Rousseau’s call for the Romantic sensibility to “return to Nature,” codified in his 1762 educational treatise Emile, finds a kindred spirit in Beethoven, who in 1808 entitled his Sixth Symphony “Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life.” Beethoven did not court extra-musical content per se in this music, calling the work “more an expression of feeling than painting,” in other words a “character” piece in symphonic terms. Beethoven reveled in his country walks in the environs of Vienna, but he did not encourage “program music.” He admonished, “All painting in instrumental music is lost if pushed too far.” Rather, the intensity of feeling that the music generates in its most ambitious moments suggests the rampant pantheism endemic to Romantic thought, the dominant motif of poets Wordsworth, Shelley, and those German poets who inspire Schubert.
The “Pastorale” remains Beethoven’s sole symphony in five movements, the last three of which flow into each other. The expansive first movement, Allegro ma non troppo, “The Awakening of Cheerful Feelings on Arrival in the Countryside,” opens in relative quietude on a drone pedal, evolving into 500 measures that repeat its simple melodic idea, with only a slight, but powerful, modulation from B-flat to D Major as the development section proceeds. It is the second movement, Andante con moto, “Scene by the Brook” in B-flat Major, that has inspired so much debate regarding “realistic” effects, with its bird calls like the cuckoo, nightingale, and the quail, with concomitant chirps and trills. Set in 12/8 time, the music achieves a lazy, meandering line of motion, basking in the repetitive phrases and, at the bird calls, halting the progression entirely.
The third movement, a Scherzo in F Major in 3/4 time, means to invoke a “Merry Gathering of Countryfolk,” Allegro. Its trio section appears twice, and the music captures the buoyant, good fellowship that soon becomes disrupted by the appearance of a powerful storm movement in F Minor, Allegro, 4/4 time. What begins as a few, scattered drops of rain soon transform into a raging fury, what Berlioz called “the end of the world.” Trombones appear with the timpani to accentuate Nature’s fury, what Shelley embraces in his “Ode to the West Wind.” With the dissolution of the storm, the oboe appears to lead us to the Promised Land, a flute solo staccato scale to open F Major vistas, the glory of Heaven, Allegretto in 6/8 time. This last movement, in sonata-rondo form, marks the “Shepherd’s Song: Cheerful, Thankful Feelings after the Storm,” and constitutes a glorious, F Major hymn of praise. Basking in luminous harmonies, the symphony ends on two, powerful chords in F Major.
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) took on a piano transcription of Beethoven’s F Major Symphony in 1837. Doubtless, beyond the sheer challenge of the task, Liszt wished to fulfill a personal mission to bring the Beethoven symphonies to those areas where a symphony orchestra simply would not have been available. For this work, Liszt recycled his previous transcriptions by simplifying passages, stating that “the more intimately acquainted one becomes with Beethoven, the more one clings to certain singularities and finds that even insignificant details are not without their value.” Liszt would note down the names of the orchestral instruments for the pianist to imitate; he also added pedal marks and fingerings for amateurs and sight readers. Vladimir Horowitz, in a 1988 interview, stated, “I deeply regret never having played Liszt’s arrangements of the Beethoven symphonies in public – these are the greatest works for the piano – tremendous works – every note of the symphonies is in the Liszt works.”
Back to Claire Huangci’s Bio page
“There is no other work which leaves such a vast field for interpreters to display their qualities of imagination, skill and virtuosity, while giving the most substantial nourishment to musicians.”
-Wanda Landowska
J.S. Bach published his Aria with Thirty Variations in 1742, part of his Clavier-Übung or “keyboard exercises” that included his Italian Concerto in F Major and French Overture in B Minor. The apocryphal story behind the work claims that Bach’s student Johann Theophilus Goldberg, in service to the Russian ambassador to the Saxon Court at Dresden, suffered from chronic insomnia and commissioned Bach to compose some music that would aid in his attempt to sleep. Certainly, the sheer breadth of Bach’s creation, assuming one’s mind has not been totally engaged, would contribute to the possibility of sleep, since with all repeats intact, a performance may last from an hour to 80 minutes.
A possible model for Bach’s mighty creation could be Handel’s 1733 Chaconne in G Major with 62 Variations, especially since its eight-bar bass line is identical to the first eight bars of Bach’s “Aria da Capa.” Bach’s “Aria” in G Major proceeds as a sarabande, in two halves, each repeated, in which Bach focuses not on the melody but upon the bass line and its harmonic structure. Bach will retain the harmonic motion throughout, making various adjustments for the three variations in minor keys. What ornamentation exists derives from the coupled French style and Spanish origin of the sarabande, which require a series of arabesques.
Bach groups the variations in sets of three – much in conformity with his Lutheran sense of mystic symbolism. The third variation in every set is a canon or round-dance, its imitative voices set at a progressively wider interval with each set of three. Variation 3 appears in canon at the unison; the No. 6 at the distance a second; the Variation 9 at the third; and so on to No. 27, which stretches to a ninth. To accompany the journey to each canon, Bach adds a free-form piece or Baroque dance in a popular genre, such as a Gigue (no. 7) or a Fughetta (no. 10), and a toccata, a chance for ample, virtuoso display. Bach indicates a second ending for selected numbers: 2, 4, 6, 16, and 25, with the numbers 18 and 25 (a dark, passionate Adagio in G Minor) each having their repeat deliberately set in an antique mode.
The No. 15 (Canone alla quinta: Andante), a kind of dividing-line, proves quite remarkable, since in the course of its progression, the two halves mirror each other and reverse, and the hands depart from each other, the right suspended on an open fifth, ready to proceed to a “new beginning” in the French Overture at No. 16. Glenn Gould said of the No. 15: “It’s the most severe and rigorous and beautiful canon … the most severe and beautiful that I know, the canon in inversion at the fifth. It’s a piece so moving, so anguished—and so uplifting at the same time—that it would not be in any way out of place in the St. Matthew’s Passion; matter of fact, I’ve always thought of Variation 15 as the perfect Good Friday spell.”
The French overture of No. 16 is unique within this composition. It’s the only variation written in this style, and indicates a clear turning point in the music. The big, bold opening and closing chords further add to the point. The variation consists of a slow prelude with dotted rhythms followed by a fugue-like contrapuntal section. The ensuing No. 17 presents a brilliant toccata, and listeners may hear allusions to Vivaldi and Scarlatti. In contrast, the No. 18 has a formal solemnity, a strict canon at the 6th, 2/2, in which the upper and bass voices seem to compete for dominance in a tone stately, even “imperious” (Nicholas Kenyon).
While the No. 19 presents a rapid dance, and the No. 20 a spirited and technically daunting toccata, the No. 21, the Canon at the 7th, the second of the minor-key variations, laments in chromatic harmony that generates a feeling of grief, even tragedy. It adumbrates the more anguished, emotional climax of Variation 25, Adagio, ¾, whose “dark passion” in G Minor intensifies its florid, arioso character with a pathos we associate with Chopin or late Beethoven. Wanda Landowska referred to this variation as “the black pearl” of the set, and Glenn Gould noted that its harmonies constitute “a richer lode of enharmonic relationships [than anything] between Gesualdo and Wagner.”
In Variation No. 26 the sarabande becomes a brilliant, two-part toccata that literally broils with radiant energy. The Canon at the Ninth (No. 27) is a “pure” moment of imitation, lacking a bass line. It resembles Bach’s two-and-three-part inventions but raised to a visionary height. The stunning trills and quick-passing ornaments of Variation 28 make this toccata in ¾ thirty-second notes daunting, as both hands cross and then mirror each other in a way that a music-box might charm us in multiple voices. No. 29 complements this variation, here in resonant chords in ¾ alternating with shared arpeggios in a grand manner. Robert Schumann might well have savored this and the following Quodlibet (medley) as a union of the timely and the timeless in “fearful symmetry” (William Blake).
The final Variation No. 30 beckons us to recall a Bach family ritual, with the family being seated around the dinner table, first to sing a devotional chorale, and then proceeding to less decorous repertory, including comic and scatological songs meant to invoke joie de vivre, laughter and hearty, even peasant, goodwill among this illustrious band of musicians. We have a Quodlibet, or joke made of folk songs, like Ich bin solang nicht bei dir g’west, ruck her, ruck her (“I have so long been away from you, come closer, come closer”) and Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertrieben, hätt mein’ Mutter Fleisch gekocht, wär ich länger blieben (“Cabbage and turnips have driven me away, had my mother cooked meat, I’d have opted to stay”). The results of say, the cabbage, would be flatulence, and the rising arpeggios and trills may attest to their effect.
Lastly, the Aria da Capo returns, note-for-note, unchanged and unscathed by all that has preceded. The snake has devoured its own, archetypal tail; but we might feel a touch of nostalgia, knowing as we now do, all of this innocent tune’s potential. The more literary will recall the lines from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”:
“…the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
The return to our pristine state has not left us unaffected. We can contradict Thomas Wolfe and go home again, but the long voyage has given us glimpses of Eternity.
Back to Juho Pohjonen’s Bio page
What makes the Bach clan so completely unique in music history is the truly high technical level at which virtually all of them operated and the level of experimentation and questioning of ideas and tropes that they sought to bring to their artistic output.–Mahan Esfahani
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the second surviving son of J.S. Bach, secured an appointment in 1740 as harpsichordist to Frederick II of Prussia, himself an adept flute player. In 1767, Bach managed to free himself from service and moved to Hamburg, where he published his influential Essay on Keyboard Instruments, which remained unsurpassed for two generations. Haydn called it “the school of schools.” Mozart said, “He is the father; we are the children.” Beethoven, when teaching the young Karl Czerny, wrote, “be sure of procuring Emanuel Bach’s treatise.
Emanuel Bach owned two clavichords as well as a harpsichord and a fortepiano, but his preferred instrument was the clavichord. Theologian, translator and music essayist Carl Friedrich Cramer wrote, “All who have heard Bach play the clavichord must have been struck by the endless nuances of shadow and light that he casts over all his performances.”
Bach’s work exhibits much invention and, most importantly, extreme unpredictability, a wide emotional range even within a single work, a (“sensitive”) style that may be categorized as empfindsamer Stil. It is both sincere in thought and polished and felicitous in phrase. His keyboard sonatas, for example, mark an important epoch in the history of musical form. Lucid in style, delicate and tender in expression, they are even more notable for the freedom and variety of their structural design; they break away from both the Italian and the Viennese schools, moving instead toward the cyclical and improvisatory forms that became common several generations later, especially in Beethoven.
The Sonata in F sharp minor H37 (Wq 52/4) dates from 1744. The most remarkable movement is the opening Allegro, built on a contrast between fantasia and lyric passages. The movement opens with rapid passagework in 16th triplets. After the first four bars, which are grounded by irregularly spaced, accented notes in the bass, Bach complicates the rhythm through metric displacement of the lowest notes within rising scalic or arpeggiated passages. Rather than reinforcing the beat, these low notes often fall on the second 16th of a triplet. The result is rhythmic instability, resolved only by the ultimate arrival on a long note at the end of the phrase. Bach follows this fanciful opening with a contrasting, galant (simple and immediately appealing) theme accompanied by steady repeated 8th notes. Although the movement as a whole is in a standard, rounded binary form, within each section the fantasia and lyrical elements alternate, sometimes in short fragmentary phrases.
In contrast to the unusual opening movement, the following Poco andante, in D major, is a study in restrained elegance. Here Bach evokes a trio sonata, with two treble voices in imitative texture set over a steady bass in eighth notes. The three voices in the slow movement feel impeccably balanced, their transparency provoking a close listening that creates deep engagement.
The finale, Allegro assai, moves again in binary form, featuring dotted rhythms and occasional sudden rests setting off dramatic harmonic progressions, demonstrating the spontaneous, even “edgy” qualities of the empfindsamer stil. In one case, the rest lasts for an entire bar, placing in relief a diminished third in the bass, soon followed by still another silence preceding a diminished triad. More restrained than some of his other early finales, this movement balances continuity with rhetorical irregularities.
When Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, he was already a musician with a promising record and a reputation as a brilliant pianist/improviser/composer. While his first published, Viennese works were a set of piano trios, Op. 1, he followed these with a triptych of piano sonatas for his Op. 2, published in 1797 and dedicated to Joseph Haydn, with whom he had studied (with increasing dissatisfaction) for about a year. Beethoven’s three Op. 2 sonatas appear as large-scale works by the standard of the time. Each is in the four movements more common to the symphony and the string quartet, rather than the three movements usually found in the sonatas of Mozart and Haydn, works that were also usually written with the amateur market in mind. Beethoven — and his publishers — certainly expected amateurs to buy his sonatas for home performance, but they are clearly imbued with the new expressive and technical range of the composer’s own playing.
The Sonata in C major, Op. 2, No. 3, immediately strikes us as a most brilliant virtuoso vehicle, an expansive work that approaches a solo concerto in style and scope. In fact, Beethoven took his first movement materials from a quartet movement he had sketched as a student in Bonn. The first movement, an Allegro very much con brio, proceeds in sonata form with a passage like a concerto cadenza in the recapitulation. The main, four-part thematic material, reminiscent of a quartet, is constructed from the sort of terse motives and gestural figures that lend themselves readily to development – and a sense of improvisation – while the lyrical second subject arrives in the expected key of G, but in the minor mode – not at all common. Beethoven mirrors this in the recapitulation, where it returns in C minor. A cadenza leads to the coda, a brilliant finish to an audacious first movement.
The Adagio second movement brings us harmonic surprises. It opens unexpectedly in the key of E major, with an ensuing shift to E minor. This five-part movement in three themes balances an intimate, elegantly phrased main theme with swirling, arpeggiated music, first in E minor, then returning in E major. The return of the right-hand arpeggios and octaves in the bass begins, however, with a sudden dip into C major, reminding us of the Sonata’s home key.
The quasi-fugal Scherzo abounds in contrapuntal intimations and harmonic diversions. The fleet, vigorously rhythmic dance, playfully emphasizing weak beats in the measure, moves to a turbulent Trio section in the relative minor key, savoring roiling, broken chords in triplets. The Scherzo injects a final “joke” in its astonishing coda, a graduated, obsessive fadeout that combines neurotic extension and emphatic summation simultaneously.
Beethoven’s finale. Allegro assai, pays homage to Haydn, a cheerful sonata-rondo whose central episode acts as a development, and the first theme and first episode take the form of first and second subjects. Despite its apparent gaiety, the technical demands on the performer remain taxing. The main rondo theme makes its final appearance with increasingly brilliant figuration until it dissolves into soft trills, silences, and the threat of complete dissolution before ending in boisterous, even Homeric, thunder.
Ironically, the 32 sonatas Beethoven created for the keyboard and universally admired for their craftsmanship and energy, no less intimidated the Romantic composers who succeeded him: no practicing composer-virtuoso fashioned a comparable number of sonatas, including such masters as Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Thalberg. In 1853, the year of Liszt’s grand Sonata in B Minor, Johannes Brahms entered into the select circle of the Robert Schumann home. Schumann himself had already begun a serious mental decline that would culminate in his suicide attempt. But he recognized in Brahms a major extension of the Great German Tradition; and in an article, Neue Bahnen, “New Directions,” he proclaimed Brahms as the successor to that Tradition by virtue of the two sonatas, Op. 1 in C and Op. 2 in F# Minor, that Brahms had proffered to the Schumanns on their doorstep. The third sonata, in F minor, was not yet completed, and would be finished in Düsseldorf while he stayed with the Schumanns. In five movements, this Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor (1854) remained the most massive of his keyboard works, its textures and musical materials often a direct borrowing or application of techniques and motives in Beethoven, with its more poetic episodes indebted to Schumann.
The Sonata opens Allegro maestoso in mixed measures of four, in an ambiguous torrent of emotion from a low octave F, not quite certain of major or minor tonality. Suddenly, the music gravitates into C Minor, quoting the famous rhythmic motto for Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. A five- bar phrase takes us to G Minor and then to a full C Major cadence and a fermata, a pregnant pause. Brahms introduces a lovely theme in the relative major key, A-flat, marked fest und bestimmt (“firm and decisive”). The keyboard writing makes demands of persistent upbeats, and rolled chords in large spans, often a tenth, even an eleventh. The development section, capitalizing on the Beethoven motif, becomes quite intense and chromatic, tending to the favor the key of D-flat Major. Eventually, through a maze of triplet figures and syncopations, Brahms sets up his recapitulation with a cadence used to signal a concerto’s cadenza. Despite any number of metric disruptions, the music proceeds via B-flat Major to a definite F Major resolution. Six full chords descend from on high in the right hand as six rising bass octaves oppose them in the left. An ambiguous victory, perhaps, but a declared resistance to fate. The second movement owes much to the influence of idol Robert Schumann, who subsumed poetry and literature into his musical persona. Marked Andante espressivo, in A-flat Major, the score bears a heading taken from the German poet Sternau (1767-1849): Der Abend dämmert, das Mondlicht scheint, Da sind zwei Herzen in Liebe vereint Und halten sich selig umfangen. (The evening dims in twilight, the moonlight shines, There are two hearts united in love And they embrace each other in rapture.)
With an undulating left hand, a lovely melody unfolds, with an upbeat descent in thirds, and adding an expressive trill. Brahms marks the top line bel cantando, song-like, almost an allusion to Chopin’s reliance on operatic bel canto. By using the circle of fifths, Brahms creates a tight, flowing melodic line, whose occasionally unique metric pulse, 4/16, still must remain Äußerst leise und zart (“Extremely quiet and tender”). When the climax of this music occurs, it is in F Minor, molto pesante et fortissimo, high and triumphant chords that will seek D-flat. The tempo shifts to adagio, an ardent benediction in Romantic terms, over a pedal and marked ppp, very expressive and transfigured from its original key center, with a brief forte in rolled chords to conclude.
The Scherzo is marked Allegro energico in ¾, F Minor. Rather explosive in its “A” section, this passionate music first launches a dissonant “diminished seventh” chord notated as grace notes before the downbeat. The chromatic, swaggering motion persistently seeks the sub-dominant key of B-flat Minor. To maintain the acerbic quality of this rare music – Brahms wrote only one other piano Scherzo, Op. 4 and only one for a symphony, his E minor, Op. 98 – the pedal should be employed sparely. The contrasting, hymn-like Trio section, in D-flat Major, with episodes in B-flat Minor and E-flat Minor, which leads back to the reprise of the Scherzo section.
Brahms invokes the word Ruckblick (retrospect) to characterize his fourth movement, an Intermezzo (Andante) in B-flat Minor. This backward-glance is directed to the former romance of movement two, now a funereal march with the Beethoven “fate” tread in triplets in various keys, such as A-flat, B-flat, and F Minor. The dark color of the progression is marked by tremolos and crescendos, dramatically placed. The desolate atmosphere might have been intended as a farewell to Robert Schumann’s creative powers, soon – in a few weeks – to perish forever.
The Sonata’s fifth movement is vastly proportioned, a swaggering 6/8 Rondo form that wavers between F Minor and F Major and concludes with an extended coda in three sections, much like a symphonic development. The music proceeds with much syncopated agitation, seeking to resolve in C but finding its way to F Major, with transitions into the contrasting motif in D-flat Major. The left-hand part will transition to the large Coda, in F Major Più mosso, in a constant 6/8 rhythm. Brahms makes virtuoso demands on the performer, who must execute brilliant canons, punctuated octaves, syncopations, and arpeggios in contrary motion. Indications like con fuoco, grandioso, and appassionato invest the music with a wild, flaring intensity. The grand design of the last pages suggests the end of movement one, but with the addition of a plagal cadence (a cadence from IV to I) and its association with “Amen.” The final chords place an F at the top note of a journey that has moved from darkness into light.
Back to Anna Tsybuleva’s Bio page
Discussions of musical Romanticism often concentrate on the Promethean figure of Beethoven, forgetting that in the self-enclosed keyboard world of Frederic Chopin experiments in splicing lyrical and dramatic impulses find an imaginative synthesis. Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler once quipped, “Bach, Beethoven – and then, there is Chopin!” Even this great interpreter of the German symphonic tradition had to concede Chopin’s creation of unique documents singularly suited to his medium – the piano as a singing instrument – where each form becomes a Rosetta Stone that encapsulates the epoch’s rhetoric and sensibility. Chopin’s works embody what Artur Rubinstein characterized as an “iconoclastic Classicism” of formal design, in which Chopin literally invented new forms to convey his personal response to experience.
Chopin inherited the form of the impromptu – the improvised, spontaneous expression of emotion and facility – from both Vorisek and Schubert, adjusting the form to his own requirements. The F-sharp Major Impromptu dates from 1839-1840. The work’s peaceful, graceful motion suggests a nocturne impulse, looking forward to the Berceuse in D-flat and the Barcarolle in the shared, relatively rare key of F-sharp Major. The striding, central march section looks ahead to the opening measures of the 1841 Fantasie in F Minor, Op 49.
Chopin’s second set of etudes, Etudes, Op. 25, was published in 1837, only four years after the original set, and is dedicated to Franz Liszt’s mistress, Marie d’Agoult, who, at a dinner party in 1836, had introduced Chopin to the author George Sand.
Op. 25, No. 7, C# minor (Cello). This etude tests the performer’s capacity to maintain a long, singing line that both hands share at various points. Tonal quality proves no less a challenge. The longest of any of the 24 etudes, this work requires the pianist’s sense of phrase to maintain the instrument’s vocal line, even when the melodic note appears ambiguous. The melody itself, mournful and slow, Lento, 3/4, gives way to bravura runs in 16ths, and the left hand has select, quick runs. At moments, the piece’s dramatic quality suggests a tragic element, much in the spirit of a ballade.
Op. 25, No. 2, F minor (Bees), marked Presto, molto legato. Here we have a study in polyrhythm that likes to juxtapose right hand, quiet eighth-note triplets with left hand quarter-note triplets. When the two hands mesh, the effect becomes lyrical and mesmeric, completely contrary to the piano’s percussive action.
Op. 25, No. 3, F major (Cartwheel/Horseman), marked Allegro, 3/4, leggiero. In this Etude, Chopin demands a nuanced sense of rhythm. He tests the pianist’s right hand with the requirement of having to end rotations on a staccato note. The last note of every three-note group is to be played staccato, with a slight bounce, which interrupts the sense of melodic continuity. There are two versions of this etude, and in each the melody note is not the longest one. The second version requires a 16th, a dotted 8th, and an 8th note. Thus, the pianist must be aware of rhythm and touch at all times, blending intricate, rhythmic patterns.
The Romantic fusion of literary with musical forms bears rare fruit in the four narrative ballades Chopin composed from 1835 to 1842, of which the fourth, like the others, derives from the work of his friend, the poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), who transposed Lithuanian legend and fairy tales into a “political” context. The emotional outline of the four ballades lends some sense of continuity to these pieces, generally wrought in 6/8 and 6/4 meter, a kind of musical trochaic foot, announcing a subject of romance. The F Minor Ballade, Op. 52, predominantly of Slavic character in its concentrated and polyphonic lyricism, is dedicated to Baroness de Rothschild. The Ballade follows “The Three Brothers Budrys,” a tale of brothers sent by their father to fetch sables. When the brothers disappear, their father assumes they perished in a war. But the sons return from “the barren, stripped land,” with one bride shared by all three. The large scale of the piece, moving in modified sonata-form, embraces, alternately, waltz-like qualities, cadenzas, towering ornaments, and sudden silences. “Music hot from the soul” was James Huneker’s verdict of its broad, emotional range: “Its witchery is irresistible.”
The opening features repeated G’s which assume a melodic function, soon gravitating into G-flat Major, using the small interval from F Minor as a Neapolitan harmony that can function in this work’s reliance on harmonic variations into A-flat and even C-flat, a tritone away from F Minor. The work’s concluding pages and coda prove extremely dense and harmonically rich in Chopin’s late style, heavily reliant on contrapuntal textures.
Chopin’s only lullaby in D-flat (1843) presents a distillation of ornament, brought to a high level of sophistication. Dedicated to Mlle Elise Gavard, the music builds upon a simple alternation of a tonic and dominant bass line, a rocking theme varied 14 times over a basso ostinato. Upon the riveted monotone, Chopin constructs a miracle of harmonic rhythms and vocal filigree in 70 measures that Huneker calls “a rain of silvery fire.” The delicacy of the line, which must be strict and clear while revealing its wealth of color nuance, presents the performer with all the challenges he or she could desire within such a concentrated medium.
Chopin composed three piano sonatas, but only the last two remain in the mainstream repertory. The Sonata No. 1, Op. 4 reveals innate talents yet to be developed, but generally lacks “inspiration.” The so-called “Funeral March” Sonata, Op. 35 has had a long life of its own. The last of Chopin’s sonatas dates from 1844 and is dedicated to Countess Émilie de Perthuis, one of the many ladies of title who enjoyed Chopin’s tutorship. The sonata, in four movements, conforms in many ways to the sonata structure that Mozart and Beethoven had established for the genre.
The opening movement, Allegro Maestoso, begins in resolute chords, forte, but quickly melts, piano, so that by a transition through D Minor, a new theme with refined melody emerges in D Major. Poetic in nature, the music assumes the character of a nocturne, an impulse that will dominate movement three, Largo. This exposition rounds off unexpectedly by first intensifying the nocturne and then presenting an entirely new theme in both hands in measures 76-88. What must serve as the development section proceeds in the manner of a ballade, filled with both lyricism and dramatic tumult. The movement ends in B Major on a note of exuberant rapture.
The second movement, Scherzo: Molto vivace in E-flat Major, moves in ternary form, rather brief, with a trio in B Major that utilizes low harmonics. Much of the mood remains light, in the manner of an etude by Mendelssohn. Only the trio section bears any hint of emotional anxiety.
The sonata’s heart lies in the extraordinary Largo movement, which after a short but stormy introduction, becomes an extended, nocturnal aria in dotted rhythm in B Major, cantabile, a true offspring of the notion of the keyboard as an extension of Bellini’s bel canto. Chopin breaks the melodic line, inserting a moment of uncertainty in the course of an E Major series of rolling arpeggios.
The finale, Presto non tanto in B Minor, 6/8, takes its initial energy from a high dominant 7th chord, and then proceeds into a galloping rondo-allegro. The progression quickly assumes the mass and drama of a ballade, presto and agitato, and we wonder if the sheer momentum of the finale of the Beethoven Symphony No. 7 has influenced Chopin. Chopin’s dark chromaticism finally yields to the B Major impulses, and with this triumphant declaration, the epic sonata concludes.
Back to Nikolay Khozyainov’s Bio page
Baroque composers were fond of writing dance suites, and Bach likely composed his “French” Suites – in sets of three, with six in each set – around 1717-1723 in Köthen, where he served as Kappellmeister. Bach did not name his suites French or English; in fact, the collected dances have their origin in various parts of Europe. While most suites have four movements, the French Suite No. 5 has seven, all in G Major and proceeding in binary form.
Each of the sections has its own charm, if only because their placement nicely contrasts with or complements the last. Bach opens with an Allemande (French for “German”) in 4/4, in moderate tempo in flowing 16th notes. While Bach includes ornaments, the performer may add trills and turns ad libitum. The Courante (French for “running”) that follows offers a French dance in lively, triple time. The slow, triple- meter Sarabande comes from Spain, a stately and austere procession that lends itself to ornamentation. Bach adds a Gavotte to the suite, a French dance in four beats to the bar, that opens on the third beat of the first measure. It moves at a moderately fast pace. The Gavotte is a particular favorite of pianists, and a pianist like Wilhelm Backhaus delivers it in an Italian manner, while Emil Gilels makes it sound French. The ensuing Bourrée moves at a lively pace, two beats to the bar. It begins on the second beat of bar one, and it skips and jumps with a sense of exuberance. The Bourree is a folk dance in quick duple meter, whose roots lie in the Auvergne. Its etymology comes from bourrir, to flap the wings. Bach then introduces a slow Loure, a French dance in 6/4 and dotted rhythm that often earned the nickname gigue lente, or slow jig. Finally, Bach turns to Ireland for a Gigue, a virtuosic, three-part fugue set in 12/16, a compound of two beats in a measure. This little fury moves in 16th notes, six to each beat of the bar. The Gigue can be brilliant as well as rapid, according to the performer. It finishes the Suite with “a sense of pleasant excitement” (P. Spitta).
Listeners often consider Ravel as an impressionist, but the label suits uneasily, and he reveals himself a neo-classicist. That is to say, his stylistic orientation leans toward the strict forms and their content found in earlier historical periods, while his music is sumptuous in sound. He is considered to be one of the most brilliant of orchestrators––and is known for clarity, refined elegance, and reliance upon traditional models. In the case of Le Tombeau de Couperin, the title refers to François Couperin (1668-1733), the great French composer of harpsichord music during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A tombeau is the title given to an artistic tribute––in this case, without any reference to a tomb. Ravel wrote the work during World War I. He had served as an ambulance driver and dedicated each of the movements to friends who lost their lives in the great conflict. Written for solo piano, it literally evokes a seventeenth-century dance suite in six movements––each entitled with one of the traditional Baroque dances. Needless to say, the dances sound unlike Baroque music and follow the tenets of neo-classicism.
The piano work’s six movements are all based on traditional dance movements from the French Baroque suite: Prélude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet, and Toccata. Ravel placed great importance on studying and incorporating the music of his predecessors into his compositions. In preparation for composing the present suite, he transcribed a forlane from Francois Couperin’s Concerts royaux. Ravel’s Tombeau borrows the forms, cadences, and ornamentation of the conventional 18th century French keyboard suite employed by its namesake, but the harmonic language, containing an abundance of major 7ths and parallel chords, is clearly impressionistic in nature. The majority of the suite is set in E Minor, while the Rigaudon and Menuet, respectively, move in G-Major and C-Major. The brilliant Toccata that closes the work, dedicated to friend and musicologist Captain Joseph de Marliave, concludes in a rush of E-Major.
It is unusual for pianists to program Chopin’s Op. 4, considered the weakest of his three piano sonatas. It was written during Chopin’s time as a student with Józef Elsner, to whom the sonata is dedicated. Despite having a low opus number, the sonata was not published until 1851 by Tobias Haslinger in Vienna, two years after Chopin’s death. The work proceeds in four movements:
Allegro maestoso (C minor): The first movement is in sonata form. Only in the aspect of key relations does this movement break from tradition – the second group of themes is based in C minor as much as is the first, so that the dramatic contrast of key which Cedric Thorpe-Davie among other identify as the heart of sonata form becomes lost. Furthermore, the recapitulation begins in the remote key of B♭ minor, with the second theme appearing in G minor. The first movement rather wanders, and one could claim it lacks real melodic inspiration, Chopin’s having chosen to make his contrasts harmonic, major and minor.
Minueto (E-flat major). The second movement, a minuet and trio, remains simple and approachable. The Trio section passes through some shadows, and a brisk transition takes us back to the opening courtly dance. This is the only minuet that Chopin is known to have written. The central Trio is in E-flat minor, the tonic’s parallel minor.
Larghetto (A-flat major): The third movement proves the most unusual, having been written in 5/4 – a device Tchaikovsky employs in the second movement of his Pathetique Symphony, but unusual in Chopin’s time. The third beat of each five-beat bar carries a secondary accent, which is marked explicitly in certain bars. In other places, it can be inferred or even ignored. This movement, rather static, sounds like a truncated response to a funeral tune. James Huneker, in his introduction to the 1895 American publication of the Mikuli edition of the work, calls this unusual characteristic a “failed novelty.”
Finale: Presto (C minor): The last movement has the bravura and fire we have come to expect of Chopin the virtuoso. The hands must move constantly, and the melody feels strong enough to maintain our interest through the finale.
Back to Zoltán Fejérvári’s Bio page
Mozart wrote any number of variations in order to exhibit his considerable, even remarkable, skills in improvisation at the keyboard. He wrote these variations on “Lison dormait” for a Paris audience in 1778, based on a popular arietta from a comic opera Julie, by Nicolas-Alexandre Dezède (1772), which was enjoying a revival while Mozart visited Paris. The initial theme, 2/4, is in C Major.
Variations 1-7 constitute 32 measures each, with two repeated sections, each twice: measures 1-8 and measures 9-32. Variation 8 is marked Adagio and extends for 64 measures. Variation 5 is in C Minor. Variation 9 embarks on a vigorous Allegro, 3/8, with a decisive cadence at measure 63; then, at measure 64, Allegro, 2/4, for 78 measures. Mozart exploits the notion of “unity in variety” in a large piece, broad and colorfully expressive.
The Adagietto, the fourth movement, written for strings and harp, follows what the composer himself called “a devil of a Scherzo.” The Fifth Symphony represents a stylistic departure from Mahler’s previous four symphonies, each of which relies on his song impulse and the folk influence of the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn). The trumpet solo that announces the first movement suggests a kind of “fate motif” we know from Beethoven, especially poignant in light of Mahler’s awareness of his failing heart condition.
The Adagietto introduces in lyric and sometimes convulsive figures the finale to the symphony, and is incomplete on its own, not so much musically as psychologically. Although the scoring sounds relatively transparent, Mahler provides exacting details about how phrases should proceed. The first three notes of the melody, for instance, are marked pianissimo, molto ritardando, espressivo, and crescendo. This impassioned song without words intimately relates to perhaps the greatest of all Mahler songs, that drawn from Friedrich Rückert, the setting of Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (“I am by the World abandoned, forgotten”), composed that same summer of 1902.
Liszt toured Spain and Portugal in 1845, and he found in the jota aragonesa, the courtship dance of northern Spain, with its flamboyant couples who carry castanets, conducive to his sense of color for keyboard transcription. While the piece opens in E Major, Lento, 3/4, it early introduces Liszt’s flair for large chords, quick runs, dynamic drama in crescendo passages, and cadenzas, ad libitum. These opening, deep rumblings soon skyrocket into celestial regions, where Liszt anchors himself to the Folies d’Espagne folk tune, which in classical music can be traced back to Corelli. Moving at first slowly, this theme gathers momentum through a series of brilliant variants and ornamentation that embraces the full range of the piano.
Liszt interrupts the “madness” of La Folia with a musette, a music-box texture for his jota aragonesa, here with the drone effects mid-range that suggest a hurdy-gurdy. More variations ensue, until Liszt interrupts with a disarming, simple recitative, a moment of reflection before the final torrent pours forth. Liszt will combine both themes in a dazzling apotheosis of form and technique that has brought forth for masters Arrau, Bolet, Berman, and Bachauer stupendous awe for their ability to fulfill all of Liszt’s Herculean requirements! And so, on to Gryaznov. . .
Russian chemist and part-time composer Alexander Borodin wrote his String Quartet No. 2 in D Major, in spite of the objections of Mily Balakirev, the leader of “The Mighty Five” group of nationalist composers, who deplored chamber music as “a mere refuge” for lesser talents. Borodin dedicated the Quartet to his wife of 20 years, Ekaterina, as an anniversary gift. The work teems with melody and the Russian predilection for long lines vibrating with color and rhythmic vitality, often set as conversations among the instrumentalists.
The Nocturne, the third movement, has enjoyed a singular popularity and survives in numerous arrangements. The sweeping, compelling melody stated in the cello passes to the violin, and each sounding of the theme (“This is my beloved” from Kismet) is marked “in a singing style, expressive.” It is important not to overlook the ravishing middle section of the Nocturne, even beyond the elegance of the dance, brief conflict, and sublime duet in the original scoring. The contrapuntal mastery Borodin exhibits possesses a luminous quality imbibed from his deep study of Mozart and Beethoven, and attached to his impassioned, Russian soul.
Tchaikovsky’s perennially popular ‘Waltz of the Flowers” derives from his 1892 two-act ballet The Nutcracker, adapted from the 1816 story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” In Act II, Clara and the Prince travel to the beautiful Land of Sweets, ruled by the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Prince’s place until his return. He recounts for her how he had been saved from the Mouse King by Clara and transformed back into himself. In honor of the young heroine, a celebration of sweets from around the world occurs, of which, after a touching Pas de Deux, a string of flowers performs a lilting waltz, whose soaring melodies embody the romance of spirit this traditional Christmas ballet expresses.
In addition to his splendid gifts at the keyboard, Sergei Rachmaninoff devoted himself to the art of song. His songs represent the culmination of the 19th Century Russian musical tradition, cultivated from his deep knowledge of music of Glinka and Tchaikovsky. He set texts by canonic Russian poets: Pushkin, Balmont, and Lermontov. Most of his songs, like those of Schubert, explore nature, religion, love, sadness, and loss.
“Night is Mournful,” Op. 26, No. 12 (1906): Returning to Russia after a curative visit to Italy in 1906, Rachmaninoff completed the 15 Songs Op. 26. His close friends in Moscow, Arkady and Mariya Kerzin, assembled the sundry Russian poems. Arkady, a lawyer, and Mariya, a trained pianist, had founded the Circle of Russian Music Lovers in Moscow in 1896, an organization that presented concerts of Russian chamber and orchestral music until 1912. As the song collection grew, Rachmaninoff pressed his friends for more emotionally diverse lyrics. Here, the poet describes hopeless longing on this “sad night,” and Rachmaninoff provides a mournful melody and deft, contrapuntal accompaniment.
“How Fair This Spot,” Op. 21, No. 7 (1902): Based on a poem by Eynerling, this song is one of twelve Rachmaninoff composed while recovering psychologically – with the help of Dr. Dahl – from the debacle of his First Symphony. The narrator contemplates the river, the meadow, the clouds, the flowers – all in a pantheistic rapture of love.
Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14 (1912): Vocalise occupies the place of the fourteenth song – this without words – from his series composed in 1912 and premiered in 1916. Its pure legato requires no words to convey its melancholy lyricism, and many arrangements exist for instrumentalists to exploit its sentiment.
Italian Polka (c. 1900): Rachmaninoff likely heard this street tune in Italy, possibly played on a hand organ. He set the tune for piano, four hands. Slava Gryaznov writes that he thought it would be fun to arrange this piece, the melody of which no one he met in Italy recognized.
Glinka is considered by many to be the father of Russian music, given that his operas and orchestral works were based on Russian themes and ultimately became models for other compatriots to incorporate Russian folk music and folk tales into their works. Tchaikovsky even commented that “all of the Russian school of symphonic works is contained in Glinka’s Kamarinskaya, just as the whole oak tree is in an acorn.” The Valse-Fantasie began as a keyboard work, later orchestrated. Glinka called it “a scherzo in waltz form.” Gryaznov’s transcription, which he has revised several times, originated in 2005.
Back to Vyacheslav Gryaznov’s Bio page
Venetian composer Baldassare Galuppi produced a significant amount of music, particularly in the genre of opera, though many of his operatic works have not endured in the active repertory. He held a number of important posts in the opera life of Venice. In 1965, Italian virtuoso Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli made a recording of the Sonata in C that completely revived interest in Galuppi’s legacy. The opening Andante displays the major aspects of Galuppi’s pre-Classical style: a galant, ornamented melodic line with an accompaniment in broken chords, the so-called Alberti bass. The harmonic progressions follow standard I-IV-V-I logic. The grace and liquid charm of the entire piece depend on the touch of the performer, who should illuminate the transparent, jeweled, music-box style that places this piece as a special moment in piano literature.
Mendelssohn’s G Minor Sonata is a product of his youth, a 12-year-old’s student work that he denied publication. The work became available twenty years after Mendelssohn’s death. Mendelssohn had studied with conservative composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, who “warned” Mendelssohn about the dangers in Beethoven! We hear, especially in the second movement Adagio, in E-flat Major, the influence of composers Haydn, Dussek, and Clementi. This expressive movement opens with a leap of over two octaves, embroidered with romantic, pianissimo arpeggios. The outer movements, Allegro and Presto, exploit one theme in the manner of Haydn, and even Scarlatti. These movements display a passion that may well be more imagined than experienced, and the last movement exhibits some virtuosic effects that likely reveal something of the young composer-pianist’s technical abilities.
Ravel’s inspiration for his Sonatine came by way of a 1903 competition sponsored by a fine arts literary magazine, Weekly Critical Review, on which Ravel’s friend, M.D. Calvocoressi, was a member; he encouraged Ravel to submit an entry. The prize of one hundred francs would be awarded to a piece whose first movement did not exceed 75 measures; but Ravel’s first movement, the sole entry, ran longer. The magazine facing bankruptcy, soon canceled the competition. In 1905, Ravel completed the other two movements, and the score was published by Durand, which became Ravel’s sole publisher.
Ravel (1875-1937) dedicated the cyclical Sonatine to his dear friends Ida and Cipa Godebski. Madame Paule de Lestang gave the world premiere in Lyon, France on 10 March 1906. Gabriel Grovlez gave the work’s Paris premiere for a concert sponsored by the National Music Society of the Schola Cantorum. The Sonatine pays homage to the stile galant of the 18th century, especially its sense of refined elegance. The first movement (Modere) – in sonata form – in F-sharp minor in the Aeolian mode, exploits a perfect fourth descending, to C-sharp, and a perfect fifth, ascending, as an inversion to complete the opening motive and as a recurring idea in later movements. The use of the opening motive in the subsequent movements derives from Ravel’s admiration of Liszt and his “transformation of theme.” Ravel favors accented upbeats at key intervals and at the perfect fourth.
The second movement presents a Menuet in an archaic mode of D-flat, like his earlier Menuet antique of 1895. The movement lacks a trio section, typical of a sonatina. The secondary theme appears in measures 39-48 and echoes movement one. Upbeat accents, along with the measured tempo, prevent the music from having become a waltz. The color in this movement, quite expressive, relies on Ravel’s wishing to sound pairs of notes, G and A-flat, and D-flat and A-flat. The last movement, Animé, is another example of a toccata in an antique style, close to Rameau and Couperin, whom Ravel admired. Like movement one, the key is F-sharp minor and the music in sonata form. The theme consists of a series of horn calls, accented, beginning on a perfect fourth, C-sharp – F-sharp. At two points, Ravel changes the metrics to 5/4 and indicates he wants a tranquil effect. The recapitulation begins at measure 106 and builds, subito e crescendo, to a powerful finale.
The single-movement Sonata No. 3 was based on one of the half-dozen such works at which Prokofiev tried his hand at the academy. In his memoirs he recorded an anecdote, a delightful sketch of mingled adolescence and artistic precocity, concerning the derivation of its lyrical second theme: “I had no acquaintances among the girls of the Conservatory, although there was no lack of them: there were lots of them walking through the corridors or sitting on window ledges…. I noticed several girls my own age and watched them during breaks between academic classes. One of them had a rather strange last name: Eshe. When I wrote her name in French, ‘Eche,’ I noticed that each letter stood for a note. [According to German notational convention, ‘H’ stands for B-natural.] Remembering that music had been written on themes derived from names (for example the variations on the theme B–A–C–H), I tried to write a theme based on E–C–H [B-natural]–E. And since it struck me as successful, I used it — with imitations at that — as the subordinate theme in my Third Sonata.” Prokofiev retained the thematic material and basic shape of the 1907 Sonata in his 1917 revision, though the piano writing was cast in a grander manner and the harmonic details were sharpened.
The Third Sonata compresses Prokofiev’s simultaneous leanings to the simple and the complex. Prokofiev combines logic and clarity of form, texture and rhythm with harsh, unusual harmonies and timbres. He creates his own distinctive melodic design, in which simplicity of line is combined with unusual twists and angularities, and his own harmonic idiom, in which transparently diatonic harmonies (much like old folk harmonies) alternate with sharp polytonality. Finally, he makes great use of vigorous, clear-cut rhythms, inspired by elements of the march, the dance, and human gesture.
Nikolai Kapustin was born in Gorlovka, Ukraine, and studied the piano with Avrelian Rubakh, who had been a student of Felix Blumenfeld. Kapustin graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1961 as a piano student of Alexander Goldenweiser. After performing with the jazz bands of Yuri Saulsky and Oleg Lundström, Kapustin dedicated himself to composition. His vast output for piano, published by A-RAM and Zen-on and distributed by The Music Trading Company Ltd. (MusT) in London, includes twenty-one sonatas, six concertos, 24 Preludes, op. 53, 24 Preludes & Fugues, op. 82, 10 Bagatelles, op. 59, and three sets of etudes, op. 40, op. 67, and op. 68.
Kapustin’s style fuses the classical approach to form and the jazz approach to harmony and rhythm in a unique way, though somewhat indebted to the influence of Austrian piano virtuoso Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000). Kapustin’s compositional style finds impulses derived from American jazz, particularly the styles of Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans. From the classical side, Kapustin feels debts to composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Frederick Chopin, Maurice Ravel, and Béla Bartók. The major focus of the 1980s shifted from music for piano and orchestra to music written exclusively for the piano. Kapustin composed twenty piano sonatas during the period of 1984-2011. Ten of them were completed by the end of 1999.
The Sonata No. 2 dates from 1989 and constitutes Kapustin’s most extended work in the genre. Written in the bright, sanguine key of E major, it proceeds in a traditional four-movement mold. There is, however, nothing at all traditional about the piano writing itself, which teems with interesting and innovative twists and turns, both stylistically and pianistically. Indeed, one remarkable feature of Kapustin’s piano writing lies in its ability to fit the hand beautifully. He always insisted on composing at the piano in order to avoid coming up with figurations that would not fit the hand well. Prokofiev once described one of Nikolai Medtner’s short piano pieces as being so comfortable as to be ‘always right there, under the fingers.’ The same can unquestionably be said of Kapustin at any point within his piano works. Indeed, on a purely pianistic level, Kapustin and Medtner tower above any other piano composer in history, as far as pure comfort at the keyboard is concerned.
One marvels to discover the many surprises contained in this exuberant work—as well as the various apparent influences—and a couple of features are worth pointing out. The brilliant and overwhelmingly energetic first movement, Allegro molto – that contains Gershwinesque features and stride elements – curiously but very effectively resolves with a reflective and rather lengthy coda, in great contrast to the ebullience of what came before. The Scherzo, Allegro assai, immediately suggests the toccatas of Prokofiev and Khachaturian, but cross-fertilized by Jazz. The third movement, Largo – Allegro, projects intimacy and the nightclub. The opening bars remind one of the song “Tenderly” as sung by Nat King Cole. And the last movement, Allegro vivace, possesses a unique rhythmic framework: it is a perpetual motion set in a repeated pattern of 8+7+8+5 beats, and the motion keeps to this stilted sequence up to the very last bar, resulting in many unexpected accents. Incidentally, this movement often invokes comparisons with the pianism of Art Tatum, but Kapustin’s stated influence here is the world of country music. We might infer that Gershwin and his musical successors like Oscar Peterson or even Keith Jarrett demand recognition.
Back to Yeol Eum Son’s Bio page
Mozart took the French folk song, “Mother, if only I could tell you. . .” which we know as “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and used the tune in a Vienna recital for bravura variations that display his glorious gift for improvisation. The basic theme having been stated, it then experiences changes in rhythm, harmony, and texture. Despite the dazzling treatment in ornamentation – pearly right-hand ornaments and left-hand runs – the theme remains recognizable throughout. As a final variant, after a touching adagio, Mozart incorporates much of the earlier technique in a sumptuous combination of technical virtuosity and musical invention.
The Eroica Variations, Fifteen Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme, Op. 35, were written in 1802 and published the following year in Leipzig. The dedication went to Mozart’s former pupil, Count Moritz Lichnowsky, brother of Beethoven’s generous patron, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, after an originally intended dedication to the Abbé Stadler. The theme appears elsewhere, in the finale of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, in the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, and in a Contredanse. As in the symphony, the theme appears first in skeletal form, an opening chord followed by the bassline only. It then appears in two parts, the right hand’s adding a simple counterpoint. The right hand now takes the original bassline, crossed intermittently by the left hand, to produce an impression of three voices. Then follows a version a quattro, with the original bass now the upper part, leading to the familiar theme itself.
The first of the Eroica variations, which might have been better known, had Beethoven’s intentions been followed, as the Prometheus Variations, offers a 16ths right-hand version of the theme, followed by a triplet 16ths version, including a brief cadenza. An abrupt third variation leads to a running 16ths bass, with right-hand chords, and to a brief syncopated fifth variation. The theme emerges clearly in variation six, while the seventh variation is a canon at the octave. The hand-crossing of the eighth variation is succeeded by a version in which the bass of the theme is announced in lower register grace notes and a division of labor in the tenth variation. The following three variations explore other keyboard sonorities, before the penultimate E-flat minor fourteenth variation and the ornamented Largo, the E-flat Major fifteenth. The fugal subject, the bass of the theme, arrives in the second voice, is answered in the upper voice, and followed by a third bass entry. The fugal texture finds itself interrupted by a passage that leads to the return of the full theme and its subsequent elaboration in a brilliant conclusion.
Clara Schumann wrote her Op. 20 Variations in 1853, and played them in 1854 for a new guest in the Schumann home, Johannes Brahms. The theme, from the fourth movement of Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blätter (“Colorful Leaves”), Op. 99, is marked ziemlich langsam, “rather slow.”
Clara begins with a verbatim restatement of Robert’s short piece, and invents seven variations, retaining both the melodic theme and its subdued mood throughout. Variation 1 employs triplets in the bass with the clear statement of theme in the treble. Variation 2 utilizes staccato 16ths, an energetic impulse that indicates something of Clara’s own virtuosity. Variation 3 returns to the initial theme, but changes the emotional tenor into a lament. Variation 4 asserts a dynamic movement, offering 16th triplets in the right hand, while the left retains the character of the main theme. Variation 5 resumes the piece’s animation, with agitated, left-hand octaves over which we hear the initial tempo with a harmonized canon. Clara turns to spread chords and arpeggios for Variation 6, expressing the theme in a delicate texture. The final pages employ soft arpeggios to drift off into silence. Marital responsibilities and the crises of Robert’s health came to interfere with Clara’s creative powers, so these Variations stand among her last efforts in original composition.
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. After the 1930s and since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked both in serialism and in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented that captures the ringing of bells. Pärt’s music contain elements inspired by Gregorian chant. Variations for the Healing of Arinushka for solo piano was composed in 1977 for the composer’s daughter Ariina, who was recovering from an appendix operation. The piece contains six short variations, the first three of which are in minor key and the other three in major.
Excursions, Op. 20 is American composer Samuel Barber’s first published piece for solo piano and remains one of his most popular pieces for the instrument. A neo-Romantic composer whose style was characterized by lyricism and expression, Barber takes small classical forms (Rondo, the Theme & Variations, for example) and infuses them with regional, American folk idioms to create a four-movement work that depicts a musical travelogue around the United States.
Movement III takes us into the American West. Barber creates a theme and seven variations based on the tune, “The Streets of Laredo.” Gentle and touching, the piece treats the quasi-romantic ballad to a series of syncopations and polyrhythms, and even moments of playful jazz and blues. The effects reduce the sense of discernible bar lines, as the romance of the West assumes a liquid glow.
Barber concludes his American journey in Movement IV, still in the West, with a barn dance, a hoe-down, rhythmically demanding, with an upbeat tempo that suggests a fiddler’s gestures, accompanied by either a banjo or harmonica in block chords, tonic and sub-dominant, as some may recall from the film, The Devil and Daniel Webster.
The influence of Italian, virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) on composers and performers of the 19th Century quite dominated creative thought. Paganini’s command of violin technique and popular showmanship made him an icon, even a character susceptible to legend. Liszt heard Paganini in 1832 in Paris and determined to become as adept in keyboard virtuosity as Paganini was on his violin. In imitation of the violin master, Liszt conceived his Six Grand Paganini Etudes, which were meant to daunt any but the most accomplished pianists and intended for Liszt’s sole execution. Even in their revised state, they contain some of the most demanding technical skills in the piano repertoire.
The Etude No. 6 in A Minor takes its cue from Paganini’s own Caprice No. 24 for Solo Violin, for which there are variations by that master. The original may be more demanding than Liszt’s transcription for the keyboard, with its 11 variations; but Liszt’s requirements in rapid octaves, scales, spans, and arpeggios manage to test velocity and accuracy in heroic proportions.
Back to Sandra Wright Shen’s Bio page
In March 1789, Haydn wrote to his publisher, Artaria: “In a moment of great good humor I have completed a new Capriccio for fortepiano, whose taste, singularity and special construction cannot fail to receive approval from connoisseurs and amateurs alike. It is … rather long, but by no means too difficult.” The work in question—harder to play than Haydn implied—was the one we know as the Fantasia in C Major. Based on an Austrian folksong, Do Bäuren hat d’Katz valor’n (“The farmer’s wife has lost her cat”), this madcap 3/8 Presto offers a work of energized virtuosity, full of quasi-orchestral effects (such as the horn calls in a prominent cadential phrase) that recall the finale of Sonata No. 48. One of the more zany of Haydn’s essays in comic deception, the piece repeatedly leads us to expect one key and then leaps or shies off in a quite different direction.
Haydn wrote his Andante in Vienna, originally set as “an alternating strophic variation in six parts,” intended as a sonata movement. Haydn altered the form to a reprise of the theme and a coda. Haydn may have been attracted to the Slavonic dumka, a dance that alternates slow and vivacious episodes suddenly, without transition. These variants conform to the dance, with their shifts between major and minor episodes entwined in a set of double variations that progress much in the style of an operatic dialogue.
The Andante opens, 2/4 in tolling 8ths and 16ths in dotted rhythm, a constant rhetoric device in Haydn’s strategy. The second half of the double theme proves more elegantly playful, less tragic. With a shift to C major, the texture becomes more transparent, the arpeggios creating a three-part texture. The texture gains a rich patina in chromatic harmonies, with D minor serving as a pivot chord for Haydn to move ineluctably back, through various delays and detours, to the tonic F. The closing bar of the piece moves in ghostly repetition of the broken octave theme, ending this time pianissimo. The naked octaves in dotted rhythm might suggest a funeral march that moves into the distance: some commentators remark that it might have been meant for the passing of Mozart in 1791.
In 1817, Beethoven received a six-octave Broadwood piano as a gift from the English manufacturer. Although he was too deaf to appreciate the instrument’s expanded tonal and dynamic range, his music reveals a similar expansion of musical boundaries, as evidenced by the mighty Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106, of 1818. Like many of Beethoven’s late works, these sonatas juxtapose passages of great tenderness and lucidity with lacerating eruptions of raw energy and emotion. The composer’s deafness affected his music and outlook on life, and there is no mistaking the “inwardness” of these extraordinary works, with their radical discontinuities, far-flung tonal relationships, and bold reconfigurations of musical time and space.
A strong feature of the late instrumental works is their increased concentration of musical thought. Compressed into brief utterances of compelling significance, they seem reduced to their essentials, their composer quite unconcerned about the rules of polite, aristocratic musical conversation that characterized his early period. Emblematic of this increased density of thought is an increased density of texture that often tends towards the contrapuntal, and in particular towards the fugal, as in the finale to this Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 110.
This sonata has a genial cast, the warmth of emotion radiating out from the first movement, in its unhurried pace and the vocal nature of its themes – explicitly referred to in Beethoven’s first-bar indication: con amabilità (likably). The first movement proceeds in contrasts, between leisurely melodies and fast, rippling arpeggios; major-key innocence and minor-key tempests; placid, chordal passages and billowing crescendos.
Beethoven’s abrasive humor erupts in the second movement, an F-minor Allegro molto, a scherzo and trio in 2/4. The raucous impishness of the texture derives from two folk songs, Unsa Kätz häd Katz’ln g’habt (“Our cat has had kittens”) and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich (“I’m a dissolute slob, and so are you”). This “secular” procedure in antiphonal style contrasts dramatically with the “religious” affect Beethoven achieves in his third movement, in which a serene recitative, Adagio, ma non troppo, leads to a Song of Praise, Arioso dolente, in A-flat minor.
The throbbing triplet accompaniment conveys a sense of urgency. Then, suddenly, the momentum dissipates, and an unadorned melody—a sequence of ascending fourths—sounds out in the home key, signaling the start of the sonata’s climactic, three-voice fugue. The finale proceeds for a while in familiar, almost textbook contrapuntal fashion until the lament returns, in the remote key of G minor. After it, too, runs its course, Beethoven pivots to G major, brings back the subject of a second fugue, here in inverted form (with descending fourths), and beats a tonally circuitous path back to the safe haven of A-flat major. A final flourish of arpeggios, reminiscent of the first movement’s engaging tracery but much more resolute, ends the sonata on a note of triumph.
Ravel was a member of an avant-garde coterie of musicians, writers and visual artists who jocularly called themselves Les Apaches, Parisian argot for “ruffians” or “hooligans.” Between 1904 and 1905 he composed Miroirs, a suite of five pieces, each describing “in a mirror,” as it were, a fellow member of the club. While the connection with individual personalities remains unclear (and may even have been fanciful), these pieces stand among the most pictorially vivid—and technically challenging—in the piano repertoire.
Ravel vividly depicts the irregular flight of night moths in the first piece of the set, Noctuelles, which opens with a busy blur of chromatic flutter extending over vast swathes of the keyboard but centering on the upper range. The unpredictability of the moths’ flight is depicted in phrases of uneven length that rev up out of the blue in rapid-onset crescendos, with brief silences punctuating the succession of sweeping phrase gestures. The moths seem to settle on some object of mothy interest in the slower-paced central section, but soon lose interest and flit back to life in the closing section.
Ravel described Oiseaux tristes as “birds lost in the torpor of a very dark forest during the hottest hours of summer.” As the piece opens, we hear one solitary bird singing, but the bird is soon joined by others. Gabriel Fauré described the texture in these terms: “Fundamentally, Ravel set store by the player’s bringing out two levels: the birdcalls with their rapid arabesques on a higher, slightly strident level and the suffocating, somber atmosphere of the forest on a lower level, which is rather heavy and veiled in pedal without much movement.”
Une Barque sur l’océan paints the image of a boat’s floating and rocking gently on the ocean waves. Ravel begins his depiction with a three-layered sound-picture. A rich carpet of arpeggios sweeps up and down in the left hand, suggesting the action of the waves. A chiming sequence of open intervals in the upper register outlines the vast expanse of the sea. An intrusive bird voice emerges clearly in irregular figures in the middle register. Ravel makes use of the full diapason of the keyboard to color his vivid depiction of the sea as a giant who cradles mankind in his embrace.
Among the keyboard repertory’s most virtuosic pieces, Alborada del gracioso paints a satirical portrait from Spanish burlesque, the crude and clownish gracioso, the parallel of Beaumarchais’ Figaro, but more malevolent and impish. This buffoon sings an alborada, a morning serenade. We hear guitar strumming and distinctive, pungent rhythms of Spanish folk music in this modal piece. Highly demanding in terms of technical virtuosity, the piece demands quick, articulate repeated in staccato, and double glissandi (slides) in 3rds and 4ths in the right hand. The recorded performance by Romanian Dinu Lipatti set a standard that all seek to emulate.
Ravel’s suite concludes with La Vallée des cloches, a multilayered evocation of bells, which toll in their own pitches at various distances. The opening, repeated G-sharps in octaves move to an increased texture, rife with parallel fourths and fifths, all to evoke the muffled, metallic resonance as bells sound their call from every direction. A chant emerges from the resonant mix, rising and then settling down to a sustained C. This melody recedes among the bells, and Ravel reverses course to the opening, high pitches that began the piece, but ending in somber, deep tones. Ravel dedicated this piece to Maurice Delage, his pupil and fellow pianist-composer.
Although Chopin left Poland forever at age twenty, he loved his homeland, and he wrote polonaises throughout his lifetime. (When he wrote his first little polonaise in G minor, he was only seven years old.) Let it be noted that the instrumental polonaise usually maintained its basic, original features: the rhythmic identity (8th note, two 16ths, four 8th notes), 3/4 meter, moderate pace; but during the 19th Century, it grew in virtuosity, dynamics, coloration, emotional content, and dimensions, especially in the presentation of extended, heavily decorated melodies. Gradually, it developed an ABA structural format that Chopin found amenable to his refined taste.
In 1830–31 Chopin composed his Grande Polonaise for solo piano, and later set it into a work for piano and orchestra. Three years later, in 1834, he appended an Andante spianato (smooth and flowing), as a bel canto style introduction to Opus 22. The Andante spianato opens in G major, and soon divides into two uneven sections. The first, long section presents a lyrical, melancholy theme, with a gentle, rolling accompaniment in compound meter. The following section, Semplice, moves into triple meter, and appears austere in its homophonic setting. Chopin uses flowing, descending runs that closed the first section to take the Andante to its conclusion in G. That G pivots to the fanfare that opens the Polonaise—through G and C minor—into E-flat major. The main theme, often in bel canto style, permits lavish ornamentation, and it progresses to a dramatic episode that descends into a turbulent C minor, with a rocking bass figure. Chopin provides an extended, brilliant coda rife with coloratura and virtuosic filigree.
Back to Rachel Cheung’s Bio page
Haydn wrote his Andante in Vienna, originally set as “an alternating strophic variation in six parts” intended as a sonata movement. Haydn altered the form to a reprise of the theme and a coda. He may have been attracted to the Slavonic dumka, a dance that alternates slow and vivacious episodes suddenly, without transition. These variants conform to the dance, with their shifts between major and minor episodes entwined in a set of double variations that progress much in the style of an operatic dialogue.
The Andante opens, 2/4 in tolling 8ths and 16ths in dotted rhythm, a constant rhetoric device in Haydn’s strategy. The second half of the double theme is more elegantly playful, less tragic. With a shift to C Major, the texture becomes more transparent, with the arpeggios’ creating a three-part texture. The texture gains a rich patina in chromatic harmonies, with D Minor serving as a pivot chord for Haydn to move ineluctably back, through various delays and detours, to the tonic F. The piece’s closing bar ends with a ghostly repetition of the broken octave ‘melody,’ this time pianissimo. The naked octaves in dotted rhythm perhaps depict the ‘funeral march’ walking further into the distance, moving gradually out of sight.
Many of Haydn’s early sonatas were written for his students and as such are brief and understated. By the 1760s and 1770s, his writing had become more passionate; and, with his later sonatas, more substantial and expressive. Haydn was particularly inspired by C.P.E. Bach, whose motifs he often mimicked, including upward arpeggios at the end of movements. An immensely spirited composer, Haydn is also renowned for playing tricks on the listener, including a false ending in which the listener believes the piece to be drawing to a close, only to hear the music start up again in an unrelated key.
The Sonata in F is in three movements. The first movement, 2/4, Allegro moderato, is in sonata form. The music quickly modulates to the relative key of D Minor and then to a more ambitious C Major. The development section, measures 48-87, takes us through a variety of keys, including D Minor, G Minor, C Major, and F Major, The recapitulation makes use of the secondary tune in F and concludes with a perfect cadence in the home key.
The second movement, Larghetto, 6/8, moves in binary form. Part I takes us to the relative major key of A-flat and ends with a perfect cadence in that key. Part II (at measure 22) has a darker tenor, exploiting the minor keys in B-flat, C, and F. Haydn concludes with a perfect cadence in F Minor. The last movement gives us a spirited Presto in F Major, 2/4. This expansive movement is in sonata form, with its own exposition (measures 1-53). development (measures 54-95), and recapitulation (measures 95-149). Haydn is particularly playful in this music with its two subjects, exploiting audacious moves in inversion, and episodes in the dominant key of C or the supertonic in G Minor. Somehow, with the surprise cadences, pedal points, and bridge passages, Haydn manages to land on a perfect cadence in F Major.
The E-flat Major Sonata is among the last three Haydn wrote during his second visit to England, and he was eager to compose for the heavier action of the English pianos. Composers Clementi, Dussek, and Cramer had already exploited the English keyboard, creating rich textures that offered dramatic effects: thick chords, quick dynamic contrasts, brilliant runs that would often plummet the full length of the keyboard, and dulcet, double thirds that would resound sweetly in the upper registers.
Haydn’s E-flat Major Sonata abounds in all the tricks of his (British) trade, since he conceived the piece for Therese Jansen, an outstanding virtuoso. The first movement, Allegro moderato, begins with a fanfare, a French Overture, in chords of six or seven notes. The first ten measures present five alternations between forte and piano, and his last run drops down four octaves to a low E-flat. Haydn’s secondary tune imitates either a mechanical clock or a music-box that sounds in the distance. Orchestral effects in tremolos and long-held notes abound.
The 3/4 Adagio second movement in E Major/Minor displays Haydn’s sensitivity to texture. The music has a processional tone, like a sarabande in dotted figures, with the emphasis on the second beat. The real art of this movement lies in Haydn’s sense of ornamentation, which garlands the melodic line in a sea of grace notes and skyward, coloratura runs that easily suggest an operatic impulse. Haydn’s finale, however, trades grace for keen wit, a Presto whose invention and irreverence for form never fails to delight and surprise listeners. A drumbeat opens the proceedings, repeated notes over a low, pedal bass that soon confronts a shepherd’s musette. Whatever “regularity” exists soon succumbs to inexplicable pauses, and sudden sound eruptions (forzando) or accents on weak beats that add decisive “cheek” to the occasion. No wonder this last of Haydn’s piano sonatas often receives accolades as his greatest exercise in the form.
While the term “scherzo” originally signified a jest, a playful and vigorous burst of energy in light fashion, there is little of the “jocular” in Chopin’s four exercises in his one-movement, expansive solo pieces so designated “scherzo.” True, Beethoven employed the Scherzo in his symphonies, often in an ABA structure in triple time with sforzandos off the beat, the “joke.” Chopin goes well beyond Beethoven in adapting the form to his own, dramatic requirements. They are indicated tempo presto or presto con fuoco, and they explore an expressive range akin to the Romantic William Blake’s notion of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. While the four Scherzos preserve Chopin’s pianistic brilliance and bold, even operatic, fioritura, they reveal an emotional range that holds fast to Chopin’s national love and nostalgia for his beloved Poland, too often suffering under the tyranny of foreign oppression.
The B Minor Scherzo begins with a terrifying cry of anguish. This jolting, tension-filled opening chord comes out of nowhere, unleashing a fiery torrent of virtuosic sparks that fly up and down the keyboard. Just as suddenly, this dissolves into a quietly brooding dialogue between treble and bass. The middle section (molto più lento) quotes the old Polish Christmas song, or noel, Lulajże Jezuniu. (As Chopin composed this music in Vienna in 1831, the November Uprising against the Russian Empire was raging in his native Poland). The dreamy nostalgia of this middle section is rudely interrupted by a return of the ominous opening chord. Curiously, the quiet music lingers, as if unaffected as the two “worlds” clash.
The Second Scherzo opens in sotto voce rumblings, answered with fierce, dramatic force, all of which is repeated. Harmonically, the piece opens in B Minor but its resolution rests in D-flat Major. Schumann thought the entire Scherzo played like a ballade, perhaps based on a Byron poem. Chopin marks his central melody con anima over lush harmonies in the left hand. The trio section shifts to A Major. Chopin repeats the Trio to introduce a bridge from the prior tune in F-sharp Minor. The outer Scherzo returns, reprises, and its eight-bar shift into A Major announces the arrival of the coda. Chopin superimposes several of the themes in close proximity, and the sheer energy of the conclusion fulfills his sense of dramatic closure.
The Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp Minor, the most dramatic of Chopin’s four compositions of this form, is built from the alternation of to sharply contrasting musical elements. The first, passionate and stormy, is marked by strong accents and thundering scales in stark, open octaves. The other element is graceful and luminous, combining a richly harmonized chorale phrase with an incandescent ripple of falling notes. The background to Chopin’s writing this passionate work involves his declining health, and his and George Sand’s voyage to the isle of Majorca to find rest. Instead, they encountered storms and a diagnosis of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill the composer.
The opening of the music reveals rhythmic and harmonic ambiguity. The sudden burst of chromatic runs feels demonic in its urgency, finally finding its key center and then making a transition to the noble D-flat Major chorale that consoles Chopin’s tormented spirit. The cascading arpeggios, meno mosso, anticipate Wagner in some passages of Tannhauser. Silences as well as passionate chords create the drama in this piece: Artur Rubinstein reports that in his meeting with composer Camille Saint-Saens, the latter sat at the keyboard, declaring, “The C-sharp Minor is my favorite Chopin,” and played the piece note-perfect, but too fast.
The beginning of the generally sunny Scherzo No. 4 in E Major alternates two contrasting textures and harmonies—first in subdued chords and then faster, arched figures that rise and fall with the dynamics. The Trio section offers an operatic, cantilena melody easily attributable to Chopin’s admiration of Bellini and the bel canto style. Chopin expands the basic A-B-A format in an attitude of freedom and spontaneity, the triple meter perhaps nodding to Beethoven, but the motives express themselves in rich, non-threatening figures. Once more, we mention the French composer Camille Saint-Saens, who took the Scherzo in E Major as his model for the second movement of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22. Chopin’s work was composed at George Sand’s villa at Nohant, and their mutual happiness invests this Scherzo with a rare moment of acceptance.
Back to Alessandro Deljavan’s Bio page
