Yesterday I was a guest of Paolo (the sadly infamous PianoExpert) and, for the whole day (extremely rainy and windy!) I had to endure sad and boring music.
We went from "Edward Grieg - Peer Gynt - Aase's Death" to "Franz Liszt - La lugubre gondola" and on weeping...................
Returning home, as if that weren't enough, I found my PC "dead", even though it hadn't participated in the revelry!
Well, actually very badly! Imagine, I wanted to publish something for you to enjoy, but how can one do that with a computer that is on strike and dying in my arms?
Anyway, this morning I convinced it (with those rough ways of mine that suit me) to spit out all the material I need from the disk, and now here it is! Still a bit limping, but quite lively for having avoided PianoExpertise!
And so, purely out of spite, do you know what I'll do to Paolo+PC?
Joy, nothing but unbridled joy; I continue with two intertwined stories: Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the Tarantella.
Born in New Orleans in 1829, LM grew up in a neighborhood where he had the opportunity to listen to Creole music, with its Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and the folk songs that would later form the basis of much of his music.
Some biographers think that his childhood home was the "geographical center" of his musical inspiration. For example, it is said that he listened to the dance music that slaves held throughout New Orleans on Sunday afternoons; and that once, hearing the roll of drums while he was in the house, he began to dance frantically, until his mother had to intervene and take him to his room, where he immediately fell asleep. Given LM's alleged age in the episode (two years old!), the story is unlikely, but it is still realistic to think that he was exposed to music within the family, through his grandmother and his nurse, both natives of Santo Domingo.
However, be careful not to think that Gottschalk's works are somehow derived: when he used traditional sources, he always acknowledged it and, in any case, even his citations are always marked by his playful creativity (it was easy, he didn't have PianoExpert on his heels!).
I have already told you that, at just thirteen years old, he left the United States and sailed for Europe, because his parents wanted a classical education for him to allow him to emerge. But LM also pushed for such an evolution; in a letter to his mother he wrote: "in two years or perhaps less I will know how to earn my living on my own".
Unfortunately, as I also told you, Zimmermann did not think the same way and LM had to study privately; finally, thanks to the intervention of family friends and his abilities, he managed to pursue a rapid career as a virtuoso pianist, so much so that Frédéric Chopin predicted that LM would become one of the most important pianists of the century.
Gottschalk did not have great esteem for European artists, ridiculing the cult of genius and the manias of his European pianist colleagues. For him, Franz Liszt was an "Alcibiades of the piano" and, referring to his long hair, he told how all Romantics wore long hair, even going so far as to say: "much of Liszt's talent is only in his hair!".
In 1853 LM returned to the United States, leaving an environment dominated by selfishness and vanity; however, even this return was not without problems and criticism; in the years to come he would travel extensively throughout the United States and Canada to earn a living, then gradually shift his musical interests toward Central and South America.
His life was a whirlwind of travels that, however, rewarded him with the satisfaction of success and the idolatry of the women who surrounded him (his beloved women!).
In 1865, his career took a sudden turn when Gottschalk had to leave the United States following the scandal of his relationship with a student from the Oakland Female Seminary. Having left the country, LM undertook his last and most famous tour, visiting all the capitals of South America. His concerts were an enormous success, and some of these are remembered for the immense number of performers involved (over 600!).
He died in 1869 in Tijuca, at just forty years old, due to a collapse during a concert at the end of the performance of his composition "Death!".
La Célèbre Tarantelle (or Grande Tarantelle), Op. 67, for piano and orchestra, is a tarantella composed in 1858.
Of this composition, also due to the hand of LM, several transcriptions exist (orchestra and piano, piano 4 hands, trio for piano, violin and piano, two violins and piano), those for one and two pianos by the composer's friend Nicolás Espadero - for whom he wrote the preface to this Tarantella - and the version for piano and orchestra by Hershey Kay, used for the ballet by George Balanchine, which is presented here, performed by pianist Nadia Weintraub, .
