Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Nowadays it's hard to imagine Maurice Ravel as a "bad-boy" revolutionary, a member of a group whose name can be loosely translated as The Hooligans. To most listeners today, Ravel's music is the very picture of sumptuous beauty. But the group he belonged to, Les Apaches ("The Hooligans"), earned its name because of its members' uncompromising attitudes about music; attitudes that clashed sharply with the conservative tastes of the establishment.

Another composer who belonged to Les Apaches was the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Falla is certainly not as well known as Ravel, but the two became fast friends when he arrived in Paris in 1907. They formed a kind of mutual-admiration society that proved immensely fruitful for both of them. Falla was deeply impressed by Ravel's Spanish-inflected music, marveling at its authenticity given that Ravel was French. But Ravel, now a symbol of French music, was the son of a Swiss father and a Spanish-speaking mother, and he was born just eleven miles from the Spanish border in the Basque region. His Spanish voice was no affectation; it came from somewhere deep within, and Falla noticed this immediately, remarking that Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole was "a Spain ideally presented by his mother."

Today on the show we'll explore the Spanish world of Falla and Ravel through two central works: Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole. These pieces, both astonishing in their creativity and craftsmanship, offer a wonderful opportunity to compare and contrast the music and approaches of these two close friends. We'll also talk about Les Apaches and their goals, legacy, and some of their legendary members.

All this and more is coming up on this final collaboration on Ravel and Friends with G. Henle Publishers! Join us!

Longtime listeners of Sticky Notes know that Shostakovich's 10 symphony was the inaugural piece covered on the show. It's been 8 years(!) since that show, so I've totally re-written the episode and had the privilege of presenting this new version live with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra last week in Aalborg.

Shostakovich, like so many composers before him, was obsessed with musical codes and messages, with songs that expressed two or more meanings, with ideas that were at once black and white and profoundly complex. This also describes Shostakovich himself, a man who was incredibly guarded with his public persona, and even his private persona as well. It is impossible to know anything for sure with Shostakovich, and to me therein lies the greatest strength of his music. The 10th symphony has been described as a portrayal of the Stalin years, as a portrayal of obsessive love, as a requiem, as sarcastic, as humorous, as agonizing, as triumphant, as, as, as….and the truth is that like all of the greatest works of Western Classical music, it is all of those things and so much more. It is a work of profound intensity, grabbing you from the start and not letting go for nearly 50 minutes, which makes sense considering that the piece was written in the shadow of another momentous event, the death of Joseph Stalin. There are very few experiences like hearing Shostakovich's 10th symphony live, and it is the kind of piece that, by the end of it, leaves you a slightly different person than you were when it started. Today on the show, we're going to be talking about a wide range of topics, from orchestral color to Joseph Stalin, from symphonic form to obsessive love, and much more. Join us!

I so enjoyed making this latest episode in my collaboration with G Henle Publishers. I talked with two absolute experts in their fields, Norbert Mülleman and Stefan Knüpfer, all about how to edit Ravel's music, and how to create the Ravel sound on the piano. This episode definitely veers into some very nerdy territory, but Norbert and Stefan are both so brilliant at explaining very high level concepts in a way that anyone can understand, from a person who has never looked at a score to a professional performer. I think everyone will learn a lot from this episode and I don't think you'll ever hear Ravel the same way again after listening! Enjoy!

Along with Antonin Dvorak and Bedrich Smetana, Leos Janacek is known as one of the three great Czech composers. He was born in Moravia, part of the Austrian Empire at the time, and became passionately interested in studying the folk music of his Moravian culture. After World War I, when the empire collapsed and Moravia became incorporated into the new country of Czechoslovakia, those nationalistic sentiments only increased, and Janacek was the perfect person to express those feelings through his music, seeing as his interest in the folk music of his homeland had been a lifelong passion for him. Enter the Sinfonietta, written in 1926, commissioned by none other than a Gymnastics festival!

A sinfonietta is usually a smaller scale piece than a symphony, shorter, with a lighter orchestration and a lighter touch. But Janacek was always a rebel, and his Sinfonietta is a symphony in all but name, featuring an absolutely massive brass section that lustily performs the nationliaistic fanfares that Janacek gleefully adds  to the music. The Sinfonietta is an expression of patriotic love for Janacek's homeland, but it is also a piece that shows off so many of the things that make Janacek such a unique and underrated composer, his love of short fragmented melodies, his shocks and surprises, his innovative use of orchestration, and more. If you're not familiar with Janacek's music, the Sinfonietta is the perfect entry point, so come join us on this Patreon-sponsored episode!

David Krauss is the Principal Trumpet of the Met Opera orchestra, and in this conversation, we talked about his beginnings on the trumpet, the differences between playing in a symphonic orchestra vs. an opera orchestra, how to manage the vast distances between singers, the conductor, the orchestra, and the brass section, the specific skills an opera orchestra player has to have, and some funny/terrifying stories about on stage moments we both would rather forget! We also talked about David's podcast, Speaking Soundly. This was a really fun conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Note: This episode will be a lot more enjoyable if you listen to Part 1 first!

As we turn towards the final three quartets of the set, we'll see a lot of the same characteristics of the first 3; a perfect classical era proportionality, strong influences from Haydn and Mozart, and that perfect blend of vividly drawn but just very slightly restrained characters that marks Beethoven's early period. But we also will see something else. We will see C Minor, Beethoven's favorite key to depict drama and anxiety, we will see music that is almost impossibly charming and Mozartian coming from a composer as irascible as Beethoven, and then we will arrive at Op. 18 No. 6, perhaps the most emotionally complex and forward looking of the 6 Op. 18 quartets. We'll take our same birds eye view of each of these quartets, as we did last week, but I will also do two more deep dives. We'll take apart the first movement of Op. 18 No. 4, and the last movement of Op. 18 No. 6, which is the movement that for many is the highlight of these quartets. Along the way, we'll enjoy all of the quirky details of these three mini masterpieces, and see how Beethoven was starting to break the mold and set out onto his own path, one note at a time.

PS: All recordings used on the show for the last two weeks were done by The Cleveland Quartet - recordings of the complete quartets are available at clevelandquartet.com

In 1798, Beethoven, all of 28 years old, was about to begin a project that would take him to the last days of his life, a project that would result in some of the most far-reaching, most cosmic, most life-affirming, most dramatic, and simply put, some of the greatest music he, or anyone else, ever wrote. This project that Beethoven was beginning was his first set of string quartets. Beethoven wrote/published 16 string quartets during his life, and they are both a superhuman achievement and yet also a testament to the ability of a single person to create music of vast complexity and the deepest of emotions, all for just 4 musicians.

To really understand Beethoven's quartets, and his achievements with them as he progressed through his life, we have to start at the beginning. Beethoven was very rarely in the shadow of anyone during his life, but when it came to the string quartet, Beethoven still felt very much indebted to two of his colleagues, Haydn and Mozart. Haydn had essentially invented the genre of the string quartet, and by 1798 was beginning the massive project of cataloguing and writing out his 68 string quartets. Mozart had died only 7 years earlier, leaving us with some of the most pristine and gorgeous entries in this still relatively new at the time genre of instrumentation. 

Beethoven's music is often separated in to early, middle, and late periods, and these string quartets are always placed into the early period, which makes sense considering his later works, but also belies the fact that Beethoven had already accomplished quite a bit by the time he turned 30! It's safe to say that these pieces come near the end of this early period, where Beethoven was still working out how to embrace the classical traditions that he admired so much in composers like Mozart and Haydn, while also finding his own path as the creator of brand new traditions, smashing the rule book along the way.

So this week, I wanted to take you through an overview of these amazing works. We'll talk about the genre of the string quartet itself, what Haydn and Mozart had essentially codified when Beethoven wrote his Op. 18s, and of course, what Beethoven did with this genre, even at this early stage, which is often absolutely astonishing in its creativity, intensity, and just plain excitement.

In almost every one of the past shows I've done about Shostakovich, the name Joseph Stalin is mentioned almost as much as the name Dmitri Shostakovich, and of course, there's a good reason for that. Shostakovich's life and music was inextricably linked to the Soviet dictator, and Shostakovich, like millions of Soviet citizens, lived in fear of the Stalin regime, which exiled, imprisoned, or murdered so many of Shostakovich's friends and even some family members. Post his 1936 denunciation, Shostakovich's music completely changed. Moving away from the radical experimentation he had attempted with his doomed opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, he adopted a slightly more conservative style, which he hoped would keep him in good stead with the authorities.

But the piece I'm going to tell you about today, his monumental first violin concerto, is a bit different. It was written just after World War II, between 1947 and 1948. And yet, it was not performed until 8 years later. Shostakovich himself withdrew the work and kept it "in the drawer" along with his 4th string quartet and his song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry.

When the piece was finally performed by its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, it was a massive success, and it remains one of the best ways to "get into" Shostakovich's music. It is a huge work, in 4 grand movements, and Shostkaocvich himself described it as a "symphony for violin solo." It features all of the qualities that make Shostakovich's music so exciting, powerful, heartbreaking, and intense, while also allowing the listener, for the most part, to remove politics from the equation. While there are certainly encoded messages in the piece, one of which we'll get into in detail, this is a piece that is as close to pure musical expression as any of Shostakovich's post 1936 works, and so today I won't be mentioning Stalin all that much, I won't be mentioning the Soviet government every other sentence, and instead, we'll explore what makes this concerto so fantastic, so emotionally powerful, and so rousingly exciting. Join us!

Everyone knows Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  Even if United Airlines hadn't made the piece ubiquitous, it seems like the one piece of classical music almost everyone knows besides the beginning of Beethoven's 5th symphony is Rhapsody in Blue.  But did you know that Gershwin wrote a second rhapsody for piano and orchestra?  

We know Shostakovich's later works for their intensity, drama, and depth, but did you know that Shostakovich was a completely different composer when he was a young man?  That he wrote funny, sarcastic, and wildly experimental music?  

How about Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and his Battalia a 10?  Or Ethel Smyth's string quintet? Or the music of Teresa Carreno? Leonard Bernstein used to talk about the infinite variety of classical music because there's simply an endless treasure trove of great and often totally unknown classical music out there.  So today, I want to take you on a bit of an archeological expedition, exploring 10 pieces you've (probably) never heard of, but really have to listen to.  My list includes some very recognizable names, including Ravel, Gershwin, and Shostakovich, but also some names you might know less well, like Anton Arensky, Milosz Magin, and Teresa Carreno. Join us and discover something new!