Listening List

The Young Beethoven: A Play List

from Artistic Director and Conductor Steven Schick

A sense of exploration, adventure, and energy often mark the early works of a composer. Music made before the days of heady fame, where the great composer can do no wrong (!), feels electric to me. This is art that is still on trial: to the contemporaries of the composer, to history, and often to the artist her- or himself.

We celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday by looking at his Symphony #1, created in 1800 by the 30-year old composer, only recently transplanted from his native Bonn to Vienna, the musical capital of the world. And we’ll pair each movement of the mercurial Beethoven symphony with an early work by another artist and a theme that helps us gain a little insight into the mindset of an emerging master.

One quick note: the merging of styles itself would have been familiar to the young Beethoven, since many classical era concerts were nearly vaudevillian mixtures of styles and purposes. Very unlike the “silent adoration of a masterpiece” that typifies then the modern concert.

Pure Energy

Nothing beats a beat. And Beethoven knew it. So after the nearly ubiquitous slow introduction, he turns up the heat and the noise. Compared to the gentility of much aristocratic music of the day, Beethoven’s first symphonic work gets up in your face. And fast.

On the Beatles’ first day of recording with a big label (EMI) they ended with a cover of a high energy cover of a Phil Medley and Bert Berns tune, “Twist and Shout.” Lennon’s voice was shot from a long day of recording. But the pure energy is unmistakably Beatles.

Beethoven: Symphony #1, 1st Movement

The Beatles: Twist and Shout

From the Tradition of Song

The second movement of a classical symphony is usually slow and song-like. (But beware, Beethoven himself switches things up in the 9th.) In his first symphony, the slow second movement is a little formal, constructed on a canonic exposition of his theme. In fact, truly beautiful slow themes came a little late to Beethoven. But the sense of space here and the patience with which he lets the germinal cells of melody play out, prepare us for the great slow movements of the later symphonies and string quartets.

Patsy Cline, on the other hand, felt instantly at home in the fluid intimacy of slow music. “I Fall to Pieces” is one of her first hits. Though she lived her entire life as a young artist, dying at age 30 in a plane crash while returning home to Nashville from a concert tour.

Beethoven: Symphony #1, 2nd Movement

Patsy Cline: I Fall to Pieces

Time to Dance

Beethoven felt a keen tension in his symphonic music between the typical “Minuet and Trio”—typically stately and dancelike in the Minuet and often slightly wistful in the Trio—and the helter-skelter dash of the scherzo, a minuet so amped up that no one could dance to it. The more classical of his symphonies have minuets, and the stormier ones have scherzos. In a strange way, the third movement of his first symphony is both stately and a little amped up. Beethoven wanted it all!

Before the myth and michigas of Michael Jackson, there was his early work with The Jackson 5. If you can sit still through “ABC,” you’ve got more Zen than I do!

Jackson Five: ABC

Beethoven: Symphony #1, 3rd Movement

The Big Finish

In a way, the last movement of an early piece is a kind of “late music.” By then we have learned the language of the piece and been taken on the artistic journey of the composer. There is usually some reflection on what happened earlier in the work and that distance affords some maturity. Beethoven’s last movement begins with a musical joke, a blasted chord setting up a soft whimsical phrase, in the Dominant Key, played by first violins. The music gets softer and softer, the bow is pulled back to the breaking point. Then, Beethoven lets it fly.

It’s the same way that RUN DMC lights it up when they break through the wall and join Aerosmith on stage in “Walk this Way.”

Beethoven: Symphony #1, 4th Movement

Aerosmith and Run: DMC Walk This Way

LISTENING LIST

Short Pieces for Tiny Porches

Tiny Porches is a project of the Breckenridge Music Festival that features local stories in combination with small newly-commissioned pieces presented in small spaces. Our idea was to mirror the way neighbors would meet on each other’s porches to share stories and listen to music. 

To whet our appetites for this week’s conversation about Tiny Porches, which will feature composers and storytellers, Asher Tobin Chodos, Alex Stephenson, Lisa Atkinson and Leon Joseph Littlebird, in conversation with Festival Artistic Director and Conductor Steven Schick we offer a tasting menu of small pieces. But, don’t be fooled: these works may be short, but they are impactful!

John Adams

Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Take all of the energy, imagination and élan of John Adams and pack it into a single piece, less than 5-minutes long, and you get Short Ride in a Fast Car. Adams’s early music, which also includes the ground-breaking opera, Nixon in China is pure electricity….as you will hear!

That’s All Right

Jayme Stone and Breckenridge Music Festival Orchestra

One of the highlights of our 2019 season was the appearance of Jayme Stone and Folklife with the BMF orchestra in a program of orchestral arrangements of the Lomax songbook, all arranged for us by Max Wolpert. Everything on that concert was a study in intimacy, particularly this gentle version of That’s All Right.

Listen below to an encore, featuring the astonishing Bonnie Paine, who was a featured soloist on the Lomax/Jayme Stone concert last year, in a performance with violinist Enion Pelta-Tiller. It’s pure joy!

Bonnie Paine and Enion Pelta-Tiller

Cold Mountains-What My Darlin’ Says

If Mahler was the musical version of Tolstoy and Proust, writing music like huge novels set in expansive landscapes, then Webern wrote Haiku, the musical version of Basho. This movement from his poetic Five Pieces, less than a minute in length, says all you need to know. Webern’s dense, modern language spiraled inward towards personal truth and the concentrated expressive language of the individual.

Webern Five Pieces for Orchestra, #5

In 2016, the first piece I conducted with the BMF orchestra was Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. These “children’s pieces,” are full of great music and some not-so-childish themes. Re-listening to this masterpiece repays richly. In an interesting twist, we offer an arrangement of the third movement from Mother Goose the Hungarian percussion quartet, Amadinda.

Maurice Ravel: Mother Goose Suite, 3rd movement La Laideronnette, arr for percussion

So, let’s not forget the storytelling aspect of Tiny Porches. Enjoy this 49-second story from the master of low-key pithy humor, Stephen Wright.

Stephen Wright

We finish with The Minute Waltz, the quintessential, short flashy piece played by the equally quintessential pianist, Lang Lang.

Frederic Chopin Op. 64 #1

The Minute Waltz

Listening List

THE EVOLUTION OF DEBUSSY’S PIANO MUSIC

By Michael Linville, Artistic Partner for Chamber Music

Debussy’s early output was marked by lyricism, elegance, sensuality and importantly, strict form. Even though at an early age Debussy was interested in breaking the rules, his first works gained the attention of his teachers because (for the most part) they followed them!

When we think of Debussy’s most beloved and well-known piano pieces, they tend to be from the first period of his compositional life.

Rêverie (1890)

The dream Debussy relates in this piece is gentle and bittersweet. The accompanying figurations leave the harmonies in question, allowing for surprises in the change of direction, and unexpected moves to unrelated keys. Tuneful and innocent, the immense appeal of the language and relative technical simplicity makes it a favorite among younger pianists, even today.

Hear Ella Fitzgerald’s take on this tune:

Ballade (1890)

From the same vintage as Rêverie, the Ballade is likewise tuneful and bucolic, at least at the outset. This is a ballade from the tradition of Brahms and Chopin, a kind of storytelling that leaves the actual story for the listener to make up as it goes. Debussy’s Ballade starts with a “once upon a time” evocation. The initial melody is repeated and developed over the course of the piece and climaxes with a section accompanied by rolling arpeggios in the left hand.

Joni Mitchell’s Overture/Cotton Avenue from Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (1977) sets up a similar sense of wonder and adventure.

Two Arabesques (1888-1891)

Arabesque No.1

Arabesques No.2

The most notable aspect of these pieces is the use of modal harmony – moving away from the stricter harmonic notions of the Romantic composers and freeing it to imply more ancient music.

Clair de Lune (from Suite bergamasque, 1890-1905)

In Clair de Lune, we start to hear Debussy using rhythm to set the pace for how the piece is rolled out. In many instances, the rhythms work on multiple levels to give a greater sense of freedom, and to allow individual lines to have unique profiles. Harmony and texture become increasingly more essential to the music’s identity.

Hear The Art of Noise reimagine Debussy’s Sarabande from Pour le Piano:

For contrast, listen to one of Debussy’s Etudes, from 1915. The piano writing here is virtuosic, and each etude is a musical masterpiece that focuses on one element of piano technique. You’ll immediately hear how much Debussy’s compositional process evolved from those early piano pieces. Here is Mitsuko Uchida playing “Pour les Agréments” (“For the grace notes”)

Listening List

Party at home with this playlist of straight-up, foot-stomping jazz for the 21st century. Discover new music from The Hot Sardines, the band that was slated for the 2020 Applause event, “Bourbon Street Boogie” intertwined with music from Breck Music Presents artists of the past.

Listening List

5 American Symphonies You Should Know

From NPR Classical

NPR Classical examined a few fascinating homegrown symphonies with the help of five acclaimed musicians. Read their reviews of American symphonic works and what makes them great.