I attended Sunday afternoon's CSO "Beyond the Score" presentation on Tchaikovsky's Fourth. What is so great about these programs, which I highly recommend, is how they put masterpieces in perspective in terms of other art of the period - literary, visual, and musical. Right off the bat, three pieces were mentioned as influences on Tchaikovsky's 1878 symphony: Verdi's La Forza del Destino, Bizet's Carmen, and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
This got me to thinking about how some of the recordings in our catalog try to put great works into musical perspective. While Cedille Records' main mission is to present the work of Chicago's finest musicians and composers, we have a secondary mission of "increasing awareness and knowledge of neglected areas of the classical repertory" (from our Mission Statement). In addition to presenting unrecorded or relatively obscure works, this also means presenting programs that combine the familiar and the unfamiliar in ways that often shed new light on the more familiar work.
I should note that almost all our program ideas come from the Chicago musicians we record. The champion in finding ways to illuminate renowned works is violinist Rachel Barton Pine. Her 2003 recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlos Kalmar made quite an impression, not only for the great playing but because she coupled it with the great (but very rarely recorded) "Hungarian" Concerto by Joseph Joachim, which one critic called "the Holy Grail of Romantic violin concertos."
The reason this was such an illuminating choice was that Brahms wrote his 1878 violin concerto for, and in consultation with, Joachim, the leading violin virtuoso of the day. (Inspection of the original score surprisingly suggests Joachim may have convinced Brahms to make more alterations in the orchestral writing than in the solo part.) Joachim's great concerto preceded Brahms's by over 20 years and definitely seems to have been an influence on Brahms.
In this same vein is the project we just recorded in London with Rachel and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier: Beethoven's 1806 Violin Concerto and the 1805 Violin Concerto by Franz Clement, the violinist and composer for whom Beethoven wrote his concerto. The pieces were premiered exactly a year apart and the key and structure of Beethoven's piece are identical to the Clement, suggesting he took Clement's piece as his departure point. The Clement has never been recorded before, because a performing edition had never been available until last year (a Professor at Leeds University just made that edition). This recording is due for release in September 2008.
Rachel's Scottish Fantasies recording puts Bruch's eponymous masterpiece in the context of other violin and orchestra works based on Scottish themes (originally fiddle tunes from the 18th century and before) including Pablo de Sarasate's Airs Ecossais and works by Scottish composers Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie and Sir John Blackwood McEwen. The recording concludes with a Medley of Scots Tunes for violin, fiddle, and orchestra by Rachel Barton Pine and Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, based on still more of those early fiddle tunes.
On different recordings, violinists Rachel Barton Pine and Jennifer Koh put Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004, with its magnificent concluding chaconne (perhaps the greatest piece ever written for unaccompanied violin), in very different perspectives. On Solo Baroque, Pine plays in a "historically informed" style on her 1770 Nicola Gagiano violin in original, unaltered condition (gut strings, etc.) and puts Bach's 1720 masterwork in historical context by also playing its antecedents: solo violin works dating from 1674 to 1717 by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Johann Paul von Westhoff, and Johann Georg Pisendel. On Solo Chaconnes, Jennifer Koh takes a "romantic" approach to Bach's Partita on her fully modernized Stradivarius violin and follows it with early 20th century Chaconnes by Richard Barth and Max Reger to show the influence of Bach's work stretching forward into the just-concluded century.
Another Cedille artist, soprano Patrice Michaels, is responsible for a couple of revelatory programs of her own. On Divas of Mozart's Day, Ms. Michaels looks at the opera world of Vienna in the late 18th century from the perspective of the singers who created Mozart's most famous roles. This allows her to present less-familiar concert and substitution arias Mozart wrote for those divas alongside works other composers wrote for them, including Antonio Salieri, Vincente Martin y Soler, Vincenzo Righini, and Domenico Cimarosa - all of whom were extremely popular opera composers of the day.
Ms. Michaels does something similar on her Songs of the Classical Age, presenting works by the four pillars of the Classical period - Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert - alongside efforts by 13 of their contemporaries, including several women composers. Again, this puts the composers with whom we're all familiar into the context of other excellent composers we rarely hear from these days. (Despite the popularity of Mozart and Beethoven, the Classical Period is probably the most UNexplored period in musical history.)
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