An Italian Prelude for Thanksgiving that has nothing to do with Thanksgiving

Can you think of any classical music having to do with Thanksgiving?  I can think of only one, and that's Earl George's decent Thanksgiving Overture of which I was unable to find a recording.  In lieu of that piece I've decided instead to Give my Thanks to IMSLP for helping me discover new works at the touch of a button, including my most recent discovery, the mid-19th century Italian pianist-composer Stefano Golinelli.  Music historians like to pretend that no worthy instrumental music was written in Italy between Boccherini (?) and the Casella-Respighi-Malipiero collective, but as guys like Giuseppe Martucci keep reminding us there's always more to life than what they taught you in Stuff 101.  Golinelli helps fill a hole in my personal understanding of Italian instrumental music, that of the era of Brahms and late Schumann, and his piano works are typical of the best pianistic traditions of the 1840's and 1850's, or at least as far as I've heard, which is five of his 24 Preludes, op. 69, the second of his prelude sets.  These preludes are part of the grand tradition of preludes in each major and minor key that that darned Bach guy started in the 18th century, and once again Golinelli's variations on the form prove that there's always room for one more really long cycle of preludes.

Unlike the Chopin Preludes, Golinelli kicks off the set relaxed and amiable.  The post-Chopin years were quite fruitful in harmonic and rhythmic malleability, the former seen in the left hand's sliding chromatic triads and the latter in the right hand's offset beat.  There's a fine discipline in this writing, as each hand never breaks their respective characters and the right never uses more than two notes at a time (and very prudently, at that).  This combination of ambling textures and tentative lyricism makes for a curiously wistful mood, a mildly daring way to start off a long cycle of pieces, especially so considering that most of the 24 Preludes I've seen come flying out of the gate.  The prelude also endears itself to me because I can't resist any piece that reminds me of the "Nocturne" from Grieg's Lyric Pieces, op. 54.  The YouTube upload has both this prelude and five others from the set, all of them worthy of a spin and proving once again that pianists shouldn't leave any stones unturned.

Oh, heck, let's also Give Thanks to YouTube for being endlessly generous, including offering this delightful Golinelli Tarantella, a fine accomplishment considering that Tarantellas are rarely delightful:

Happy Thanksgiving from Forgotten Leaves!

~PNK

P.S.  Don't you just love the word "ventiquattro"?

Wagner's Elegy to the Future

Whether you adore his work or despise it, whether you hold his antisemitism against him or choose to ignore it, you can't deny that Richard Wagner was one of music's great geniuses; his "music of the future" was far ahead of his time and enormously influential to late-19th century composers.  That being said, it's entirely understandable why some modern listeners may be put off by his work, as the majority of his output was comprised of obnoxiously long operas.  Wagner was a megalomaniac to end all megalomaniacs, including commissioning instruments to be built for his as-of-then unperformed works and building a radical new theater for his own 15-20 hour Ring cycle.  That isn't to say that all his work is intolerably huge, as is proved by this sliver of a piece:

Though it bears a dedication of December 26, 1881 (very near the end of Wagner's life), the Elegie's harmonic language bears some resemblance to that of the ever-taught Tristan und Isolde, written in the late 1850's, and some references state that it was written in 1858.  Either way, it remains some of the most sensitive music Wagner ever wrote (and is as close as I'm able to highlight fellow musical futurist Liszt's En rêve in this blog).  Man, those opening chords - he digs into them so hard, only to recede into unpredictable harmonic movement.  Measures 5 & 6 feel very much like the undulations in the slow movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, and that was pretty much as beautiful as Schubert ever got, so kudos.  The hairpin dynamics compliment romantic pianism very well, requiring both incredible sensitivity and a willingness to throw your whole weight into the keys.  The piece has probably been eluding capture for a while thanks to poor publication, but earlier this year one Francisco Javier Hernando Rodríguez was kind enough to make a very readable engraved version in honor of Wagner's bicentennial.  As you can see at the top, the Elegie began its life as a two-line scrabble, and you can see the original up close as well as the typeset version and a subpar published version here.  Perhaps it would have been more resonant to publish this article the day after Christmas like the dedication, but I think publishing it ahead of its time is more in the spirit of the "music of the future".  Whichever way you look at it, the Elegie is an apt representation of the darkest month of the year, and his bicentennial is slipping away faster each day - and this performance is just as fine a memorial as anything.

~PNK