Classical Companion

Fifty years after his death, it is worth remembering that Pablo Casals was the first celebrity cellist of the modern age. What Paganini had done for the violin, and then Clara Schumann and Liszt for the piano – making a viable career out of touring as a solo virtuoso, as singers had done – it took Casals until the turn of the 19th-20th century. Yet he commissioned very little for his instrument, and then abruptly ceased that solo career at its zenith.

By rights, every major opera company should be mounting Il trittico in this Puccini anniversary year, marking the centenary of his death. Yet they will likely revive the reliable house-fillers of Butterfly, Tosca and Turandot, and the reasons are not hard to find. Trittico lacks a true diva role. It demands instead a tightly knit company cast of diverse talents, and a conductor and director who both believe in the unity of the whole as its composer did.

Towards the end of his life, Rachmaninoff looked back in the early 1940s and regarded his recent Symphonic Dances as one of his finest works. But in the same bracket he placed his choral symphony of three decades earlier. Again, as well he might, for he borrowed and adapted the opening teaser of the early piece for the later one, as well as a good deal else such as the Dies Irae plainchant. This became a signature theme (almost an idée fixe), and an orchestral palette which continually evokes bells without resorting to the literal use of them.

Ravel was a sharp-suited Parisian-about-town in his late 20s when he wrote the String Quartet during 1902-3. He had a decade of composition behind him, mostly piano pieces, but little to show for it. He didn't even have a graduation certificate from his years of study at the Paris Conservatoire, still less any recognition conferred by the coveted Prix de Rome, despite several unsuccessful attempts to win over the conservative judges while pointedly breaking their rules and fastidiously refining his own voice.

The premiere of Der Rosenkavalier took place on the 26 January 1911, at the Royal Court Opera in Dresden. The success of the piece became an event in itself, perhaps the most glittering triumph in the history of opera. Special trains were laid on to ferry visitors from Berlin eager to attend extra performances. The work was immediately taken into the international repertory, and there it has remained.

Iwas not thinking of the Saviour when I was composing Parsifal', wrote Richard Wagner to his wife Cosima – dismantling one of many misconceptions held about his last music drama. One practical motivation, having contemplated the subject matter for over 30 years, was an inheritance to Cosima and their children which would secure both their financial future and that of the theatre at Bayreuth which he had built to stage the Ring.