The Melow Quartet Plays Schubert
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
The Melos Quartet, founded in 1965 and considered one of the best quartets in the world, gives a mellifluous reading of the early Schubert Quartet, No. 1 in B-flat, D. 18.
Neapolitan composer Nicola Porpora was born this day in 1686. During his lifetime, he was renowned throughout the continent and England as one of the greatest opera composers, and during his stay in Vienna, a young Joseph Haydn became his servant in exchange for composition lessons. He wrote some instrumental music, of which we hear the highly unusual—or unusually high—Concerto for Cello and Strings in G, in which the cellist must play throughout in the highest range, almost never going below the G of the third string. Negotiating this early cello masterpiece is cellist Suzan Moses, supported by I Solisti Veneti under Claudio Scimone.
Bedrich Smetana wrote his “Festive Symphony” as a tribute to the 1854 wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph to Elizabeth of Bavaria. It is his only formal symphony, and features themes from the Imperial anthem in several movements, with a full statement in the last pages of the score. Lothar Zagrosek conducts the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
A special treat is birthday celebrant (1944) Jean-Bernard Pommier’s polished Poulenc, as he presents the Piano Concerto, written partly as a picture postcard of downtown Paris for Poulenc’s tour as pianist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Richard Hickox conducts the City of London Sinfonia in this delightful reading.
Neapolitan composer Nicola Porpora was born this day in 1686. During his lifetime, he was renowned throughout the continent and England as one of the greatest opera composers, and during his stay in Vienna, a young Joseph Haydn became his servant in exchange for composition lessons. He wrote some instrumental music, of which we hear the highly unusual—or unusually high—Concerto for Cello and Strings in G, in which the cellist must play throughout in the highest range, almost never going below the G of the third string. Negotiating this early cello masterpiece is cellist Suzan Moses, supported by I Solisti Veneti under Claudio Scimone.
Bedrich Smetana wrote his “Festive Symphony” as a tribute to the 1854 wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph to Elizabeth of Bavaria. It is his only formal symphony, and features themes from the Imperial anthem in several movements, with a full statement in the last pages of the score. Lothar Zagrosek conducts the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
A special treat is birthday celebrant (1944) Jean-Bernard Pommier’s polished Poulenc, as he presents the Piano Concerto, written partly as a picture postcard of downtown Paris for Poulenc’s tour as pianist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Richard Hickox conducts the City of London Sinfonia in this delightful reading.
