Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga: Symphonie à Grand Orchestre en Ré, Le Concert des Nations

Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga - Symphonie à Grand Orchestre en Ré, Le Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall (conductor) (First recording of the original version) 1. Adagio-Allegro Vivace-Presto – 00:00 2. Andante – 10:19 3. Minuetto: Allegro-Trio – 17:48 4. Allegro Con Moto – 21:28 Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga (Bilbao, 1806 — Paris, 1826) was born in Bilbao on 27 January 1806, just fifty years after the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with whom he has so often been compared. His father was very fond of music, and it is clear that Juan Crisóstomo owed his first steps in music partly to him. “He had received from nature,“ wrote François-Joseph Fétis (Biographie universelle des musiciens), “two qualities which are very rarely found together in one artist: the gift of creativity and a perfect attitude towards overcoming the difficulties of musical science“. Among the first compositions he wrote, before the age of twelve, must be mentioned the one entitled ‚Nada y mucho’ —a short divertimento composed in 1817—, and the Overture Op.1 —“his first serious work“— written for two violins, viola, double-bass, flute, two clarinets and two horns. There is also, of course, the two—act opera ‚Los esclavos felices’ which he composed “at the age of thirteen, without having formally studied the basic principles of harmony“. Arriaga completed this work in 1818, and its first performance a year later in Bilbao met with great success. The young composer went on writing at great speed. Thus, in 1820 he composed a quartet on an original theme with variations for violin, which is the number 17 of his opus, and in 1821, when he was 15, he completed ‚La Húngara’, a set of variations for violin and bass ad libitum which he later adapted for a string quartet. At the end of the summer of 1821, Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga left for Paris. He registered at the Conservatoire, and there he worked without ceasing. „His progress was prodigious: only three months were necessary to give him a perfect knowledge of harmony, and afer two years he had mastered counterpoint and fugue. The young man’s progress in the art of playing the violin was no less rapid; he was endowed by nature for doing everything well in the realm of music“ (Fétis). Arriaga studied the violin with Guerin (Kreutzer and Baillot were then responsible for this subject) and counterpoint and fugue with Fétis, for whom he later worked as répétiteur. Juan Crisdstomo de Arriaga died in Paris on 17 January 1826, ten days before his twentieth birthday. His body was buried in a communal grave in the Northern cemetery, now Montmartre. “The work was excessive and exhausting, and perhaps for that reason he caught a chest infection which, worsened by the long hours he devoted daily to his art, came to threaten his very existence“, wrote “Juan de Eresalde“, pseudonym of Jose de Arriaga e Igartua, the composer’s great-nephew). During Arriaga’s “Parisian period“ he wrote, amongst other works (some of which have disappeared) the ‚Three Quartets’—which he dedicated to his father, various lyrical – ‚Scénes lyriques-dramatiques’, the ‚Symphony for large orchestra’ and ‚Three études or capriccios for piano’. Symphony for large orchestra: We do not know the exactly on what date that Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga wrote his Symphony for large orchestra (manuscripts of the period call it ‚Sinfonia a gran orchestra’). The first performance we know of took place in 1888, but the first edition of the score —with the first and fourth parts mutilated (170 bars in one and 30 in the other)— was not published until 1933 by the Comision Permanente Arriaga of Bilbao. At first sight, the Sinfonia is a more rational and conservative work than the Three Quartets, it could be said that it “refines“ many of the techniques that appeared reflected in them, yet at the same time, it reveals the most characteristic aspects of Arriaga’s “mature“ style . In it the composer again returns to the sonata form, with which he experiments constantly. (from booklet by Jose Antonio GOMEZ RODRIGUEZ, Oviedo University )