The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Today is May 5 — Cinco de Mayo. And here is a work by Mexican composer Gustavo Campa to celebrate the holiday
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is May 5 – the colorful Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo.
If you don’t know the origins of the holiday and what events sparked it, here is a link to the Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo
Usually the music that celebrates the holiday is popular music or folk music – including mariachi bands and guitar music.
But there is also a good amount of classical music by Mexican composers that can mark the occasion.
In past years, this blog has featured Mexican performing artists such as the terrific pianist Jorge Federico Osorio and the most famous Mexican composer, Carlos Chavez (below, in a photo by Paul Strand).
But there are many others.
Perhaps programming and performing more Mexican and Latin American composers and music would help attract Latinx listeners to concert halls once they reopen.
In any case, here is a link to a sampler or compilation of Mexican music found on Spotify:
https://www.classicalmusicindy.org/cinco-de-mayo-playlist/
And here, in the YouTube video at the bottom, is a lovely “Melody” for violin and orchestra, with a photo essay, by the Mexican composer Gustavo Campa (below) along with a link to his biography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Campa
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
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Classical music: YOU MUST HEAR THIS – the “Meditation” for solo piano by Mexican composer Carlos Chavez
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By Jacob Stockinger
The solo piano repertoire is huge, but The Ear knows quite a lot of it.
Yet here is a piece he had never heard, live or recorded, until he finally did hear it this week on Wisconsin Public Radio.
It is the five-minute ”Meditacion” – or Meditation – by the 20th-century Mexican composer Carlos Chavez (below, in a photo by Paul Strand).
It is played beautifully and sensitively in a live performance by the unjustly neglected Mexican virtuoso pianist Jorge Federico Osorio (below), and was recorded — perhaps as an encore, given the applause at the end — with the Piano Concerto by Chavez for the nonprofit Cedille Records in Chicago and distributed by Naxos Records.
Listen to it and let The Ear know what you think.
Does anyone else hear echoes of the eccentric French composer Erik Satie in the music? Shades of other pieces or composers?
Do you like the Chavez piece?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Mexican modern composer Carlos Chavez gets his first full examination and hearing from the Bard Music Festival this weekend and next.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Do you know much about the 20th-century Mexican composer Carlos Chavez (below, in a portrait by famed photographer Paul Strand)?
Despite the emphasis on cultural diversity these days, have you heard much of his music in concerts halls, on recordings and on the radio? (You can hear his Symphony No. 2 in a YouTube video at the bottom. Furthermore, YouTube has quite a lot of the music written by Carlos Chavez.)
Judging from The Ear’s own experience, probably not.
But that may be about to change.
Once again the Bard Music Festival -– under the direction of Bard College president Leon Botstein (below) who also directs the American Symphony Orchestra -– is known for taking on neglected composers or neglected aspects of well-known composers.
This year is no different.
Starting this weekend and continued next weekend, the Bard Music Festival will explore the world and music of Carlos Chavez, who was the foremost Mexican modernist.
Like his American colleague Aaron Copland, Chavez (below) helped to free the classical music of both North America and South America from the grip of European music and especially the excesses of late German Romanticism.
Here is a link to the website of the festival, the center of which is the concert hall (below) designed by architect Frank Gehry. Looking at the schedule will give you some idea of the range and quality of the events and concerts that are planned.
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/
Perhaps the best preview appeared in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/arts/music/carlos-chavez-mexican-modernist.html?_r=0
Tags: American Symphony Orchestra, Arts, Bard College, Bard Music Festival, Carlos Chavez, Chamber music, choral music, Classical music, concerto, Frank Gehry, Jacob Stockinger, Leon Botstein, Mexico, Music, New York City, New York Times, North America, Orchestra, Paul Strand, Piano, South America, The New York Times, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin
Classical music: YOU MUST HEAR THIS – Chicago pianist Jorge Federico Osorio plays a piano transcription of J.S. Bach by Walter Rummel, whose transcriptions deserve a much wider hearing.
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By Jacob Stockinger
There is no point being a purist about transcriptions, especially in the Baroque era and Romantic eras.
All the great Baroque composers — Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, George Frideric Handel and especially Johann Sebastian Bach (below) to name a few — borrowed from themselves and from other composers, and always felt free to rearrange the original for a different instrument or a special occasion.
Like many piano fans, I know and have heard or even played a lot of Bach transcriptions for the modern piano, from Ferrucio Busoni’s wonderful version of chorale preludes to Alexander Siloti’s and Egon Petri’s version to Wilhelm Kempff and of course the famous version of “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” by Dame Myra Hess (below).
But I had never heard of transcriptions of Walter Rummel -– even though the Hyperion label offer a series of Bach piano transcriptions with more than 10 volumes, including a 2-CD set of Walter Rummel’s transcriptions of movements from Bach’s cantatas.
Rummel (below, in 1944) lived from 1887 to 1953 and studied with the virtuosic performer and arranger Leopold Godowsky. Though of German background, he spent most of his career in France and was acclaimed for his playing especially of Debussy, and for his arrangements and transcriptions.
Anyway, I like what I heard and was quite taken with it, and hope you will be too. As with so many of these transcriptions, I suspect it sounds a lot easier to play than it really is.
Anyway, here it is, played by the Chicago pianist Jorge Federico Osorio (below) in a live performance captured by and posted in a YouTube video.
I cannot find a recording of this particular work – although Osorio has recorded three volumes of Mexican music, including the Piano Concerto by Carlos Chavez, for the outstanding non-profit Cedille Records in Chicago — by Osorio on CD. But the acclaimed pianist Jonathan Plowright has recorded it for the Hyperion series.
What is your favorite piano transcription of Bach? And who plays it?
The Ear wants to hear.
In the mean time, here is the lovely and calmingly thoughtful performance by Jorge Federico Osorio. Tell me if it doesn’t want to make you hear more:
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