The year is 1794. The Reign of Terror is in full swing in Revolutionary France, with thousands being executed at the guillotine. The latest imprisoned aristocrat appears before the Committee of Public Safety who will decide her fate. She is not alone. As well as the police guard, this 30-year-old woman is accompanied by an item more typically found in a Parisian salon than a courtroom – a piano. She is reputed to be one of the country’s finest musicians, and if she’s good, as the delegation of musicians advocating for her have promised, then she could be of use, first for ‘patriotic events’, later at the capital’s new conservatoire. She is invited to take her seat at the keyboard, to play for her very life.
Almost inevitably, she is asked to perform La Marseillaise, a 1792 rallying cry that would soon become the national anthem of the new French republic. What the pianist does with it is unexpected: after playing the tune, she begins to improvise variations on it, the music gradually building to a great climax, the melody billowing out over arpeggios. The men listening are moved to tears. She walks free.
Bu hikaye BBC Music Magazine dergisinin December 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye BBC Music Magazine dergisinin December 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
FESTIVAL GUIDE 2024
It's that time of year again... Spring has finally sprung, and along with the promised sunshine we welcome a brand-new season of glorious summer music.
The mighty Sampson
As soprano Carolyn Sampson turns 50, she tells Ashutosh Khandekar about the development of her voice through a remarkable catalogue of recordings
Music to die for
From wrathful Verdi to ethereal Fauré, there are many different ways to compose a Requiem, as Jeremy Pound discovers
Avian anthems
From Vivaldi to Messiaen, composers have often been inspired by birdsong. But accurately mimicking chirrups and tweets in music is far more difficult than it sounds, finds Tom Stewart
THE BIG 400!
BBC Music Magazine has reached its 400th issue! To celebrate, we look back over eight milestone issues since the very firstin 1992
Northern light
From her first piano lesson, composer Errollyn Wallen has lived and breathed music; and though inspired by a range of styles, her composing is a deeply personal expression, as she tells Kate Wakeling
Felix Mendelssohn Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor
Jo Talbot celebrates the Mozart of the 19th century’ as she searches out the finest recordings of this masterful work for piano, violin and cello
Antonio Salieri
Forget the hate-filled murderer of Mozart, says Alexandra Wilson; the real Salieri was an opera composer of considerable standing
Aix-en-Provence France
Rebecca Franks breathes in the spring air in the popular southern city, where the music making sparkles and the sun always shines
Composing is like breathing. It's just something I do, like a hobby, really...or an addiction
The world's most performed classical composer, a small, black-suited figure with a mop of white hair and mutton-chop whiskers, stands on the huge Brucknerhaus stage, almost invisible among the sea of musicians.
