Further to the recent Mrs Bach furore, we present a modest discovery by the pianist, Philip Sears:
I regularly check the public domain scores digitized and released each week by the Bibliothèque nationale de France on its Gallica website. Very recently they released a set of four piano pieces published c. 1860 and ascribed to la Baronne Nathaniel de Rothschild, aka Charlotte de Rothschild, a pupil (with her cousin Mathilde and mother Betty) of Chopin in Paris.
I was playing these through, and amazed to discover that two of the pieces are identical to posthumous works by Chopin himself, which are listed on worklists as being first published in the 20th century. They are the Nocturne in C minor, B. 108, KK IVb/8, P 2/8 (1837), first published in 1938 and the Waltz in A minor, B. 150, KK IVb/11, P 2/11 (1843), first published in 1955 (per the Wikipedia worklist).
The nocturne in the 1860 edition has barely any dynamic markings, but the waltz has performance instructions that do not appear in the Henle Urtext edition. I am not only curious as to how these pieces came to be published under another name, but also as to the provenance of the other two pieces in the set, a polka in C minor and a waltz in F minor. I can’t match these up to any listed work by Chopin, but they are certainly in his style. I have recorded the polka on my YouTube channel here:
And the waltz in F minor here:
I am not a Chopin scholar, and would welcome any information your readers could provide on this. The BnF score can be found here.
Reply below, please.
The Economist, a sober-sided weekly newspaper, writes the following in its obituary of Jeremy Thorpe, a fallen Liberal Party leader:
What could not be mentioned was his vigorous homosexual life: picking up rent boys in Piccadilly and the King’s Road, or using the established, clandestine, gay network at the National Liberal Club. Ever the exhibitionist and risk-taker, confident of social success even as a child, he did not much care to conceal what he was doing. In Devon he and Henry Upton, the blond and sporty heir to Viscount Templeton, would race about the lanes together in Upton’s Aston Martin. One-night lovers were told he was an MP, and some were sent letters on House of Commons stationery.
Thorpe’s gay life was well-known in political circles. It ‘could not be mentioned’ while he was alive because of Britain’s stringent libel laws, but now that Thorpe is dead there is no harm – there may even be a public duty – to describe the man as he really was. Thorpe, for a brief moment in 1974, held the balance of power in Parliament. He got there by being a bully and a cheat, living a double life, bludgeoning his lovers into silence.
Friends of Thorpe – who was often seen at classical events with his pianist wife, Marion – will probably take offence at these revelations. Those who care for probity and transparency in public life will applaud them.
What does this have to do with the lives of musicians?
Twice in the past week we have been criticised for noting, on the death of a once-celebrated artist, the decline of their careers and the reasons for it. Should we have suppressed or gilded that sad reality?
Art is nothing if it is not about truth. Performers are men and women who put themselves on the public stage. Their careers are, by their own choice, a matter of public interest. While we do not believe it is appropriate to breach an artist’s privacy or the conventions of common decency, neither is it right to distort the facts of artists’ lives or the manner of their deaths. To do so would subvert the art they served.
Time to adjust the viewfinders. A niche label from New Rochelle has earned five Grammy nominations, more than any of the so-called majors.
Here’s the Bridge Records record:
Nominee # 1, Best Classical Instrumental Solo: “All the Things You Are” performed by Leon Fleisher, piano (BRIDGE 9429)
Nominee #2, Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance; Harry Partch: Plectra and Percussion Dances, performed by Partch (BRIDGE 9432)
Nominee #3, Best Classical Compendium; Harry Partch: Plectra and Percussion Dances; John Schneider, Producer. (BRIDGE 9432)
Nominee #4, Best Contemporary Classical Composition: George Crumb: Voices from the Heartland; Performed by Ann Crumb, Patrick Mason, James Freeman and Orchestra 2001 (BRIDGE 9413)
Nominee #5 “Producer of the Year, Classical”: David Starobin.
They’ve been given the Herbert von Karajan award in Baden-Baden, topping up the $1 million Birgit Nilsson Prize from earlier in the year.
The new prize is worth 50,000 Euros.
The point of it?
See Ecclesiastes, 1:1.
Hans Wallat, who has died after a long illness aged 85, was general music director at the opera houses of Mannheim (1970-80), Dortmund (1980-85) and Düsseldorf/Duisburg (1986-96). He conducted more than 90 Ring cycles and guested at Bayreuth, Vienna, the Bolshoi and the Met.
A bronze statute of Herbert von Karajan in the garden on his Salzburg birthplace was attacked early on Saturday and severely damaged.
The baton was broken off and there may have been an attempt to topple the statue altogether.
No cause is known for the attack.
before…. after
