World Premiere of Mendelssohn's “Seven Songs Without Words” for Piano Four-Hands at the Ravinia Festival Festival

By -

World Premiere of an unpublished Mendelssohn piece at the Ravivia Festival June 20

Misha and Cipa Dichter will also perform the work at the Aspen Music Festival on August 20

Misha Dichter and Cipa Dichter, who have become known for bringing many previously neglected works of the two-piano and piano four-hand repertoire to the concert stage, will perform the world premiere of an unpublished work by Felix Mendelssohn at the Ravinia Festival on Saturday, June 20, followed by a performance of the work on Thursday, August 20 at the Aspen Music Festival. The “Seven Songs Without Words, Op. 62 and Op. 67” for piano four-hands are among more than 270 unpublished works recovered by The Mendelssohn Project.

Mendelssohn began writing his “Six Songs without Words” for solo piano, Op. 62, in 1841 and completed them in early 1844. Soon after at a dinner in London with British novelists Charles Dickens and William Thackeray, the idea was discussed of arranging the Op. 62 songs for piano four-hands and dedicating them to Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert , both pianists. His work was nearly finished when he learned that the Queen’s favorite song was Meditation from the “Six Songs Without Words,” Op. 67. Mendelssohn quickly arranged the work, and on June 9, 1844, presented the “Seven Songs Without Words, Op. 62 and 67” for piano four-hands to Prince Albert with the following dedication (translated from the German).

Your Dignified Royal Highness,

I have taken the liberty to arrange the fifth book of my Songs Without Words for four-hands for You. And now I dare to lay it down at the feet of Her Majesty the Queen and Your Royal Highness; I have used hints of Czerny’s facile arrangement style etc. as well as I could, and have even exceeded my predecessor at least with respect to one point, I have enclosed a still unpublished seventh Song for four-hands. May the composer be credited for what the copyist may have lacked here and there – and vice versa! May Your Royal Highness sometimes play parts of it and consider it as evidence of my heartfelt gratitude for the gracious accommodation and the unforgettable hours that You let me share during my stay last week.

Always, Your Royal Highness, most sincerely
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

In addition to their world premiere performance of Mendelssohn’s “Seven Songs Without Words” at Ravinia, the Dichters will play Dvorak’s 5 Legends and Liszt’s Concerto Pathetique for two pianos. The Ravinia program will also include Schubert’s Sonata Op. 143 and Beethoven’s Six Bagatelles, Op. 126 by Mr. Dichter.

In Aspen on August 20 the Dichters will also perform Shostakovich’s Concertino for piano four-hands, Mozart-Busoni’s Fantasia for Musical Clockwork and Liszt’s Concerto Pathetique for two pianos, and the first movement of Shostakovich’s Babi Yar Symphony for two pianos with baritone and male chorus. The Dichters performed the world premiere of the first movement of the Babi Yar Symphony at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York in 2006.

Pianists Misha and Cipa Dichter met at The Juilliard School as students of the legendary Rosina Lhevinne and made their first joint appearance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972, four years after their marriage. Since then, they have performed recitals in all major cities of the U.S. and Canada, made appearances with the symphonies of Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and have performed abroad in the music capitals of France, Germany, Holland, Spain, and Switzerland. The Dichters gave the world premieres of Robert Starer's Concerto for Two Pianos and the first movement of Shostakovich’s two-piano version of Symphony No. 13 (Babi Yar).

The Dichters’ first recording—a three-CD album of the complete piano works for four hands by Mozart plus four-hand arrangements by Busoni and Grieg, which was named by Music Web International as a 2005 “Record of the Year”—is available from Musical Heritage Society.

Born in 1945 in Shanghai, where his Polish parents had fled at the outbreak of World War II, Misha Dichter came to Los Angeles with his family at the age of two and began his piano studies a few years later. While still a student at Juilliard, he launched his international career with a stunning triumph at the 1966 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

The Mendelssohn Project, an international foundation established by Stephen Somary in 2004, is dedicated to reacquainting today’s society with the music of Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and to providing the public with a complete picture of their lives, compositions, letters, and artworks through CDs, concerts, books, film, theatre, and other media. Before the campaign of vilification by Richard Wagner and German Nationalists, Mendelssohn, a brilliant composer, performer, and leading figure in European cultural life, was considered the most influential and respected musician of his time. More information is available from themendelssohnproject.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more