Fleisher, Pires, 2022

This Week in Classical Music: July 18, 2022. Instrumentalists and Singers.  We’ll skip several anniversaries, such as Francesco Cilea’s, his opera Adriana Lecouvreur notwithstanding, even though the title soprano role has been sung by such luminaries as Magda Olivero, Renata Tebaldi, Leyla Gencer, Montserrat Caballé, Renata Scotto, Mirella Freni, Joan Sutherland and Angela Gheorghiu.  We’ll also skip Ernest Bloch, a Swiss-Jewish-American composer mostly famous for his Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque, a large-scale work for cello and orchestra. And we’ll also leave out Adolphe Adam who wrote music for such popular ballets as Giselle and Le corsaire.  All three of them were born this week, on July 23^rd of 1866, July 24^th of 1880 and July 24^th of 1803 respectively.  Instead, we’ll acknowledge several interpreters: the pianists, violinist, and singers.

First, the pianists. Leon Fleisher was born on July 23^rd of 1928.  Fleisher lived a long life (he died two years ago) but his phenomenal career was cut short in 1964 by problems in his right hand.  He continued playing arepertoire for the left hand while trying to find a cure.  In 2004, 40 years after being diagnosed with focal dystonia, he regained some use of his right hand, but not on the level of his early years.  For almost 60 years Fleisher taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music; among his students were André Watts, Yefim Bronfman, Hélène Grimaud, and Louis Lortie.   Here’s the famous recording of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto Fleisher made in 1962.  George Szell conducts the Cleveland Orchestra.

The Portuguese pianist (pronounced “piresh” in Portuguese) was also born on July 23^rd, in 1944.  She’s an unusual musician in that she clearly tries to avoid the demands of a virtuoso concert pianist’s life: hundreds of concerts, media presentations and such.  Her career is punctuated by pauses, as when she stopped playing in public from 1978 to 1982.  Pires’s repertoire is broad, but she seems to be especially close to the music of Mozart and Chopin.  Here is Maria João Pires playing Chopin’s Nocturne no.20 In C Sharp Minor, Op. Post.  And here she plays Mozart’s Piano Sonata no.11 In A Major K.331.  “Crystalline technique” seems to be a very appropriate description of her playing.  And integrity.

The violinists.  Isaac Stern was born on July 21^st of 1920.  Two years ago we celebrated his 100^th birthday, you can read it here.  Ruggiero Ricci was two years older than Stern: he was born on July 24^th of 1918 in San Francisco, a son of Italian immigrants.  A child prodigy, he played a concert in San Francisco at the age of 10 and at Carnegie Hall at 11.  He was the first violinist to record all 24 caprices of Paganini.  Even though he had a special affinity for Paganini (in 1971 he premiered the newly discovered Fourth Violin concerto by the composer) he also played a lot of contemporary music, premiering violin concertos by Ginastera, Gottfried von Einem and several other composers.  ’s Paganini’s Le Streghe, arranged by Fritz Kreisler.  Louis Persinger, who was Ricchi’s teacher when he was eight and then much later, when Ricci was already an acknowledged virtuoso, is on the piano.

We’ll have to come back to the singers another time, but will name them in this post:Pauline Viardot, the famous French mezzo born in Paris to Spanish parents, a lover of many celebrated French writers (and of a Russian, Ivan Turgenev) and also the sister of the diva soprano Maria Malibran, was born on July 18^th of 1821.  Susan Graham, the wonderful America mezzo, born on July 23^rd of 1960.  And of course, the great Giuseppe Di Stefano, born on July 24^th 101 years ago.