It is said that when the Viennese were finally able to drive the Turks from their walls in 1683, the fleeing legions left behind an unforeseen legacy — coffee. The rage for the stimulating new beverage swept through Austria and into Germany, where coffee houses became important centers of society and amusement. In order to give public concerts of instrumental music at one of the local coffee houses in Leipzig, in 1704 Georg Philipp Telemann organized some of his fellow students at the city’s university into a performing group known as the “Collegium Musicum,” a “Musical College (or Society).” So popular did their programs prove to be that they were continued after the close of the school term, though the proceedings were moved into the coffee house garden during the clement summer weather so the patrons could enjoy the pleasant outdoor setting without sacrificing propinquity to the brewing pot. Those Friday afternoon concerts became a fixture of life in Leipzig, and they were still popular when Bach arrived in 1723 to assume the position of cantor and organist at the Thomas Church. In 1729, he took over the leadership of the Collegium Musicum, and continued in the post for seven years. In addition to his work at the Thomas Church and with the Collegium during those years, Bach also derived special delight from making music at home with his family. He wrote to his old friend Georg Erdmann in 1730, “Altogether, [the children] are born musicians, and I can assure you that I am already able to form a concert, both vocal and instrumental, with my family, especially since my present wife sings with a very clear soprano, and my eldest daughter too does not join in badly.” It was for use at both his home entertainments and at the Collegium concerts that Bach created his concertos for keyboard.

Thirteen of Bach’s keyboard concertos have survived. Seven are for solo clavier (only the beginning of an eighth is extant), three for two claviers, two for three, and one for four. (The multiple-keyboard works were probably for performance by him and his oldest sons — Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philip Emanuel and Johann Gottfried Bernhard — who began leaving home in 1733 to start their own careers.) Rather than compose completely original music for these Leipzig keyboard concertos, however, Bach turned to earlier concerted pieces for violin and solo wind instruments, and reworked them for clavier. Though he arranged a number of concertos by Vivaldi and others for organ, for these keyboard concertos he seems to have used mostly his own music, some of which has been identified, some conjectured. The Concerto No. 5 in F minor is generally thought to have been based on a violin concerto in G minor lost through the negligence of Wilhelm Friedemann. The right hand of the solo probably follows the original violin part quite closely, though suitable embellishments have undoubtedly been added, especially in the ornate middle movement. The left hand is closely related to the bass of the orchestra, but elaborated. The structure of the opening movement follows the common Baroque formal practice of ritornello, in which a returning orchestral refrain is separated by episodes for the soloist. This is music of grave countenance but vigorous rhythmic energy that embodies the Baroque ideals of touching sentiment allied with physical stimulation. The lovely second movement resembles an operatic cantilena in its lyrical flow and florid decorations. It leads with only a pause for a single breath into the finale, which returns the bracing vitality of the first movement. Amid its dashing rhythmic motion appear some particularly felicitous echo effects between orchestra and soloist.

Elena Ruehr was born in 1963 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but grew up in rural Houghton, in the state’s Upper Peninsula, home of Michigan Technological University; her parents, both amateur musicians, were a mathematician and an English professor. Ruehr developed a love of both music and dance early in life, beginning piano lessons at age four and later studying with Melvin Kangas, composer, performer on the Finnish kantele (a traditional plucked-string instrument similar to a zither), and faculty member at Finnish University in neighboring Hancock. Ruehr went on to study composition at the University of Michigan and Juilliard, where she earned her doctorate; her teachers include Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Bernard Rands and Vincent Persichetti. She also studied dance and African drumming, joined the University of Michigan gamelan (the traditional Indonesian ensemble of metal percussion instruments), and played with Javanese and West African performing groups. Ruehr has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1992.

Elena Ruehr’s compositions, most of which bear referential or evocative titles, draw on her experiences of dance and classical music as well as the music of other cultures, all filtered through a deep awareness of the natural environment of her Upper Peninsula home. She has written numerous orchestral and wind ensemble works, five concertos, seven string quartets and many other chamber pieces, vocal and choral music, piano compositions and six operas, including the visionary Cosmic Cowboy (2020), with a text by Cerise Lim Jacobs, “a space odyssey,” Ruehr explained, “that explores colonization through the lens of the ancient past and the near future ... a modern day Magic Flute that includes a robotic ballet with an industrial robot and a virtual reality experience of the Big Bang.” Among Ruehr’s honors are awards from the Percussive Arts Society and International League of Women Composers, a fellowship at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Meet the Composer and Michigan Council for the Arts, and residencies with the Salt Lake City New Music Consortium, Yaddo Colony, Virginia Center for the Arts and Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Ruehr wrote, “I composed the three-movement Equality, Justice, Freedom, commissioned for CityMusic Cleveland’s season of that title, considering the emotions evoked by lack of equality (anger and frustration), seeking justice (which can be a hard path), and valuing freedom (honoring ourselves and our history). Because of the subject, I decided to have an instrument that usually plays a supporting role, the bass, become the main focus. The three movements are played without pause.”

With the works of Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados during the decades around the turn of the 20th century, Spanish music emerged as an integral part of the international cultural scene. In the years before World War I, Albéniz and Granados were joined in creating a national musical style by Manuel de Falla and Joaquín Turina, who, like their older colleagues, went to Paris both to study the traditional ways of music-making and to be inspired by the exciting modernities of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and the other important composers then making that city the most vibrant center of art and culture in Europe. Turina was especially attracted to formal academic study, and he enrolled at the Schola Cantorum as a pupil of the eminent pedagogue and composer Vincent d’Indy. Under d’Indy’s tutelage, he turned out his first published work, a String Quintet in G minor, the performance of which was to have a profound effect on Turina’s later music and philosophy. Albéniz, whom Turina had not previously met, was at the premiere of the Quintet in 1907 with Falla, and after the performance, Albéniz invited his younger compatriots to join him for a drink and some serious conversation at a café in the Rue Royale. Recalling the meeting with Albéniz four years later, Turina wrote, “[That evening] I realized that music should be an art, and not a diversion for the frivolity of women and the dissipation of men. We were three Spaniards gathered together in that corner of Paris, and it was our duty to fight bravely for the national music of our country.” Turina returned to Spain in 1914, and soon came to be regarded as one of the leading musical figures of his country. Though he was best known during his lifetime for his compositions, he also gained fame as a pianist and chamber music player with the Quinteto de Madrid, as a professor at the Madrid Conservatory, as director of the performances of the Ballet Russe in Spain, as a music critic, and as a member of the Spanish Academy of Arts. Following Albéniz’s advice, he sought inspiration for many of his compositions in indigenous songs and dances, and created such works in the national idiom as La Procesión del Rocio, Danzas Andaluzas, La Oración del Torero, Sinfonia Sevillana and Canto a Sevilla.

Turina’s Scène Andalouse for Solo Viola, Piano and String Quartet of 1912, written shortly before he graduated from the Schola Cantorum and went home to Spain, is imbued with the musical mannerisms and expressive ethos of the composer’s native land. The Scène comprises two colorful frescoes of several sections each — Crepuscule du Soir (“Evening Twilight”) and À la Fenêtre (“At the Window”) — in which the viola acts not so much as a virtuoso soloist as a lead singer. The opening theme of Evening Twilight, a vigorous melody enliv- ened by the metric ambiguity that is one of the most characteristic features of Andalusian dance, is entrusted to the piano, and then taken over by the viola and lastly by the quartet. The music quiets, and a short connecting phrase in the low notes of the cello leads to the second section of the movement, a lyrical Serenata (“Serenade”) sung by the viola above the background strumming of the quartet. A ruminative passage in the viola introduces a swaying Habanera, after which the Serenata returns to frame the form of this atmospheric pastel of old Spain.

At the Window, by turns festive and reflective, follows an ingenious structural plan that summarizes the entire composition. The quartet presents the main theme of the movement, a subject grown from the motive that opened the work. The solo viola offers thematic contrast with a waltz-like, modally inflected melody. The center section is given over to transformations of the main theme and a quiet reminiscence of the Habanera from the preceding movement. The main theme and the viola’s contrasting melody (assigned to the piano upon its reappearance) serve as the formal recapitulation. A coda which recalls other thematic kernels from the first movement brings this lovely souvenir of Iberia to a close.

“I would settle down on his lap, and tirelessly he would begin, ‘Once upon a time ...’ It was Beauty and the Beast and The Ugly Empress of the Pagodas, and, above all, the adventures of a little mouse he invented for me.” So Mimi Godeb- ski reminisced in later years about the visits of Maurice Ravel to her family’s home during her childhood. Ravel, a contented bachelor, enjoyed those visits to the Godebskis, and took special delight in playing with the young children — cutting out paper dolls, telling stories, romping around on all fours. Young Mimi and her brother Jean were in the first stages of piano tutelage in 1908, and Ravel decided to encourage their studies by composing some little pieces for them portraying Sleeping Beauty, Hop o’ My Thumb, Empress of the Pagodas and Beauty and the Beast. To these he added an evocation of The Fairy Garden as a postlude. In 1911, he made a ravishing orchestral transcription of the original five pieces, added to them a prelude, an opening scene and connecting inter- ludes, and produced a ballet with a scenario based on Sleeping Beauty for the Théâtre des Arts in Paris. The suite from Mother Goose was arranged in 1999 for string quartet, bass and piano by Los Angeles violist Roland Kato.

The Mother Goose Suite comprises the five orchestrated movements of Ravel’s original piano version. The tiny Pavane de la Belle au Bois dormant (“Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty”), only twenty measures long, depicts the Good Fairy, who watches over the Princess during her somnolence.

Petit Poucet (“Hop o’ My Thumb”) treats the old legend taken from Perrault’s anthology of 1697. “A boy believed,” noted Ravel of the tale, “that he could easily find his path by means of the bread crumbs which he had scattered wherever he passed; but he was very much surprised when he could not find a single crumb: the birds had come and eaten everything up.” The strings meander through scales as the boy wanders through the woods, with a few of his aviary nemeses returning to scavenge for the last morsels of bread.

Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes (“Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas”) portrays a young girl cursed with ugliness by a wicked fairy. According to Ravel’s inscription, “She undressed herself and went into the bath. The pagodas [grotesque little figures made of porcelain, crystal or precious jewels] began to sing and play on instruments; some had theorbos [large lutes] made of walnut shells; some had viols made of almond shells; for they were obliged to proportion the instruments to their figures.” This tale, too, has a happy ending in which the Empress’ beauty is restored. The music is decidedly Oriental in character, and is playable in the original version almost entirely on the piano’s black keys.

Ravel prefaced Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête (“Conversations of Beauty and the Beast”) with lines from the tale as interpreted by Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1757: “‘When I think how good-hearted you are, you do not seem to me so ugly.’ ‘Yes, I have, indeed, a kind heart; but I am a monster.’ ‘There are many men more monstrous than you.’ ‘If I had wit, I would invent a fine compliment to thank you, but I am only a beast.’ ‘Beauty, will you be my wife?’ ‘No, Beast!’ ‘I die content since I have the pleasure of seeing you again.’ ‘No, my dear Beast, you shall not die; you shall live to be my husband!’ The Beast had disappeared, and she saw at her feet only a prince more beautiful than Love, who thanked her for having broken his enchantment.” This piece, influenced by a certain Satie-esque insouciance, is among the most graphic in Ravel’s output. The high instruments sing the delicate words of the Beauty, while the Beast is portrayed by the bass. At first the two converse, politely taking turns in the dialogue, but after their betrothal, both melodies are entwined, and finally the Beast’s theme is transfigured into a floating wisp in the most ethereal reaches of the solo violin’s range.

The rapt, introspective splendor of the closing Le jardin féerique (“Fairy Garden”) is not derived from a particular story, but is Ravel’s masterful summation of the beauty, mystery and wonder that pervade Ma Mère l’Oye. Its serenity is matched among Ravel’s works only by some pages from the opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges, his other masterwork inspired by a vision of childhood. During this final scene of the ballet, Prince Charming awakens the sleeping Princess Florine with a kiss, and all the characters gather around the royal couple as the Good Fairy bestows her blessing.

After his years in Paris absorbing the riches of what was then the world’s most vibrant musical city (and simultaneously befriending Debussy, Ravel and Dukas), Manuel de Falla retreated to Spain in 1914 in the face of the German invasion of France. Soon after Falla’s arrival, Pastora Imperio, the reigning donna of Gypsy music, asked him to provide the accompaniment for a “song and dance” for her act. So fervent was Rosario’s singing of the traditional songs and recounting of the Gypsy legends that Falla decided to create not just a “song and dance” but a full ballet. Despite Imperio’s popularity, however, the premiere of El Amor Brujo gained little success, and Falla revised the score, cutting some numbers and expanding the original chamber scoring to full orchestra.

El Amor Brujo is set in Andalusia. To the accompaniment of singing, the heroine of the ballet, Candelas, appears. She has been in love with a dashing Gypsy, recently dead, who keeps returning to haunt her. A live and handsome villager, Carmelo, loves Candelas and wants to marry her but the ghost inter- venes, and his sorcery prevents her from granting Carmelo the kiss of perfect love. Desperate, Candelas tries to drive off the specter through a Ritual Fire Dance. She fails, so Carmelo tries to trick the ghost. Since the deceased always liked attractive women, Carmelo decides to use Lucia, a companion of Candelas, as a decoy. Carmelo comes to woo Candelas. Jealous, the specter appears, but when his eye is caught by the pretty Lucia he ignores Candelas and follows her friend. Carmelo convinces Candelas that his own devotion to her is greater than that of the ghost. As morning dawns and the bells of the village sound, the pair at last exchange the perfect kiss and exorcise the ghost forever.