Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), a true contemporary of J.S. Bach, showed a remarkable musical talent early in life, and by age 15 he served as an organist at the Royal Chapel in Naples. In 1702, in Florence, he made the acquaintance of Bartolomeo Cristofori, the inventor of the first piano with a reliable action, and Scarlatti learned to play and master this new cimbalo con piano e forte. In 1729 the Portuguese princess Maria Barbara married the Spanish Crown Prince Ferdinando VI. Scarlatti followed her, by request, to the Spanish court, and eventually, by 1733, settled in Madrid.
Spain is the source of most of Scarlatti’s many sonatas, especially since the new Queen Maria Barbara (1746) ordered several pianos from Florence. Scarlatti made a habit of “repaying” regal kindness with volumes of (30) Essercizi per Gravecembalo, prefaced with the composer’s invitation: “Reader, whether you be Dilettante or Professor, in these Compositions do not expect any profound Learning, but rather an ingenious Jesting with Art, to train you in the Mastery of the Harpsichord. Neither Self-interest nor Ambition led me to publish them, but Obedience.”
Between 1752 and 1757 several hundred sonatas had copyists and formed two collections known as Parma and Venice, those cities those libraries own the valuable manuscripts. Earlier volumes have been uncovered, from 1742 and 1749, a total of 102 sonatas. A number of sonatas were discovered by American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-1984), his having consulted the Madrid telephone directory! In 1906 Alessandro Longo published most of Scarlatti’s sonatas, but also containing many editorial additions and “corrections” of Scarlatti’s often audacious harmonies that Kirkpatrick’s edition restores. Many of the piano’s effects bow to the model of the guitar, which will bring us later to the music of Albeniz, Granados, and Falla.
Sonata in D Minor, K. 19 presents us a spectacular, through-composed touch-piece cut in one varying cloth, an Allegro in 2/4, set in its opening in sparkling staccato notes, running figures, and close imitation. Scarlatti exploits the crossed-hand technique for the left hand to emphasize the 3-note “epilogue” figuration.
Sonata in D Major, K. 430 bears the unusual marking Non presto ma a tempo di ballo, not too fast, but in ballet style. Among Scarlatti’s most popular exercises, the touch-piece wants delicacy of articulation in the antiphonal sections, the trills, and in the shifts in the piano’s register. A bit of humor seems to emerge when the left hand may be said to imitate the cuckoo. Trills, a frequent, necessary component in Scarlatti, beg the issue on which note – upper (the standard) or the lower (ad libitum) – to begin. Contemporary scholarship allows either, to the discretion and invention of the performer.
Sonata in D Minor, K. 32, among Scarlatti’s most “operatic” creations in the genre, is marked Aria in 3/8. The major component of the slowly evolving melody lies in its descent and its cadential trill. The melody also “spreads” over the registers while passing dissonances hint at repressed sadness. A stately dance, perhaps influenced by the Spanish sarabande, the music possesses a haunted simplicity.
This is a quintessential Scarlattian sonata with several fingerprints:
- Two-part Italian writing (two lyrical voices)
- Descending (Phrygian) tetrachord (e.g., the notes D, C, B, A)
- 1-2-3-4-5 bassline (the notes C, D, E, F, G)
- Canon beginning (two voices playing the same melody, starting at different times.
Here Scarlatti had in mind a so-called “Similitude aria” by the Italian librettist Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782), one with feelings of loss end quite despair. One of the most touching sonatas by Scarlatti.
Scarlatti’s sonatas often have an inherent sense of dance, being it slow, moderate, or fast. Sometimes tempos are taken too fast to maximize virtuosic effect at the expense of this dancing character. Most important for the performer is attentiveness to metric accents and short “breaths” before the beat.*
*This final remark, courtesy of Mr. Carlos Grante, must make us cognizant of the huge problem of slurs in Scarlatti, as well as those in Chopin. Do the slurs indicate tied notes, or do they indicate breaths, even the omission, of notes below the
mark? A riddle that each interpreter might consider. . .
Sonata in D Minor, K. 1 is an Allegro in common time that demands crisp articulation of its dotted, martial staccatos and the trills that end the various periods. Dazzlingly playful, the piece urges both the independence and the coordination of the hands, in runs, upward scales, and imitative figures answering each other in varying registers. The trills may anticipate the bird calls the 20th Century composer, Olivier Messaien, would come to love. The bass assumes a voice of its own, bell-toned authority.
By 1823 Franz Schubert had been diagnosed with the syphilitic infection that would doom him.
It had been four years since Schubert had written a keyboard sonata, and the A Minor – unpublished until 1839 – would mark a new departure in personal expression for the composer: stark, sparse, “unidiomatic,” and an attempt to mold some consolation of beauty from despair.
The opening movement, Allegro giusto, sets a conflicted appoggiatura – strong/weak – at Measure 2 that sighs in spiritual weariness throughout melody and harmony. Curiously, as in Gluck and Mozart, the major-key episodes feel more tragic than those in the minor mode. The music proceeds in large blocks of sound and ff intrusions, using plagal, funereal cadences in bare octaves, that suddenly break out into dotted figures, gestures of false hope. The second subject, set in E Major in bell-tones, bears comparison to the Non confundar in aeternam section of the Te Deum, the resolution, “Let me not be confounded in eternity.” This music seems hyper-emotional, obsessive in its rhythms and pedal-points, suggestive of controlled fever or panic.
That the music has modulated to A Major at the conclusion only emphasizes the “false hope” in Schubert’s tragic sensibility.
The ensuing Andante is in F Major, but its consolations seem anxious and uncertain. The low theme is doubled in the tenor register, and constant ppp murmurs infiltrate those episodes between thematic statements. The pianist’s left hand will prevail in the arch-shaped, lovely melody, the right hand’s serving as a shadow in triplets, two octaves higher. The music moves temporarily into C Major, only to return in sad song-form to F Major.
The finale, Allegro vivace, suggests unbridled panic at an ineluctable Fate. The scurrying figures relent for the second subject in E – as in the opening movement – set in counterpoint. The melody seems to derive from Schubert’s setting of a Rueckert verse of 1823, Lachen und Weinen, “Laughter and Tears,” that sets the tone of the entire work; only here, in the finale, the hands engage in furious imitative passages, even as the melody tries to break the gloom, to alleviate the demonic, kinetic energies that compel the progression. Before the final measures, a flurry of sudden octaves leads us to an aggressive, bleak conclusion.
In 1801, Beethoven, otherwise wrestling with his Second Symphony in D Major, embarked on four piano sonatas, of which two receive the designation “sonata quasi fantasia,” suggesting their unconventional structure and freedom of expression. The second of these has achieved a status virtually unparalleled in music for popularity and imaginative suggestion. Its opening Adagio sostenuto in sonata-form, based on a repeated arpeggio, “to be played with the greatest delicacy and without dampers,” creates an intimate atmosphere in a key foreign to Mozart, used once by Haydn, and repeated by Beethoven only at the end of his creative life, in the late Quartet No. 14, Op. 131.
The piece is dedicated to Countess Giuletta Guicciardi, with whom Beethoven had become enamored, though she married a nobleman. Years later, the critic Ludwig Rellstab suggested a moonlit scene on Lake Lucerne, and Berlioz imagined a sunset over a Roman countryside. Czerny envisioned a night-scene in which “a mournful, ghostly voice sounds from a distance.” Whatever serenity and disembodied spirit the music projects have their foil in the repeated G-sharps that, in the last movement, Presto agitato, assume a tempestuous violence. The opening movement provides melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic continuities throughout the sonata.
The second movement, Allegretto, is in C-sharp Major, sometimes notated in the more accessible D-flat. Liszt calls the movement “an intermezzo, neither minuet nor scherzo, lying like a flower between two abysses.” The final movement leaps at us immediately, a tempest rife with passion, in the manner of a brilliant improvisation. We come to realize that the entire sonata has been cast from one block of emotional marble of varying colors and temperaments, but unified by a master craftsman’s experimenting with his chosen instrument.
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Grazioli became an organist at St Mark’s Basilica in 1778, and in 1785 he was appointed principal organist, on the death of Baldassare Galuppi. He was known in his own time as an especially accomplished performer whose compositions concentrated on work for the church, though his collections of keyboard works were evidently designed for domestic consumption.
The Adagio in G Minor presents an ongoing, stately, lyrical cantabile (con molto espressivo), reminiscent in shape and color to the middle movement of Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in F Minor, BWV 1056. Even as the bass line remains relatively static, moments of imitation appear in the course of the horizontal evolution of the theme. A quiet intimacy reigns, with little ostentation, although Polish pianist Friedman has introduced trills and dynamic shadings. The piece ends with some long notes, a gently martial coda.
Liszt, perhaps the greatest keyboard virtuoso of his times, made a series of transcriptions of the lieder of Franz Schubert between 1833 and1845, maintaining the vocal character of the songs while elaborating the lyricism with the resonance that the modern keyboard could provide to the words and their accompaniment.
During his 1838 visit to Vienna, Liszt explained what moved him between 1833 and 1845 was his intense preoccupation with Franz Schubert’s lieder: “I heard in the salons, with vivid pleasure and sentimentality bringing tears to my eyes, an artistic friend, the Baron von Schönstein, present Schubert’s lieder. The French translation renders only a very incomplete sense of how this mostly-very-lovely poetry connects to the music of Schubert, the most poetic musician ever to live. The German language is so admirable in the area of sentimentality; perhaps only a German is capable of comprehending the naiveté and fantastic aspects of so many of these compositions, their capricious appeal, their melancholy letting-go.”
“Wohin” (“Whither”) from Die schöne Müllerin (“The Fair Maid of the Mill,” Op. 25, D. 795), a song cycle composed in 1823 by Schubert based on poems by Wilhelm Müller. The general tenor of the song-cycle’s opening is optimistic, as a young man follows a brook to a mill and espies a lovely girl, the miller’s daughter. The theme of wandering (“rauschen”) prevails, and we think of the iconic 1818 painting, “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Mist” by Caspar David Friedrich. In G Major, the narrative asks, “Where to?” and “What awaits me?” as the figurations capture the babbling of the brook, turning upon themselves in inversions of the major triad that dominate this unified, through-composed lyric (i.e., non-sectional, non-repetitive music).
“Ständchen” (“Serenade”) occupies the fourth position in the set of 14 posthumous lieder, Schwanengesang (“Swan-song”), D. 957. The singer serenades, in words by Ludwig Rellstab, his beloved at night, and bids her to come and meet him. In F Major, 3/4, Maessig (gently moderate), the music proceeds to a crescendo then fades away. Liszt’s magical transcription preserves the inwardness and simplicity of Schubert’s original.
Composed c. 1854, this brief, highly lyrical “nocturne” by Liszt sets him in a class with his contemporary, Chopin, as a master of poetic expression. Marked Appassionato (Animato), the piece moves intimately and briskly, with a rising bass pattern that may remind some listeners of Chopin’s posthumous Nocturne in C-sharp minor. The ripple effects in the treble point to Liszt’s several water pieces, while the passing harmonies anticipate figures in Debussy.
Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (The Dance in the Village Inn), is a lesser-known version of the Mephisto Waltzes (four waltzes composed by Franz Liszt between 1859-1885. The Mephisto Waltz No. 2 was written in 1881 and dedicated to Camille Saint-Saens. While the legend of Faust most easily raises the specter of Goethe, it was from an Austrian poet, Nilolaus Lenau (1802-1850) that Liszt took inspiration, and Liszt inscribed Lenau’s specific program into the score of No. 1:
“There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song.”
The opening of the work, a tritone (B-F), provides a dissonance Medievalists attribute to the Devil, and Liszt means to suggest the tuning of Mephisto’s violin. The character of this waltz remains aggressive, dissonant, with a new, middle section relatively meditative, even passionate. With the return of the opening material, the music becomes manic and collapses back into the tritone. Moving to E-flat Major, the music assumes a more heroic character, but the bare B Major chords at the end jar us in their abruptness.
Rachmaninoff composed his Opus 33 Études-Tableaux (“picture-studies”) between August and September of 1911, the year after he completed his Opus 32 Preludes; and, while the Opus 33 shares some stylistic points with the Preludes, the pieces differ significantly. Rachmaninoff composed his Opus 33 at his country estate, Ivanovka, a place whose rural setting offered the peace and tranquility necessary to stimulate his “creativity. While Rachmaninoff emulates Chopin – and Liszt – in his sense of the color-etude, he wrote for the large span of his own hands, so the music makes huge demands on the pianist: syncopations, alternating hands, changing time signatures, awkward extensions, brisk tempos, expressive melodies, large leaps, and massive chords. Many require strength, precision, endurance, rhythmic control, and dynamic and tonal balance.
No. 2 in C Major (Allegro, 12/8) proceeds as a chromatic nocturne, using cross-hands technique to extend the melodic line ever higher in the piano register. The music accelerates, 9/8, and crescendos, appassionato. The two tempos alternate to create an improvisational fantasy, with the frequent designation, Meno mosso, less rapid. A series of gentle trills ends the piece.
No. 3 in C Minor (Grave, 6/4) possesses the lugubrious weight of Russian liturgy and Russian bells. Mysterious, slow chords take us to a section in 5/4, then into more metric shifts and passing dissonance. A middle section emerges, Molto tranquillo, in C Major and moves, ever slowly, to a crescendo, poco a poco agitato. The mix of agitation and tranquility proceeds to the last chords, loud and soft, as the coda tells in brief of the passed inner turmoil.
The Four Etudes were composed in 1909, when Prokofiev was 18. He dedicated the set to Alexander Winkler (1865-1935), pianist and teacher – a former student of the famed piano teacher, Theodor Leschetizky – at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where Prokofiev had enrolled in his classes in 1905. The Four Etudes already point to the formal evolution of the composer’s innately percussive style. Prokofiev himself separated his musical language into four primary categories: ‘classical,’ ‘modern,’ ‘toccata,’ and ‘lyrical.’
Prokofiev sought to find a personal style, especially after the painful observation by another professor, Taneyev, that the student Prokofiev lacked originality. Prokofiev moves away from the usual binary and ternary forms, opting for a free through-composed form that varies the original motifs. Prokofiev already relies upon injected dissonances and chromatic displacement to enliven his music, and the element of playful irony may be detected, especially in the context of a lyrical work whose tone suddenly erupts into volcanic or obstinate figures. Often, Prokofiev transposes his melody into another key center, what some term “tonal mutability.” At his best, Prokofiev fuses the four affects or categories of his style into an often ferocious blend of piano colors, utilizing the full range of the keyboard in a manner reminiscent, at least in scope, of Liszt.
No. 1 in D Minor immediately sets a frenetic pace, 6/8 Allegro. The bass chords drive the relentless pace, heightened by briskly transparent filigree in high register. Biting staccatos, glissandos (slides), and jabbing sforzatos mark the progress of the often percussive, thundering tissue. A crescendo sets a definitive, abrupt coda.
No. 2 in E Minor begins Moderato in the unusual metric 18/16, occasionally alternating into 4/4 in the left hand. The smooth, legato melody proceeds over a spare bass line. As the chromatic line becomes more colorful, the challenge lies in maintaining a delicacy of touch. Marked poco agitato, the music intensifies, especially while the bass line increases in chromatics. The music transforms again, dolce, into a pastiche of watercolors and ends in a Romantic haze, quite suggestive of Rachmaninoff or Scriabin.
No. 3 in C Minor opens Andante semplice, 4/4, in a parlando or “spoken” mode. Indicating the player to apply rubato, the music accelerates, quickly and lightly. The fast section breaks off to resume the slow, darkly funereal pace of Tempo I, only to accelerate yet once more into nothing less than a toccata. Only a brief respite occurs before, Prestissimo, we hurtle to a solid conclusion.
No. 4 in C Minor rushes forth, Presto energico, 4/4, a militant, aggressive pronouncement. The ostinato bass has a stamping character we might assign to Bartok. The mad, jerky, chromatic pace plummets ahead, a virtuosic piece of militant ordinance that rises to a sudden, vanishing halt.
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Transcriptions by Vyacheslav Gryaznov
Walking through Venice for the first time, nobody can escape two things: the labyrinth of canals, and the striking Piazzo San Marco (St Mark’s Square), which has been walked by countless musical geniuses over the years. One of these was Claudio Monteverdi, who was the head of music at the stunning St Mark’s Basilica that dominates the square. Famed for its extraordinary acoustics, St Mark’s Basilica was practically Monteverdi’s home, and it was during his over 30 years here that he cemented his position as one of the most influential and monumental figures in music history. He is usually credited as the father of the opera, and also as the most important transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music.
Si dolce è’l tormento is from Quarto scherzo delle ariose vaghezze (text by Carlo Milanuzzi, 1590-1647), composed in Venice in 1624. This solo madrigal conveys a wide range of emotion confined within a strophic form (having the same music for each stanza). The poem captures the contrary tensions of courtly love – their “fire and ice” – as often expressed in Dante, Petrarch, and Michelangelo, whose poetry is often as potent as his sculpture. The plaint laments love’s denial, but consistently looks to faith to provide spiritual solace. Perhaps, someday, the beloved will utter a sigh of regret for her cruelty.
This elaborate, festive work, which Bach wrote in Arnstadt circa 1709, begins very quickly in 12/8. Its hypnotic, scalar pattern in 5-part harmony soon displays Bach’s inventive and chromatic treatment in various registers. The music breaks off into a Grave section in cut time (2/2), and its grand, bass, chorale harmonies – in passing whole tones and pedal points – invite images of a celestial procession. A huge, sudden dissonance begins another section of thick harmonization in layers (stretti) of sound over a pedal bass line. A mountainous ascent, almost a rocket figure, carries us to a resounding, dissonant, triumphant last chord. Contemporaries of Bach found the piece unnerving, and complained about its “wonderful variations and foreign tones.”
Probably during his concert tours in the smaller towns and cities of Europe, Franz Liszt decided to introduce audiences who lacked a local symphony orchestra to the larger works of Beethoven. Musicologist Dr. Alan Walker states that Liszt’s Beethoven Symphony transcriptions “are arguably the greatest work of transcription ever completed in the history of music.” Liszt was engaged in 1863 by publishers Breitkopf and Haertel to assemble his edition of Beethoven, and the full set of transcriptions was finally published in 1865 and dedicated to pianist, conductor, and composer, Hans von Bülow.
For this monumental work, Liszt recycled his previous transcriptions by clarifying 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.” Peter Tchaikovsky confirms Liszt’s assessment, stating, “In Beethoven we find no ‘filler’ as such; the writing is completely economical, and every note has dramatic and musical significance.” Liszt would note down the names of the orchestral instruments for the pianist to imitate and added pedal marks and fingerings for amateurs and sight readers.
Beethoven’s C Major Symphony (1800) breaks with the Classical tradition in its very first, 12 measures, opening with a series of chords that delay – via inverses on the tonic and dominant cadences of F and G Major – a resolution on the home key. Beethoven did not seek to merely imitate Haydn and Mozart. The quick shifts of loud and soft (f-p) also defy tradition. The ensuing Allegro con brio asks the oboe and flute to engage in dialogue. A simple subject defines the entire second movement, Andante cantabile e con moto.
Beethoven truly bids Classicism adieu in his Menuetto, which is quite fast, animate, and filled with a rough zest unknown to courtly dances. Beethoven’s sly humor opens the last movement: Allegro molto e vivace, it begins with a gradual scale that soon bursts into high spirits. A series of Mannheim Rocket figures plays throughout, with loud dynamics, a tribute to the orchestra of that city. Beethoven also utilizes the Grand Pause, a sudden cessation of sound before once more dashing forward. Played crisply, articulated clearly, many of the passages in the last movement will resemble playful figures in Rossini.
Norwegian creative personalities, dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) and musician Edvard Grieg, collaborated in 1875 for the 1867 play Peer Gynt, the picaresque adventures of a romantic wanderer. The premier occurred in what is now Oslo (need Christiania) on 24 February 1876. The complete incidental music of 33 pieces appeared in Grieg’s catalogue as Op. 23, but he arranged two suites, Op. 46 and Op. 55, which far outshone the original score in the popular mind.
Both excerpts selected by Mr. Gryaznov derive from Act IV of Ibsen’s drama. The well-known Morning Mood is set in E Major, a glowing lyric that expands by repetition and crescendo into a magnificent paean to nature. Its counter theme depends on a series of lulling phrases and an interjectory three chords. Anitra’s Dance Is set in A Minor, and it relates to an Arabian princess, charmed by the wealth Peer had gained, having answered the Riddle of the Sphinx. Her seductive dance woos away his wealth, and then Anitra tells Peer to flee before her father has the palace guards kill him. Grieg’s music captures her oriental charm and her treacherous whimsy.
The Adagietto, the fourth movement, written (in 1902) for strings alone with harp, follows what the composer called “a devil of a Scherzo.” The Fifth Symphony marks a stylistic departure from Mahler’s previous, four symphonies, almost all of which rely on his song impulse and folk influence in his Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The trumpet solo that announces the opening 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 often convulsive figures, the finale, incomplete on its own, not so much musically as psychologically. Although the scoring appears relatively transparent, Mahler provides exacting details about how phrases should be played. The first three notes of the melody, for example, are marked pianissimo, molto ritardando, espressivo, and crescendo. This song without words intimately relates to perhaps the greatest of all Mahler songs, the setting of Friedrich Rückert poem, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (“I am lost to the world, forgotten”), written that same summer. That Maestro Gryaznov executes these passionate figures in a transcription for the left-hand solo should prove musically daunting and virtuosic.
This work from 1894 announced Debussy’s formal rejection of German principles of composition and traditional harmony, especially a well- defined tonal center. The scoring blurs the fine lines of color instruments, with low winds’ playing in high registers and high instruments in low registers. The opening flute solo travels chromatically down an augmented fourth, the diabolus in music. Debussy based his symphonic work on a Symbolist poem of Stephane Mallarme: the music itself tells the tale of the mythical faun, playing his pipes alone in the woods. He becomes enchanted by nymphs and naiads and drifts off to sleep filled with colorful dreams. From the dreamy opening flute tune, Debussy evokes the sleepy calm of an afternoon in the forest through smooth melodies and improvisatory passages. Several pianists have made solo piano transcriptions of the work, including a classic rendition by Debussy’s friend, George Copeland (1882-1971).
La valse was written 1919-1920, conceived as a ballet scene as fulfillment of a commission from Serge Diaghilev. Ravel wished to invoke a Viennese-waltz scene at the middle of the 19th Century; his own love of the waltz-form derived both from the Strauss tradition and that of Franz Schubert. The world-shattering intrusion of WW I, however, distorted Ravel’s vision of an idyllic time, and all his celebrated dance forms – the waltz, the alborada, the bolero – quite literally explode in the last bars.
Ravel himself described his vision of the opening of the ballet:
“Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees at letter ‘A’ [a rehearsal marking in the score] an immense hall peopled with a whiling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo at letter ‘B.’ An imperial court, about 1855.”
The murky chords that open the piece coalesce into distinct waltz rhythms, but these become kaleidoscopic color and disturbing non-functional chords, dissonances, and passing moments of polytonality. The various germs of melody and whirling rhythms accelerate to a point of critical mass, and the scene detonates at the conclusion. Ravel arranged the score in a two-piano version and a solo, which it is likely he could not perform himself. For Diaghilev, he did play the two-piano version with Marcelle Meyer, according to Francis Poulenc, badly!
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Beethoven conceived his Opus 34 Variations (1802) in tandem with his more famous Opus 35, the so-called “Eroica Variations” in E-flat Major for piano. Beethoven enjoyed a potent reputation as an improvisor at the keyboard, and the variation form suited his capacities as both mechanical technician and creative artist. Beethoven dedicated this set of variations to a gifted pupil, Princess Barbara Odescalchi, a more than competent pianist in her own right. The unique feature of Opus 34 lies in Beethoven’s having set each of his variations in a new key in a descending circle of thirds, a point that he insisted his publisher indicate. As such, the set compresses a series of character-pieces into a unified sequence of structured improvisations.
Beethoven opens in F Major with a lyrical theme, cantabile, that assumes a song-form, ABA structure, wherein the counter melody is merely six measures long. The small turns and trills add a courtly delicacy to the occasion. Variation 1 is in D Major, Adagio, and becomes highly decorative, extending the central tune. Beethoven changes the tempo to 6/8 for the entry into B-flat, as rhythmic Variation 2, dissects his theme so that a low register competes with “rockets” much higher. Motionless chords play against rapidly moving figures. Variation 3 exploits flowing eighth notes as the veiled theme moves in G Major. The 4th Variation moves to E-flat, a minuet in triple meter. The central part of the theme manifests both in right hand octaves and left-hand fragments. Beethoven next descends to his dramatic trump card, C Minor, for Variation 5, a funeral march that explodes in orchestral colors. A miniature coda prepares to take us – by way of C Major – to the home key for Variation 6, where the melody assumes a folk-dance character. A reprise of the theme, in full, virtuoso panoply, rises to a climax and hints at a cadenza, but Beethoven eschews elaborate display for a slow, ornamental version of the theme in Adagio tempo, simple but effective.
The Romantic Period in music claims, along with its emphasis on subjectivity and literary bias, a new sense of instrumental virtuosity, marked by the new possibilities in the Erard piano and in violin playing, by the advent of Italian wizard, Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840). His 24 Caprices, Op. 1 (1802-1817) established the modern school of violin art, and composers for the piano – Liszt, Schumann, and Brahms – were eager to transfer that volcanic sensibility into keyboard virtuosity.
While Brahms traditionally appears as a Classical, musically conservative figure, the antipode to the more exploratory and experimental impulses in Liszt and Wagner, Brahms had an innate keyboard technique that could accommodate the New German School of grand effects and stellar virtuosity. In 1862 Brahms had met the brilliant Liszt pupil, Carl Tausig (1841-1871), in Vienna, that same Tausig whom Liszt described as “the infallible, with fingers of steel.” The premier of the Brahms F Minor Sonata for 2 Pianos, Op. 34b fell to Brahms and Tausig in 1864. Brahms dedicated his two sets of Paganini Variations to Tausig. The set is based on the same Caprice in A Minor, Op. 1, No. 24 that had Paganini, Liszt, and later Rachmaninoff inspired to provide their own treatments. In each of the two books Brahms includes 14 variations and a coda, investing Book I with grueling and ostentatious bravura and Book II demonstrating the more “learned” aspects of his mastery of composition.
Book I confirms Clara Schmuann’s name for the work: Hexenvariationen, the “Witchcraft-Variations.” These Studies for the Pianoforte, as they are subtitled – much in imitation of Paganini bravura – demand double thirds, double sixths, wide spans and trills at the top, octave studies and octave tremolos, polyrhythms between the hands, staccato against legato phrasing, huge slides (glissandos), fast scales in contrary motion, and sustained arpeggios over long-held notes. Left hand and right hand often trade figurations; and, the codas that evolve from the final variation progress in three parts in the manner of Bach, synthesizing a number of techniques in one, furious gesture. Listen for delicate tracery in Variation 12 of Book I; its successor has a clear, gypsy and Hungarian flavor.
Variation 4 of Book II appeals to the waltz form; No. 6 captures the Paganini fascination with semitones in arpeggios; No. 8 exploits the violin’s pizzicatos. The twelfth of the variations, a calm nocturne, strays into F Major, providing the only deviation from A Minor or A Major. The next variation, No. 13, gives us the cascading thirds that are a hallmark of the Brahms style. Brahms might boast with no small pride that he has met Liszt on his creative battleground and done well.
Chopin, the Romantic musician most expressive of the Polish national spirit, mastered two of its endemic forms, the mazurka and the polonaise, forms of the Polish folk and of patriotic heroics. Chopin took Mozart as his example of the complete musician: “Mozart encompasses the entire domain of musical creation, but I’ve got only the keyboard in my poor head,” he lamented. Yet, restricted to the keyboard except for a handful of chamber music pieces, mostly for the cello, Chopin managed to integrate the bel canto operatic style of Bellini into compositions for a predominantly percussive instrument.
The Polonaise-Fantasy (1846), dedicated to Mme. A. Veyret, represents a hybrid work in an advanced syntax that thwarted the composer’s attempts to define it: “I’d like to finish something that I don’t yet know what to call,” he remarked. The piece opens, Allegro maestoso, in 3/4, a kind of operatic introduction (mezzo voce) that tails off in dreamy arpeggios in the manner of a nocturne. Dignity and melancholy suffuse the entire piece. The immediate transition into the fantasy element aligns the piece with the Fantasy in F Minor, Opus 49, but after a transition into E-flat Minor, the polonaise 6/8 meter begins to intrude, as does the harmonic descent of a fourth. Besides using harmonic audacities in his late style, Chopin moves freely in and out of lyrical episodes or impulsive jolts, including a truly poetic middle section in B Major. Franz Liszt imagined the work’s generating “an elegiac tristesse. . . like somebody caught in an ambush, surrounded on all sides.” The kaleidoscopic shifts of mood and meter force the interpreter to impose, if possible, a sense of unity on a highly disparate series of emotions, contrarily intimate and epic.
“[Petrushka] is such a work of genius that I cannot contemplate anything beyond it.” – Serge Diaghilev.
After Stravinsky completed his first major ballet, The Firebird, he began discarding the syntax of the Russian style created by Rimsky-Korsakov and forging his own harmonic language. For his next major project in ballet, Stravinsky turned to the character of Petrushka (also known as Punch, Pulcinella or Polichinelle), who dates from the 16th-century Italian Commedia dell’arte. In Stravinsky’s version, Petrushka is a figure of pathos and pity, the eternal outsider whose vain attempts to gain acceptance arouse both compassion and contempt. The primitive edginess of Stravinsky’s music captures the elemental nature of the story and its characters, who represent human emotions in their primitive form: Petrushka, the despised pariah yearning for love; the Ballerina, an unattainable emblem of beauty and desirability; and the ill-mannered Moor, who epitomizes all the base, loutish aspects of the human psyche.
A decade after the ballet’s celebrated premiere in 1911, Stravinsky returned to the music of Petrushka (1911; 1921) to create a showpiece for pianist Artur Rubinstein. The first excerpt, Russian Dance, comes from the end of the ballet’s first tableau, a scene at the 1830s St. Petersburg fair in which Petrushka and his fellow puppets come to life and dance for the crowd. The second movement, Petrushka’s Room, explores the interior of the puppet theater to reveal the love triangle between Petrushka, the rival Moor, and the Ballerina they both desire. The discordant, rising triad figures near the beginning spell out the distinctive “Petrushka” chord in two, dissonant keys that rings throughout the ballet. The third movement transcribes the merriment from the ballet’s final scene at the Shrovetide Fair, complete with gypsies, a dancing bear, and a group of masqueraders. Stravinsky always conceived of the piano as a percussive instrument; and, even before the keyboard solo arrangement for Rubinstein, the piano appears as part of the orchestral tissue. Nevertheless, the piano transcription proves virtuosic and poetic, even as the composer exploits a percussive, swelling burst of color, called, In the words of Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and actor, Vladimir Myaskovsky (1893-1930), the “reckless abandon” that the music offers.
Der Müller und der Bach: Although Beethoven’s lovely An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved, 1816) is generally cited as being the first “song cycle,” Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (The Miller’s Lovely Daughter, 1823-24) is the first song cycle describing a literary plot-progression. Of the 20 songs in the cycle, Liszt transcribed six in 1846. The song being performed in this concert is the 19th entry in the full cycle, whose German language origins had begun to attract Liszt more than the inspirations he had found in Paris. His relations with the Countess Marie d’Agoult had cooled, despite their time together on the Rhine island of Nonnenwerth.
In the poem, a love-sick young man laments his wounded heart, though the stream he encounters answers him with images of solace. The young man, still discomfited, sees “down there” in the waters “cool rest.” Wilhelm Müller in 1820 wrote to a friend that he hoped “a kindred spirit may someday be found, whose ear will catch the melodies from my words, and who will give me back my own.” Schubert’s flowing brook dominates the piano texture, especially as transcriber Liszt becomes attuned to the tragic tenor of the later verses. Liszt had declared Schubert “the most poetic” of all other composers.
In Auf dem Wasser zu singen (“To be sung on the water,” D. 774), Liszt allows himself some license. The poem (1838) is by Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg, who called it “Barcarolle.” It likens the flight of the soul to the gliding of a boat, with increasing intensity of color through the three verses. The shimmering character of the reflected waves and swaying boat imitate the parallel motions of the glow of sunset sent from Heaven. Liszt takes the singing melody, with much drama, towards the shimmering conclusion, a prolonged postlude, at first in the left-hand tenor, then the alto, and finally the soprano voice.
Die Forelle (“The Trout,” 1817) remains foremost among Schubert’s popular lieder. Schubert incorporated the song (by Christian Schubart) into his A Major Trout Quintet to serve as the basis of fourth movement variations. Liszt’s 1846 arrangement embellishes the Schubert lied with, at first, an extended introduction. The trout has been swimming freely; but when an angler captures the fish and its blood colors the water, the poet becomes indignant. The original piano accompaniment builds upon rising sextuplets that define the trout’s motion in the water. The vocal melody, limited to a strophic form, creates a dazzling unity-in-variety in the simplicity of the folk idiom. Liszt, like his rival, Thalberg, succeeds in raising the melody from the middle of the texture and then shifting it to the upper voice on repetition. The treatment becomes openly virtuosic, adding passages that suggest an improvisation in rapid scales and arpeggios.
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) was determined that the Spanish musical voice needed a broad forum provided by his music. He stated, “It has been occasionally asserted that we have no traditions. But in our dance and our rhythm we possess the strongest traditions that none can obliterate. We have the ancient modes which, by virtue of their extraordinary inherent freedom, we can use as inspiration dictates.” Falla embraced not only national pride but a profound conviction in musical authenticity and potential. El amor brujo was commissioned in 1914 by Pastora Imperio (1887-1979), a renowned gypsy dancer, as a one act gitanería (gypsy piece). It was scored for cantaora, actors and chamber ensemble and performed at the Teatro Lara, Madrid, on 15 April 1915, unsuccessfully. Falla later arranged a version for piano. The story is a dark one, centered on a common theme in gypsy folklore: fear of a spirit that haunts the living after death. The most truly melodic episode, Pantomime, explores canto jondo (“deep song”), originally given to the cello, as Carmelo, the protagonist Camela’s new love and she enjoy a tryst, while the ghost of Carmela’s first husband has been distracted by her friend Lucia.
The dead husband had been a jealous and vengeful man who was unfaithful to Camela while alive and still torments her as an aparecido (apparition) after his death. In an attempt to rid herself of his visitations, every night she dances the Danza del terror (dance of terror), but remains nevertheless under his spell. In her despair, she seeks out ever more demonic rituals, including a círculo mágico (magic circle) and other rites of exorcism, a medianoche (at midnight). The most evocatively ghostly of these is the Danza ritual del fuego (ritual fire dance), with its conspiratorial buzz-whisper of trills, flickering with menace of explosive sforzandos, jabbing staccatos, and its hypnotic whirl of ecstatic melodies.
De Falla’s music is deeply rooted in throbbing drones and modal scales, and brutally incorporates rhythms of the flamenco musical tradition, with obsessive repetition a principal element in its syntactical design.
The Four Ballades (1835-1843) synthesize the Romantics’ fusion of literature and music, finding “programmatic” correspondence in the passionate dramas that the two genres unfold. Chopin (1810-1849) generally deplored the concert hall and its associations with celebrity and rather favored the (Parisian) salons for his performances – intimate and expressive revelations of his character: “The crowd embarrasses me. I feel stifled by their breathing, paralyzed by their curious glances, mute before their strange faces.” The ballades owe their impetus to the Polish poet Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (1798-1855), who transposed Lithuanian legends and fairy tales into a “political” context.
The G Minor Ballade, Op. 23 (1835), Chopin’s favorite among the four, is dedicated to Monsieur le Baron de Stockhausen, fashioned after the Mickiewicz poem “Konrad Wallenrod.” Alternating between tempos of 6/8 and 6/4, the music follows Wallenrod’s shocking praise of the Moors’ defiance to Spanish oppression. He, too, will bring plague and death to his adversaries. With a fierce struggle between dark and light, between G Minor and E-flat Major, complemented by Neapolitan harmonies, this piece serves as Chopin’s answer to Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata. The lovely, secondary theme becomes, in the words of Alan Walker, “apotheosized” in the presto con fuoco that ends in hammered octaves. James Huneker called the G Minor Ballade “the Odyssey of Chopin’s soul.”
Robert Schumann, dedicatee of this work, said of the Ballade No. 2 in F Major, Op. 38 (1836; rev. 1838), “It is less artistic than the first, but equally fantastic and intellectual.” Chopin based this ballade on Mickiewicz’s “Le Lac de Willis,” an evocation of the lake where Russian predators laid waste a Polish city. To escape persecution, the young Polish maidens prayed for a miracle and were changed into mysterious, fatal flowers that adorn the edges of the mirror-smooth waters. Balancing a delicate F Major with a somber A Minor, the piece moves from a lulling andantino (lighter and quicker than an andante) to a convulsive presto. Anton Rubinstein waxed eloquent, comparing its progress to “a caressing of a flower by the wind. . .which at last reduces the flower to a victim of martial forces.”
The A-flat Major Ballade No. 3, Op. 47 (1841), is dedicated to Mlle. P. de Noailles and musically depicts the poem “Ondine” almost line by line. A young girl doubts the fidelity of men and becomes a water sprite and temptress who lures young men to their destruction, since they must pursue her evasive figure forever. Huneker calls this piece “aristocratic, gay, graceful, piquant, and. . . delicately ironical.” It has a hypnotic, cantering gait, with a stormy middle section in C-sharp Minor.
Ballade No. 4 in F Minor (1842) is both quintessentially Slavic in character and compresses the Chopin style into a through-composed, dramatically lyric, and potently stormy experience. Dedicated to Baroness de Rothschild, it depicts the poem, “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 the war. But the brothers to return “from the barren, stripped land,” sharing one bride among them. The sectionalized drama moves alternately in waltz-form, and as towering cadenzas, luscious ornaments, and sudden, imposing silences. “Music hot from the soul,” is Huneker’s verdict. “Its’ witchery is irresistible.”
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Chopin, called the “Copernicus of the piano” by Andrew Porter, conceives his keyboard approach after the style of both J.S. Bach and Carl Czerny, a combination of technical didactics meant to instruct, and artful poetry meant to emphasize the capacity of studies to effect poetic and imaginative response. In these respects, Chopin’s etudes stand as models of artful economy: they address technical boundaries even as they carry us into Chopin’s especial poetics.
No. 1 in C Major directly references Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C from The Well Tempered Clavier, Book I. Chopin exercises the art of arpeggio, concentrating on a widely-spaced broken-chord pattern in the right hand over sustained chords in the left. The right hand stretches test wrist flexibility while bass harmonies announce a potent sense of drama.
No. 2 in A Minor concerns itself with detailed fingering of chromatic scalar passages in the right hand over a sparse accompaniment. The weaker fingers of the right hand play sempre legato, and the pianist avoids pedal effects.
No. 3 in E Major, Lento ma non troppo [Slow but not too much], Chopin’s personal favorite, demands legato (smooth, with notes bounded together) playing and syncopation, producing two separate melodic lines in an A-B-A song form, with sparse use of the sustaining pedal. The bass line proceeds smoothly, the accent of the second note. Chopin uses slurs and tied notes for melodic emphasis. The chromatic, middle section proves challenging to the ear, since the accents clash in cross-rhythms.
No. 4 in C-sharp Minor offers a virtuosic, moto perpetuo [perpetual motion] structure with equally difficult figuration for both hands. The melodic line literally passes hand-to-hand, and the demands for syncopation and voice-leading can be intimidating. The dynamics move both in complementary and opposing directions, with and without transition. The pedal remains absent until the last four bars, where it contributes to a triumphant peroration.
No. 5 in G-flat Major requires deft proficiency on the black keys, hence its nickname, “Black-Key Etude.” It tests the pianist’s touch and capacity for color in counterpoint, since two melodic impulses compete, each with pedal points. The piece becomes intense when the white keys enter, the key changes fluid. Chopin does not want pedal at the coda, and he tests the pianist’s legato singing line.
No. 6 in E-flat Minor (Andante) is the second of the lyrical etudes, and the (contrapuntal) melody must evoke the bel canto ideal of Italian opera. The two hands alternate the melody and its concomitant chromatics. The performer must play evenly and quietly, without pedal, legato and legatissimo [most smoothly]. Chopin’s rubato plays a role late, where a sustained effect trails off at the coda, rallentando [gradually slowing the tempo].
No. 7 in C Major (Vivace) presents the notorious double-note etude designed to refine the technique of modulation by way of changes in pedal points. Chopin writes two distinct melodic lines in off-beats, juxtaposing contrary dynamic markings, softer and louder, in each hand, a real test of syncopated counterpoints.
No. 8 in F Major (Allegro) offers another study in counterpoint, with the melody in the left hand. In tri-partite form, the central section moves into D Minor. The challenge in playing this piece in tempo, forte legato, is to preserve the clarity of the melodic line, with a judicious use of pedal when indicated.
No. 9 in F Minor, along with No. 12, represent the only minor-key pieces, and it tests the playing of legato arpeggios in counterpoint. While the main melody floats in the right hand, the left has another melody embedded in its arpeggios. The demands for legatissimo and sotto voce [in an undertone] effects – especially in the middle section – correspond directly to elements in Bellini opera, so the test lies in creating a singing tone in an instrumental, polyphonic setting.
No. 11 in E-flat Major (Allegretto) [Moderately fast] sets a test of arpeggiated chords and the judicious use of the sustaining pedal. Chopin also varies his dynamics, for the most part demanding piano and pianissimo, but occasionally indicating a sudden burst of color, sforzando. Ambitious harmonically, the piece moves through various key centers – like F Minor and A-flat Minor – so the flow must appear seamless and the chords synchronized. Here, the pianist’s ear has its own tests, besides those for his fingers.
No. 12 in C Minor “Revolutionary” presents us a tour de force for the left hand with a march-like theme in the right. Chopin avoids the sustaining pedal in this work to avoid any smearing of the driven line. Here, scale technique, arpeggios, contrary dynamics, and syncopation find compressed expression throughout, and the last measures, fortissimo appassionato, must convey a sense of defiant triumph, given the militant context of Chopin’s inherent nationalism. A performance of this piece, allegro con fuoco ed appassionato, seems mandatory.
Like his friend and contemporary, the violinist Fritz Kreisler, Serge Rachmaninoff enjoyed hands that perfectly accommodated his chosen instrument. Rachmaninoff’s keyboard compositions reveal a thorough knowledge of the instrument and its capacities for the color and virtuosity his music demands. Rachmaninoff composed his five Fantasy Pieces in 1892, much in the spirit of his admired Schumann, and dedicated the set to Anton Arensky, composer and instructor at the Moscow Conservatory. Originally, the set comprised four pieces; but, after a genial interview with Tchaikovsky, who liked the Prelude and the Melody, Rachmaninoff added the Serenade.
The opening Elegy in E-flat Minor sets the mood of nostalgia which infiltrates virtually the entire Rachmaninoff canon. In simple ternary form, the A section in parallel thirds and sixths starts with a single note melody in one hand supported by arpeggiated chords. The B section shifts to the relative major of G-flat major and switches the melody into the left hand.
Rachmaninoff first performed his most famous Prelude in 1892, at an Electrical Exhibition festival. It was particularly popular in England, where his debut took place in 1899 performing the Prelude along with the Elegy at the Queen’s Hall. Much to Rachmaninoff’s surprise, London publishers gave it subtitles, such as “The Burning of Moscow” and “The Day of Judgment.” He had written the Prelude a year after graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, for the purpose of having some income. Despite its later success, he sold it for only the equivalent of twenty dollars. This first prelude of an eventual 24 opens with a three-note motive (A-G-sharp-C-sharp). The piece is in ternary form, where the A section is marked at ppp and features the motive in the lower register, which is surrounded by middle range chords. In measures 7-9, we hear a fragment of the Dies Irae, a favorite melody often used by the composer. At the B section, marked Agitato, there is a change of texture, containing triplets with a chromatic melody. These triplets soon alternate left- and right-hand chords that serve to transition to the return of the A section. Rachmaninoff spreads the chords into four staves, giving the piece an even heavier and dark sound, marked fff and pesante.
The Melody is the only piece in a major key within the Op. 3 set. The original version, marked Adagio sostenuto (1893), features the melody in the left hand, with accompanying blocked chords in the right hand. The revised version was published in 1940, with the major difference being that these chords were arpeggiated and marked as Andante con moto. In ternary form, the melody follows typical Rachmaninoff procedure: it moves in a general stepwise, arch shape. In the A section, it remains mostly in the left hand, supported by arpeggiated triplets of the right hand. In the B section, marked piu mosso, the melody switches to the right hand, supported by triplets in both hands initially. Four measures later, marked Animato, the texture becomes thicker with chords in both hands. At the return of the A section, the melody pervades both hands, supported by a mix of arpeggiated figures and chords.
The Polichinelle or “Punch” puppet in F-sharp minor offers a character rich in comedic episodes, often alternating between minor and major keys and alternating dynamic contrasts. In ternary form, the A section displays fanfares and rising bravura passages, which creates a suggested scene at a fair or circus. The B section, although marked Agitato has a lyrical melody, surrounded by arpeggiated chords.
Rachmaninoff rewrote the Serenade in B-flat minor (and the Melody) in 1940. The main difference lies in the first version of the Serenade having rolled chords, whereas the second has staccato chords. Additionally, the second version includes embellishing chromatics. The second version begins with a slow introduction marked Sostenuto, which introduces a fragment of the first theme. It proceeds Tempo di Valse. This waltz section resembles an Ètude, with the accompanying chords often overlapping in the same register as the melody. These waltz chords challenge the performer, with big leaps in the left hand, and they demand overlapped hands, sometimes right over left and sometimes left over right. Unlike the previous four pieces, this one does not have a contrasting B section and maintains the waltz texture until the coda, Piu vivo ed accelerando.
Serbian composer Svetislav Bozic (b. 1954) presents essentially, in his Sacred Music for Piano, a dance suite or series of laconic, character pieces – even ecstatic bagatelles – whose modal and reflective nature at times becomes reminiscent of late Grieg, although the rhythmic urgency occasionally hints at jazz and blues elements. While Bozic claims liturgical, Orthodox, vocal music as the source of his suite, several episodes suggest piano etudes or reflective meditations. In the darker, angular, more dissonant episodes we hear echoes of gypsy laments, religious chant, and Mussorgsky. In the brighter passages, we hear glittering influence from Ravel, Debussy, and Stravinsky or the bell tones that often mark the Rachmaninoff’s keyboard music. The last of the Sacred Music has a strong rhythmic affinity with some of the jazz improvisations from Keith Jarrett.
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Mozart spent part of 1775 in Munich, during which time he composed the six sonatas, K. 279-284. They represent the first works he composed specifically for the fortepiano, the predecessor of the modern piano. Compositions written before these sonatas could be performed on the clavichord, harpsichord or fortepiano, whichever was available to the performer. The numerous dynamic markings in these sonatas reveal Mozart’s intention to use the fortepiano’s wide dynamic range and, especially, the rich sonority of its bass register. The sonatas certainly give us a glimpse into Mozart’s improvisations.
The Piano Sonata in F Major opens Allegro assai, a kind of declamation in triple meter and triplet figures. The chromatic transition ushers in sighing gestures in the bass and soprano triplets. Then, a kind of buffa colloquy ensues between bass octaves and flute-like replies. In the next transition, the bass line ascends chromatically, a device Beethoven liked to imitate.
The expansive Adagio proves most impressive, since of all Mozart’s sonatas it lies in a minor key (F Minor), and its melody easily suggests the slow movement of Piano Concerto No. 23, which is set in F-sharp Minor. Here, we have an affectionate siciliano that reflects restrained, meditative pathos. Its second subject is set in A-flat Major, but it modulates into B-flat Minor and later into C Minor. These shifting modes add a degree of color quite exquisite in Mozart. The concluding movement, a rapid Presto, dissolves the tears of the middle movement with a sense of brilliant mischief. The movement indulges in cross-references (in minor) to the preceding Adagio, as if Mozart relishes joyfulness with full awareness of life’s tragedies.
Chopin’s love for his native Poland assumed the shape of fifty-nine mazurkas, the usually brief, compressed, dance form in ¾ and 3/8 that Chopin treated between 1825-1845 as his experimental laboratory in meter, harmony, and keyboard nuance: often, it is their metric ambiguity that fascinates listeners and performers – the composers Meyerbeer and Chopin persistently argued whether Chopin had written mazurkas or waltzes!
Not confining his musical influences within the standard forms of the dance – the Oberek, the Mazur, the Kujawiak – Chopin borrowed dance impulses from Norway, Scotland, Ireland, and Romani gypsy cultures. Poetic, witty, and often passionately dramatic, they testify to Chopin’s flexible and improvisational rhythmic pulse, in which his use of the slur in music adds dramatic contour and nuanced phraseology when applied together with the composer’s unique rubato. Most of all, Chopin’s mazurkas represent memory, both sentimental and martial but infused with the sense of the piano’s expressive range of timbre, its capacity to sing in bel canto style. Reports of Chopin’s own playing marvel at the degree of softness he could elicit from his keyboard, as though the hammers merely brushed the strings. Robert Schumann, on the contrary, saw potent, political drama in the mazurkas: “If the mighty autocrat of the North knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in the simple tunes of Chopin’s mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin’s works are cannons buried in flowers.”
From the very first bars of No. 1 in G Minor (Lento), we encounter the kujawiak melody, based on a folk tune, “Why aren’t you ploughing, Johnny, why aren’t you ploughing?” The rhythmic flexibility enjoys subtle shifts in harmonic accompaniment, and the music in variation moves into the relative major. Moving in thirds, we come to a jaunty mazur tune in E-flat Major that serves a kind of trio section that will return to the opening G Minor timbre and quietly slows the (organic) progression into meditative thoughtfulness.
No. 2 in C Major (Allegro non troppo) proves to be a delicate fabric in Lydian mode (diatonic F-F with an augmented 4th) that breathes Polish folk style. A four-measure introduction ushers in a tonic-dominant motif that no less involves the “forbidden” consecutive fifths in the bass. These will later serve as a 12- measure coda that fades away. The mazurka has a drone effect in the manner of rustic folk music, spiced by a Lydian maneuver in the form of a B-natural in the context of F Major.
The terse No. 3 in A-flat Major (Moderato) indulges in metric ambiguity, an improvisation with waltz overtones. The mood of meditative relaxation will come in direct conflict with the next mazurka in B-flat Minor. Diatonic in texture, it alternates between C and G Major, with a trio in D-flat Major.
No. 4 in B-flat Minor (Moderato), a kujawiak, exploits dark ambiguities in a most ambitious, “symphonic” manner. The central section unfolds brightly, quasi scherzando, in D-flat Major. Its expanses proved a constant challenge to Chopin’s pupils, who could not satisfy the composer’s demands for soft unisons in its central section. “One was barely allowed to breathe over the keyboard, let alone touch it!” exclaimed a frustrated student. This middle section, sotto voce (in a quiet voice), elicits the folk tune, in which a Lydian fourth emerges. It ends in the form of an epilogue rather starkly, on a bleak, dominant note, F surrounded by a sustained silence.
Schubert had intended to dedicate his last sonatas to Johann Hummel, but Schubert died before the last sonatas of 1828 were published. Diabelli published them only in 1838, with the dedication going to Robert Schumann, an apt choice in light of his championship of Schubert’s music.
This powerful sonata often recalls for us Schubert’s admiration of Beethoven, and its dark tenor and interior drama easily allude to the two composers’ emotional affinity for the sturm und drang (storm and stress) of early Romanticism. The opening Allegro begins in grim, punctuated chords that soon adopts a bass line in Alberti style (arpeggiated accompaniment), a motif often likened to Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C Minor. The second subject provides a tender respite in E-flat Major. The development dispenses with legato consolation and indulges the defiant affect chromatically, meandering in the bass misterioso and giving the right hand traveling, chromatic scales. The movement ends in stark terms, tragic and bleak.
The Adagio designation for a Schubert second movement is rare: he prefers andantes. Set in A-flat Major, the music conveys a noble grace and stoic beauty we might again find in Beethoven. The contrasting materials are rife with Schubertian triplets. Moving like a hymn in four-part harmony, the music develops with two interludes, creating a kind of rondo pattern.
The brisk Menuetto returns to the home key, C Minor. This music conveys a kind of dark humor, with tricky agogic accents, metric wit. Schubert inserts full measure rests that announce the return of the opening tune prior to a leisurely, triple meter Trio set in A-Flat Major that resembles an Austrian laendler (folk dance).
The finale, an immense Allegro, opens in the manner of a demonic, Italian tarantella, but here infused with the kind of obsessive gallop we recall from the famous lied, Der Erlkönig. Schubert tries to find relief in passages that indulge in scales, but the ride to the abyss concludes with nearly one hundred measures of midnight ride reaching a bitter, perfunctory final cadence.
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Orlando Gibbons was an English composer, virginalist and organist who was one of the last masters of the English Madrigal School. By the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England, with a career cut short by his sudden death in 1625. Pianist Glenn Gould has said of Gibbons that “by the first decade of the 17th Century, Orlando Gibbons was creating hymns and anthems with cadences as direct and emphatic as anything that Bach would ever set down to celebrate the faith of Luther – music that possessed an amazing insight into the psychology of the tonal system.”
Although the compositions of Orlando Gibbons are limited in number, his genius left us some delightful, true keyboard music for today. His fantasias were written not only for one voice but for a combination of many voices that built upon harmonic polyphony. Gibbons does not favor the homophonic style in his keyboard music as much as other virginal composers of the time. He also was an excellent writer of vocal music. He could write beautiful melody, but he did not apply melody in his fantasias. He wrote variations less often than his contemporaries, but when he set a tune, he did it in a thematic procedure – the melody with free, imitative writing in a simple way.
Gibbons reached his peak of perfection in 1612 when he published his “madrigals and motets of five parts: apt for viols and voices.” Outstanding works among the madrigals and motets are “Silver Swan,” “Ayre,” “Dainty Fine Bird,” and “What Is Our Life?” In the instrumental field, Gibbons wrote more music for strings than any of his contemporaries in the 16th century and early part of the 17th century. There are 24 fantasies for string trio besides a Galliard for trio. Also, there are some 15 fantasies in three parts and two in four parts for strings as well as a pavan (a stately dance in slow duple time) and galliard (a lively dance in triple time) for six strings.
Gibbons’ Preludium is a good example of a 6/4 melody line that soon spreads itself between the voices. The bass line proves perhaps more interesting, especially in the last measures, 35-38, in which the texture achieves an appealing sense of closure. The Queen’s Command follows an AABB format, with a more toccata-like middle section that leads into a succinct dance-variation. The variation has two voices, soprano and bass, which interchange and indulge in brief counterpoint. Gibbons’ melodies are free and florid, exploiting rises and falls. They almost always use different devices in each variation, such as running embellishments, breaking or spreading the chords or intervals, and long trills between the melodies.
Spanish pianist Ricardo Vines (1875-1943) gave the premiere of Pavane pour une infante defunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) in 1902. The salon piece had been commissioned of the 24-year-old Ravel in 1899. The composer felt a bit bewildered by the work’s popularity, but nonetheless orchestrated it in 1910 to even greater success. This lyrical, captivating work represents one of the few dance forms in Ravel’s oeuvre that does not explode of its own momentum. With the Pavane, we see Ravel’s love of older musical forms from the Renaissance, in this case a moderately paced court dance. He chose the title because he was fond of the alliterative sonority of the French words (“infante defunte”). The piece was not meant to be a funeral lament for a child. Rather, Ravel hoped to evoke the scene of a young, Spanish princess delighting in this stately dance in quiet reverie, as would have been painted by Velazquez in the Spanish court. The style is deliberately archaic, a concession to the slow, processional 16th-century Italian dance from which it takes its name. Major sevenths and ninths inform its rich, harmonic aura. Ravel well knew how to establish and maintain a magical mood; the middle movement of his G Major Piano Concerto no less attests to his capacity for melody. Ravel transcribed the Pavane for a small orchestra of two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, harp, and muted strings. Understandably, he later became quite critical of it, writing in 1912: “Alas, its faults I can perceive only too well: the influence of Chabrier is much too glaring, and the structure rather poor.”
Albeniz embodies a paradox: a devout lover of his native Spain, he left the country as a kind of protest against its dearth of musical culture. It was in Paris, especially in the influence of Debussy and Ravel, that Albeniz “discovered” his eminently Iberian identity: “Spanish music with a universal accent.” Albeniz took on more complex rhythmic and harmonic progressions and asserted more virtuosity in his piano writing, especially given that he was not always a proficient pianist. His music evolved from early pieces – written in Romantic, European, salon style – into music quintessentially Spanish. Like his Hungarian and Russian contemporaries, Albeniz employed native, Spanish and Moorish influences in his startling sense of color, mixing Romani (Gypsy) harmony, guitar effects, and aspects of flamenco. Then, he turned to regional characteristics of Spain’s diverse cultural community, creating music endemic to specific areas.
The piano solo suite Iberia (in four books of three pieces each, composed 1905-1909) remains one of the most daunting of keyboard works, likely influenced by the challenges inherent in Balakirev’s nationalistic Islamey. Rhythmic complexities, dynamic shifts, and technical gymnastics contribute to the bravura demands on any effective performer. In Iberia we find a beguiling mélange of folkloric references, elements of French Impressionism, and post-Lisztian virtuosity blended by a master hand.
Evocacion immediately invokes a sentimental nostalgia for the Spanish homeland, rife with reminiscence, a fandanguillo. Set in A-flat Minor, the piece evokes a memory, an image of landscape, and dream-vision, in the manner of Debussy. The dynamic range is extreme, running from fortissimo to a diaphanous ppppp, a barely audible pianississississimo.
Triana is named after the gypsy section in Seville, and the music invokes stamping, flamenco colors and hand-slapping in time or in syncopation. The interplay of timbres sets this piece apart.
Eritana is set in a tavern that lies on the outskirts of Seville. This Moorish-sounding piece in seductive, sevillana rhythm features dense textures. The tavern itself had a prestige for its flamenco entertainments and virtuoso guitar ensembles. This strumming-rich composition ends on a suspenseful fortissimo that opens a possibility of a musical sequel, perhaps a return to the beginning of the suite, since Eritana concludes on the dominant chord of the suite’s opening key.
The second set of Preludes, composed in 1913, was written primarily on three staves and named after the fact of their playing. The Preludes push Debussy’s idiosyncratic harmony further afield of any German models, and even those of his adored Pole, Chopin. Few of these pieces “develop” as such: a perfect example would be Les tierces alternées (Alternating double thirds). Between Nature and Literature, Debussy finds inspiration for his especial colors, exotic musical syntax – such as whole tone scales and Javanese sonorities – and oppositions of sound and dramatic silences.
La Puerta del vino takes us to Spain, an Andalusian habanera (a Cuban dance in slow duple time) inhabited by both flamenco and cante jondo (deep song), pregnant with sex and menace. Bruyères (Heather) projects an aspect of plainchant that inhabits Debussy, while the piece wants its A-flat progression to invoke olfactory sensations of mist and pines near the Normandy coast. Canopes refers to the Egyptian burial rite, here doucement triste, and its second theme bears comparison to the famed Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. The slowly cautious melody, a hint of plainchant that breaks up, invokes singing tones.
Stephen Hough has a great repute as pianist, composer, painter, and writer. His novel, The Final Retreat, invites such epithets as “harrowing,” “graphic,” “a controversial struggle of faith and loss.” One other piece of valuable information for the program notes: Albert Cano Smit informs us that Hough composed this piece after he learned that Albert had won the Naumburg (Gold in 2017). And knowing that Albert was Catalan, Hough composed the piece accordingly, influenced, as he said, by the Catalan composer Mompou.
Stephen Hough notes: “Having composed four sonatas for piano of a serious intense nature, I wanted to write something different for my Naumberg commission – something brighter, something more celebratory, more nostalgic.
This Partita is in five movements. Its outer, more substantial bookends have an “English” flavor and suggest the world of a grand cathedral organ. The first of these alternates between ceremonial pomp and sentimental circumstance, whereas the final movement, taking thematic material from the first, is a virtuosic toccata – a sortie out of gothic gloom into brilliant Sunday sunshine.
At the center of the work are three shorter movements, each utilizing the interval of a fifth: a restless, jagged Capriccio of constantly shifting time signatures, and two Cancio y Danzas, inspired by the Catalan composer Federico Mompou.”
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