Bon Voyage!
Handel - Water Music
The Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements, often considered as three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel. It premiered in the summer on July 17, 1717 when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed by 50 musicians playing on a barge close to the royal barge from which the King listened with some close friends (including the Duchess of Bolton, the Duchess of Newcastle, the Countess of Godolphin, Madam Kilmarnock, and the Earl of Orkney). George I was said to have loved it so much that he ordered the exhausted musicians to play the suites three times on the trip.
Music and Instrumentation:
All the instruments in the Baroque orchestra were brought onto the barge, except the harpsichord since it was impossible to bring an instrument of such size onto the barge.
The instrumentation varies depending on the movement, but the requirements in a complete performance are a flute, two oboes, one bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, strings, and continuo: this instrumentation is effective in outdoor performance. Some of the music is also preserved in a contemporary score written for a smaller orchestra (possibly the one at Cannons where Handel is known to have worked in 1717): this version is not suitable for outdoor performance, as the sound of stringed instruments does not carry well in the open air.
Water Music opens with a French overture and includes minuets, bourrées and hornpipes. It is divided into three suites:
Suite in F major, HWV 348
- Overture (Largo – Allegro)
- Adagio e staccato
- Allegro – Andante – Allegro da capo
- Minuet
- Air
- Minuet
- Bourrée
- Hornpipe
- Allegro (no actual tempo marking)
- Allegro (variant)
- Alla Hornpipe (variant)
Suite in D major, HWV 349
- Overture (Allegro)
- Alla Hornpipe
- Minuet
- Lento
- Bourrée
Suite in G major, HWV 350
- Allegro
- Rigaudon
- Allegro
- Minuet
- Allegro
However, there is good evidence for the somewhat different arrangement found in Friedrich Chrysander's edition of Handel's complete works (Georg Friedrich Händels Werke, Vol. 47, published in 1886), where the "suites" in D and G have their movements mingled together. This sequence derives from Samuel Arnold's first edition of the complete score in 1788 and the manuscript copies dating from Handel's lifetime. Chrysander's edition also contains an earlier version of the first two movements of HWV 349 in the key of F major composed in 1715 and originally scored for two natural horns, two oboes, bassoon, strings and continuo: in addition to the horn fanfares and orchestral responses, the original version contained an elaborate concerto-like first violin part, discarded in the later version.
(Approximately: 16 mins)
Brahms – Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra in A Minor, Op. 102
The Double Concerto in A minor (Op. 102) by Johannes Brahms is a concerto for violin, cello and orchestra. Composed in the summer of 1887, and first performed on 18 October of that year, it was Brahms' final work for orchestra. Brahms, approaching the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own, wrote it for the cellist Robert Hausmann and his old estranged friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. The concerto was, in part, a gesture of reconciliation towards Joachim, after their long friendship had ruptured following Joachim's divorce from his wife Amalie. Brahms had sided with Amalie in the dispute, and this led to the estrangement between Brahms and Joachim. The Double Concerto acted as a form of musical reconciliation. The concerto also makes use of the musical motif A-E-F, a permutation of F-A-E, which stood for a personal motto of Joachim, frei aber einsam ("free but lonely").
The composition consists of three movements in the fast-slow-fast pattern typical of classical instrumental concertos:
1. Allegro (A minor)
2. Andante (D major)
3. Vivace non troppo (A minor → A major)
Joachim and Hausmann repeated the concerto, with Brahms at the podium, several times in its initial 1887-88 season, and Brahms gave the manuscript to Joachim, with the inscription "To him for whom it was written." Clara Schumann reacted unfavourably to the concerto, considering the work "not brilliant for the instruments". Richard Specht also thought critically of the concerto, describing it as "one of Brahms' most inapproachable and joyless compositions". Brahms had sketched a second concerto for violin and cello but destroyed his notes in the wake of its cool reception. Later critics have warmed to it: Donald Francis Tovey wrote of the concerto as having "vast and sweeping humour". It has always been hampered by its requirement for two brilliant and equally matched soloists.
