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2023-12-18 19:35:00
Ascanio in Alba, Oper Frankfurt, 17 December 2023
[…] and his librettist Giuseppe Parini’s response to it. The second of his three operas for Milan, Ascanio was the second of two operas commissioned for – wait for it… the 1771 marriage of Archduke Ferdinand Charles, Governor of the Duchy of Milan and a younger son of the Habsburg monarch, Maria Theresa, to Maria Beatrice, daughter of Ercole III d’Este, Duke of Modena, and his estranged wife, Maria Teresa, Duchess of Massa and Princess of Carrara in her own right. Various treaties and agreements were made concerning inheritance, which I shall not detail now, but this was, even by ancien regime standards, a complicated dynastic match, not even originally intended for Ferdinand, but rather for one of his elder brothers, (Peter) Leopold, passing down the line of succession when the latter went instead to Florence in 1765, succeeding his father, Francis Stephen, as Grand Duke of Tuscany (but not as […]
2023-11-17 19:46:00
First comes the Overture to Il Ruggiero, Johann Adolph Hasse’s – and Pietro Metastasio’s – final work from Orlando furioso. Originally commanded by Maria Theresa for the marriage of Maria Antonia/Marie Antoinette and the French Dauphin, the work's libretto was not completed in time, so it served instead for the 1771 marriage of the Empress's son Archduke Ferdinand Charles, Governor of the Duchy of Milan, to Maria Beatrice, daughter of Ercole (Hercules) III d’Este, Duke of Modena, and his estranged wife, Maria Teresa, Duchess of Massa and Princess of Carrara in her own right. As heiress to four further Italian territories, Maria Beatrice offered an advantageous match for the Habsburgs, and had originally been intended for one of Ferdinand's elder brothers, Archduke Peter Leopold (now Duke of Tuscany and later Emperor Leopold II). Ferdinand and Maria Beatrice had been engaged since childhood, the treaty thereby concluded recognising Ferdinand as Ercole's heir. […]
2023-06-03 18:29:00
[…] of melancholy such as is perhaps more likely on the piano than the harpsichord, the gap between our age and Sweelinck’s paradoxically both more and less pronounced. More important, though, were clarity of line and beauty of touch. Ornamentation told, without distracting. The art of variation had been properly announced, Tiberghien’s second variation boasting pinpoint accuracy and rhetorical flair, his third marrying surface nonchalance with deep harmonic understanding. The fifth emerged as if carved from Carrara marble. All the while, harmony and counterpoint wove their magic. Little less than a month earlier, I had heard Benjamin Grosvenor in this same hall play Busoni’s transcription of the Bach Chaconne. Now it was Brahms’s turn; and, Busoni devotee though I may be, I must acknowledge Brahms’s as the finer work. I knew, but even had I not, I am sure I would have heard before seeing that this was left-hand only. Brahms’s […]
2022-03-02 19:05:00
[…] Rock solid of rhythm, it was yet infinitely pliable. Through the truest of rubato, Chopin’s waters glistened, invited, even seduced. From an A-flat Polonaise of (fatally?) wounded swagger, there emerged a struggle worthy of Beethoven or Liszt, the foe mechanised and monstrous, heroism lying in further nocturnal depths. We knew, as we did in the cruelly if necessarily demanded encore: the G minor Ballade, its clarity of line equal to that of its moral purpose. Carrara marble of Pollini’s youth aurally gleamed once more, yet the depth of suffering was new, of our time alone. Strange realms were visited as if for the first time. In whispered confidence, in aching sorrow, in the proudest of defiance, we knew.
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