The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra Archives - NativeDSD Music

Piano Concertos nos. 1 & 2

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Before we listen to the young Dutch pianist Hannes Minnaar play Beethoven’s first two piano concertos, it is perhaps interesting to see how another young pianist may have played them once, long ago – a German who lived in Vienna, a headstrong and temperamental genius. His name? Ludwig van Beethoven. His pupil, the famous composer of etudes and sensitive observer Carl Czerny, once described his playing: “[…] characterised by passionate strength, alternated with all the charm of a smooth cantabile. The expressiveness is often intensified to extremes, particularly when the music tends towards humour […] Passages become extremely daring by use of the pedal […] His playing does not possess that clean and brilliant elegance of certain other pianists. On the other hand, it was spirited, grand and, especially in the adagio, filled with emotion
and romanticism.”
Strength. Smoothness. Humour. Focus on these aspects and you will come close to Beethoven. Minnaar, De Vriend and The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra play the concertos in reverse order: first 2, then 1. A bit odd. Or isn’t it? Artistically, it is highly defensible: introduced as it were by the more balanced, more modest Piano Concerto no. 2, no. 1 radiates all the more festiveness (trumpets, clarinets and tympani have come to join the orchestra). Perhaps the lovely, gentle, almost feminine B flat major of Concerto no. 2 would not have been able to hold its own after the male and martial C major. But there is something else

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Piano Concerto No. 3

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The missing link. Hannes Minnaar’s release of the beginning and end phases (numbers 1 & 2 and 4 & 5 respectively) of Beethoven’s piano concertos is now ‘followed’ by No. 3. It forms a link in another sense as well. The first concertos: replete with youth, sparkling, often even rambunctious; the last two both more mature and more heroic. And Piano Concerto No. 3 then? In part still building on his youth (Beethoven was around 30 when he wrote it), this is the first one where we hear heroism. Might has become the central theme.

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Matthaus Passion

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

On 11 March 1829 the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in the concert hall of the Singakademie in Berlin, almost 100 years after the work had last been played. Some 900 people were in attendance, and the performance was so successful that it was repeated twice, on 21 March and on Good Friday, 17 April 1829.
Mendelssohn was given the score of the St Matthew Passion for his 15th birthday, 3 February 1824, or else as a Christmas present in 1823. He knew of the score as one of Zelter’s pupils and as a member of the Singakademie, which had a few chorus parts from the St Matthew in its repertoire. Zelter, the conductor of the Singakademie, found the work too diffi cult to be performed in public. Mendelssohn, however, had a different opinion. In 1828 he set to work on the score, making changes in line with the day and age and the instruments then commonly used. Mendelssohn meant many of his changes to provide a better understanding of what, in his opinion, formed the heart of the passion story.
After its successes in Berlin, the St Matthew Passion was performed in a number of German cities. In 1841 Mendelssohn gave a performance in Leipzig, where he was then Kapellmeister, in the Thomaskirche, the church where the work had fi rst been performed. For its performance in 1841, Mendelssohn again made alterations to the score, but fewer than in 1828/1829.

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Beethoven Piano Concertos 4 & 5

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 are performed by pianist Hannes Minnaar with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jan Willem de Vriend on Challenge Records International Classics. It is one of the 9 albums by Hannes Minnaar available at NativeDSD.Com

Beethoven wrote five Concertos for Piano and Orchestra. It doesn’t sound like much; his near-contemporary Mozart composed 27. But although it may be a bit smaller, Beethoven’s contribution is a true monument in the history of music.

He used the first two concertos to move away from his example, Mozart (whose last piano concerto was from 1791, while Beethoven completed his first in 1795); in Concerto no. 3 Beethoven carved out new dimensions for the genre’s dramatic possibilities.

Beethoven’s Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 have proved to be unmatched in their genre. The radiant Concerto No. 4 is worshipped by experts and aficionados alike, while No. 5 is the all-time favorite of the public at large. Almost 25 years passed between Beethoven’s first sketches for a piano concerto and the double line he drew under his last one. His piano concertos thus show a development covering more than half of the composer’s life.

Hannes Minnaar – Pianist
Jan Willem de Vriend – Conductor
Netherlands Symphony Orchestra

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Symphonies nos. 4 & 5

Sjoerd Staal — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It was only when he reached Naples in April 1831 – after almost a year of his journey – that Italy began to seep its way into Mendelssohn’s music. Naples also called a halt to the pleasures of travelling. The weather was dreadful, with continual rain, so it was better to remain indoors. Mendelssohn used his ‘free time’ for a new symphony in the vibrant key of A major, the Italian. It seems to have fl owed from his pen with consummate ease, although he was only to complete the work some two years later, in Berlin, when his journey to Paestum on the Gulf of Salerno was far in his past.
The Italian is a real party piece. This was certainly the view following the work’s premiere in London on 13 May 1833, given by the Philharmonic Society. (Mendelssohn was highly acclaimed in London, where he had been commissioned to produce a new symphony). This makes it all the more remarkable that Mendelssohn himself described this masterpiece as having been ‘one of the most bitter moments of my entire career’, fretting, for years to come, about whether he ought to rewrite the second, third and fourth movements.
The opening Allegro vivace abounds with Mediterranean exuberance. The slow movement probably depicts a religious procession, witnessed by the composer in Naples. The third movement – Con moto moderato – seems to have little in the way of Italian infl uence. Rather one might imagine oneself in the shade of Germanic limes, beech and pine trees, Biedermeier-style. But the fi nale is drawn directly from Italian folk life: an irresistible, whirling dance to the rhythmic beat of the saltarello.

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Violin Concertos 1 & 2

Sjoerd Staal — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Opera played an important role in the life and works of Niccolò Paganini. Opera violinists and composers (Francesco Gnecco, Ferdinando Paër) were among his first teachers. At the age of 23 Paganini became leader of the opera orchestra of Bonaparte’s sister in Lucca. When he finally decided to espouse the career of a traveling virtuoso in late 1809 he used to perform in opera houses, eagerly attending their performances and commenting on them in his letters. As to Rossini, he was dernier cri, at least after the sensational success of his “Tancredi” in 1813. No stage in Italy or abroad could afford to ignore him. Paganini procured himself of a score at least of one Duet from this opera and tried to attend as many Rossini- performances as possible. In his own concert bills he accompanied singers singing Rossini’s arias and enriched them with spontaneous improvisations. He also improvised, composed, and performed purely instrumental variations on Rossini’s most popular themes. At least three of these Variations for violin and orchestra, on themes of “Mosé”, “La Cenerentola” and “Tancredi”, have come down to us. They seem to have been written down in 1818/19. But since Paganini rarely wrote down or mentioned the dates of his compositions we can never be sure.

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Violin Concerto & Romances

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was beyond any doubt strongly influenced by the violin concertos of the French school, especially those of Giovanni Battista Viotta (1755-1824) and Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831). It was therefore no coincidence that Beethoven dedicated his Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 47, to Kreutzer, a violinist from Versailles who was one of the instrument’s great virtuosos. Kreutzer, however, never played the piece and complained that it was incomprehensible (“rageusement intelligible”). Beethoven was far ahead of his time for the instrument. The violin playing of Beethoven’s friend Franz Clement (1780-1842) was said to be especially intimate and gracious, with unfailing intonation and a highly developed bowing technique. That must have greatly appealed to Beethoven, for he was no fan of the dazzling, demonstrative type of playing in which so many violinists shone and resorted to to win over audiences. Clement, moreover, had earned respect as conductor of the Theater an der Wien and the composer of some 25 concertos.
It is hardly surprising that Beethoven dedicated his first and only violin concerto to Clement. The inscription above the manuscript reads: “Concert par Clemenza pour Clement primo Violino e direttore al theatro a Vienna Del L.V. Bthwn 1806.”

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Symphonies nos. 7 & 8

Sjoerd Staal — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

1812 was a difficult year for Beethoven. His general health and his hearing in particular were steadily declining. Throughout his life he had been unlucky in love; none of his relationships had lasted very long. At the beginning of July in that year Beethoven wrote his three famous letters to his “Immortal Beloved”. Beethoven biographers such as Solomon Maynard and Lewis Lockwood have concluded that these letters were very likely addressed to Antonie Brentano. There is still no real proof as to who his mysterious beloved was. But it is certain that Beethoven loved this woman, whoever she was, from the depths of his soul. The words in his letters are heartfelt and moving. But a truly long-lasting relationship with a woman was not possible in his life. He reached this conclusion himself and became more and more convinced of it. A relationship could not fit in with his way of life, his unpredictable nature and his devotion to his music. Because Beethoven was his work, he was his music.

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Triple Concerto & Archduke Trio

Sjoerd Staal — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The piano trio was the ensemble type with which Beethoven opened his series of works published with opus numbers in Vienna in 1795. In his Triple Concerto, published as Opus 56, Beethoven confronts this genre with a large orchestra. Anton Schindler, since 1822 Beethoven’s self-named secretary and also his first, sadly all too often untrustworthy biographer, stated that the piano part of the trio instrumentation was specified for Archduke Rudolf; but the facts do not support this. The Archduke was only sixteen years young when the work was written around 1804, a year marked by the composition of the Third and Fifth Symphonies, Fidelio and the “Appassionata”, and when the Triple Concerto was put to print in 1807 the piece was dedicated not to a schoolboy from the Imperial House, but to another member of the high nobility and confidant of the composer, Prince Lobkowitz.

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Symphonies nos. 1 & 5 Vol. 2

Sjoerd Staal — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The centuries-old discussion about whether Beethoven’s symphonies are endowed with extra-musical meaning sparked a vehement dispute between heart-and-soul Romantics such as E.T.A. Hoffmann and Wagner and nonformalists such as Eduard Hanslick, Schoenberg and Theodor Adorno. But is this discussion still necessary? The truth, after all, surely lies somewhere in the middle. Is it not inherent in music, as Carl Czerny and others proposed, that some sort of story always lies behind it and that this worked as a source of momentum in Beethoven’s composition? A story, however, can also be a single image, a feeling, or a musical idea that during the act of composition develops into something directly evoking images. Whether there is an extra-musical element is not so much the point. More important is what it evokes in the mind of the conductor who interprets it, using his musical background, knowledge and personality. And also, the images and feelings it stirs in the listener!

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