Recently named the winner of the 2019 Young Concert Artists (YCA) International Auditions, 22-year-old Swiss-born pianist Albert Cano Smit has been winning international competitions since age 14, including the prestigious Naumburg Competition in 2017. Of his 2018 San Francisco Performances recital, a reviewer wrote, “The audience witnessed a genius at work.” His Fondation Louis Vuitton recital earlier this year at the Frank Gehry–designed “glass cloud” in Paris was broadcast live globally. CBC Music notes that he “plays with the maturity of someone three times his age.”

1. Äußerst bewegt (“Extremely animated”), D minor
2. Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch (“Very heartfelt and not too fast”), B-flat Major
3. Sehr aufgeregt (“Very agitated”), G minor
4. Sehr langsam (“Very slow”), B-flat Major/G minor
5. Sehr lebhaft (“Very lively”), G minor
6. Sehr langsam (“Very slow”), B-flat Major
7. Sehr rasch (“Very fast”), C minor/E-flat Major
8. Schnell und spielend (“Fast and playful”), G minor

1. No. XV, Le baiser de l’enfant Jésus (“The Kiss of Baby Jesus”)
2. No. XII, La parole toute-puissante (“The Omnipotent Word”)

1. Allegro inquieto—Andantino
2. Andante caloroso
3. Precipitato

The departure in 1704 of Bach’s older brother Johann Jacob to join the army of King Carl XII of Sweden as an oboist was a source of concern for the whole family. For the occasion, Bach—who was then 19—wrote his Capriccio on the Departure of His Beloved Brother, a charming and affectionate work. It is one of the few examples of programmatic music by Bach, for it depicts the actual departure of his brother on a carriage: each movement has a subtitle that describes the events. The opening Arioso is subtitled “a coaxing by his friends to dissuade him from the journey.” The second movement “is a picturing of various calamities that might overtake him in foreign parts,” and Bach depicts these calamities by modulating into wrong keys. The Adagissimo “is a general lament of his friends,” and in the fourth movement “come the friends, since they see it cannot be otherwise, and take their leave.” The fifth movement—Aria di Postiglione—echoes the horn call of the carriage that will carry the brother away, and the final movement is a “Fugue in Imitation of the Postilion’s Horn.”

Few composers have been as well read as Robert Schumann, who found inspiration in a range of writers, from Shakespeare to Goethe to Jean Paul to Byron. One of the strongest literary influences on Schumann was the work of the German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), author of novels and fantastic tales. Hoffmann named one of his sets of fantastic stories Fantasiestücke, and Schumann borrowed that title for several of his own works; but it was Hoffmann’s fictional character Johannes Kreisler who seems to have struck Schumann most strongly. A musician and critic (like Schumann himself), Kreisler was a perfect example of the literary concept known as Zerrissenheit: the artist-hero who is torn apart by the conflict between his idealized sense of order and the claims of the world he must live in; one of Hoffmann’s original working titles, in fact, appears to have been Lucid Intervals of an Insane Musician. Schumann, one of the most mentally tormented of all composers, saw in Johannes Kreisler a spiritual brother, and he borrowed the name Kreisleriana for this collection of eight piano pieces, which he specifically called “fantasies,” from Hoffmann’s cycle of musical writings of the same name.

Schumann wrote Kreisleriana in the spring of 1838. He was 27 years old, his efforts to marry Clara Wieck were being thwarted by the opposition of her father, and music seemed to pour out of the young composer. From January 1838 came his Novelletten, followed by the Kinderszenen in February; in March Schumann composed the Fantasie in C Major, and in April—in the space of four days, so he claimed—he wrote Kreisleriana. Schumann may have called these pieces “fantasies,” which implies formlessness, but they are in fact quite disciplined works. They do, however, defy easy classification: some are in ABA form, some are in simple binary form, and several have forms all their own. As a very general rule, it might be observed that the odd-numbered movements are fast and dramatic, and the even slow and expressive, but even this observation is undercut by the frequent internal episodes in contrasting tempos. Particularly striking is the variety of mood and expression in this music—one moment it can be simple and lyric, the next it turns mercurial, and suddenly it is violent and extroverted. Yet this music tells no tales and paints no pictures, nor does it try to translate Hoffmann’s magical stories into music—these eight pieces are abstract music, complete in themselves. Throughout, one feels Schumann’s instinctive and idiomatic understanding of the piano, and the end of Kreisleriana is stunning: after the galloping, hammering energy of the final piece, the music grows quiet and suddenly vanishes like smoke on two barely audible strokes of sound.

The apparent inspiration for this music was Hoffmann’s character, but Schumann chose to dedicate Kreisleriana “To His Friend Frederic Chopin.” His letters, however, make clear that the real inspiration for this music was his love for Clara Wieck—he wrote to tell her: “Play my Kreisleriana occasionally. In some passages there is to be found an utterly wild love, and your life and mine.”

Messiaen composed Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus in Paris between March 23 and September 8, 1944. That was one of the happiest moments in the history of that city—the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation took place that summer—but there is absolutely no trace of such external events in this work. This music is concerned with quite a different sort of joy, one that exists outside time and human action—it is an expression of the devout Christian faith that lies at the heart of every note Messiaen composed. The title translates as “Twenty watches [or perhaps ‘observations’ or ‘perspectives’] on the Infant Jesus.” Written specifically for Messiaen’s brilliant pupil Yvonne Loriod, who later became his wife, Vingt regards is a collection of 20 pieces that lasts in its entirety about two hours.

These 20 pieces are unified in several different ways. First, three different themes run through the set: a simple chordal melody that Messiaen calls the “Theme of God,” a linear “Theme of the Star and of the Cross,” and a “Theme of Chords,” a sequence of four simple chords. Vingt regards also reflects Messiaen’s lifelong interest in birdsong (he quotes the songs of specific birds) as well as his interest in canon. In its purest form, religious faith should be ecstatic, and Vingt regards is ecstatic music: in its rhythmic freedom (there are no time signatures here and few bar lines), its incredible pianistic sonorities (much of it is written on three staves), and in its virtuosity—Yvonne Loriod was a superb pianist, and this music was written specifically for her abilities. In the preface to the score, Messiaen writes of Vingt regards: “More than in all my preceding works, I have sought a language of mystic love, at once varied, powerful and tender, sometimes brutal, in a multicolored ordering.”

This recital offers two movements from Vingt regards. Le baiser de l‘enfant-Jésus (“Kiss of the Infant Jesus”) is a rapt slow episode that treats the “Theme of God” as a berceuse, or lullaby. Messiaen marks the movement “Very slow, calm” and then stipulates that it should be like “a dream.” This movement is in the home key of Vingt regards—F-sharp major—and Messiaen sends the piano into its ringing high register as the music comes to a quiet, shimmering close. La parole toute-puissante (“The Omnipotent Word”): “This child is the Word who sustains all things by the strength of his word.” Written on three staves, this movement is distinguished by its percussion sounds: deep in the left hand, the sound of a tam-tam rings throughout, and at moments Messiaen has the piano echo the sound of drumrolls.

The Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, composed in Paris in 1835, has left critics gasping for language that can suggest its unearthly evocation of the night: “night-marmoreal . . . hushed, airless, and miasmic . . . black magic,” says one. “An atmosphere of morbid pessimism, heavy and oppressive,” says another. By comparison, The New Grove Dictionary keeps itself under control, describing this music only as “one of [Chopin’s] best nocturnes.”

This is impressive music, and its haunting night atmosphere is the result of Chopin’s careful—and very imaginative—technical control. The Nocturne in C-sharp Minor is in the expected ternary form, with an opening section that glides darkly along the left hand’s widely ranging sextuplets, a pattern that continues throughout. High above, the right hand has the melodic line, quiet but unsettling in its harmonic freedom. At the center section, marked Più mosso, the music presses forward powerfully. Over triplet accompaniment, the right hand begins quietly but soon hammers its way to a great climax marked appassionato and agitato. This falls away, and the transition back to the opening material brings another surprise: Chopin gives it entirely to the left hand, whose long sequence of octaves is almost a small cadenza in itself. The opening material resumes, but the repeat is not literal; and Chopin suddenly abandons this music for an entirely new idea, which moves easily along a chain of major thirds. The atmosphere, so tense to this point, now seems to relax, and Chopin completes the surprise with an utterly unexpected modulation into C-sharp major at the end.

This technical description, no matter how accurate, misses the essence of this music. That lies in its atmosphere—dark, unsettled, and constantly changing.

Prokofiev liked to plan works far in advance, and in 1939—when he was 48—he projected a series of three piano sonatas, which would become his Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth. He completed the first of these in 1940, but then came catastrophe—Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941, and Prokofiev’s plans were delayed and altered. Along with many other artists, he was evacuated, first to Nalchik in the Caucasus, then in the fall of 1941 to Tbilisi, near the border with Turkey. Here Prokofiev plunged into his project to compose an opera based on Tolstoy’s War and Peace: the heroic Russian resistance to Napoleon became a parallel for the struggle against Nazi Germany. And at the same time as he worked on the opera, Prokofiev found time to compose his Piano Sonata No. 7, completing the score in Tbilisi in April 1942. Young Sviatoslav Richter gave the first performance, in Moscow, on January 18, 1943.

Since the moment of that premiere, the Seventh has been acclaimed one of Prokofiev’s finest works. Almost inevitably, observers have claimed to hear the sound of war and national catastrophe in this music, but the composer himself made no direct connection, leaving such issues to his listeners. The first movement has the unusual marking Allegro inquieto, and unquiet this music certainly is. The opening section is quite percussive, and something of the music’s character can be understood from Prokofiev’s performance markings: tumultuoso, veloce, con brio, marcato, secco; at one point, he even requests that the performer make the piano sound quasi timpani. The pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy has compared this opening section to the sound of “drums beating and iron screeching,” which makes the second section all the more impressive. This is a singing and flowing Andantino, which Prokofiev marks espressivo e dolente (“grieving”); these two quite different kinds of music alternate before the movement comes to a quiet close.

The second movement also has an unusual marking, Andante caloroso (“warm”); and some have found the opening almost sentimental in its relaxed songfulness. This is soon disrupted by an agitated middle section; the violence fades away, but the gentle opening makes only the briefest and most tentative return before the close. The famous last movement is a blistering toccata, marked simply Precipitato (“precipitous”). The movement is extremely fast, set in the unusual meter 7/8, and unremittingly chordal in its textures. It is also extraordinarily difficult music (Vladimir Horowitz sometimes used this movement as an encore piece), and it forms an exciting conclusion to the sonata. Along the way, material from the opening movement makes a brief reappearance, but the chordal violence of this movement overpowers it and drives the sonata to its hammering close.