The Maiden's Prayer: Leaves From Grandmother's Piano Album

Various Artists

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Cat No: 8550646

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099564625

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: The Maiden's Prayer

Description
The Maiden's Prayer Leaves from Grandmother’s Piano AlbumThe nineteenth century was the age ofthe piano. The newly developed instrument, decorated in the domestic taste of the time and strengthened by the use of an iron frame, making maintenance much easier,proved an admirable centre of home entertainment. The piano enjoyed also a social cachet.Young ladies with any pretension to gentility were expected to play the instrument, whichhad the additional advantage of being self-sufficient and a useful adjunct in theaccompaniment of singers or other instrumentalists. Composers and music publishers werequick to realise the importance of the new market for short piano pieces that were not toodemanding. Tekla Badarzewska-Baranowska's well known Maiden'sPrayer was an aptly named response to just such a maiden need for playable andattractive repertoire, ensuring the otherwise unknown composer a measure of immortality.The genre produced attractive compositions from more distinguished composers than this.The Czech Antonin Dvorak, no great pianist himself, sketched his famous Humoresque in America, where he spent a few years asdirector of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, writing it up in thetranquillity of his native Bohemia in 1894.In Vienna at the turn of theeighteenth century and into the nineteenth the presiding genius, Ludwig van Beethoven,also turned his hand to sets of dances for the piano, music that had an obvious practicalapplication. Among such compositions came several sets of minuets, published in themid-1790s, with the Minuet in G the bestknown of all.The French composer CamilleSaint-Sa?½ns had no intention of publishing his famous Carnivalof the Animals, a jeu d'esprit designed for the private entertainment of hisfriends. The carnival, after all, brought a rare collection of animals, including fossils,critics and pianists. The Swan, however,originally a cello solo, was published, and has continued to please ever since, not leastin soulful accompaniment to languishing ballerinas.It has been the fate of some composers to be remembered ,popularly at least, by relativelytrivial compositions. Rubinstein, founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and one ofthe most famous virtuoso pianists of his time, as well as a prolific composer of operasand symphonies, is known above all as the composer of a Melodiein F, an undemanding little piece. Jacques Offenbach, son of a cantorfrom Germany, established himself in Paris as a cellist and, in particular, as a composerof light opera. His Tales of Hoffmann,derived from the work of the writer of the title, includes a scene in Venice, with thescene aptly set by that most Venetian of songs, a Barcarolle.The Russian composer Pyotr Il'yichTchaikovsky is represented on the present release by two pieces. The first is atranscription of a song, None but the lonely heart, while the second, in similar vein, isa sad song conceived for piano solo, the Chanson tristein G minor. Mendelssohn's particular c
Tracklisting