Par SCHUBERT FRANZ. Franz Schubert's Mass in G major (D 167) was composed in 1815 for his home parish in Vienna-Lichtenthal. It was initially intended as a Missa brevis with string orchestra and organ, but was soon supplemented by two trumpets and timpani ad libitum for more festive occasions. This instrumentation is documented in a set of parts that Schubert himself wrote shortly after his full…

Par HAENDEL GEORG FRIEDRICH. In the fourth volume of his “General History of Music”, Charles Burney's verdict on Handel's “Giustino” was as enthusiastic as it was prophetic: “Upon the whole, this opera, so seldom acted and so little known, seems to me one of the most agreeable of Handel's dramatic productions”. In it, wondrous things happen: a peasant's son falls asleep while ploughing and is call…

Solomotette Zum Dreifaltigkeitsfest Oder Zu Weihnachten. Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. A good six years following its first performance in Milan [1773] a second version of Exsultate, jubilate was completed for a performance on Trinity Sunday in 1779. It has survived in a manuscript from Salzburg. This “Salzburg version, ” which was discovered in 1978, differs from the “Milan version” primarily thro…

Solomotette Zum Dreifaltigkeitsfest Oder Zu Weihnachten. Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. A good six years following its first performance in Milan [1773] a second version of Exsultate, jubilate was completed for a performance on Trinity Sunday in 1779. It has survived in a manuscript from Salzburg. This “Salzburg version, ” which was discovered in 1978, differs from the “Milan version” primarily thro…

Solomotette Zum Dreifaltigkeitsfest Oder Zu Weihnachten. Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. A good six years following its first performance in Milan [1773] a second version of Exsultate, jubilate was completed for a performance on Trinity Sunday in 1779. It has survived in a manuscript from Salzburg. This “Salzburg version, ” which was discovered in 1978, differs from the “Milan version” primarily thro…

Shortly after a rather unsuccessful performance of his Piano Concerto #1, Johannes Brahms wrote to Joseph Joachim in 1859: '... a second one will sound different?. Nevertheless, a good 20 years elapsed before that second concerto finally took form, and only in 1881 was he able to announce: 'I wanted to tell you that I have written a very small Piano concerto with a tiny little delicate Scherzo?.Th…

Solomotette Zum Dreifaltigkeitsfest Oder Zu Weihnachten. Par MOZART WOLFGANG AMADEUS. A good six years following its first performance in Milan [1773] a second version of Exsultate, jubilate was completed for a performance on Trinity Sunday in 1779. It has survived in a manuscript from Salzburg. This “Salzburg version, ” which was discovered in 1978, differs from the “Milan version” primarily thro…

Cesar Franck's Sonata for Piano and Violin is one of the most treasured works in the violin repertoire, a masterpiece of cyclic form with a gracefulness and expressive force almost paradigmatic for the age of musical Romanticism. This work was composed in 1886 and was dedicated to the Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe.Franck's correspondence proves that he was directly involved in the pr…

Par SMETANA BEDRICH. Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) only began to devote himself intensively to the project of an original opera in Czech at the age of 38. The libretto of 'The Bartered Bride”, the second of Smetana's nine operas, was written for Smetana by the poet and journalist Karel Sabina. The subject chosen for the comic opera was the story of a pair of lovers in the countryside whose relations…