Tansman) (Łódź,11 juni1897 – Parijs, 15 november1986) was een Pools–Franscomponist, dirigent en pianist.
Levensloop
Tansman werd als zoon van Frans-sprekende Joodse ouders in Łódź geboren en groeide daar ook op. Al op 4-jarige leeftijd kreeg hij pianolessen en op 8-jarige leeftijd begon hij te componeren. Hij studeerde van 1908 tot 1914 piano en compositie bij Wojciech Gawroński aan het conservatorium van Łódź. Vervolgens vertrok hij naar Warschau en studeerde rechten aan de Universiteit van Warschau en promoveerde in 1918. Tegelijkertijd studeerde hij aan het conservatorium van Warschau contrapunt bij Piotr Rytel en compositie bij Henryk Melcer-Szczawiński.
Nadat hij bij de eerste compositiewedstrijd in 1919 van de Polski Klub Artystyczny (Poolse Artiestenclub) in Warschau met de werken Romans (Romance) (1918-1919) voor viool en piano, Impresję (Impressie) (1918-1919) voor piano en Preludium H-dur (Preludium in B) (1918-1919) voor piano drie prijzen had gewonnen, vertrok hij naar Parijs. Hier maakte hij kennis met de grote componisten van die tijd zoals Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Andrés Segovia en Igor Stravinsky. Hij begeleidde Maurice Ravel in 1928-1929 op diens concerttournee door de Verenigde Staten.
Al in het begin van de jaren dertig was Tansman een belangrijk lid van wat wel de Parijse School wordt genoemd, een groep kunstenaars in Parijs aan het begin van de 20e eeuw, onder wie veel buitenlanders. In 1932 en 1933 maakte hij een concerttournee door de hele wereld, waarbij hij Hawaï aandeed, door de Verenigde Statenreisde, en Japan, China, de Filipijnen, Singapore, Nederlands-Indië, Maleisië, Ceylon, India, Egypte, Palestina en Griekenland bezocht. In 1937 was hij jurylid van de Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd voor viool in Brussel. In 1938 kreeg hij de Franse nationaliteit. Inmiddels was hij gescheiden van zijn eerste vrouw, Anna Eleonora Brociner. In 1937 trad hij in het huwelijk met de Franse pianiste Collette Cras, een van de dochters van de componist Jean Cras.
Als Joods componist met verbinding tot de muzikale moderne werd hij al spoedig tot speelbal van de wereldgebeurtenissen. Zijn naam verscheen in 1938 in de beruchte, door de nazi‘s propageerde en geënsceneerde expositie Entartete Musik, en naar de deling van Frankrijk vluchtte hij in 1940 naar Nice. Zijn emigratie in 1941 via Lissabon naar de Verenigde Staten met zijn echtgenote en hun dochters, die beide nog zuigelingen waren, werd mogelijk gemaakt door grote steun van Charlie Chaplin, Arturo Toscanini, Sergej Koesevitski, Eugene Ormandy en Jascha Heifetz. In Los Angeles vond hij al spoedig een groep van Exil-kunstenaars. Hij werd een goede vriend en dagelijks bezoeker van Igor Stravinsky, over wie hij in 1948 een biografie schreef.
Na het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog kwam hij in 1946 eindelijk naar Frankrijk terug, omdat hij – zoals hij later steeds verklaarde – “Europa met heel zijn narigheid boven een goed leven in Amerika verkoos”. Tot het einde van zijn leven componeerde hij, en hij schreef rond 300 werken. Tansman beleefde een carrière, die hem niet uitsluitend met de grote componisten van zijn tijd samenbracht, maar ook met talrijke persoonlijkheden van historische betekenis. Maar weinig componisten hebben een audiëntie bij de keizer Hirohito van Japan gekregen, of waren zes dagen persoonlijke gast van Mahatma Gandhi, hebben samen met George Gershwin aan de orkestratie van hun An American in Paris gewerkt, en de persoonlijke hulp van Charlie Chaplin kunnen genieten. Aan het einde van zijn leven was de wereldburger Tansman in drie van de hoogste Academiën van de Kunsten – in Frankrijk, België en in het vaderland Polen. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Tansman
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Alexander Tansman (Polish: Aleksander Tansman, French: Alexandre Tansman; 12 June 1897 – 15 November 1986) was a Polish composer, virtuoso pianist and conductor of Jewish origin, since 1938 a French citizen. One of the earliest representatives of neoclassicism, associated with École de Paris, he was praised for his mastery in orchestration, instrumentation and his original approach to harmony and form. A globally recognized composer.
Early life and heritage
Tansman was born and raised in the Polish city of Lodz during the era when Poland did not exist as an independent state, being part of Tsarist Russia. His parents were both natives of Pinsk. His father Moshe Tancman / Tantzman (1868-1908) died when Alexander was 10 and his mother Hannah (nee Hurwicz / Gourvitch, 1872-1935) reared him and his older sister Teresa (born in 1895) alone. A commemorative plaque in Lodz city with the inscription: “Aleksander Tansman, a world-famous Polish composer, was born in this house on June 12, 1897, and spent the first 17 years of his life here”.
The composer wrote the following about his childhood and heritage in a 1980 letter to an American researcher: “… my father’s family came from Pinsk and I knew of a famous rabbi related to him. My father died very young, and there were certainly two, or more branches of the family, as ours was quite wealthy: we had in Lodz several domestics, two governesses (French and German) living with us etc. My father had a sister who settled in Israel and married there. I met her family on my [concert] tours in Israel. … My family was, as far as religion is concerned, quite liberal, not practicing. My mother was the daughter of prof. Leon Gourvitch, quite a famous man”.
Among his first music teachers were Wojciech Gawronski (a student of Moritz Moszkowski and Johannes Brahms) and Naum Podkaminer (a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov).
Career
Although he began his musical studies at the Lodz Conservatory, his doctoral study was in law at the University of Warsaw. On January 8, 1919 Tansman won the first composers’ competition held in independent Poland. In the fall of 1919, encouraged by his mentors Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Henryk Melcer-Szczawinski and Zdzislaw Birnbaum, Tansman decided to continue his musical career in Paris. His musical ideas were accepted there, influenced and favoured by composers Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Jacques Ibert, Igor Stravinsky, musicologists and critics Émile Vuillermoz, Boris de Schloezer, Alexis Roland-Manuel, Arthur Hoérée, conductors André Caplet, Gaston Poulet, Vladimir Golschmann. Though Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud tried to persuade him to join Les Six, he declined, stating a need for creative independence. Nevertheless, he was one of the earliest and leading representatives of neoclassicism, along with Stravinsky, Les Six, Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, Alfredo Casella. He was also one of the most respected members of the international music group École de Paris, along with Bohuslav Martinů, Tibor Harsányi, Alexander Tcherepnin, Marcel Mihalovici, Conrad Beck.[7]Alexander Tansman and Anna E. Brociner, 1920s
Tansman spoke seven languages (Polish, Russian, French, German, English, Italian, Spanish). His first wife was Romanian-Swiss Anna E. Brociner. They divorced in 1932. In 1937 he married a French pianist Colette Cras, daughter of the composer and naval commander, admiral Jean Cras.
From the 1920s Tansman’s rise to fame was meteoric, with works conducted by such world-famous baton masters as Arturo Toscanini, Tullio Serafin, Willem Mengelberg, Walter Damrosch, Henry Wood, Serge Koussevitzky, Pierre Monteux, Otto Klemperer, Rhené-Baton, Walther Straram, Hermann Abendroth, Leopold Stokowski, Erich Kleiber, Adrian Boult, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Eugene Ormandy. Tansman follows Paderewski as the second Polish composer whose theatre piece – ballet Sextuor – was staged by the Metropolitan Opera (1927).
In 1927 Nicholas Slonimsky called Tansman a “musical plenipotentiary of Poland in the Western World”.
In 1931, Irving Schwerke’s book titled Alexandre Tansman, compositeur polonais (Alexander Tansman. The Polish Composer) appeared in Paris. It was devoted to the work of Tansman until 1930 and its reception, to his individual style, the aesthetics of his oeuvre and included a catalogue of his works
As Marcel Mihalovici noted, Tansman was one of the most prominent contemporary representatives of the centuries-old tradition of École de Paris: “This included musicians at Notre-Dame Cathedral during the Renaissance, and later Lully, Mozart, and Wagner. Not to mention Chopin, Falla, Enescu, Honegger, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Copland, and certainly our old colleague Alexander Tansman”.
In June 1938, four years after Stravinsky and in the same year as Bruno Walter, Tansman was granted French citizenship by the last president of the Third Republic Albert Lebrun.[6]Cover of the score of A. Tansman’s Second Concerto (1927) dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, Éditions Max Eschig
Tansman fled Europe as his Jewish background put him in danger with Hitler’s rise to power. He moved to Los Angeles, thanks to the efforts of his friend Charlie Chaplin in founding a committee visa. In 1941 he could join there the circle of famous emigrated artists and intellectuals that included Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Mann, Arnold Schönberg, Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel, Emil Ludwig, Aldous Huxley, Lion Feuchtwanger, Adolph Bolm, Eugène Berman, Jean Renoir.
During his American years Tansman toured a lot as pianist and conductor and wrote a wealth of music, including a few scores for Hollywood movies: i.e. Flesh and Fantasy, starring Barbara Stanwyck, a biopic of the Australian medical researcher Sister Elizabeth Kenny, starring Rosalind Russell, and Paris Underground, starring Constance Bennett. For the 1946 Academy Awards ceremony, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, for Paris Underground. In 1948 Tansman authored an essay monograph on the musical phenomenon of Stravinsky.
When Alexander Tansman returned to Paris after the war, his European musical career started again all over Europe and his works were performed by the best orchestras and conductors, i.e. Jascha Horenstein, Rafael Kubelik, André Cluytens, Paul Kletzki, Charles Munch, Bruno Maderna, Paul van Kempen, Malcolm Sargent, Ferenc Fricsay, Charles Bruck, Øivin Fjeldstad, Jean Fournet, Franz Waxman, Georges Tzipine, Alfred Wallenstein, Eduard Flipse, Roger Wagner, Jean Périsson.[9]
During the last period of his life, he began to reestablish connections to Poland, though his career and family kept him in France, where he lived until his death in Paris in 1986. Since 1996, in his native city of Lodz, Alexander Tansman Association for the Promotion of Culture has been organizing the Alexander Tansman International Festival and Competition of Musical Personalities (Tansman Festival).
Notable students of Tansman include Cristóbal Halffter, Leonardo Balada, Carmelo Bernaola, Yüksel Koptagel.
Music
Cover of the score of A. Tansman’s Fantaisie (1936) dedicated to Gregor Piatigorsky, Éditions Max Eschig
Tansman was not only an internationally recognized composer, but was also a virtuoso pianist. He performed five concert tours in the United States, the first one as a soloist under Serge Koussevitzky with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1927-1928). In 1932-1933, Tansman made an unprecedented artistic tour around the world – starting from the United States, through Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Ceylon, India and Egypt, to Italy – and performed for audiences including Emperor Hirohito of Japan and Mahatma Gandhi.
Many musicologists have said that Tansman’s music is written in the French neoclassical style of his adopted home and the Polish national style of his birthplace, also drawing on his Jewish heritage. Already on the edge of musical thought when he left Poland (critics questioned his chromatic and sometimes polytonal writing, both present in his early works), he adopted the extended harmonies of Maurice Ravel and later was compared to Alexander Scriabin – whom he met personally in 1914 – in his departure from conventional tonality.Cover of the score of A. Tansman’s Divertimento (1944) dedicated to Arnold Schönberg, Éditions Max Eschig
His original style that has already manifested in the early 1920s, was often characterised as a combination of expressive colouring, intense lyrical qualities and prolific melodic inventiveness with the ideal clarity, aristocratic elegance and precision of structure. French, Belgian, Dutch, German, Austrian, Italian and American critics praised his mastery in orchestration, instrumentation and the use of orchestra, and pointed to his sophisticated music language, including such of his trademarks as the chord called “the skyscraper” and his individual approach to form, where he introduced the so-called “bridges”.
According to Alejo Carpentier Tansman was “one of the most gifted musical personalities of our times”.
He was indeed one of these Polish artists whose art truly injected itself into the circulation of the international art life. It is Tansman – along with Karol Szymanowski, who was fifteen years his senior – who was the first composer to interweave Polish music with a new language and aesthetics of the 20th century. However, Tansman went beyond the 19th century musical poetics and German patterns much more than Szymanowski. Cover of the score of A. Tansman’s Hommage a Erasme de Rotterdam (1969), Éditions Max Eschig
Tansman always described himself as a Polish composer: “It is obvious that I owe much to France, but anyone who has ever heard my compositions cannot have doubt that I have been, am and forever will be a Polish composer”. After Frédéric Chopin, Tansman may be one of the leading proponents of traditional Polish forms such as the mazurka or the polonaise; they were inspired by and often written in hommage to Chopin. For these pieces, which ranged from lighthearted miniatures to virtuoso showpieces, Tansman drew on traditional Polish folk themes, adapted them to his distinctive style, thus enriched melodic and harmonic means of modern music language, as well as instrumental colour and rhythmic variation. However, he did not write straight settings of the folk songs, as he states in a radio interview: “I have never used an actual Polish folk song in its original form, nor have I tried to reharmonize one. I find that modernizing a popular song spoils it. It must be preserved in its original harmonization. But Polish character is not solely expressed through folklore. There is something intangible in my music that reveals an aspect of my Polish origin”
As Irving Schwerke accurately concluded: “Deeply Polish, thanks to France Tansman became universal”. Cover of A. Tansman’s piece Suite in modo polonico (1962) dedicated to Andres Segovia, Éditions Max Eschig
The key determining the Tansman’s artistic stance, was his constantly repeated efforts to create a new classical style. It did not mean sticking to neoclassicism in terms of the aesthetic and stylistic impact in the normative meaning. The discrepancy between Tansman’s composing practice and the basic principles of neoclassicism could be observed in the 1940s, although the signs of such an attitude were clearly present in his earlier works. Nevertheless, after World War II, Tansman implemented more radical techniques. He included some achievements of the contemporary avant-garde and was interested in purely qualitative characteristics of sounds. The coexistence of various constructing principles in one form led to the clash of different types of expression, which strengthened the drama, dynamics and power of presentation of his music. All this without breaking up with the ceaseless pursuit of his music: to find a new classical style.
When reviewing Tansman’s oratorio Isaiah, The Prophet in 1955, Alfred Frankenstein and Herbert Donaldson considered it “should be counted among major works of religious music” and admired “the composer’s genius”.
Tansman composed prolifically in most genres and wrote more than 300 works, including 7 operas, 10 ballets, 6 oratorios, 80 orchestral pieces (with 9 symphonies), virtuoso concertos and numerous works of chamber music, among them 8 string quartets, tens of pieces for piano, as well as pieces for the radio theatres and pedagogical works. He is also known for his guitar pieces, mostly written for Andrés Segovia – in particular the Mazurka (1925), Cavatine (1950), Suite in modo polonico (1962), Variations sur un theme de Scriabine (1972). Segovia frequently performed the works in recordings and on tour; it is today part of the standard repertoire. Tansman’s music has been performed by musicians such as Marya Freund, Jane Bathori, Louis Fleury, Léo-Pol Morin, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Walter Gieseking, José Iturbi, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Alicia de Larrocha, Bronislaw Huberman, Héléne Jourdan-Morhange, Jascha Heifetz, Joseph Szigeti, Henry Temianka, Pablo Casals, Gregor Piatigorsky, Maurice Marechal, Enrico Mainardi, Gaspar Cassado, Marie-Louise Girod, quartets Pro Arte, Paganini, Pascal, Parrenin.
Almost all his works have been now recorded on CDs.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Tansman
I: Introduction and Allegro II: Sarabande III: Scherzo Eric Mohr, bassoon Marque Smith, piano Recorded February 26, 2010 Von Kuster Hall, University of Western Ontario
MINDER WEERGEVEN 🙂
Alexandre Tansman (1897 – 1986) Hommage à Manuel de Falla, pour guitare et orchestre de chambre Posthumous work, orchestration by Angelo Gilardino (1941) Guitar: Ermanno Brignolo Orchestra del conservatorio di Alessandria Conductor: Paolo Ferrara Live recording: 23/03/2013
Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) Violin Concerto I. Moderato 0:00 II. Lento – Presto 8:05 III. Adagio cantabile 14:28 IV. Allegro molto 19:38 Bartosz Cajler, violin Orchestra of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Marcin Nałęcz-Niesiołowski, conductor Alexandre Tansman (1897 – 1986) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of Jewish origin. He spent his early years in his native Poland, but lived in France for most of his life, being granted French citizenship in 1938. His Polish identity influenced several orchestral and chamber works, such as Rapsodie polonaise and Quatre Danses polonaises, and some guitar works, such as Hommage à Lech Walesa and Hommage à Chopin. His music is often said to be primarily neoclassical, drawing on his Polish Jewish heritage as well as his French musical influences. Tansman was born and raised in the Polish city of Łódź during the era when Poland did not exist as an independent state, being part of Tsarist Russia. The composer wrote the following about his childhood and heritage in a 1980 letter to an American researcher: “… my father’s family came from Pinsk and I knew of a famous rabbi related to him. My father died very young, and there were certainly two, or more branches of the family, as ours was quite wealthy: we had in Lodz several domestics, two governesses (French and German) living with us etc. My father had a sister who settled in Israel and married there. I met her family on my [concert] tours in Israel. … My family was, as far as religion is concerned, quite liberal, not practicing. My mother was the daughter of Prof. Leon Gourvitch, quite a famous man.” Although he began his musical studies at the Łódź Conservatory, his doctoral study was in law at the University of Warsaw. Shortly after completing his studies, Tansman moved to Paris, where his musical ideas were accepted and encouraged by mentors and musical influences Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel, as opposed to the more conservative musical climate in his native Poland. While in Paris, Tansman associated with a crowd of foreign-born musicians known as the École de Paris; though Honegger and Milhaud tried to persuade him to join Les Six, he declined, stating a need for creative independence. Tansman later wrote a biography of Stravinsky that was extremely well received. Tansman used to describe himself as a French–Polish composer; he spoke French at home and married a French pianist, Colette Cras, daughter of the French composer and Admiral Jean Cras. In 1941, Tansman fled Europe, as his Jewish background put him in danger with Hitler’s rise to power. He moved to Los Angeles, thanks to the efforts of his friend Charlie Chaplin in founding a committee visa, where he soon joined the circle of famous emigrated artists that included Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and others. Tansman composed the score for at least three Hollywood movies: Flesh and Fantasy, starring Barbara Stanwyck, a biopic of the Australian medical researcher Sister Elizabeth Kenny, starring Rosalind Russell and Paris Underground starring Constance Bennett. For the 1946 Academy Awards ceremony, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, for Paris Underground. There was a huge field of 21 nominations, and the winner was Miklós Rózsa for Spellbound. Tansman also composed scores for films made and released outside the United States. Tansman returned to Paris after the war, his European musical career started again all over Europe and he composed his main works, which were immediately played by the best orchestras and conductors. In many works, Tansman returned to his musical roots, drawing on his Jewish and Polish background to create some of his greatest works. During the last period of his life, he began to reestablish connections to Poland, though his career and family kept him in France, where he lived until his death in Paris in 1986.
Class&Jazz Duo Oleg Bezuglov, violin Natalia Bezuglova, piano www.class-jazz.com 1. Toccata 2. Chanson et Boîte à Musique 3. Mouvement perpétuel 4. Aria 5. Basso ostinato ®Ars Longa Records, 2009 Recorded live at the 1st concert of Chamber Music Festival “Christmas Premieres” on January 6th, 2009 in the Chamber Hall of Rostov State Phillharmonic