A Rarity from Swiss Music Heritage

There are not too many composers who were called ‘prodigy composers’ and those that we know most often lived many centuries ago. Let’s admit it – the number of outstanding musicians, and I mean REALLY outstanding whose genius can be put in the same line as Mozart’s, is way lower than it used to be in, let’s say, Baroque period. It’s not at all about blaming the nature or announcing the talentless-ness of the younger generation but is rather an attempt to fix on those prodigies that we still have a chance to encounter.

One of such remarkably noticeable figures in music composition is Ernst Levy (1895-1981), the pride of Swiss music heritage. He was not just a composer with style but with a style that musicologists still can’t relate to any of the existing schools – so unique it is. Ernst Levy was also an extended pianist and pedagogue who taught both in his mother country and in the United States. He publicly performed his first piece – D major Concert by Handel – at the early age of 6. Levy strongly believed in the viability of tonality unlike most of his contemporaries who stuck to dodecaphony. His music heritage includes about 460 works, among them 15 symphonies and numerous choral and chamber pieces.

If earlier all these precious manuscripts could be found only in the library of Basel University, now they accessible for the wide public all over the world. The full collection of Ernst Levy sheet music has been digitized with the help of his son Frank Ezra Levy (who is an acknowledged composer and cellist himself) and put online for people to enjoy.

Aaand here’s one of my favorite performances by Mr. Levy: Brahms’ Intermezzo in master’s curious interpretation.

O Holy Night for brass quintet

…O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining, 

It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth…

Long ago in the 19th century a parish priest in France asked his friend to write a poem for Christmas. The friend, a wine merchant (not musician) by profession named Placide Cappeau, obliged and drafted a wonderful verse that turned into a Christian hymn in a way. The words desperately needed a no less beautiful music accompaniment and that’s where Adolphe Adam was turned to for help. What we have now is a bright and tender Christmas song that is well-recognized today.

The original always sounds better but the English versions are charming too. Though dedicated to telling the story of Jesus’ birth, this piece has something secular about it, something far from the church that reaches anyone beyond religion. No wonder that such well-known singers as Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and may others have recorded their versions of the song. It still is recorded, by the way, last one being this year by Ladywell Primary School in honor of a pupil who died from meningitis.

Adolphe Adam did a great job, no doubt. But music is so multifaceted and diverse that the same work can be rendered with a different shade with every performance. I quite liked the arrangement for a brass quintet by David Burndrett. The nice thing that it can go perfectly well as a concert piece and be played as a fun piece too.

Gershwin’s Summertime for 2 Trombones

Yes, for half the planet that’s way too early to dream about summer yet but this song is something you could always listen to and which lyrics would light a small soul fire every time you hear it. Composed as early as in 1935 by George Gershwin and so popular up to now, marvelous, isn’t it? Some say that it’s the finest creation of the composer. And indeed, Gershwin managed to skillfully combine jazzy elements with African-American motifs that go perfectly well with the lyrics by DuBose Heyward, the “Porgy and Bess” opera author, for which this music piece was specifically written.

Summertime can be called a historical piece in a way. As a matter of fact, it is one of the most recorded songs ever – the number of covers written for it reached 33 thousands! Some of them got really big commercial success (Summertime by Billy Stewart), others were called most distinctive and powerful (Summertime by Celine Dion), and modern music bands still include their own Summertime version into new albums (Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Doors, Morcheeba, etc.)

It’s pretty clear with the lyrics. What about the music? Of course, the original is beyond comparison to anything else but there really are some nice arrangements of the piece. Here is one particularly curious work that is scored for a lovely and rare duo – tenor and bass trombone arrangement of “Summertime” by Shannon Mowday does have its own charm. Check it out.

Under-recorded Scott Joplin

Today performers have more chances of getting famous fast, unlike composers who are sort of left in the backstage and whose names are not as often heard around. You’ll rather hear the “oh, you heard that new song by *performer*?” rather than “have you heard the new work by *composer* sung by *performer*?” Cases when composers get the world fame and are recognized by masses of people worldwide are pretty rare. Especially when it comes to

a) recordings
b) conducting

Let’s take America. Such a large country… but the recording priority has been mostly spread between just… 5 names. Five great, talented, outstanding but... few composers: Ives, Barber, Bernstein, Gershwin, Copland. Of course, that’s a very rough distribution but it is basically so. Those are the names that appear on recordings most and whose works are most of all included in conductors’ repertoire.

On the other hand, there are others, slightly overlooked but no less important. But the tradition has been formed in such a way that their names are skipped somehow. And today, I’d like to mark one name – Scott Joplan. Yes, you’d say he’s a fairly well-known composer. But the fame he deserves should have been much bigger in fact – bigger AND embodied in manifold original recordings. Imho. “The King of Ragtime” wrote 44 ragtime pieces, a ballet and 2 operas. But just a few of them received a quality record for future generations. Here, below, is composer’s most influential piece “Maple Leaf Rag” performed by composer himself.

Ave Maria for Piano-Cello Duet

It’s quite interesting when music pieces have the ability to migrate from one genre to another within centuries. And this migration is especially curious when the move happens between two opposite genres such as secular music and church music. In this case, church music is more often to be ‘softened’ for people than the pop music ‘churchilized’ for liturgical services.

Franz Schubert’s setting for Walter Scott’s poem “The Lady of the Lake” was not supposed to get into church when composed. But it did. Not at once, of course, and not on church’s order. The composer was so happy to receive quite a sizeable amount of money for this work (20 pounds sterling!) that thought that was the peak of it. Only by chance of destiny was the holy Latin “Ave Maria” text put on Schubert’s “Lady” by some unknown musician. Since then this duet has been working pretty well.

As composer’s most popular work, Ave Maria was and still is arranged a lot for different instrumentation – piano, violin, cello, organ, choir, flute, trumpet, saxophone and others. Franz Liszt himself wrote three arrangements for it. But choosing between Ave Maria’s versions, I personally opt for the duet of cello and piano. That’s one curious arrangement like that by Viktor Dick: “Ave Maria, Cello and Piano, B flat major” – a lovely sounding! On video another lovely performance by the young Rice brothers, also in my favorite instrumentation.