MAGALOFF & LONQUICH - W. A. MOZART, F. J. HAYDN (High Resolution Audio)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 -1791) 

Concerto in mi bemolle maggiore per due pianoforti e orchestra K 365 

Allegro (10’)

Andante (7’)

Rondò. Allegro (7’)

Concerto in la maggiore per pianoforte e orchestra K 488 

Allegro (8’) 

Andante (6’)

Presto (4’)

Pianista Alexander Lonquich 

FRANZ JOSEPH HA YDN (1732 -1809)

Concerto in re maggiore per pianoforte orchestra Hob. XVIII n.11

Vivace (8’)

Un poco adagio (7’)

Rondò all’ungherese Allegro assai (8’)

Pianista Nikita Magaloff

Recording data

Recorded at“Sala Verdi” del Conservatorio di Milano

Recording date Feb. 21th 1988 “Serate musicali di Milano”

Recording supervisor Giulio Cesare Ricci

Sound engineer Alessandro Orizio

Audio designer engineer Bê Yamamura

Tube microphone Numann U-47, Neumann U-49

Mixing console Bê Yamamura4.o

Analogue tape recorder Studer J37 two tracks

Digital tape recorder Sony PCM

Cables Van Den Hul

General producer Giulio Cesare Ricci

Text Anna Bergonzelli

ORCHESTRA DA CAMERA DEL FESTIVAL DI BRESCIA E BERGAMO 

Orizio studied the piano with his father, with Giuseppe Anfossi and with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and has carried out an intensely active concert career in Europe. Successively, with the help of Hermann Scherchen, he has undertaken conducting committments. He is the founder of the international piano competition of Brescia and Bergamo and of the “Gasparo da Salò” Orchestra, with which he has reiceved enthusiastic notices in Italy, Poland, Rumania, the United States and, recently the Sovietic Union, France, Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and South Africa. He has directed other important orchestras both in Italy and abroad. Orizio has appeared many times on television in Italy, Rumania, America, Russia and Poland. 

NIKITA MAGALOFF 

Born in Petersburg in 1912, Nikita Magaloff began his studies in Finland (where his family had taken shelter after the 1917 revolution) guided by Alessandro Siloti, Liszt’s pupil and Rachmaninoff’s cousin and teacher. Afterwards he studied in Paris, under the guidance of Isidor Philipp. When he was 17 he obtained his diploma and was awarded the first prize. On this occasion, Maurice Ravel said about him: «A great musician is born, a really extraordinary one». He achieved his first international successes playing with Joseph Szigeti, the famous violinist. After the war he was one of the first musicians who played in Paris and, after 1947, in USA. Among the countless outstanding events of his career may be mentionned the first performance of Prokofiev’s «VII Sonata», that of Strawinsky’s «Capriccio» under the direction of the composer, «tournées» in Europe, USA, Japan and Israel. He has been often and regurarly present among the judges of the most important intemational competitions (Leeds, Warsaw, Bruxelles, Lucerne) always alert to the eventual discovery of talented persons among the young generations. He recorded pieces of music from Liszt Tchaikowsky, Weber, Srtawinsky'. Brahms, Granados and, recently, Chopins’s «opera omnia». Nikita Magaloff is an unexecelled interpreter of Chopin’s works which he presented in the most important European cities. 

ALEXANDER LONQUICH 

Born in 1960 in Trier, Germany, Alexander Lonquich studied in Cologne with Astrid Schmidt, with Neuhaus at the Conservatory there, and, from 1972, at the Academy of Music. Between 1976 and 1980, he continued his studies in Essen with Paul Badura Skoda, and following this, went on to courses in advanced studies with A. Jasinski in Stüttgart, and Ilonka Deckers in Milan. After several successful performances in Germany, he won first prize at the “A. Casagrande” International Competition in Terni in 1977 and since then each year he has been a guest of the most prestigious Italian concert societies. He tours regularly abroad. Lonquich is passionately committed to chamber music collaborating frequently as a duet with Nikita Magaloff, Paul Badura Skoda, Dino Asciolla, Pietro Borgonovo and Michael Faust as a Duet. 

English translation by 

Nicky Swallow 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In terms of the subtlety of many of the instrumental passages, the originality and perfection of form, and the intensity of its expressivity, the concerto in A major, written during the draught of “Figaro”, is one of the aristocrats among Mozart’s concertos, and is therefore set as a pinnacle of his creativity. The delicacy with which Mozart defines the character of the first movement from the outset, the painful solitude with which the wonderful Adagio is voiced, the return to life, with its inkling of nostalgic fun, of the Finale, kaleidoscopic in its tunes and rhythms, estranges this masterpiece from the genre of brilliant and mundane entertainment, and transforms it into a private space, a sphere wherein one could say that Mozart himself is colloquizing with the music. Through this concerto we leam, as in few other works, that if his music would seem to be extraneous to the motions of renouncement or romantic confession, it is not through a kind of sentimental modesty, but rather because in this music their lives an absolute identification between the words of subjectivity and musical language. Thus, that wonderful gift -that is the lack of forcing, even in moments of extreme blossoming expression -is not merely a simple sense of proportion, but rather the density of the first “Tutti”, as in the several dynamic emphases of the orchestra. The breadth of symphonic texture, however, which Mozart was to conquer during that very period, is still not fully matured. The sense of thematic elaboration in this first movement almost never ceases; the subject matter proceeds thanks to the continual proliferation of new ideas rather than through the effect of laborious developments. The over-riding sense of genuine serenity does not permit intrusions, and it assents to the key of C minor in the second piano, or the unusual and unexpected minor passage immediately after the repeat. The central slow movement transforms the climate of the Allegro into a more meditative and tender mood, with the occasional grain of melancholy. Here too, the richness of melodic ideas compensates for the levity, and the orchestral contribution is more prominent; a delightful figure of trills and repeated notes, or certain extended oboe lines providing the only background for the pianistic material. Finally a frankly good humour pervades in the Rondo -certainly the most elaborate of the three movements -with the orchestra playing a substantial part in the dialogue with the soloists and the pianistic writing tending towards brilliant figurative. Melodic hints of Papageno are heard, but they were to wait another ten years before reappearing in the multicoloured theatre of “The Magic Flute”.

English translation by 

Nicky Swallow 

Franz Joseph Haydn 

The patient and tenacious craftsman of the purest of musical structures as well as the authentic founder of that instrumental genre with which the extraordinary vitality of Viennese classicism is traditionally associated, Franz Joseph Haydn, was less attracted by the solo concerto than by other forms. Whereas his inexhaustible creative faculties led, in full maturity and in accordance with a variety which remains above suspicion, to those wonderful fruits of the second half of the 18th century, the quartet and the symphony, the concerto had to await Mozart before its fundamental principles (already, it must be said at a superb level), were to reach the peak: of their development. It is sufficient to consider the mere thirty compositions of this kind (written, furthermore, for the most part during the early years of Haydn’s service to Prince Esterházy), and compare this scant number to the more significant other works which his untiring creative drive reserved for more favoured forms. In spite of the absence of exterior conjecture, we may risk proffering various reasons for the composer’s lack of enthusiasm for this particular genre. Firstly, it is well-known that Haydn neither attained virtuosic proficiency on any instrument, nor did he possess that taste for instrumental exhibitionism that plays not an insignificant part in the interweaving between solo instrument and orchestra. When all is said and done, Haydn lacked, as his operas may remind us, that genius for theatrical strategy that even in the context of a concerto tends to control the give and take of the dialogue, and shapes the different dynamic expressions as in a kind of instrumental play. Above all, however, the rising sonata form, insistently explored by Haydn’s talent to clarify, was perhaps not yet mature enough to be exposed to those structural digressions, to that proliferation of thematic ideas, that were to make of the Mozartian concerto an organism so little inclined to any classification. Written in about 1783, the Concerto in D major for piano (but originally for harpsichord or fortepiano) and orchestra thus represent an exception to Haydn’s compositional itinerary. It dates, alongside the other concerto for violoncello (in the same key), from a period during which he completely ignored this type of form. As in other works datin1 from those years, Haydn’s natural propensity towards an extrovert and lively musical style supplants the more direct references to a learned genre in favour of popular taste, of a feeling of simplicity and immediacy. The initial Vivace is enlivened by a great feeling of haste, while the play on the sforzandos, the dynamic successions of pianos and fortes, and the insertion of long syncopations, contribute to the flexibility of the elementary musical lines. A sense of unadulterated fun prevails throughout and during the development with its rebounding of the last three notes of the principal theme between the left hand of the piano and the strings, we get a glimpse of one of the most solid principals of Haydn’s compositional processes, that of thematic elaboration. Rather than the slightly conventional introductory melody of the central Poco Adagio, we should admire a sextuplet rhythm heard first in the strings and then dominated by the embellishments of the soloist, and even more, the suggestive central section -in the minor key -with its unmistakable Mozartian accents. Nevertheless, Haydn reveals his best hand in the last movement, a Hungarian Rondo which is pervaded by irresistible dance motifs. This is full of jerky bursts of speed, and crackles with delightful accacciatura figures, the fruit of that curious mixture of Turkish spice andgypsy melodies which so attracted an eighteenth-century exoticism as yet untouched by modem philological preoccupations.