Download Concert d`aujourd`hui! Works by Domenico Scarlatti (1683

Concert d’aujourd’hui!
Works by Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757) - Johann Sebastian Bach(1685-1750) – Carlo
Munier (1859-1911) - Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco (1895-1968)- Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)
Leo Brouwer (1939) – Ernesto Cordero (1946) - Victor Kioulaphides (1961)
Duo Binnendijk Spinder
Ferdinand Binnendijk - mandolin
Saskia Spinder – classical guitar
Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757) Sonata K.322
Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (Naples, 26 October 1685 – Madrid, 23 July 1757) was an
Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish
royal families. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his
music was influential in the development of the Classical style and he was one of the few
Baroque composers to transition into the classical period. Like his renowned father
Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known
mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Partita für Violine BWV 1002
I.Allemande
II.Courante
III.Sarabande
IV.Tempo di Bourrée
Johann Sebastian Bach(1685-1750)
German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He enriched established German
styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and the
adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France.
Bach's compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B
minor, two Passions, and over three hundred cantatas of which around two hundred survive.
His music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth.
Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected during his lifetime, although he was not
widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest in and performances of his
music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the
greatest composers of all time.
Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco (1895 – 1968) Sonatina op. 205
The resprected Italian composer and teacher, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, was descended from a
prominent banking family that had lived in Florence since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco was first introduced to the piano by his mother, and he composed his first
pieces when he was just 9 years old. After completing a degree in piano in 1914 under
Edgardo Del Valle de Paz (1861-1920), well-known composer and pianist pupil of Beniamino Cesi,
he began studying composition under renowned Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti,
and received a diploma in composition in 1918.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco soon came to the attention of composer and pianist Alfredo Casella,
who included the young composers work in his repertoire. Alfredo Casella also ensured that
Castelnuovo's works would be included in the repertoires of the Societa Nazionale di Musica
(later the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche), granting him exposure throughout Europe as one
of Italy's up-and-coming young composers. Works by him were included in the first festival of the
International Society of Contemporary Music, held in Salzburg, Austria, in 1922.
In 1926, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco premiered his opera La Mandragola, based on a play by
Niccolò Machiavelli. It was the first of his many works inspired by great literature, and which
included interpretations of works by Aeschylus, Virgil, John Keats, William Wordsworth,
Walt Whitman, Miguel de Cervantes, Federico García Lorca, and especially William Shakespeare.
Another major source of inspiration for him was his Jewish heritage, most notably the Bible
and Jewish liturgy. His Violin Concerto No. 2 (1931), written at the request of Jascha Heifetz,
was also an expression of his pride in his Jewish origins, or as he described it, the "splendor of past days,"
in the face of rising anti-Semitism that was sweeping across much of Europe.
At the 1932 festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music, held in Venice,
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco first met the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia.
The meeting inspired Castelnuovo-Tedesco to write his Guitar Concerto No. 1,
one of the first of almost one hundred compositions for that instrument,
which earned him the reputation as one of the foremost composers for the guitar in the 20th century.
Later on, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed many other guitar pieces dedicated to Andrés Segovia,
who was enthusiast of his style.
The following year the Italian fascist government developed a program toward the arts,
which were viewed as a tool for propaganda and promotion of racial ideas.
Even before Mussolini officially adopted the Manifesto of Race in 1938, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
was banned from the radio and performances of his work were cancelled.
The new racial laws, however, convinced him that he should leave Italy.
He wrote to Arturo Toscanini, the former musical director of La Scala, who left Italy in 1933,
explaining his plight, and Arturo Toscanini responded by promising to sponsor him as an immigrant in the USA.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco left Italy in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
In the meantime, he wrote his Cello Concerto in G minor, Op. 72, for Gregor Piatigorsky.
It was premiered with the dedicatee under Arturo Toscanini in New York in 1935.
For Piatigorsky he also wrote a Toccata (1935), and a piece called Greeting Card, Op. 170/3,
based on the spelling of Piatigorsky’s name.
Like many artists who fled fascism, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco ended up in Hollywood, where,
with the help of Jascha Heifetz, he landed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a film composer.
Over the next 15 years, he worked on scores for some 200 films there and at the other major film studios.
Rita Hayworth hired him to write the music for The Loves of Carmen (1948),
produced by Hayworth for her Beckworth Productions and released by Columbia Pictures.
It is generally thought that he actually composed more film music than he is credited with,
and that he was often called upon to ghost-write film music for other composers who were under time
constraints or had other difficulties completing their assignments.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a significant influence on other major film composers,
including Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein and André Previn. Jerry Goldsmith,
Marty Paich and John Williams are all his pupils. His relationship to Hollywood was ambiguous:
later in life he attempted to deny the influence that it had on his own work, but he also believed
that it was an essentially American artform, much as opera was European. In the USA,
he also composed new operas and works based on American poetry, Jewish liturgy, and the Bible.
He died in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 72.
Leo Brouwer
Composer, guitarist and music director, Leo Brouwer was born in Havana, Cuba in 1939. He
studied with Nicola, Pujol's pupil and specialising in composition, completed his studies at the
Julliard School of Music and at Hartt College of Music.
In 1987 Brouwer was selected, along with Isaac Stern and Alan Danielou, honourable
member of UNESCO in recognition for his music career - an honour that he shares with
Menuhin, Shankar, Karajan, Sutherland and other musical luminaries.
Leo Brouwer wrote and dedicated his Canciones Amatorias to countertenor Sytse Buwalda
and guitarist Saskia Spinder, after hearing their performance of ‘Dos Canciones’ at the
International Guitar Festival Zwolle 2009. October 5th 2012 the Asteria Ensemble where at
the Festival Leo Brouwer da Música da Cámara in Havana, Cuba.
Three weeks after, Leo Brouwer wrote to Sytse and Saskia: “I could not resist the beauty of
your interpretation, this week we send you another song, in the next weeks the third.”
Together these three songs form the new song cycle ‘Canciones Amatorias’, dedicated “with
love” to Sytse Buwalda en Saskia Spinder.
Música Incidenal Campesina (1964), music for the play ‘El fantasma’
Originally composed for two guitars is performed here in an arrangement made by
Spinder and Binnendijk for mandolin and guitar. The work consists of four
movements: I. Preludio - II. Interludio - III. Danza - IV. Final
Leo Brouwer with Saskia Spinder and Ferdinand Binnendijk: during their tour with the
Asteria Ensemble at the Festival La Voix Humaines, in Havana – Cuba.
Astor Piazzolla: (1921 – 1992) was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player and
arranger. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo
tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneonist, he
regularly performed his own compositions with a variety of ensembles.
In 1992, American music critic Stephen Holden described Piazzolla as "the world's foremost
composer of tango music"
l’Histoire du Tango
Bordel 1900: The tango originated in Buenos Aires in 1882. It was first played on the guitar
and the flute. Arrangements then came, to include the piano, and later, the bandoneon. This
music is very gracefull en liveliness. It paints a picture the good natured chatter of the French,
Italian, and Spanish women who peopled these bordellos as they teased the policemen,
thieves, sailors and riffraff who came to see them. This is a gay tango.
Café 1930: This is another age of the tango. People stopped dancing it as they did in 1900,
preferring instead simply to listen to it. It became more musical, and more romantic. This
tango has undergone total transformation: the movements are slower, with new, and often
melancholy harmonies. Tango orchestras come to consist of two violins, two bandoneons, a
piano and a bass. The tango is sometimes sung aswell.
Nightclub 1960: This is a time of rapidly expanding exchange, and the tango evolves again
as Brazil and Argentina come together in Buenos Aires. The bossa nova and the tango are
moving to the same beat. Audiences rush to the night clubs to ;isten earnestly to the new
tango. This marks a revolution and a profound alteration in some of the original tango forms.
Concert d’aujourd’hui: Certain concepts in tango music. Bartok, Stravinsky, and other
composers riminisce to the tune of tango music. This is today’s tango and the tango of the
future aswell.
El Carbonerito
Ernesto Cordero:
“Lovely version of El Carbonerito by Saskia Spinder.”
A musical theme with 5 variations, this piece is based on an ancient nursery melodie.
Spanish:
¿Dónde vas, Carbonerito, dónde vas a hacer carbón?
A la buena, la buena, a la viña ná, a la viña ná del señor.
English:
Where are you going, Little Coal-Heaver Boy, where are you going to make charcoal?
O the Villa, lla, to the Villa, the Villa of the Lord.
Discussing the originals of the piece, Marcelino Canino, a Puerto Rican investigator, relates:
”The wording of this musical theme is based on an ancient Spanish romance, whose oldest form
appears in a gothic parchment, dating from the XV century, wich belongs to the Prague Library (see:
Marceline Meléndez y Pelayo, Anthology Number IX, page 220, appendix to the
“Primavera” extract number 37). The most recent, or modern version of this romance, belongs
to the music, are one pertaining to Spanish King Alfonso XII, as well as the one known as “Little
Coal-Heaver Boy” This “Little Coal-Heaver Boy” interpretation was the mandatory piece on the
thirteenth edition of the renowned “Concours de la Guitare de Radio France” in 1987-1988. These
variations dedicated to Mr. Robert J. Vidal, contest founder and were composed in Puerto Rico in the
year 1986. In 1987, they were premiered at Radio France by Mr. Vladimir Mikulka.
Ernesto Cordero.
Ernesto Cordero
© Ernesto Cordero
Ernesto Cordero was born in New York and began his higher studies in 1963 when he
entered the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, continuing at the Madrid Royal
Conservatory, Spain, where he earned a diploma in 1971. Subsequently, he did post-graduate
work in composition with Roberto Caggiano in Rome, Italy, from 1972 to 1974, and with
Julian Orbón in New York, from 1977 to 1978. He first studied guitar from 1961 to 1964
with Jorge Rubiano and he later worked with several teachers, most importantly Regino
Sáinz de la Maza in Spain in the 60s and Alirio Díaz and Claudio de Angelis in Italy in 1972.
Since 1971, he taught composition and guitar in the music department of the University of
Puerto Rico. In addition to his activities as composer, performer and teacher, Ernesto
Cordero was music director since 1980 to 1997 of the International Guitar Festival of
Puerto Rico. Cordero has composed a large catalogue distinguished by its Caribbean flavor.
He has written eight concertos (four for guitar, two for violin, one for flute/piccolo and one
for the Puerto Rican cuatro), orchestral compositions, a variety of chamber works in which
the guitar appears in diverse ensembles, and numerous guitar solos, some of which have
become standards. He has received important awards for composition and his music is
performed and recorded worldwide by the finest artists.
Milestones for Cordero have been the performances and recordings of his guitar concertos:
the 1978 and 1983 premieres in Puerto Rico of the Concierto Evocativo and the Concierto
Antillano, the 1988 performance of the Concierto Antillano in Paris by the Philharmonic of
Radio France under the baton of his close friend and colleague Leo Brouwer.
Victor Kioulaphides (1961) – Sonata Marittima
Victor Kioulaphides was born in Athens, Greece, in 1961 and moved to New York in 1979.
He studied double bass and composition at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of
Music; his composition teachers were Giampaolo Bracali and Ludmila Ulehla; he is a recipient
of the Pablo Casals Award and the Harold Bauer Award.
Sonata Marittima is a seascape, a painting of the sea, ominous and seductive, terrifying and
exhilarating at the same time. Coming from a long lineage of Greek islanders, seamen since
the Middle Ages, sailing along with the Venetian and Genovese merchant-mariners of the
Mediterranean, I know both sides, both characters of the deep, blue sea, both her smile and
her frown. Her salty water runs in my veins, and I sing her song from the heart; she is always
my Muse. Giampaolo Bracali, my beloved, Italian composition teacher, a prodigy of Rome's
Santa Cecilia Academy and a child of Italy's brilliant, 20th-century neoclassicism, would always
turn towards me after reading one of my scores at the piano, smile, and say "al fresco". How
right he was! I always compose rapidly, as if painting on a wet wall, with my paint-brushes
bringing the mural to life, hand, eye, ear, heart and mind running at the same, dizzying speed,
the same fantastic intensity and joy. I still do...
Carlo Munier (1859-1911) Capriccio Spagnuolo op. 276
Carlo Munier (1859-1911), this picture with Raffaele Callace (Picture from the London
Mandolin Association Website) was one of Italy's greatest mandolinists of the past. Carlo
Gennaro Pasquale Munier was born in Naples on July 15, 1859, son of Vincenzo Munier, a
printer, and Rosa Vinaccia. Orphaned at a very young age, he was adopted by the relatives of
his maternal grandfather, the noted luthier Pasquale Vinaccia. The Vinaccia family of Naples
had been active as instrument makers since the first half of 18th century, and Pasquale is
considered today one of the fathers of the modern mandolin for his technical innovations for
the instrument. Munier acknowledged the closeness of his relationship with the Vinaccia
family in his several references to Pasquale Vinaccia in his Method for mandolin, and in his
dedication of the Three Mazurkas Op. 116-118 for mandolin and guitar to his uncle Gennaro,
son of Pasquale.
Growing up in the Vinaccia atelier, where he learned his first musical rudiments, Munier
began to study the mandolin and the guitar with Carmine de Laurentiis, Neapolitan maestro
of both instruments and author of the 1869 "Metodo per mandolino" published by Ricordi
editions. Munier then enrolled in the S. Pietro Maiella Conservatory when he was 15.
studying piano with the maestros Galiero and Cesi and harmony and composition with
maestro Nicola D'Arienzo. He completed his studies at 19, winning awards in composition
and harmony. In this period he performed at several concerts in Naples and published his
first compositions, arrangements of La Traviata and I Puritani for two mandolins, mandola
and piano, dedicating the last one to the Queen of Italy.
When he was 22 Munier moved to Florence, where he spent the rest of his life. He quickly
gained a reputation as a virtuoso, becoming a guiding figure of the Florentine mandolin and
guitar school, which also included such illustrious students as Queen Margherita. In 1890 he
organized and conducted the first plucked string quartet, with Luigi Bianchi on first mandolin,
Guido Vizzarri on second mandolin, Riccardo Matini on mandola and himself on liuto
moderno. With this quartet he performed several concerts across Italy, popularizing this
kind of ensemble. In 1892 the quartet won first prize in the National Competition of Genoa,
over which the famous violinist Camillo Sivori presided. In the same competition Munier
won the gold medal as mandolin player and composer performing his "Concerto in Sol
maggiore". In October 1909 he performed for King Vittorio Emanuele III, in the historical
castle of Sommariva-Perno in Cuneo province, playing the "Prelude in Re maggiore" and the
Mazurka-Concert "A Lei!". The king complimented Munier on the execution of the pieces
and the extraordinary effects he obtained with the mandolin.
In autumn 1910, Munier left for a European tour that made stops in Marseilles and Antwerp.
In Marseilles, he met his mandolinist friend Laurent Fantauzzi to whom he told of his plan to
organize an impressive concert in Florence. Unfortunately, he never realized the event; on
his return to Florence Munier contracted an unexpected illness and died on the 10th of
February 1911, after an unexpected illness.
Munier first married Luisa De Fonseca, who died young and to whom he dedicated Elegia op
148. He then married Armida Bastianini with whom he had two daughters, Luisa and Elena.
Munier was a prolific composer. His catalogue includes more than 350 published works.
With the exception of a few works, including the "Trio for mandolin, violoncello and piano"
and the "Three quartets for 2 mandolins, mandola and lute", Munier wrote primarily for
mandolin and guitar. His production of methods was also remarkable: the Metodo completo
for mandolin in two volumes; Lo Scioglidita in four volumes and the Venti Studi. His ouvre
also included didactic works like the "Lezioni in Forma di Duetto" Op. 115 and the Opere
per Due Mandolini (Op. 220, 228 and 230).
Ten or twelve years ago the publication of a Method like this one would have been a useless
proposition. At that time the mandolin was little known whereas now it has attained its
rightful place in the art of music. In fact, many people dedicate themselves to studying it with
constant passion, therefore the need for a "Complete Method" for a guide to lead one
without difficulties to perfect execution"
Carlo Munier, Florence, July 1891