of musical practice and performance.

Quartets, quintets, trios, duos, duets, etc. i.e. chamber music in general played an important role in the social habits of the 18th century society. Music soirées (either soirées organized at some very notable stylish salon or simple gatherings of friends for playing some music among dinners, good food, spicy drinks, some dancing, much talking, music listening and music playing: according to the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, one of the first performers of Le Nozze di Figaro in 1786, a good punch, at these soirées, was the favourite drink of Mozart himself: «He was remarkably fond of punch»; and from other accounts we know also that Mozart adored dancing) were a fundamental part of the social life in the second half of the 18th century and the public demand for new music (to be consumed at the soirées with one’s friends, both amateur players and professional musicians doesn’t matter) was really abundant and important.

A few composers even managed to transform all this into a profitable business, like Kozeluch and his own publishing firm, the Musikalisches Magazin, founded in 1785.
Also Mozart had his part, and a considerable one, in this peculiar context of social habits. Apart from his quartets, the piano sonatas, the violin and piano sonatas, etc. production, he and his sister, when travelling across Europe (literally as child prodigies of Nature), managed to make a particular form of work for keyboard rather popular: the pieces for keyboard 4-hands, an interesting form of performance, which could well highlight the incredible capabilities of the two performers.
In June 1784 an English author, whose identity is still unknown, could assert about the origin of this genre of composition in England:
«The first instance of two persons performing on one instrument in this kingdom was exhibited in the year 1765 by little Mozart and his sister».
After this first period of marvellous public performances by the Wunderkind himself, this kind of repertoire remained a sort of firm label for Mozart and his sister throughout the 1770s and those people who wanted to meet Mozart, his sister and his father personally, and privately, could reach the house of the Mozarts at Salzburg and have the possibility of listening to Mozart and his sister playing piano duets.
Even the famous large family portrait by Johann Nepomuk della Croce, painted in 1780-1781, has Mozart and his sister playing piano duets together at the keyboard…

When Mozart left Salzburg to reach Vienna, many things changed drastically in the life of Mozart.

Nonetheless, as far as we know, the Viennese social gatherings gave the occasion to Wolfgang to approach the genre of the works for keyboard 4-hands (and that for 2 pianos) on a completely new basis: no more his sister at his side, but the composer, singer and pianist Marianne von Martinez and then Caroline Pichler and Franziska von Jacquin, the sister of his close friends, the von Jacquins, who usually organized Geselligkeit evenings (i.e. conviviality evenings) on Wednesday evenings are among the names we know associated to the piano 4-hands production and performance by Mozart. So these women, who, after 1781, usually played piano 4-hands works with Mozart in well known social contexts, were skilled performers belonging to notable families who regularly promoted music soirées in Vienna.
As for other music genres cultivated by Mozart, the great master never thought to simplify his art, his music to meet the trivial necessities of common music amateur players (as other composers of his era did) and even when he writes music for the principianti his art remains sublime and untouched in its masterly construction.

That’s the reason, in any case, why Mozart’s music was not a particular best seller in score in that period, being de facto too sophisticated or even difficult for the average amateur player of the music soirées… (see, just an example among others, the problems with his Dissonance Quartet) and why Kozeluch became richer than Mozart in this peculiar branch of music mass production of the 18th century.
Nonetheless, as far as we know from various accounts on Mozart at the soirées (see Michael Kelly, Da Ponte, Caroline Pichler and others), when there was a soirée and Mozart was there with his friends, Mozart’s music was often in the programme of the music soirée (written music or improvised one were both common) and often with highly distinguished listeners (i.e. the great Neapolitan composer Paisiello) and highly distinguished performers (i.e. Haydn, Maximilian Stadler, Dittersdorf, Vanhal and others).
And we have also a curious anecdote on Mozart, playing piano duets during these conviviality evenings: at Caroline Pichler’s own salon, the highly talented lady pianist Pichler was playing some music at piano and suddenly Mozart sat at her side and stopped her playing and then started improvising a piano duet together (it seems he was reworking some music from his Figaro) and when they completed their improvisational duet piano performance, Mozart «began leaping and somersaulting about the room while meowing like a cat». Was Mozart happy with Pichler’s ability in improvisation 4-hands?… Being a piano duet improvisation a difficult art of its own not for the average common amateur music performer, such episode highlights the great talent of Caroline Pichler as pianist, that very Pichler who was considered «one of Vienna’s foremost lady pianists with a masterly touch, strong in execution, and undaunted by the greatest difficulties».
Those, who well know the complicated story behind most of Mozart’s music fragments apparently left unfinished, will discover, in this anecdote, the great master’s habit of jotting down some ideas derived from his own soirées musical improvisations of the kind described by Caroline Pichler. And therefore the famous fragments of Mozart’s piano 4-hands works still surviving belong to this very peculiar category of compositions: works, in reality, fully performed as improvisation during some music gathering, then written down on some music paper by Mozart as a pro memoria of some good ideas and then left without completion, even for years: the Clarinet Concerto K622 is a great example of this way of working.

But let’s see, in details, the Contents of the two CD Albums by Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate…

3. Mozart: Piano Duets Vol. 1. Dedicated to Nannerl and Franziska von Jacquin.
With their particular choice, Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate wanted to dedicate the first volume of the piano duets to two important figures in Mozart’s life: his sister and companion of professional concerts tours Nannerl Mozart and to Franziska von Jacquin (or in Mozartianese own language Sigra. Dinimininimi), that talented pianist pupil of Mozart (and sister of one of his closest friends Gottfried von Jacquin, in Mozartianese language HinkitiHonky), who often became the official and/or unofficial dedicatee of various difficult piano masterpieces by Mozart during his stay in Vienna in the 1780s.

In fact, Mozart’s pieces presented by the duo Perkins-Abbate in this first volume belong exactly to those two different periods of Mozart’s piano 4-hands music production: the Salzburg 1770s years with his sister Nannerl kept as a reference performer and the Vienna 1780s years mainly with his friend and pupil Franziska von Jacquin as reference performer…
… and, under a certain point of view, the story of piano 4-hands music production is really also the story of a few of the most famous lady pianists in history, from Nannerl Mozart to Caroline Pichler.

a. Nannerl (Salzburg) and Marianne von Martinez (Vienna)
The two duet sonatas K381 and K358 were written in 1772 and in 1773/1774 respectively. They were intended to be performed with Nannerl at Salzburg during various occasions, and, in particular, when someone wanted to meet the Mozarts in person at their home. The manuscripts of the two works remained in possession of Nannerl after his brother’s leaving for Vienna in 1781. However, Mozart kept copies of these works as a fundamental vademecum for his teaching activity and, when in Mannheim (1777-1778), he used these particular duets to be played only with the best students there. When in Vienna, Mozart managed to have these two pieces published by Artaria in 1783 among his first printed works and this is sufficient to understand the importance of such compositions for Mozart. Probably these works were among those performed 4-hands with Marianne von Martinez at her own very famous Viennese salon.

b. Franziska von Jacquin (Vienna)
As we have seen previously, Mozart’s relationship with important and skilled Viennese lady pianists led to piano duets performances during the so called conviviality evenings. Mozart’s connection to the family von Jacquin was profound and long lasting and his talented pupil Franziska became the ideal skilled performer of a few works by him. In particular, the Sonata 4-hands K521 (29 May 1787) must have had Franziska as a reference performer, since we still have Mozart’s own covering letter for this rather demanding composition:
«Give this sonata to your sister [i.e. Franziska] with my compliments and tell her to start working on it at once as it is rather difficult».
The suggestion of start working must imply that Mozart wanted to play this work with Franziska at some soirée…
However, the final published version appeared in 1788 as dedicated to another pupil of Mozart, Babette de Natorp, and to her sister Nanette. And again Mozart’s choice makes us understand that Mozart saw this kind of difficult works for piano 4-hands as a sort of official recognition of the particular technical command of the piano technique attained by his pupils: is it a reminiscence of his own musical path as a Wunderkind?

4. Mozart: Piano Duets Vol. 2. A masterpiece, again Nannerl and possibly Pichler’s (?) fragments with a World Premiere Recording.
With their second volume of piano duets, Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate decided to shift their interest onto the masterpiece of this collection of piano works 4-hands (K497) and onto a very interesting series of fragments (K357 in a new modern completion in a world premiere recording) and onto a fundamental doubtful work (the K19d), the two latter ones both important compositions to comprehend the technique, method of work and the most intimate world of sounds of the great master.

a. Sonata 4-hands K497 an extra-demanding masterpiece 
Both K521 and K497 belong to a professionally marvellous period for Mozart: that extremely prolific series of two years between Le Nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787). This K497 4-hands is universally recognized as one of the highest point of Mozart’s art, along with the most famous series of his Haydn Quartets and has been always scholarly praised for his excellent musical texture by such scholars as Alfred Einstein and Donald Francis Tovey. What is demanding here is not only the musical piece itself, but its very interpretation and once more we realize how Mozart considered such works for piano 4-hands not a mere trivial occasion of playing music with his friends, but rather, and without any compromise, a sort of artistic summa of piano technique. And that’s why, as Alfred Eistein pointed out, we find here the elements typical of Mozart’s orchestral works and of piano concertos with even pre-Beethovenian nuances and atmospheres.

b. Sonata K19d a fundamental influential work  
The Sonata K19d belongs to the London period (1765) and probably it was the piece used by Nannerl and little Wolfgang during their astonishing series of concerts as natural music prodigies. This Sonata is at the very centre of a scholarly dispute, since its paternity is not certain (we are not sure that child prodigy Mozart wrote this work in 1760s) and hence it has been recently moved among the works of doubtful authenticity. Nonetheless this very Sonata must have had a great influence on Mozart, because a clear and distinct echo of its brilliant finale movement Rondeau: Allegretto can be heard in the finale of the Gran Partita K361 (1781) and both in the finale of the piano sonatas per principianti K545 and K547a (both 1788). The fact that Mozart re-worked the finale of K19d (a piece which belonged to his youth and to the London year 1765) for his famous piano sonata per principianti must be surely somehow meaningful.

c. World Premiere Recording K357 completed by Robert D. Levin  
The two music fragments re-united and completed in the 19th century as K357 belong to that amazing huge corpus of music fragments and snippets left by Mozart. The art of completing such fragments left by Mozart unfinished (at least on paper, since probably he performed them in a full form during his concerts… or during the conviviality soirées, thanks to his incredible improvisational talent) has an old and long tradition which dates back to Mozart’s friends such as Maximilian Stadler and Süssmayr and to his wife Constanze.
The origin of these fragments can be easily found in that aforementioned anecdote by the excellent pianist Caroline Pichler on her duet with Mozart and in Mozart’s habit of improvising even works for piano 4-hands during the conviviality evenings…
The 19th century completion left by Andrè (1853) is characterized by a few philological problems. So, being Mozart’s original fragments (which belong to two different periods, 1787 and 1791) sufficiently rather long, the modern accurate work carried on by Levin restores the fragments of Mozart in a new completed form, this time respectful of the original compass of Mozart-era pianos and of Mozart’s own technique of composition.
Perkins and Abbate present here the world premiere recording of this completion by Levin and we hope that this completion will find its way towards popularity among international pianists.

5. J.C. Bach – M. Clementi: A wise and correct habit.
The inclusion of piano 4-hands works by J.C. Bach and by M. Clementi is a very wise choice by Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate.
And it must be said that fortunately it is an increasingly wise and correct habit from the modern generation of 18th century music performers, i.e. to have, for example, Kraus’s symphonies in the same CD Album with Haydn’s symphonies etc.
If in the era of Mozart there were many Kleinmeister of scarce quality, on the contrary, there were many great masters of that era, whose work for various and even bizarre reasons did not receive the right attention it deserved. Unfortunately what many people usually fail to correctly comprehend is that such composers like J.C. Bach, Vanhal, Dittersdorf, etc. developed their own personal Classical Era style already in the 1760s, when Mozart was only 5 years old and that child prodigy Mozart grew up studying and practicing in the style of these composers… even though the bad long habit of considering the music of the 18th century as a whole undifferentiated organism might lead to erroneously think the contrary!

So, thanks to the duo Perkins-Abbate, the two works by J.C. Bach and M. Clementi will be a nice discovery in this set of CD Albums and a motive of true enjoyment, being their sonatas 4-hands really delightful!

Even though written only in 1778 the Sonata in A major by J.C. Bach features many characteristics of his own style (in particular its Allegretto), that finely singing style that the young child prodigy Mozart, in 1765, had the possibility of studying with the composer in person in London and then, during the following years, through J.C. Bach’s scores. After 1765, J.C. Bach and Mozart remained always on friendly terms and in 1770 Mozart even officially became the pupil of the same famous teacher as J.C. Bach, that Padre Martini of Bologna, Italy (an authentic father of many great music composers), whose golden rule in composition was that «the beauty in music reveals itself naturally as a natural expression of masterly constructed parts», as Jommelli, another famous pupil of Padre Martini, put it more or less.

6. Mozart & Clementi again… a curiosity from Spring 1786.
The story of Mozart borrowing from Clementi’s piano works to create his famous overture for The Magic Flute in 1791 is well known and it is also well known how, according to Clementi, all this originated from Mozart’s reminiscences of their famous duel occurred ten years earlier in Vienna in 1781.
Now this may seem pure impression and fortuitous coincidence but Clementi’s Sonata Op. 14 No. 3 features in his Rondo: Allegro a well marked bar, which works as the conclusive seal of the whole piece and which curiously sounds like the extra-famous rhythmic motive of the Farfallone Amoroso from Le Nozze di Figaro.
The similarity here must be purely coincidental… A direct influence here may be probably very difficult and, above all, should be strictly historically and properly documented, but since this Sonata 4-hands by Clementi was first published in March 1786 and Mozart’s Figaro premiered in May 1786… well… what a striking coincidence!
Moreover this work by Clementi (performed on an ancient original square piano by Clementi & Co. London) is certainly among his best and liveliest products ever and the Adagio and the Rondo: Allegro are really two magnificent and very enjoyable masterpieces in their own right!

MozartCircle
S. & L.M. Jennarelli

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CD Spotlight May 2018: N. Porpora World Premiere Recording of Germanico

Nicola Porpora Just few know that Nicola Porpora, beside being the mentor of the most famous Farinelli, whom Mozart met in Bologna, was also a great composer and the teacher, in composition, of Joseph Haydn. Enjoy this World-Premiere Recording with a stellar cast! Max Emanuel Cencic Capella Cracoviensis Decca Classics

Impossible Interviews April 2018: Giovanni De’ Bardi the Father of Opera & of Football

Who is Giovanni de’ Bardi?

Giovanni de’ Bardi: Opera & Football
Member of one of the most important families in Florence linked to the family Medici and Lorenzo il Magnifico and famous for being the bankers of the Kings of England through the Middle Ages, just few know that Giovanni de’ Bardi is a fundamental figure in the history of music, since in 1576-1592 he decided to found the Modern Melodramma (and therefore the Modern Opera) and to develop the musical form of Monody (against Polyphony)…

And…

… seriously convinced to revive the ancient games of football of the Ancient Greeks and of the Ancient Romans, in 1580 Giovanni de’ Bardi first wrote the official rules of Calcio Fiorentino, founding thus the first Modern Football Game regulated by a precise code of rules, a first Modern Football Game with code of rules that will be the model to all the other forms of Modern Football Games from Soccer to Rugby and American Football…

de’ Bardi i.e. of the Bards: nomen omen
As for the case of Volta, also de’ Bardi is a meaningful surname.
Alessandro Volta is the modern pioneer of electricity (inventor of the electrical battery) and discoverer of methane at Lake Maggiore (in 1776: Mozart, Piano Concertos K.238 and K.246; Haydn, Symphony No. 61 and No. 66) and in the Apennine Mountains in Italy. But the most curious thing is that his surname Volta is a very ancient Etruscan name of a monster of the Tuscan Apennine Mountains, represented as a sort of killing monstrous wolf emerging from the wells and the depth of the earth like a natural gas (methane). And this Etruscan monster Volta was killed by electricity through a lightning hurled down from the sky after special prayers by the Etruscan priests of lightning (see Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, II, 54, 140).
The Florentine surname Bardi/de’ Bardi comes from the very Celtic word Bardus, i.e. bard in English and bardo in Italian, a man who invents and plays music and sings, both a verse-maker and a music composer,… What a meaningful surname for the man, Giovanni de’ Bardi, who in the 16th century deliberately decided to found the Modern Opera and the Monody music, in the attempt to revive the ancient forms of Ancient Greek music.

de’ Bardi: the great bank & wool companies of Florence
The family de’ Bardi (or simply Bardi), in Florence since the 10th century AD, was one of the most important and powerful families in Florence. Through their commercial company, the Compagnia de’ Bardi, they ran important international banks and also factories for the treatment of wool, wool which usually arrived in Florence from England in great quantities.
The Compagnia de’ Bardi had many offices in Italy, in Europe, in Africa and Asia:
a-(Italy) Ancona, Aquila, Bari, Barletta, Castello di Castro, Genova, Napoli, Orvieto, Palermo, Pisa, Venezia;
b-(Europe) Avignone, Barcellona, Bruges, Cipro, Maiorca, Marsiglia, Nizza, Parigi, Rodi, Siviglia;
c-(Asia) Constantinopole, Jerusalem;
d-(Africa) Tunisi;
e-(Rome) one of three major banks of the Pope in Rome with Peruzzi and Acciaiuoli;
f-Bank of the King of England, of the King of France and of the King of Naples.
In Florence the Family de’ Bardi had 60 Family houses, of which 45 were located in Oltrarno. The city street of origin of their Family was the via de’ Bardi(Oltrarno) and their major palaces were Palazzo Canigiani (via de’ Bardi nn. 28-30, Florence) and Palazzo Bardi (via Benci n. 5, Florence).
In 1810 the main family de’ Bardi was extinct and their properties were incorporated in the properties of the famous family Guicciardini (the descendants of famous figures like Francesco Guicciardini; and again nomen omen the family name means Hunting horns).
The last surviving member of the Family de’ Bardi died in 1964 in Florence as Bardi Serzelli conte di Vernio, who lived in the Family Palace used by Giovanni de’ Bardi for his music Camerata in 1576-1592 and who left an important series of pictures to the Uffizi Gallery of Florence.

de’ Bardi in Florence: Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio
The importance of the Family de’ Bardi was not only linked to their activity of major bankers, but also to a fundamental connection with two major figures of the Italian and International Literature: Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio.
If Dante’s Beatrice (the central inspirational character of his books Vita Novaand Divina Commedia) is really Beatrice Portinari, Beatrice (called Bice) got married to Simone de’ Bardi (called Mone) as his first wife, when she was ca. 15 years old. As is well known, Beatrice died when she was still young (8 June 1290) and Mone de’ Bardi got married to his second wife, Sibilla (called Bilia) Deciaioli. Mone de’ Bardi had, at least, three children: Francesca, Bartolo and Gemma. Unfortunately, we do not know if Mone’s children were children also of Beatrice (his first wife) or of Sibilla (his second wife). However, the three children of Mone then got married to other members of the major Florence families, the Strozzi and the de’ Medici, so that Contessina de’ Bardi was the grand-mother of the great Lorenzo de’ Medici il Magnifico himself.

The father of Giovanni Boccaccio, that Giovanni Boccaccio, author of the Decameron and who, with Francesco Petrarca, opened in Florence the first modern University Course of Ancient Greek (the first European professor of Ancient Greek was Leonzio Pilato, pupil of Barlaam Calabro) and financed the first modern translations of the ancient Greek books and in this way opened the way to the European Humanism and the Renaissance, his father was a major official of the Bank of the Bardi in Naples, responsible for the management of the money of the King of Naples. How this Naples experience in his youth with his father, as bank official of the Bardi at the court of the King of Naples, was crucial to Giovanni Boccaccio’s life and to his literary works is well known.

Giovanni de’ Bardi: the founder of the modern football games
Giovanni de’ Bardi, was not only a member of the Florentine Aristocracy well trained in both Latin and Ancient Greek and Music Composition, but he was also a well known military commander, who had had an adventurous and tempestuous life in his youth spent in Florence.
As a military commander, Giovanni de’ Bardi took part in various campaigns in Europe and in the Mediterranean. He fought for the de’ Medici against Siena, then he was at the Siege of Malta in 1565 and, once nominated captain, he fought victoriously in Hungary for the Emperor Maximillian II.
His great interest in the antiquities and in the necessity of a fundamental military training led him to establish, once and for all, the rules for an ancient Florence football game, which he thought crucial to the training of the young aristocratic men of Florence to the military life.
In order to better achieve his intent, Giovanni de’ Bardi studied the historical origin of the ancient football game typical of Florence and so he tracked its origin in the Ancient Greece football games Episkyros (i.e. the Game of the Ball on the Skyros Central Line) and Phaininda (i.e. the Deceiving Game with the Ball) from which the Romans derived their own version of this football game, the Harpastum(i.e. the Game of Carrying the Ball Away). Being Florence an ancient Roman town established by Julius Caesar himself in 59 BC, there was/is a certain real possibility that the Roman game Harpastum just survived in Florence, across the Medieval centuries, as the ancient Florence football game.
This ancient football game is described in this way by Julius Pollux in his book Onomasticon (9, 104-105):
1-2 teams one before the other on a field;
2-the field divided in 2 halves by a central line, called skyros;
3-the game starts with the ball positioned on the skyros central line (after this the name of the game Epi-skyros);
4-there are 2 backlines behind each team;
5-one team wins by carrying the adversary team/ball beyond the adversaries’ own backline.

According to the various sources we have, this kind of football game (already used in ancient Sparta, played by two teams of 12/14 men each and with a ball of leather inflated with air and called kenysphaira or follis) was very similar to modern Rugby with the addition of a few characteristics typical of Soccer (and, in general, it was a game even more violent than Rugby and American Football): and this is how Calcio Fiorentino (i.e. Florentine Kick Game) actually works. This kind of game was also praised by Galen in his treatise De parvae pilae exercitio(On the exercise with the small ball), as perfect for the physical exercise of the body.
Hence in 1580, following the authority of the ancient lexicographers, antiquarians, physicians and surgeons, Giovanni de’ Bardi finally established the fundamental 33 rules of the game of football with his book Discorso sopra il giuoco del Calcio Fiorentino, being the first in history to do so and creating thus a game similar both to Soccer and to Rugby/American Football.

Since de’ Bardi’s football game (Calcio Fiorentino) was the first football game governed by established rules and the Florentine cultural activities always being highly influential across Europe, we understand how the rules defined by de’ Bardi worked as a fundamental model and reference for any kind of modern football game.
Today Calcio Fiorentino is still played in Piazza Santa Croce (Florence) every year (see videos infra).

Since de’ Bardi, at the beginning, wanted the game to be an elite game for the aristocratic families (a sort of military exercise in the form of a football game, as the Harpastum was for the ancient Romans), families who usually were also in charge of the military activities of Florence, many important historical figures used to play Calcio Fiorentino throughout the centuries, even though it was a very violent, hard and tough game: among them there are three popes (Clemens VII, Leo XI, Urbanus VIII) and many political leaders and men from the Italian major aristocratic families (de’ Medici, Gonzaga, Barberini) and even the French princes of Condé (cadets of the House of Bourbon).

Read the Book on Football by Giovanni de’ Bardi (Florence 1580, .pdf file)

Videos on History and Tradition of Calcio Fiorentino

Giovanni de’ Bardi: the founder of modern opera
Giovanni de’ Bardi was also well trained in the art of music and his love for the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman traditions led him to develop the art of music, by reviving the ancient musical forms as described in the ancient manuscripts: a typical behaviour of a man of the Renaissance, who cultivated the love for the Ancient texts and traditions, like the truest Humanist, inspired by the Florentine Petrarca’s and Boccaccio’s first activities in this field (see supra).

Thus Giovanni de’ Bardi, in a period between 1576 and 1592, started a series of musical activities carried on by a group of people who usually kept their sessions of cultural discussions and of music playing at de’ Bardi’s own palace in Florence, Palazzo Bardi (via de’ Benci n. 5, Florence). This group received the name of Camerata de’ Bardi or Florentine Camerata. It was made up by composers, music theorists and scholars and was led by Giovanni de’ Bardi himself (the patron and host), who was also a music composer (unfortunately most of his music works went lost and are still lost).

Among the major composers and theorists who worked with Giovanni de’ Bardi there were the most famous Vincenzo Galilei (the father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei), Giulio Caccini (the composer of the first operas ever written) and Pietro Strozzi. The musical activities of this group were inspired by the works and the ideas of the scholar Girolamo Mei, a specialist of Ancient Greek drama and music, and were summarized in a series of books and works crucial to the development of modern melodramma/opera/monody:
1-Giovanni de’ Bardi, Discorso mandato… a G. Caccini sopra la musica antica e ‘l cantar bene;
2-Vincenzo Galilei (dedicated to Giovanni de’ Bardi), Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna;
3-Pietro de’ Bardi (son of Giovanni de’ Bardi), Lettera a G. B. Doni (describing the activities of the Camerata de’ Bardi and the birth of melodramma/opera);
4-Giulio Caccini, Le Nuove Musiche (the most important and theoretical part is its introduction Prefazione about Plato’s and other Greek philosophers’ theories on music and singing and the necessity of creating a new type of music different from the polyphony: effetti… che non potevano farsi per il contrappunto nelle moderne musiche, i.e. effects… that it was not possible to create through the counterpoint in the modern music pieces; Giulio Caccini was also an important music teacher of the new monody style and had many pupils ready to wide spread the new techniques, among them also collaborators of Monteverdi himself)
5-Jacopo Peri, Introduction to the score of Euridice (ritrovare questa nuova maniera di canto… gli antichi greci, i quali cantavano sulle scene le tragedie intere, i.e. to find out this new form of singing… the Ancient Greeks, who used to sing entire tragedies on stage)

The efforts and studies carried on by the Camerata since 1573 were finally supported, in the 1590s, by a new rival Florentine cultural circle led by Jacopo Corsi, who managed to gather around himself the same scholars and theorists who were involved also in the Camerata activities.
In this way, the two rival groups led Jacopo Corsi himself, Jacopo Corsi’s composer, Jacopo Peri, and de’ Bardi’s poet Ottavio Rinuccini to collaborate in creating the first opera ever written Dafne (unfortunately a work still lost: there are just a few fragments left of this opera composed both by Jacopo Corsi and by Jacopo Peri) in 1597/1598 (premiere probably 26 December 1598, Palazzo Tornabuoni, Florence, the palace of Jacopo Corsi).
Two years later the collaboration of the two composers Jacopo Peri (patron Jacopo Corsi) and Giulio Caccini (patron Giovanni de’ Bardi) with de’ Bardi’s poet Rinuccini led to the premiere of the second opera in history and the earliest still surviving opera, Euridice (premiere 6 October 1600, Palazzo Pitti, Florence).

Full performance of the earliest opera survived: Euridice by Peri & Caccini

So, in this way, that man, Giovanni de’ Bardi, that John of the Bards, who had founded the modern football games in 1580, managed to found also modern opera, the art of to act singing (il recitar cantando, an expression invented and introduced in 1600 by one of the composers of his Camerata de’ Bardi, Emilio de’ Cavalieri)…

Works by Peri, Caccini and Monteverdi at Palazzo Bardi, Florence

Monody or polyphony: a dilemma from de’ Bardi to Gluck, Mozart & Wagner
To create the melodramma/opera the Camerata de’ Bardi had to develop the technique of the monody and did this, by following the instructions of the Ancient Greece philosophers and theorists. Therefore monody started acquiring a position of contrast to the traditional polyphony style of that period, a polyphony style perceived as highly complicated (up to the obscurity), a corrupt and twisted form of music, incapable of conveying real emotional effects to an audience (nonetheless, as far as we know, it seems that both de’ Bardi and Caccini, in the end, thought that that counterposition of the two styles had not to be so completely radical).
Moreover the ideas of simplicity and of perspicuity which were cultivated with the monody style (that’s to say a canto and an accompanied basso with some chordal harmony, leading, in the end, to a recitativo, arioso and aria style) created a sort of dilemma, which had a great highly influential role in the history of music: monody vs. polyphony or harmony vs. counterpoint or homophonic-melodic treatment vs. contrapuntal treatment, as Schoenberg put it?
If we comprehend this passage well, we’ll better understand why the aesthetic ideas behind major composers like Paisiello found music perspicuity a fundamental aspect of the work of a music composer and which theoretical ideas led Gluck to carry on a reform of opera which had to change the structure of opera itself into a sort of simplified (also musically speaking) aboriginal purity. How Wagner developed such ideas, also from Gluck, into his form of opera/theatre (recitar cantando) is well known.
And we comprehend also why composers like Haydn and Mozart, following the ideas of C.P.E Bach, cultivated and developed forms of music, which were fundamentally and theoretically an amazing, marvellous and highly developed combination of the two techniques, the homophonic technique and the contrapuntal one, and why a certain acrimony emerged in Vienna between the Haydn-Mozart group of people and the Gluck group of people (among them Gluck’s pupil and official successor Salieri) with those many various accusations carried against Mozart and his opera writing: too many notes, lack of respect for word, German rubbish, due to its open contrast to the Italian and Gluckian simplified purity.

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WORKS BY DE’ BARDI
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A) Theoretical writings on music by de’ Bardi:

• Discorso mandato… a G. Caccini sopra la musica antica e ‘l cantare bene

He left also many works on Literature.

B) Compositions by de’ Bardi:

Unfortunately most of his works went lost. Here the surviving works:
• Miseri habitator (intermedii del 1589)
• Lauro, ohimé Lauro (1582)

At imslp.org de’ Bardi’s works (but the man in a portrait by Raffaello at IMSLP is Baldassare Castiglione and not Giovanni de’ Bardi):
Giovanni de’ Bardi at IMSLP.

CD Spotlight April 2018: 2 Piano Concertos by the Son of Mozart

Franz Xaver Mozart F.X. Mozart, the son of Mozart born in 1791, was a good and talented musician. Unfortunately being Mozart his father created serious difficulties to his career both as musician and as composer. Let’s re-discover his works a few of them considered even by young Liszt for some time. Howard Shelley Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen Hyperion Records

Interview January 2018: 10 Questions with I. Page

 

Ian Page: Official Sites
Ian Page Site: Ian Page & Classical Opera / The Mozartists
Ian Page: Ian Page (Twitter)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (Twitter)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (Facebook)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (YouTube)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (Season 2017/2018)

Ian Page: CD Albums
Ian Page: Mozart: Il Sogno di Scipione
Ian Page: Mozart: Haydn, Beethoven: Perfido!
Ian Page: Mozart: Zaide

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1. In 2017/2018 you are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Classical Opera, that, with its period-instrument orchestra under your direction as conductor, has gained the status of one of the major international leading exponents not only of the music of Mozart but also of his many contemporaries (i.e. Gluck, J.C.Bach, T.Arne, N.Jommelli and many others), thanks to a series of highly critically acclaimed live concerts and CD recordings. In 1997 you have founded Classical Opera, then in 2017 you have launched The Mozartists… Can you tell us about the story behind the birth and the many years of activity of Classical Opera? When did you encounter the music of Mozart for the first time and when did you decide to found Classical Opera and why? What have been the major challenges and the major accomplishments, you experienced during these 20 years? And what about The Mozartists?

It’s been a wonderful journey, although in many ways I’m always too close to it to be able to see the growth and evolution from a proper perspective.

In my late teens the music of Mozart occupied an increasingly important place in my heart – the piano concertos were my initial way in – and when I was at University at York (my degree was actually in English Literature), Roger Norrington came to conduct Beethoven’s Eroica symphony with the chamber orchestra there. It was completely revelatory for me, and I soon started supplementing by listening habits with period-instrument recordings of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

I was bowled over by how fresh, vibrant and surprising this core repertoire sounded with these instruments…

…The music suddenly seemed to make so much more sense; it was like scraping the veneer off an old painting by a great master and discovering that the original colours were so much brighter and more compelling.

By this stage I was in London studying as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music, and there I met David Syrus, who was for many years Head of Music at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (he only retired from the position last year). Like many other students before and since, I was fired by David’s musicianship, wisdom and supreme decency and generosity as a human being, and opera seemed to represent the ideal fusion of my twin loves of music and literature.

One thing led to another, and I naturally gravitated more and more towards Mozart’s operas…
…After the RAM I joined the music staff at Scottish Opera, where I worked with the Handel specialist Nick McGegan on a new production of La clemenza di Tito, and this again proved a revelatory experience. I was astonished by how wide the gulf generally was between a good and a bad performance of works like Tito or Idomeneo, and the following year Nick asked me to assist him at the uniquely beautiful and evocative rococo theatre in Drottningholm, Sweden. I was also now working at Glyndebourne, and specialising increasingly in Mozart. This was still limited to the big four or five operas, but I was becoming more and more interested in where Mozart’s operatic style and personality grew from. This was the seed for starting Classical Opera; I was struck by the dichotomy between Mozart being arguably the most highly regarded composer in the history of opera and yet only about a quarter of his operas holding a place in the repertoire of the world’s opera houses. There was no sudden light-bulb moment, but it gradually became important to me to try to set up a company that could do for Mozart what the Royal Shakespeare Company does for Shakespeare.

Over the years our brief, and my interests and ambitions for the company, have evolved, influenced partly by my growing fascination with placing Mozart’s music in context and partly by the feeling that there should be no limit to the repertoire we explore, having invested so much in assembling a wonderful team of musicians and establishing a shared philosophy and approach to performing the music of the 18th century. The name Classical Opera has increasingly felt limiting to this evolution, and earlier this year we launched The Mozartists as a vehicle for our expanding concert work.

Over our first 20 years our repertoire has already ranged from cantatas by Handel and Pergolesi to symphonies by Beethoven and Schubert, but Mozart – and his operas in particular – has always been our starting point. This new name allows us greater freedom and flexibility in our programming, while hopefully also causing less confusion among promoters and audiences. The important step for me was the recognition that we’re not exclusively an opera company, and so long as Mozart remains central to our repertoire and mission, there’s no reason why we can’t also explore Handel and Beethoven and even beyond.

20th Birthday Concert – 9 October 2017

2. In October 2017 you have released the CD recording Il Sogno di Scipione by Mozart, an opera composed in Salzburg in 1771, when Mozart was only 15 years old. You have studied and conducted Mozart’s early works, especially operas, for a long time: what’s your general impression on this incredible work by a young genius of 15 years old? Which parts of Il Sogno di Scipione impressed you most? In June 2018 you are going to conduct Mozart’s first full-length opera La finta semplice (1768), marking so another 250th anniversary. La finta semplice was written in 1768, in difficult conditions, and Il Sogno di Scipione in 1771, after Mozart’s formative experience in Italy: what’s the technical difference between the two works, in your opinion? Il Sogno di Scipione is part of your project The Complete Mozart Operas, which started in 2012: at which point of your Mozartian operatic parcours are you now and what for the future?

The parallel with Shakespeare is a significant one.

Both Mozart and Shakespeare wrote some works that are less good than others, but even in the least good ones they will suddenly do something – tap a depth of beauty, wisdom or truth – that no one else could have thought of.

Il sogno di Scipione is an interesting case in point. It’s not one of his most challenging or accomplished works – indeed it’s the first release in our ongoing complete Mozart Opera cycle that we recorded without having previously performed the work in the theatre or the concert hall – but it still has touches, details, sleights of hand, that none of his contemporaries could have thought of…

… There’s an accompanied recitative near the end in which Scipio awakens from his dream. As he stirs the sound-world suddenly changes and the strings play two bars that instantly transport the listener to a magical, elevated place.

Il sogno di Scipione

The more familiar I become with Mozart’s early operas the more aware I become that what he was extraordinary at is matching the scale and ambition of each work to the level and expectation of the commission. Works commissioned to celebrate royal weddings were virtuosic but emotionally shallow, and works written for young or amateur performers were charming but technically undemanding, while he was able to throw the kitchen sink at major commissions such as Mitridate and Lucio Silla, in the knowledge that he was writing for some of the top singers and players of the day.

Il sogno di Scipione was commissioned as a dutiful and obsequious act of homage to the Archbishop of Salzburg, so it had a specific function whose message would only be muddied by a complex plot. In truth, the piece has virtually no plot whatsoever, and this had been one of my reasons for not having performed it before. During rehearsals for the recording, though, the moment we accepted the lack of plot and started to explore the way the score underpins and enhances the philosophical nature of the libretto, we found that the music suddenly lifted off the page, and it was wonderful to see how much our singers and players started to appreciate and enjoy the piece.

La finta semplice was composed for Vienna’s leading opera buffa singers, although in the end it was never performed there, and Goldoni’s libretto is genuinely comic, so the twelve-year-old Mozart gave it his best shot. In keeping with the styles of the day, the arias are substantially shorter than opera seria ones, but the music is astonishingly skilful and successful, and the chain-finales already anticipate the celebrated Da Ponte operas…

La Finta Semplice Trailer – 6 & 8 June 2018

… At the conclusion there is even a poignant pre-echo of Le nozze di Figaro, as Giacinta begs forgiveness from her brothers for her impish trickery. With Rosina’s Senti l’eco and Amoretti, too, time suddenly seems to stand still and the comedy is briefly suspended in a vision of genuine sincerity, compassion and vulnerability.

The next release (the seventh) in our ongoing complete Mozart cycle will be of Bastien und Bastienne, which we are coupling with the early dramatic cantata Grabmusik. These two works, both completed before Mozart even reached his teens, will be released in autumn 2018, and again reflect Mozart’s skill at matching his music to the scale of the commission. Bastien und Bastienne was the only one of Mozart’s operas to be conceived for performance in a private house rather than a theatre or opera house, but its bucolic charm and simplicity are beguiling.

Grabmusik, meanwhile, was allegedly the result of a test set by the distrusting Archbishop of Salzburg, who had the young composer confined to solitary confinement while he set the text, to prove that he was not receiving help from his father or any other elders. The result is one of Mozart’s least known works, but it contains music of incredible emotional range, that must have quashed any doubters for good!

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Ian Page’s
THE COMPLETE MOZART’S OPERAS – CD Series (2011-2017)
& Other Albums
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• Mozart: Il sogno di Scipione
• Perfido! Vocal Works by Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven
• Mozart: Zaide

• Handel: Where’re You Walk
• Mozart: Il Re Pastore
• Mozart: Mitridate, re di Ponto

• Mozart: Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots
• Mozart: Apollo et Hyacinthus
• Gluck: Blessed Spirit

• Arne: Artaxerxes
• A-Z Mozart Opera

3. In 2015 with your Classical Opera you have launched another special type of concerts, synchronically featuring works by Mozart and by his major contemporaries during the same musical season: MOZART 250, which, through its concerts and its retrospective Series, chronologically follows an ideal 250th anniversary line in the annual footsteps of Mozart’s life from 1765/2015 (Mozart’s childhood visit to London) to 1791/2041. What led you to create such special annual series of musical events? Beside Mozart’s La finta semplice, in 2018 you’ll present Haydn’s Applausus, his Symphony No. 26 Lamentatione and other works by him and music by J.C.Bach, Jommelli, Hasse and Vanhal: what about your interest in the music by this group of composers and, in particular, in the music by Haydn?

Again, I can’t remember the exact moment I had the idea, but it seems to incorporate several of the things that are important to me. I’ve always been fascinated by what music Mozart heard and was influenced by, and which of his fellow composers he admired (he was famously dismissive of most of them!).

I also found myself being increasingly frustrated by reviewers and commentators judging Mozart’s early works in comparison with the masterpieces he was writing twenty years later rather than with the other music being written and performed at the same time.

Even when I first set up Classical Opera it seemed obvious that if we learnt to perform works like La finta semplice and Mitridate well then that would beneficially inform our performances of the great masterpieces of his maturity, and with MOZART 250 it’s proved really useful to be able to place Mozart’s works alongside works being written in the same year by other composers. Even those pieces which Mozart would almost certainly not have heard throw light on the gradual evolution of musical style during his lifetime, and of course the works that he did know are of even greater interest.

We’ve already featured over thirty composers in the first three years of MOZART 250, and our 2015 mini-festival exploring the music being performed in London during Mozart’s childhood stay there featured several composers that not even I had heard of before – people like Mattia Vento, Davide Perez, George Rush and William Bates.

We’ll be releasing a 2-CD set of highlights from these concerts in May 2018.

If everything goes according to plan MOZART 250 will generally form approximately half of our live projects each year between now and 2041.

Every January we present a retrospective concert offering an overview of the musical year 250 years previously. Our 1768 survey, which takes place at Wigmore Hall on 23 January, will include symphonies by Haydn and Vanhal, a flute concerto by Johann Christian Bach, played by our principal flautist Katy Bircher, and arias from Jommelli’s Fetonte, Hasse’s Piramo e Tisbe, Haydn’s Lo speziale and Mozart’s La finta semplice, all sung by the young Swiss-Belgian soprano Chiara Skerath, making her UK début. Devising these programmes is very labour-intensive but I really enjoy the process, and it always throws up some fascinating discoveries.

Of course there are some years when Mozart was extremely prolific and others when he wrote very little, but even the least productive years provide opportunities to dig a little deeper into other more obscure repertoire…

…  1766 (2016), for example, was a relatively thin year on paper, but it enabled us to present the UK première of Jommelli’s Il Vologeso, which proved to be a great success. As we enter the fourth year of MOZART 250 a consistent pattern is starting to take shape, with Haydn unsurprisingly emerging as the leading light alongside the young Mozart.

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And about Haydn,…

… just consider that, beside Applausus and his symphony No. 26 for this season, I’m on a mission to champion all the symphonies without a nickname, because they tend to be overlooked in favour of those with nicknames, and among those nos. 47, 80 and 99 are particular favourites.

Haydn 2009 Celebrations

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Ian Page’s MOZART 250 – The Journey of a Lifetime
Complete Concerts Series (2015-2018)
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• Mozart 250: Year 1768-2018
• Mozart 250: Year 1767-2017
• Mozart 250: Year 1766-2016
• Mozart 250: Year 1765-2015

4. You have worked at Glyndebourne and Drottningholm, experiencing, in this way, peculiar conditions of opera performance, a few of them, certainly typical of the 18th century (the Drottningholm Theatre, for example): how such experiences enriched your vision of the 18th century music? You have worked also with Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Alexander Gibson, Ivor Bolton, Nicholas McGegan, Mark Wigglesworth: how did they contribute to your growth as a musician, as a conductor and as an artist? You work with many marvellous, also young, artists and professionals year after year: do you want to remember someone in particular and some anecdotes? And as an entrepreneur, what have been your major challenges and what your advice and tips for those who’d like to launch their careers in the world of classical music as entrepreneurs?

When I assisted Nic McGegan at Drottningholm we were working on a production of Una cosa rara by Martin y Soler, and it was fascinating to work on such a typical 18th-century opera there.
After a few weeks in a rehearsal studio in Stockholm it seemed like a distinctly average piece with a fairly ordinary cast, but as soon as rehearsals moved into the Drottningholm theatre the piece, and the singers, suddenly sounded a million dollars!

That was a really formative experience for me; it made me realise that there are so many 18th-century works that need the right tender, loving care to flourish, and that they really start to make sense when you can recreate the conditions for which they were originally conceived.

Glyndebourne was also a wonderful place to work, and it was there that I first met and worked with Sir Charles Mackerras. I worked on all three of the Mozart/Da Ponte operas there, and as assistant conductor I had musical responsibility for luxuriously extensive understudy rehearsals, which provided me with the opportunity to work with some of the leading young singers in the country. I subsequently assisted Mackerras on his recording of Idomeneo, and he followed the development of Classical Opera with a keen interest, always generous with his advice and encouragement. Along with Stanley Sadie and Christopher Raeburn – two other great people, great minds and great Mozartians – he was the most influential mentor for me in the early years of the company.

I worked with the other three conductors you mention on rather different repertoire – Puccini, Britten and Stravinsky – but I learnt a huge amount from all of them. Sir Alex was particularly warm and inspirational, and I continue to hold Mark Wigglesworth up as a role model for his fierce musical intelligence and the depth of his thinking and preparation.

Then there are the conductors and other musicians from whom I’ve learnt so much from watching them perform or listening to their recordings. We should always retain an overriding sense of modesty and humility, but at the same time it’s really important in refining our own thoughts and interpretations to analyse what we particularly like or dislike about other performers and performances.

When I started Classical Opera we quickly gained a reputation for our work in identifying and nurturing top-quality young singers. This was partly due to the fact that we couldn’t afford more established artists, but it’s also true that this repertoire particularly suits young voices.

Young singers also tend to be more open to the style of detailed, explorative rehearsals that I prefer, and what I find particularly satisfying now is that when singers who worked with us at the start of their careers come back after a gap of several years, we already have a shared language which comes back in a matter of minutes, as with all good friendships.

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It took me rather longer to work out and identify the sort of players that I most enjoyed working with, but now that we have established such a strong and loyal sense of ensemble I’m continually inspired and fed by the players with whom I work.

It takes a certain type of open spirit, and intellectual rigour, to tame and master these wonderful old instruments, and building an ensemble isn’t just about finding the best players but also about instilling the right shared values, goals and reasons for doing what we do.

 

5. Your favourite work by Mozart and your favourite work by J. Haydn.

Oh dear, these answers will probably change on a daily basis!

For Mozart it would probably have to be one of the operas or one of the piano concertos.

The C minor Mass would also be a contender, probably more so than the Requiem, and a recent addition to the short-list would be the Sinfonia Concertante K.364, which I conducted for the first time three months ago. But how to whittle it down to one? The old cliché is probably right, that my favourite Mozart opera is the one I’m working on at the time, but this week, and off the top of my head because I know the question will get harder the more I think about it, my short-list would be Idomeneo, Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte and the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. And if I had to name one – today, and without questioning why on earth Figaro and Don Giovanni aren’t on my shortlist – I’ll say Così fan tutte. It’s such a profound, complex and modern score, and is still widely misunderstood and under-appreciated.

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Haydn is hardly any easier.

As I’ve already said previously, I’m on a mission to champion all the symphonies without a nickname, because they tend to be overlooked in favour of those with nicknames, and among those nos. 47, 80 and 99 are particular favourites. Today’s podium places, though, would be occupied by:
3. String Quartet in F major, Op. 77, no. 2.
2. Piano Sonata No. 52 in E flat major
1. Symphony No. 44 in E minor, Trauer

6. Do you have in mind the name of some neglected composer of the 18th century you’d like to see re-evaluated?

You mean apart from Mozart?…

… I’m only joking, but I do love the line of Peter Schickele, who, when asked which composer he considered to be the most underrated, replied: «Mozart – since the highest rave is a gross understatement».

Gluck CO’s Blessed Spirit at Gramophone Critics Choice December 2010

Apart from Mozart, there is still valuable work to be done in increasing appreciation of Gluck (especially his pre-Orfeo operas) and Johann Christian Bach, but of the more forgotten names there are five that stand out for me: Beck, Jommelli, Kraus, Traetta and Vanhal.

7. Name a neglected piece of music of the 18th century you’d like to see performed in concert with more frequency.

I have quite a lot of these, including several by the composers I’ve just mentioned.

They’re not confined to lesser known composers either; in March we’re performing Haydn’s Applausus cantata, which doesn’t seem to have been presented in London for many years. I’m in a very fortunate position, because when I do come across a neglected work that I really rate I can often incorporate it into our programming.

For this question, though, I’m actually going to choose a work by Mozart – his concert aria Ah, lo previdi, K.272…

Perfido!

… Mozart’s concert arias in general don’t get as much exposure as they deserve, and I’ve never understood why this should be…

… Maybe promoters just don’t think of singers to fill their concerto slot. Whatever the reasons for their relative neglect, Mozart’s concert arias contain some of his best music, and the more extended ones are like concentrated mini-operas in their own right.

Ah, lo previdi is certainly one of these, a scena lasting over twelve minutes and incorporating two fiercely dramatic recitatives – the second one in particular contains some astonishing harmonic shifts and moments of exquisite, tender vulnerability – and two arias, the second of which incorporates a beautiful oboe solo.

Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, subsequently urging his beloved Aloysia Weber to learn it and «to put yourself in all seriousness into Andromeda’s situation and position», and the celebrated Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein wrote that Mozart «almost never wrote anything more ambitious, or containing stronger dramatic feeling».

We are including this piece in Perfido!, our recent recording of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven concert arias with Sophie Bevan, and I was delighted how many of the reviews singled it out for praise.

8. Have you read a particular book on Mozart Era you consider important for the comprehension of the music of this period?

I’m very grateful for the opportunity that this question gives me to acknowledge some of the books I couldn’t do without!

With Mozart of course we are lucky in that we have a very substantial series of Mozart family letters that have survived, and Otto Deutsch’s collection of Mozart documents is similarly indispensable, so these are the two bibles.

Too many modern biographies intercede with their author’s own attempts to formulate a particular theory or new angle, but a glorious exception is Stanley Sadie’s Mozart: the early years. This was intended as the first of a two-part biography, but Stanley sadly died before he could write the second book. For a clear, authoritative and insightful overview of Mozart’s life and works up until 1781, though, this is the book to have.

Scarcely a month goes past without me referring to two other fabulous books: The Compleat Mozart (don’t be put off by the title), edited by Neal Zaslaw, is a wonderful compendium of Mozart’s complete works, and Peter Clive’s Mozart and his Circle contains invaluable biographical entries on all the important people in Mozart’s life.

Zaslaw’s benchmark book on Mozart’s Symphonies is also outstanding, and for Mozart’s operas I still don’t think that anyone has rivalled William Mann’s The Operas of Mozart, first published in 1977, which has the huge advantage of devoting a whole chapter to each of the pre-Idomeneo operas, rather than merging them into a token single-chapter appraisal.

My final top recommendation would be John A. Rice’s Mozart on the Stage, which has fascinating information and insights on how Mozart’s operas would have been composed, rehearsed and staged.

9. Name a movie or a documentary that can improve the comprehension of the music of this period.

Like the play, the film of Amadeus has plenty of critics, but despite its faults it does recreate the spirit of Mozart’s Vienna (despite being filmed in Prague!), and the flights of fancy about how some of Mozart’s compositions came into being are captivating and imaginative, if spurious. I also find Farinelli exciting for its evocation of 18th-century theatres and opera performances.

In terms of documentaries, Phil Grabsky’s excellent In Search of… series has incorporated full length films devoted to Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but I have a hazy memory of a wonderful series of TV programmes on these composers (and Schubert) from the 1980s…

… It was presented by Bamber Gascoigne and had Stanley Sadie as musical consultant, and I think it was called Man and Music. I’ve no idea whether these programmes are available anywhere now, but I’d love to know if they are, if only to see if they’re as good as I remember…

10. Do you think there’s a special place to be visited that proved crucial to the evolution of the 18th century music?

I’m not sure I can think of anywhere about which I could make such an expansive claim, but the Drottningholm Slottsteater is my own personal First Choice.

I’m a big fan of Stockholm and its people, and the story behind the theatre’s preservation is such a fortuitous and romantic one. It’s an amazingly beautiful place and setting, too, but more than anything it’s the ambience inside the theatre itself which is truly magical. It feels as close to time travel as I’m ever likely to get!

Thank you very much for having taken the time to answer our questions!

Thank you!

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