Between 1827 and 1846, Chopin composed 21 nocturnes, or night pieces, inspired by the example of Irishman John Field (1782–1837), who had established that the melodic line is maintained by the right hand. This vocal line, along with the left hand’s broken chords, would become Chopin’s most notable characteristic in transforming the conception of the keyboard away from that of a percussion instrument. Both Field and Chopin insisted on the studied use of pedal effects to enrich the texture, while Chopin introduced finer aspects of rhythmic flux—tempo rubato—to increase the drama of a vocal line that was heavily indebted to Italian opera, specifically the art of Vincenzo Bellini’s bel canto style. The nocturnes are most often set in ternary form, but they vary; some combine rondo and theme-and-variations elements as the composer saw fit. As Chopin’s style matured, he came to employ increased polyphony and experimental harmonies to expand his range and intensity of expression, making his collection of nocturnes a seminal contribution to the keyboard literature.

The Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2, the second of a diptych, was composed in 1835 in Paris; before Op. 27, Chopin had published nocturnes in groups of three. Dedicated to one of his pupils, Countess Thérèse d’Apponyi, this nocturne exemplifies Chopin’s lyrical approach to the medium. By 1835, Chopin had begun to withdraw from public concerts, preferring the salon as the venue for the intimate music he created. The piece proceeds as a love duet, its atmosphere suffused with elegiac and oneiric poetic musing. The 6/8 meter, used here, often served Chopin for his dreamy, meditative compositions. The secondary theme, espressivo, is a two-voice duet of eight measures in thirds and sixths that parallels the opening lento sostenuto statement. Chopin asks the performer to add ornaments, such as mordents, trills, turns, and grace notes, to add fioritura—vocal, virtuoso color. James Huneker claimed that the piece had but one subject, a “song of summer” intoned by two voices.

The Nocturne in F# Minor, Op. 48, No. 2 is the second of a pair that Chopin composed in 1841 and dedicated to Mlle. Laure Duperré. The nocturne opens in an Andantino in 4/4 time and proceeds in an adjusted sonata form; the recapitulation, beginning at bar 101, is cut short by the coda, which ends in trills and a rising figure that moves to the tonic major. The outer sections of this ternary piece express melancholy in a line of great purity and simplicity. The middle section, made up of shorter phrases, più lento, enters at bar 57, where the music modulates into D-flat major; the meter has altered to 3/4. Chopin commented upon the declamatory and conciliatory effect, calling the piece a recitative that should be played as if “a tyrant commands [expressed by the first two chords], and the other asks for mercy.” The textures, though transparent, offer a restrained surface under which a brooding passion awaits release.

Chopin’s commitment to the form of the literary ballade in music derived from his friend, the poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), who transposed Lithuanian legend and fairy tales into a political context. The Ballade in F Minor captures the Slavic notion of dramatic lyricism. Dedicated to Baroness de Rothschild, the music illustrates “The Three Brothers Budrys,” a tale of young men sent by their father to fetch sables. When the brothers disappear, their father assumes that they have perished in the war. But the sons return “from the barren, stripped land,” one bride shared by all three. The episodic structure incorporates waltz qualities, cadenzas, towering ornaments, powerful shifts of register, and sudden silences. “Music hot from the soul,” exclaimed Huneker of its broadly aggressive, emotional range. “Its witchery is irresistible.”

Ravel conceived Daphnis et Chloé (1912) as a symphonie chorégraphique for orchestra and wordless chorus, and set it to the second-century Greek poet Longus’s pastoral novel about the romance of the goatherd Daphnis and shepherdess Chloé on the isle of Lesbos. It was first presented in effect as a ballet for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, but is more frequently performed as a concert work.

Ravel arranged two concert suites from his ballet, and Mr. Khozyainov has arranged the second of the suites for virtuoso treatment. The suite comprises three movements played without pause: Lever du jour (Daybreak), Pantomime (a depiction of the nymph Syrinx, who had been transformed into a reed pipe), and Danse générale. The challenge for Mr. Khozyainov is to approximate on the keyboard the extraordinarily diverse color elements that Ravel employed in the orchestral and vocal score, so that, in Ravel’s words, “all their secrets [of] the real inner emotion of the music become apparent to the listener.”

The synopsis of the second suite drawn from the ballet is as follows:

In a clearing in the wood, Daphnis is lying in front of a nymphs’ grotto as dawn is breaking, mourning his loss of Chloé. Birds sing and flutter, and the sound of rushing water is heard as the light gently enters and grows into a luminous dawn. Daphnis learns that the god Pan had saved Chloé from pirates because of his memories of his own love for the nymph Syrinx. Upon Chloé’s return, Daphnis and Chloé perform a dance representing that love. Then they fall into each other’s arms, and all join in a frenzied, joyful, spectacular bacchanale.

Scriabin, an intriguing and eccentric personality, sought a consolidation of art forms much in the spirit of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk (all-encompassing artwork) wherein music, light, philosophical ideas, and mystical vision could converge in a sweeping panorama of aesthetic-religious experience. An early acolyte of Romantic style in the Chopin salon tradition, Scriabin evolved into an idiosyncratic harmonist and inventor of structurally diverse musical poems that attempted, like the painter J. W. N. Turner, to subdue aspects of transcendent light into his works. The influence of Theosophy on Scriabin became distorted into a form of solipsism, whereby all existence reflected a monumental ego obsessed with his intensely concentrated musical syntax that used the interval of the fourth as its axis. Compositions like The Poem of Ecstasy (1908) and Prometheus (1911) exemplify Scriabin’s musical emulation of Wagner, but with a color spectrum that lay outside and challenged traditional harmony. Technically, the piano style of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt had been absorbed into a rarified, tonally ambiguous sonic realm; and the trill, already expressive and liberated in late Beethoven, had become the organic culmination of Scriabin’s inner life.

Many of Scriabin’s late sonatas evolved as one-movement arches subdivided into emotionally charged sections. The “Black Mass” Sonata falls into eight large sections of variant tempo markings that evolve from the idea, légendaire, first stated at the opening, Moderato quasi andante. We might find this esoteric demand akin to that in the first movement of Schumann’s C-Major Fantasy, “in the style of a legend.” But Scriabin’s intent is at once more enigmatic or perhaps even poisonous, à la Baudelaire. Chromatic and atonal, this dissonant music often centers on the degree of the minor 9th, producing a deliberately unstable harmony. When Scriabin layers his textures with simultaneous motifs, the music demands a third staff for the performer to realize the composer’s grandiose intentions. The love of tritones, perfect fourths, and his “mystic chord” (a complex variant of the French augmented 6th), in tandem with disruptive harmonies, plays increasingly fast and loose as the emotional fervor of the piece waxes and wanes, wild or grotesque, in the manner of a demented Liszt, but the music always remains martially directed upwards at an emotional ether. This transcendent space has absorbed the entire vision, beyond good and evil, as Nietzsche might assert.

Scriabin and his first wife, Vera Ivanovna Isaakovich, traveled to Paris, where he began work on a sonata in four movements that he intended to title Gothic. He later provided a program, States of the Soul, to guide his audience, using the cyclic technique of Beethoven and Schumann to ensure a unity of effect. The first movement, Drammatico, though turbulent in character, proceeds in sonata form. The opening rhythmic pulse defines much of the movement, beginning in a passionate F# to indicate the soul’s immersion in chaotic forces, relieved somewhat by the secondary theme at bar 25, cantabile, in A major.

The second movement, Allegretto, permits a momentary respite, indulging a desire for forgetfulness. The constant repeats of the Baroque-like 16th-note triplets in the middle section create the “state of gracefulness.” But the light rhythm and fragrant harmonies are just a cover through which a restless and languishing soul is evident. The third movement, Andante, evokes a sea of feelings, both tender and sorrowful: love, vague desires, inexplicable thoughts, and illusions of a delicate dream. Scriabin links, cyclically, the last two movements using a pianissimo memory of the opening Drammatico theme and a maestoso restatement of the Andante theme as the ecstatic climax of the finale.

The last movement, Presto con fuoco, insists that a creative song arises from the depths of one’s being; but the life force proves too weak to sustain the victory, and the soul plunges back into the abyss. Scriabin urges his Wagnerian harmonies further into uncharted areas, ushering in the motif from the Andante, as though in anticipation of a transcendent coda in F# major: but the ascent fails, and the sonata ends bleakly in defeat.

By the time of his Fifth Sonata, Scriabin had dispensed with key signatures in his scores. His 1905 meeting with Madame Blavatsky intensified his theosophical leanings and the artistic egocentrism that equated art with divinity. He now followed Balzac’s dictum that “light must turn into melody … colors were lights.” It took Scriabin a mere nine days to respond to the imperious summoning of the sonata for realization, and he attached some lines from his own Poem of Ecstasy as an epigraph to the score: “I call you to life, O mysterious forces!/Drowned in the obscure depths/Of the Creator-Mind, fearful/Outlines of life, to you I bring audacity.” That boldness expresses itself immediately: the opening motto rumbles in the depths, then suddenly rockets up to the keyboard’s highest registers. A potent condensation into a single-movement poem takes place in the sonata; the climax, estatico, is a restatement of the languido, dolcissimo theme of a rising and falling third that immediately follows the explosive opening.

The sonata form is constructed on three subject groups, subdivided into five sections: Impetuoso; Languido; Presto con allegrezza; Allegro fantastico; and Presto tumultuoso esaltato. Slow, drooping harmonies constantly interrupt the galloping pace and fleet figures of the Presto sections. Dazzling light and epiphanies of color invade the psyche and suggest other forms of life and power. The motif in thirds transforms into accarezzevole (caressingly) languido, and culminates in an estatico final page played fff. A chordal motif marked Presto becomes con luminosità in the finale. The evolving process is one of dematerialization, of bearing the paradoxical weight of light through mercurial shifts of pedal and rhythm, all moving vers la flamme, toward the incandescent. The piece ends as it began, in a blaze of upward striving.

When Scriabin performed the work in Moscow in February, 1909, some acolytes fell to their knees. But two dissenters attended: Serge Taneyev quipped that he felt “as if beaten with sticks”; and Rachmaninoff told friend Scriabin, “I think you have taken a wrong path.”

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Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in D Major, D. 850, Op. 53, the “Gasteiner,” was written in 1825 while the composer was staying in the spa town of Bad Gastein. In 1826, the work became only the second of Schubert’s piano sonatas to be published; though he completed 11 piano sonatas and had begun work on more than 20, only three were published during his lifetime.

The first movement, Allegro vivace, opens with fanfare, the propulsive first subject dominated by a repeated chordal figure and swirling triplets; already by measure 5 the modality shifts from major into minor. Schubert modulates quickly into remote keys—F major and C# major—as he gravitates to the genial second subject, whose alternation of registers resembles yodeling. Some commentators find a similarity with the lied “Das Heimweh” (Homesickness), written contemporaneously. The unrelenting momentum, with few moments of repose, poses a challenge for the performer, who must execute the grandiose chordal fanfare in the development section—it will recur in the coda—and the manic triplet figures, all of which demand a bravura technique.

The second movement, in A major, Con moto in 3/4, is structured as a rondo, and moves forward quickly. The opening tune has a wistful character, balanced by the driving pulse and syncopations of the expansive B section. The martial music in dotted rhythm stops and starts and inserts recitatives and meditative materials, all to dramatic effect. Schubert merges the two impulses—the syncopations of the B section with the opening theme of the A section—moving to a coda that fades away.

The third movement Scherzo is marked Allegro vivace, and presents an athletic theme in dotted eighth and 16th notes. Once more, Schubert employs thick, chordal sonorities and frequent shifts in register, texture, and tonality. He complicates the metrics by inserting a 3/2 pulse within the basic 3/4 pattern, a rhythmic device termed hemiola. The middle Trio section in G major bears a stately poise, becoming lyrical in repeated chords and exotic modulations, a true respite amidst the propulsive figures that frame it.

The last movement, Rondo: Allegro moderato, offers a playfully naïve 4/4 march tune for development. This folk impulse will be repeated twice, adding metric variation and decorative filigree that together invite two contrasting sections, each bearing stormy episodes that intimate the Sturm und Drang sensibility that had come to dominate the Romantics’ expressive arsenal. The contrasting B section features brisk scales that move between the hands, the simple staccato phrase now blooming in variation. A third motif, rather lyrical in repeated chords, suddenly moves into the minor mode, a dramatic moment. The rondo theme recurs, ushering in a mournful coda whose tone will inspire Dvořák in his late symphonic poems. The sonata closes in quiet, subdued resignation.

The performers and publishers contemporaneous with Schubert tended to ignore his massive keyboard output, invidiously comparing his works to those of Beethoven, to Schubert’s detriment. Like its companion sonatas, the C Minor D. 958 and the A Major D. 959, this magnificent sonata did not receive publication (by Diabelli) until 1838. It took the 20th century to rediscover these works, mainly through the advocacy of pianist Artur Schnabel and fellow acolytes like Eduard Erdmann, Rudolf Serkin, Wilhelm Kempff, and Webster Aitken.

Despite Schubert’s brief period in 1828 of relative financial and burgeoning publication success, his long-term battle with the late stages of syphilis had caused his health to deteriorate; by September of that year, physical signs of the disease had become blatantly manifest. The composer reacted with an extraordinary burst of creative energy—some would argue in anticipation of his mortality—resulting in the great final piano sonatas in C Minor, A Major, and B-flat Major, each of which finds interconnections with its companions.

A broad, singing melody in B-flat major, Molto moderato in 4/4, opens the D. 960 sonata, ending on the F-major chord and introducing a fateful trill on G-flat that, nervously trembling on A-flat and G-flat, will provide the fulcrum for harmonic shifts to the key of G-flat for the main theme’s development. Then, after the music reestablishes B-flat, it moves to F# minor, the dark side of G-flat major, enharmonically speaking. By circuitous routes, Schubert modulates to a third key area in F major, the dominant of B-flat. The G-flat trill’s ending on a staccato eighth note F, marked fortissimo, produces an eerie sound, especially when pedaled, just prior to the written repeat of the exposition. Should the pianist opt for the repeat, Schubert employs a weird, nine-measure series of preparatory chords. The extended development manipulates the various motifs, ascending to a dark climax in D minor that seemingly baits the home key of B-flat, especially in the recapitulation’s bass line. A secondary theme appears, in B minor, as of a new variation. The recapitulation has ascended a fourth to once more establish B-flat as the home key. The coda quotes, in part, the opening theme, closing quietly.

The extraordinary second movement, an Andante sostenuto in ternary form, is in the distant key of C# minor. Sviatoslav Richter played the movement as an Adagio, not as Schubert intended; the music should walk, even if ever so solemnly. A somber, rocking rhythm supports a dark melody, groping its way, at first through pedal effects. The melody then emerges as a flowing song in A major, the bass line animated; the melody will progress into the B-flat home key of the sonata. The opening motif returns, the rhythmic pulse varied. More harmonically circuitous routes take the music to C major, then to E major. The last pages bring a shift to the tonic major, but the bass hints at a lingering darkness in the minor mode.

The animated third movement, Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza, manipulates harmony in unexpected ways, cannily exploiting the subdominant (E-flat) tonality so as to land in D-flat. Another theme rises to G-flat, the key that had dictated much of movement one. The Trio, written in two sections, occurs in B-flat minor, the first appearance of the minor mode of the original key of the sonata. The brisk filigree of the main theme and its snappily executed motion easily suggest the influence of Domenico Scarlatti.

The last movement, Allegro ma non troppo—Presto, emerges as a large and complex canvas, presumably conceived as a resolution to the harmonic turmoil (as embodied in the G-flat trill) of the earlier movements. Schubert, even in the course of relentless eighth notes, inserts fermatas that create a spatial component to the progression. The music suddenly breaks off in F minor, fortissimo, to introduce a theme in the parallel F major. A kind of dance figure, in the manner of an Italian tarantella, will segue back to the main rondo theme. Schubert merges his rondo with sonata form, much like Haydn had done, developing his filigree in eighths and triplets so as to land in G major, which softens the dynamic to return to the main tune. The main theme undergoes fragmentation in the coda, but the chromatic instability merely prepares us for a glorious resolution, the Presto section reverberating with a sense of hard-won triumph.

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The polonaise, one of five Polish national dances, did not begin with Chopin—polonaises can be found among the œuvre of Bach and Beethoven—but it was Chopin who refined the genre for the solo piano to a high art. In 3/4 time, the dance began as a chodzony, a “walking dance.” Before Chopin’s time, the Polish/Lithuanian aristocrat and diplomat Michał Kleofas Ogiński (1765–1833), the “epitome of Polish national pride” and one of the earliest composers to write Romantic music, had composed mazurkas, waltzes, marches, and polonaises. By the late 16th century, the folk versions of polonaise, accompanied by singing, were commonly danced by the lower Polish nobility, but the dance was not known under its current name until the 17th century. By Chopin’s era, the Polish, Swedish, and French nobility had adopted the form for ceremonial and social occasions. The polonaise is still a very popular dance in Poland today, and is often the opening dance at official balls and ceremonies.

Chopin wrote his first polonaise in 1817, when he was 7; his last was the Polonaise-Fantaisie of 1846, written and published three years before his death. Among the best known of his works in the genre are the Polonaise in A, Op. 40, No. 1 (the “Military”), and the Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53 (the “Heroic”). Also among his most beloved works is the Andante spianato et Grande polonaise brillante in E-flat, Op. 22 for piano and orchestra, which also exists in the more commonly heard solo piano version. One of Chopin’s earliest published works, the Introduction and polonaise brillante in C Major, Op. 3, for cello and piano, incorporates the polonaise, and is one of only a small handful of the composer’s works with a cello part.

The two polonaises of Op. 26, both composed in 1836 and dedicated to his friend, the Austrian composer Josef Dessauer, were Chopin’s first published polonaises, though earlier examples of the genre have since come to light and entered the standard repertoire. Both of the Op. 26 works are known for the great technique and energy they require.

The first polonaise of the set begins with rhythmically intense, descending forte octaves that lead into a passionate theme in C-sharp minor. After a series of virtuoso ascending arpeggio figures, a tender second theme that flirts with E major brings a calmer mood and a more fluid texture. But the turmoil of the opening theme returns. A calmer mood is established in a central meno mosso section in D-flat major, the enharmonic equivalent of C-sharp minor. The thunderous opening section is repeated, da capo al fine, and the piece ends quietly in the opening key.

The second polonaise of Op. 26 opens ominously with a repeated pianissimo descending figure and E-flat minor chords, maestoso (stately and dignified), but it soon becomes more agitated and passionate. A quieter central section in a nonetheless martial B major, meno mosso, provides some contrast to the earlier dark atmosphere. Following the return of the main theme, and a passionate ascent to a triple fortissimo, the piece accelerates in a final stretto, and closes subtly with pauses and nuanced dynamics, ending quietly in a triple pianissimo.

The two polonaises of Op. 40 were composed in 1838. Chopin originally intended to dedicate the first of the set to Tytus Woyciechowski, the great friend of his youth and his fellow student at the Warsaw Lyceum, but ultimately placed the name of Julian Fontana, the pianist, composer, and lawyer who shared lodgings with the composer in Paris from 1836 to 1838 (and who was ultimately his musical executor) as the dedicatee of both works. The great Chopin interpreter Arthur Rubinstein characterized the first piece of the set as “a tribute to Polish glory,” and the second as “a tribute to Polish tragedy.”

The first polonaise opens in A major, Allegro con brio, and continues in a typically martial polonaise rhythm. A second section, constituting a trio, declaims a theme in longer notes, in D major, and rises even to a triple fortissimo, after which the opening is repeated. The piece is played entirely at a forte level or even louder.

The second polonaise of Op. 40 opens with a dark and mournful theme declaimed ponderously in sotto voce octaves in the left hand, accompanied by eighth-note chords in the right—a contrast to the majestic and joyful character of the first polonaise of the set. Chopin calls for the opening section to be repeated, but this time, forte. A more serene theme is heard in 16th notes in the right hand, before a trio section in A-flat major intervenes, espressivo. The main theme is then repeated but largely abridged, with an added dramatic melody in the right hand. The piece ends with a triple fortissimo crash in C minor.

By 1841, Chopin had refined the polonaise genre to incorporate contrapuntal and fantasy elements; by this time he had abandoned formulas based on dance and folk practice. The work epitomizes the “grande polonaise” character that his Op. 53 “Heroic” Polonaise and Op. 61 Polonaise-Fantaisie share; it often receives the term “Tragic” due to its darkly intense nature. The Op. 44 polonaise is dedicated to Princess Charles de Beauvau (née Ludmille Komar), a prominent member of the Polish émigré community in Paris.

The Op. 44 polonaise is a composite work in ternary form. It opens with a short, menacing passage that soon develops into a dark and furious polonaise theme. Immediately preceding a central section is a passage that Alan Walker describes as a “military cavalcade of unbridled ferocity”—36 bars of unisono octaves, “stripped of song” and “hammered out with unremitting force”—”there is no parallel elsewhere in Chopin, where melody abounds.” The central section, Doppio movimento (Tempo di Mazurka), is in effect a mazurka in A major that provides a romantic sotto voce contrast. The mazurka soon submits to darker harmonies, and the polonaise returns after two shocking torrents of fortissimo ascending notes in octave unison—essentially a brilliant, short cadenza that provides a bridge back to the opening Tempo di Polacca. At length, the reprise seems to lose force and momentum, quieting to a pianissimo, and suddenly concludes with a gripping F-sharp double octave, fortissimo.

One of the most famous and recognizable works by Chopin, the tremendously difficult Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53, is favored by classical pianists as a virtuosic showpiece; it is referred to as the “Heroic,” after the emotional feeling that Chopin’s companion, George Sand, attributed to it. He completed the work in the summer of 1842 at her estate, Nohant, and dedicated it to his German banker, Auguste Léo. Chopin marked the work maestoso, and it was known that he did not like it to be played too fast.

A grand introduction in ascending chromatic notes, seemingly punctuated by two bars of drum rolls, has been likened to a call to arms. The first theme, in a dancelike A-flat major, forte, is accentuated by stately left-hand octaves; upon repetition, right-hand trills and octave reinforcements are added, fortissimo. Chord progressions and arpeggios maintain high energy as the piece moves between interludes, new themes, and the main theme. A second main interlude, a trio in the surprisingly distant key of E major, opens with six fortissimo arpeggiated chords, then ostinato octaves in the bass that accompany a martial theme in the right hand. The theme crescendos to a forte, then is repeated a half-step lower, notated by Chopin in D-sharp major rather than the more closely related enharmonic equivalent, E-flat. Liszt likened the octave passages to the canter of the horses of the Polish cavalry. A misterioso and quiet interlude intervenes, seemingly dying away before building in a crescendo to a glorious return of the main theme. A brief concluding passage recalls the earlier octaves and the arpeggiated chords, and the piece concludes in a triumphant sforzando A-flat final chord.

In 1845, Chopin had told his family in Warsaw that he was working on a new composition for which he hadn’t yet found a name. He ultimately settled on Polonaise-Fantaisie, and completed and published the work in 1846, three years before his death, dedicating it to one Mme. A. Veyret. It embodies a composition style so utterly different from his earlier works—a melding of polonaise-like rhythmic elements in a seemingly unstructured fantasy—that it is sometimes referred to as the beginning of “last” rather than “late” Chopin. It is his most complex work. While the earlier sections clearly have the meter, rhythm, and dancelike melodies of a polonaise, the piece is filled with musical ambiguities more akin to those of a fantasy. Even the tonic key of A-flat is not established until more than 25 bars have elapsed.

The composition is marked maestoso; and after a brief opening rhythmic declaration, a shimmering arpeggiation ascends into the heights with dreamlike pedal effects. A polonaise theme enters in a more lyrical form and, signaled by the intensified chords and the faster pace, builds into something glorious. The overall mood is serious, thoughtful, meditative, and melancholy; and the final pages reach a height of emotion seldom surpassed elsewhere. Marked by such a different style, the piece was as confusing for first audiences to grasp as for Chopin to name. Even in the 1852 book Chopin, published under Liszt’s name (but containing some flowery and nearly unreadable prose penned by Liszt’s new paramour, the princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein), the work is described as “bordering on delirium”—an assessment of which the putative author later repented. It took many years before the Polonaise-Fantaisie advanced to becoming one of Chopin’s most performed and beloved works.

Few musicians would dispute that the Sonata in B Minor is one of the 19th century’s greatest masterpieces. Liszt dedicated it to Robert Schumann, who, having already been committed to an asylum, never heard it. Clara Schumann received a copy in 1854 shortly after its publication, but loathed the work (and Liszt himself!): “merely a blind noise—no healthy ideas anymore, everything confused, one cannot find a single, clear harmonic progression—and yet I must thank him for [the dedication to Robert]. It really is too awful.” The sonata was premiered in 1857 in Berlin by Hans von Bülow, one of the century’s greatest pianists; he married Liszt’s daughter Cosima that year. The work was received joyfully by many of Liszt’s contemporaries; Wagner (himself the future second husband of Cosima) wrote in 1855 that the work was “deep and noble.” Critics, however, were sometimes not as complimentary.

Though in one movement, the work follows sonata form, prompting Liszt biographer Alan Walker to call it a “sonata within a sonata.” Three of the five main themes are presented early in the first section, providing the pianist a variety of material, from descending scales to staccato octaves to legato melodies. The lack of separation between sections gave rise to much controversy and criticism in the 19th century. The work remains somewhat controversial, in part due to an accretion of performance practices not supported by the score. Today, the sonata is the source of analysis and debate, not just for its interesting harmonies and compositional techniques, but also for its possible symbols and meaning, with theories ranging from descriptions of the divine and diabolical to portraits of Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles.

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Nicolas Namoradze is a classical pianist, composer, and educator. He came to international attention in 2018 upon winning the triennial Honens International Piano Competition, which provides one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive prizes for pianists, in Calgary. A composer as well as gifted pianist, Namoradze takes for his solo piano treatment the song “Oh, never sing to me again, my beauty” (with lyrics by Alexander Pushkin), Op. 4, No. 4 from Rachmaninoff’s Six Romances of 1893. The sad melody line in A minor strongly resembles aspects of the composer’s popular Vocalise. We may assume from Namoradze’s term “Memories” that he conceives a reminiscence in the spirit, if not the style, of Franz Liszt.

Namoradze’s own program note derives from his recent CD that includes the work:

“Memories of Rachmaninoff’s Georgian Song is neither an arrangement nor a paraphrase, but rather the musical equivalent of a faint, dreamlike recollection—an allusion to the topic of the original song itself. The work opens with a sparse figuration where strains of the song’s melody are occasionally suggested, as if from far away. A gradual thickening of the texture leads to a more recognizable utterance of Rachmaninoff’s thematic material before the work retreats back into the realm of distant memory.”

Bach composed six French Suites in the years 1717–25. History has come to assume that the “Suites pour le Clavessin,” as Bach called them, were intended as a wedding gift for his second wife of 1720, Anna Magdalena, a singer. The French Suites tend to avoid the fierce, contrapuntal syntax of much of Bach’s keyboard style, opting for a galant approach that remains ornate but relatively transparent. In five movements, Suite No. 1 casts each movement in the same key, D minor, to achieve surface unity. The opening Allemande, 4/4, moves rather briskly with its running 16th notes. Stately and solemn in tone, the piece demands ornaments in performance, which the keyboardist may add according to taste and ability. The ensuing Courante, by contrast, proceeds more slowly than normal, with a 3/2 tempo indication, and so projects a meditative, serious hue. For the Spanish-origin Sarabande in 3/4 time, Bach casts the emotionally rich expressiveness in four-part harmony, much in the style of a chorale; he places the emphasis on the second beat. He proceeds with galanteries: two Menuets, the first of which extends the somber cast—albeit at a faster tempo—from the preceding Sarabande, though its latter half modulates to the major. Menuet II reveals more energy and appropriates more ornaments. Bach’s ornate Gigue finale departs from the typical 6/8 meter to proceed in 4/4, but highly decorated. Bach employs 32nd notes and trills in the course of his three-voice texture, a combination of his learnèd style with peasant, folk energies.

Die Kunst der Fuge remains an incomplete musical work of unspecified instrumentation. Written in the last decade of Bach’s life, the work marks the culmination of his experimentation with “the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject” (Christoph Wolff). The body of 14 fugues and four canons in D minor employs a degree of variation (“contrapunctus”) on the principle subject, increasing in complexity as the survey proceeds. Several pianists and organists have arranged The Art of Fugue for performance, among them Glenn Gould and Helmut Walcha on the organ, and Charles Rosen on the piano. The subject of the consistently dark tone of Bach’s final efforts arose in discussion with a Walcha pupil; Walcha stated: “What we behold is the wonderful gift God presented man, the earth, seen from God’s solemn perspective, when He considers what man has wrought of His gift.”

The two selected contrapuncti derive from that group known as stretto fugues, in which the chosen subject appears simultaneously, layered in regular, inverted, augmented, and diminished values. Dotted rhythm marks Contrapunctus No. 6, set in four voices in the so-called stylo francese. Bach diminishes by half the note lengths, juxtaposing 16th notes against 32nd notes in rising and falling motion, while sustained notes are likewise active. Contrapunctus 7, in four voices (à 4 per Augmentationem et Diminutionem), uses augmented and diminished versions (note lengths doubled, and halved, respectively) of the main subject and its inversion.

The legacy of French composer Gabriel Fauré in the piano genre offers rich treasures in an entirely idiomatic style, a composite of Mozart’s clarity, Chopin’s fluid, singing line, Schumann’s imaginative leaps in color, and a liberated, modal sense of passing dissonance that Fauré cultivated at the École Niedermeyer. At times, Fauré’s music anticipates or echoes aspects of Impressionism. Though an organist by training, Fauré respected the piano as an instrument for direct, musical discourse “without padding.” He disliked ostentation and pure virtuosity, instead seeking intimate colors and restrained emotions whose autumnal sensibilities lie close to late Brahms.

Fauré’s nine préludes of 1910–11 receive the least attention of his major piano compositions; even acolyte Robert Casadesus recorded only three of them. Fauré, here in his mid-60s, struggled at that time with the onset of deafness. This was a time of unusually prolific output for the composer, marked by his efforts with the opera Pénélope, the Barcarolles Nos. 8–11, and the Nocturnes Nos. 9–11.

In composer Charles Koechlin’s view, “apart from the Préludes of Chopin, it is hard to think of a collection of similar pieces that are so important.” The critic Michael Oliver wrote, “Fauré’s Préludes are among the subtlest and most elusive piano pieces in existence; they express deep but mingled emotions, sometimes with intense directness … more often with the utmost economy and restraint and with mysteriously complex simplicity.” Writer Jessica Duchen calls them “unusual slivers of magical inventiveness.” No. 3 in G Minor, Andante, often proves the most accessible of the group, with its barcarolle sensibility wavering between Classical and Romantic impulses, a modern contour to its melodic line beset by a chaste sense of proportion. J. S. Bach seems to advocate for No. 6 in E-flat Major, Andante, which proceeds as a canon. Koechlin found No. 9 in E Minor, Adagio, most beguiling in its simplicity of means. A miracle of musical compression, the prélude manages an emotional depth worthy of a brief section of a requiem mass.

György Sándor Ligeti was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as “one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the 20th century” and “one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time.” In 1985, Ligeti, inspired by his studies of the 12 Debussy études, planned a set of two books of six études each. The project extended into 2001; but by then, the scope included a third set, which remained unfinished. Ligeti claimed he enjoyed writing piano studies, motivated as much by the music of Bartók as by Debussy. Technically, the Ligeti studies transcend earlier efforts in the genre, incorporating challenges of color and figuration beyond Chopin, Liszt, Scriabin, or Bartók. Pianist Jeremy Denk writes that they “are a crowning achievement of his career and of the piano literature; though still new, they are already classics.” The Études of Book 3 are generally calmer, simpler, and more refined in technique than those of Books 1 and 2.

Generally, the use of polyrhythms and polytonalities runs through these works, though occasionally they resort to an ironic simplicity that echoes French music, particularly that of Satie. Folk impulses of Hungary, Bulgaria, and Java infiltrate some textures, in imitation or mockery of Impressionism. Initially marked Andante con moto, Étude No. 11 (from Book II) exploits metric asymmetries, with six beats in the right hand and four in the left; irregular beats and accents suggest a jazz influence. The piece is dedicated to fellow Hungarian György Kurtág. Étude No. 16 (from Book III), dedicated to Irina Kataeva, embodies an increasingly manic sense of tempo, violating Jeremy Denk’s generalization. The frenetic atmosphere becomes inflamed as shorter note values and dissonant pitches intrude (Allegro con moto, Allegro vivace, then Molto vivace) into what had been originally a calm texture.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (I Call to You, Lord Jesus Christ), BWV 177, in July 1732. He wrote the chorale cantata in Leipzig for the fourth Sunday after Trinity, and first performed it on July 6. The cantata text is formed by the unchanged five stanzas of Johann Agricola’s hymn. The chorale prelude “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” appears in Bach’s Orgelbüchlein as No. 41, BWV 639. In Bach’s solo instrumental version, the music, in F minor, projects a long, chromatic, melodic line over a wavy bass pattern, the cantus firmus. The upper voice enjoys ornaments, especially trills, to heighten the pious affect. Arranger Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) indicates that the music should be played very expressively (ausdrucksvoll) with sustained singing (gehalten).

Among Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s most-often played piano pieces, Für Alina (1976) proceeds in calm, parlando fashion, one note at a time, intermittently harmonized, in a modal form of B minor. The keyboard is made to imitate chimes or a soft, church-tower effect, perhaps the echo of a gamelan orchestra, especially dependent on the sustaining pedal. Written on the occasion of the departure of a family friend’s daughter, the music nostalgically recalls Beethoven while rather making subtle demands on the performer, whose left hand outlines the B-minor triad below the right-hand progressions.

When his 12-tone works were condemned by Soviet censors, Pärt immersed himself in the study of Early Music such as Gregorian chant, plainsong, and the choral polyphonic works of the Renaissance. He emerged with a mystic and minimalist style that he called tintinnabuli, which featured unadorned notes of the triad in simple rhythms, as in the ringing of church bells. The Variations for the Healing of Arinuschka (1977) exemplifies this style, with hypnotic anapests (short–short–long rhythms) throughout, often with single slow-moving notes over soundlessly depressed chords, creating meditative, cathedral-like echoes and forming simple harmonies. The first three variations have an aeolian modal resonance; the last three variations move to the relative major. The set ends with a surprising, arpeggiated chord.

Despite the debacle of his First Symphony some years before, Rachmaninoff began work on his Second Symphony between October 1906 and April 1907. The gloom that often permeates many a Rachmaninoff score—infiltrated by the Dies Irae sequence from the Latin Requiem Mass—finds its way even into this elegiacally beautiful third movement in A major. In Rachmaninoff’s orchestral score, the first violins begin this melodic movement, the first of three parts marked by a clear interruption in the flow; a lengthy clarinet solo introduces the main theme, at first in solo notes and then richly harmonized. The Dies Irae had appeared in the first movement, and now its sequences mark the development of movement three, moving to a passionate climax in C major. The music subsides in dynamic intensity, resorting to fragmentary recollections of the opening tune and the Dies Irae, and the whole quietly resolves into a nostalgic mist typical of the composer’s Romantic sensibility.

A natural mystic, Alexander Scriabin sought to fuse the various, independent arts into a vast spectacle of sensations and seething emotions, equivalent in effect to what Wagner had dreamed of for the Bayreuth theater. The piano would become a symphonic instrument, capable of color effects both psychological and synaesthetic, suggestive of epic gestures in celebration of the Self. What had once belonged to Liszt as a theatrical showman and international piano virtuoso, Scriabin appropriated as an assertion of his creative ego.

Scriabin’s Sonata No. 4 (1904) offers first an Andante, and a Prestissimo volando, motions alternately dreamy and calm, then fiercely exuberant. He fashions the sonata with only two movements and a single theme, with a typical performance time of less than eight minutes. Short but potently expressive, the Sonata marks Scriabin’s personal evolution away from Chopin subjugation to a more independent (if more solipsistic) style. Essentially, the same theme manifests two opposing characters, the kind of dualism we find in Schumann, Wilde, Stevenson, and Nietzsche. In romantically cyclic fashion, Scriabin rounds out the piece with the Andante’s main theme for the finale: the climax, estatico, sounds a restatement of the languido theme, dolcissimo. In his accompanying poem, Scriabin seeks the eternal illumination of a distant star, the sun, as the incarnation of his own soul, radiant in its apotheosis.

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In deference to his venerated Johann Sebastian Bach, Mendelssohn conceived of his Six Preludes and Fugues, Op. 35 primarily over the course of five years, 1832–37, attaching newly created preludes to fugal pieces he had composed earlier. Commentator Felix Höpfner notes that “the Preludes and Fugues, Op. 35, are unthinkable without the Bach experience. Yet these seldom-played compositions are in no sense mere imitations. The Baroque, occasionally somewhat ponderous, art of fugue fuses with lyrically Romantic melody in Mendelssohn’s work. The alluring quality of these pieces lies in the revitalization of Baroque structural principles with Romantic sound. Only when the repossession of the past is approached creatively can great art come into being.”

Most of this set of six prelude-fugue pairs for piano was written during the mid-1830s—starting in about 1832 and gaining momentum as the 1837 date of publication approached. The exact date of the first pair remains uncertain: its fugue seems to have been composed early, perhaps in 1827. It is often listed as the Prelude and Fugue, Op. 35, No. 1, in E minor/E major. But this designation is misleading, implying as it does that the prelude is in E minor and the fugue in E major. In fact, only at the tail end of the fugue does Mendelssohn make the switch from minor to major.

From the very first measures, Mendelssohn imposes a daunting degree of technical difficulty, requiring the Allegro con fuoco to be articulated leggiero and then assai marcato, adjusting for touch. The prelude is florid and thick with always-rising arpeggios that lie comfortably under the hand. Amidst this translucent texture there is an angst-filled middle-voice melody, and every so often a moving bass line arises to support the chromatic filigree above. Mendelssohn irreverently trampled on some of the previous few centuries’ hallowed rules of melodic construction when he sat down to write the subject for the fugue: tritones abound, and the likewise forbidden intervals of the augmented second and the diminished fourth find their way in as well. The fugue is in four voices and reaches a climax in 16th notes that gives way at the end to a chorale in E major.

Bunte Blätter (Colorful Leaves), Op. 99, is a collection of piano pieces by Schumann that he assembled from earlier, unpublished works that were meant to capitalize on the financial success of his Album für die Jugend, Op. 68. After he arranged the series of pieces, he decided with publisher F. W. Arnold to split the works into two volumes—the other being the Albumblätter, Op. 124 (publ. 1853). Schumann organized the 14 pieces in order of increasing difficulty, likely envisioning them as didactic studies for prospective and accelerated keyboard students. Many writers have pointed out that several of the pieces had personal associations for the author; for example, the first piece in the collection was a Christmas greeting he had composed for his wife Clara in 1839.

As published, the selection alternates major and minor tonalities, of which No. 4 in F# minor (Ziemlich langsam) became a source of variations both for Clara Schumann (Op. 20) and for Johannes Brahms (Op. 9). No. 9, Novellette in B minor, often receives performance as an encore. Its aggressive temper has the character of one of Schumann’s many Märchen, fairy-tale marches, with a dramatically chromatic middle section. So too No. 10, Präludium in B-flat minor, rages in swift chromatics à la Chopin etudes or romanticized Bach. The longest piece to play, the ternary No. 11, Marsch in D minor, is marked Sehr getragen, to be drawn out. The central section has a delicately repeated, dancelike character. No. 6, Albumblätter III in A-flat major, has the simple character of a folk song and was originally intended for Carnaval, Op. 9. No. 12, Abendmusik in B-flat major, in minuet tempo, also receives attention from gifted amateurs who enjoy its canonic episodes.

The key to much of Schumann’s musical ethos, “the nostalgia for the dream,” is revealed in the score of No. 1, Stücklein I in A major, to be played Nicht schnell, mit Innigkeit (not quickly, but introspectively), the emotiveness focused and restrained—the Eusebius, or feminine, poetically retiring aspect of Schumann’s personae. The final two entries are in G minor, mutually assertive in the forms of a Scherzo and a quirky, irreverent Geschwindmarsch (Swift March). Echoes of Carnaval and Kreisleriana, both virtuoso suites, pass by, perhaps alerting us that the battle against the cultural Philistines must never abate.

While some scholars would argue that Brahms remains the quintessential, non-programmatic composer—the least disposed to extra-musical associations among, say, Liszt and Wagner—others find in him a latent, if not repressed, urge to the German Romantic tendency to absorb poetry and autobiographical contexts into his abstract compositions. Beginning in 1853, Brahms copied poems of particular interest into a personal notebook, now held by the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna City Library). Brahms kept these poems for the rest of his life, and many would become the basis for lieder. The first three lines of one of the collected poems, Sternau’s Junge Liebe, are published in the score to the second movement of the Op. 5 sonata. Though Brahms gives only the first few lines of Sternau’s passionate love poem, the remaining stanzas make the program of the movement clear. Moreover, as a young composer, Brahms was fascinated, as had been Robert Schumann, by E. T. A. Hoffmann’s fictional character Kreisler. Brahms even signed autographs of the sonata as “Johannes Kreisler.”

It might be better to say that Brahms wrote his programmatic music in a similar manner to that of Beethoven, opting to represent the expression of feeling rather than a literal narrative depiction of events. The program lies somewhere between a veneration of the music of Beethoven and the familial warmth Brahms felt for Robert and Clara Schumann. In an 1862 issue of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (founded by Schumann), music critic Adolf Schubring described the Andante second movement in florid terms, declaring this seminal work by a proclaimed absolute musician as definitively programmatic:

This is program music, one of the most beautiful moonlight poems ever created. Words cannot describe the blissful caresses of the two lovers in the still night, the sweet scent that wafts over the entire scene. One must hear the poem, hear it and experience it, as it is sung [sic] by Clara Schumann, who often plays it in her concerts. … Brahms has his lovers embrace to their hearts’ content, repeat their most tender farewells, and even call out the last goodbye from a distance.”

If the opening notes in Beethoven’s Op. 81a Sonata “Les Adieux” can be said to follow a vocal pattern expressing farewell, so too Brahms in his fourth movement, Rückblick (Reminiscence), offers in his falling arpeggiated thirds a transposition of the Andante theme, its urgent, repetitive rhythm matching the declamation of another Sternau poem, Bitte (Request), which followed Junge Liebe directly in Brahms’s 1853 personal poetry collection.

The Scherzo returns us to the bold, assertive and Beethoven-influenced world of the first movement. Wide leaps, thundering octaves, and the full range of the keyboard give it an exuberant, even epic quality. The air of heroic struggle resumes in the Finale, which follows without a break. In free rondo form, the movement takes us on a vast musical journey, incorporating darkly mysterious murmurings, seething turbulence, dramatic outbursts, and a chorale-like message of hope, to a triumphant conclusion.

As we listen to the progression of power that unites the outer movements of this sonata, recall the early assessments: “beaten out of steel by cyclopean hands,” “Promethean strength of aspiration,” and “heaven-storming” are a few of the descriptions called forth by the virile outburst that opens Brahms’s longest work for solo piano, composed when he was just 20.

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Bach composed dance suites for the keyboard—notably the harpsichord—in sets of six, and the designation “English” likely refers not to any regional trait, but to Bach’s London publisher and patrons. This brilliant work opens with a Prélude set as a duo in two motoric voices, suggestive of an exhilarated concerto grosso, contrasting rushing 16th notes against plodding 8ths. The harmonic-sequence shifts that follow the circle of fifths or use pedal tones create a sense of tension. The ensuing Allemande in 4/4 provides an immediate contrast, its tone rather serious given its counterpoint in four voices in the German manner. The French Courante in 3/2 that follows moves briskly, perhaps influenced by the Italian tradition. The Sarabande—a slow, grave dance of melancholy sensibility in triple time that has its origin in Spain—is here ornamented by Bach himself as an indication of his performance practice. He then provides two successive examples of galanteries—the French Bourrées, in minor and major modes. The final dance, a Gigue, combines the archaic, British folk impulse with the French taste for ornamental elegance. Taken as a whole, the English Suite in A Minor is a cosmopolitan entertainment of beauty and often startling virtuosity.

Béla Bartók had begun investigating his country’s Hungarian and Magyar folk-musical traditions as early as 1905, and the 1923 celebration of the 50th anniversary of the joining of the cities Buda and Pest to form the Hungarian capital, Budapest, provided an opportunity for Bartók to employ his inventive skills in his Dance Suite. The commemoration of the marriage of two cities represented a return to life for the entire nation of Hungary some three years after the Treaty of Trianon. The treaty had dismembered the Austro-Hungarian Empire after its defeat in the First World War, divesting Hungary of two-thirds of its land, virtually all of its natural resources, and most of the ethnic minorities that made it the most diverse of European cultures.

After the Dance Suite’s great success as an orchestral score, Emil Hertzka, the director of the publishing house Universal Edition, commissioned an arrangement for piano; it was published in 1925. However, Bartók never publicly performed his arrangement. It was premiered in March 1945, a few months before Bartók’s death, by his friend György Sándor. The work consists of five dances with Arabic, Wallachian, and Hungarian melodies, and a finale that brings together all the previous thematic impulses.

The tunes are primarily Bartók’s own inventions rather than actual folk melodies; they employ Hungarian rhythms, especially rife in 2/4 and 4/4. The movements are bound together by a lyrical ritornello. Grotesquerie characterizes the first two movements (separated by the ritornello, with the piano approximating the strings and a pair of pungent bassoons playing narrow intervals—“rather Arabic in feeling,” according to the composer). The second movement, in the orchestral version, exploits slithering trombones and blasting trumpets (with minor thirds), strongly suggestive of the Pursuit section of Bartók’s earlier ballet pantomime, The Miraculous Mandarin.

The third movement engages us with its 2/4 Eastern (rather than Scottish) bagpipe-like opening, a sound suggestive of the Giuoco delle coppie, the scherzo movement of Bartók’s 1944 Concerto for Orchestra. The transparency of texture, accomplished in the orchestra version by a series of celesta and harp glissandos over a trilling flute, is “typically Romanian in feeling,” as the composer described it. A solo flute announces the ritornello that leads to movement four. The Molto tranquillo fourth dance begins almost motionlessly with a menacing quiet that evolves into a foretaste of what would become one of Bartók’s most characteristic soundscapes—the haunted nocturne, or “night music.” The voices enter singly, and eventually depart in reverse order.

Finally, a mere wisp of the ritornello announces a rondo that brings together most of the earlier themes of the Dance Suite, culminating in a noisy romp that suggests a mingling of the agitated and lively energies utilized in The Miraculous Mandarin’s Pursuit theme and the rowdy finale of the later Concerto for Orchestra.

Chopin’s commitment to the form of the literary ballade in music derived from his friend, the poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), who transposed Lithuanian legend and fairy tales into a political context. The Ballade in F Minor captures the Slavic notion of dramatic lyricism. Dedicated to Baroness de Rothschild, the music illustrates “The Three Brothers Budrys,” a tale of young men sent by their father to fetch sables. When the brothers disappear, their father assumes that they have perished in the war. But the sons return “from the barren, stripped land,” one bride shared by all three. The episodic structure incorporates waltz qualities, cadenzas, towering ornaments, powerful shifts of register, and sudden silences. “Music hot from the soul,” exclaimed James Huneker of its broadly aggressive, emotional range. “Its witchery is irresistible.”

El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), a ballet choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Manuel de Falla, was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and premiered, with sets by Picasso, in 1919. It has a Spanish setting and employs techniques of Spanish dance and Andalusian folk music, adapted and somewhat simplified, instead of classical ballet. The story of a magistrate infatuated with a miller’s faithful wife, whom he attempts to seduce, derives from the novella of the same name by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (1833–91). Falla did not prepare suites from this work, although excerpts are performed under this term. The music is in eight main sections, split across an introduction and two parts, or acts, with some bridging scenes. The Danza del molinero (Miller’s Dance) occurs in Part II, where the Miller dances a farruca (a form of flamenco associated with Galicia) to entertain guests after he has already chased away the lustful magistrate from his premises. Dramatic, in fits and starts, with single notes of cante jondo (an Andalusian vocal style) alternating with thick chordal outbursts, its flamenco passion saturates its wild sensibility.

A slow, romantic dance piece, the Tango in D is taken from a more expansive suite, España. The composer Albéniz is considered an ardent nationalist in Spanish music, though much of his pedagogy evolved in Paris. Even as he avoided traditional folk idioms in Spain, he managed to simulate the country’s rhythms and sensibility effectively. The Tango might well serve the salon or continental hotel ballroom, but its influence, especially in the transcription by famed virtuoso Leopold Godowsky, has made it a concert staple.

El amor brujo (Love, the Sorcerer) is a ballet by Manuel de Falla to a libretto by María de la O Lejárraga García, although for years the libretto was attributed to her husband, Gregorio Martínez Sierra. The ballet exists in three versions by Falla as well as a later piano suite (1922) that he drew from four of its movements. Andalusian in character, its music includes the celebrated Danza ritual del fuego (Ritual Fire Dance), the Canción del fuego fatuo (Song of the Will-o’-the-Wisp) and the Danza del terror. The plot: a gypsy suffering from an unrequited love uses her magical arts to soften the ingrate’s heart, and she succeeds after a night of enchantments, recitations, and ritual dances. At dawn he awakens to love, and bells proclaim her triumph.

The Ritual Fire Dance, once a popular encore for Jose Iturbi, Arthur Rubinstein, and Oscar Levant, is set in C major, and calls for quick, repetitive trills and ornaments. In Falla’s ballet, the gypsy girl, Candela, haunted by her dead husband’s ghost, uses the dance to lure the ghost into the fire to exorcize it so that she might be free to be with Carmelo, the man she loves. The piece follows a symmetrical structure: ABC—ABC—coda. Changes in dynamics (pp and mf) and sudden bursts of energy in scales and triplets characterize the gestures of emotional sighs and leaps into the fire.

Maurice Ravel’s La valse is a choreographic poem for orchestra that has enchanted its way onto many programs since its first performance in 1920. For several years, Ravel had planned a tribute to waltzing Vienna and Johann Strauss, but after the horrors of WWI he instead composed a terrifying tone poem, a bitter and ferocious fantasy. Ravel also transcribed the work for two pianos and for piano solo in the same year. The innovative introduction gives no indication of a waltz—a low rumble starts the piece as excerpts of waltz melodies are barely heard. Suddenly, the main waltz theme bursts through, followed by waltzes that vary in style. A loud trill and return to the introduction bring the audience into the second half. Each of the melodies is repeated, but with tempo changes, modulations, and new intonations. Wide, sweeping movements of the pianist’s arms cast a glorious effect over the classic waltzes and lead to a danse macabre coda with a final measure—perhaps symbolically not in waltz time. It seems germane to mention that all of Ravel’s extended dance pieces—Bolero, La Valse, and Alborada del gracioso—conclude by exploding in some apocalyptic vision of the end, if not of the world, then of the epoch of grace and humanity that had originally given birth to these expressions of gentility and passion.

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This separate prelude from the Op. 28 set of 24, was composed in Nohant, and Chopin expressed to Julian Fontana, a rare appreciation of this highly romantic, even erotic, work, calling it “well modulated.” Chopin dedicated the piece to Countess Elizabeth Czernyszew, who counted among his female students and admirers. The atmosphere of the piece suggests a nocturne, intertwining the drooping main theme and its accompaniment. Late in this c. five-minute work, there appears a cadenza that calls for double notes in each of the hands, and which brings the tone of the piece to a kind of ecstasy. The original theme appears once more, dying away in a soft haze.

Generally, the Chopin waltzes, of which there exist some 36, many published posthumously, do not conform to the Viennese model for ballroom dancing. They serve as brilliant showpieces for solo piano of the social drawing room or salon, and their often dazzling technical requirements demand a skilled keyboard player. The Waltz in A Minor is one of three, Op. 34, published as Grandes valses brillantes, but it stands out for its sincere, sadly slow tempo (Lento) and aristocratic poise. Chopin’s favorite of this genre, it features a hesitant, bass melody without downbeat and trill. The secondary tune sighs in great pain and proceeds into variation. Its third melody contains a real dance impulse, only relatively free of anguish, since the subsequent modulation into the minor statement declares the depth of feeling. The middle section liberates the left hand to pursue an idyll in E Major, short lived.

Published after his death, this salon waltz is clearly marked Tempo di Valse and opens with a fanfare. Somewhat sectionalized, the piece offers several variants on the initial impulse, playful and alternately thoughtful, exploiting the high and middle registers. The delight in rhythmic (agogic) shifts allows a degree of freedom to the performer in term of inflection and rubato.

This popular waltz occupies a place with two others in the set of Op. 64, the last of the waltzes composed prior to Chopin’s death. A strongly nationalistic, Polish impulse, the music conveys joy and vivre, capitalizing on the enharmonic relationship of C-sharp and a conciliatory D-flat. Some find in this piece a “veiled melancholy” in its descents, despite its Tempo giusto, which seems to indicate “find the right tempo.” Set as a question-answer dialogue, the music proceeds upward, chromatically, the left hand’s utilizing the circle of fifths. Eighth notes next dominate, the music’s accelerating relentlessly, virtually whirling, in brilliant texture while permitting tempo rubato.

This brisk, 2/4 waltz begins with a trill on the dominant (E-flat) before breaking into a delightful melody. To distinguished Chopin interpreter, Moritz Rosenthal, the music evoked a brilliant Parisian ball, full of elegance and coquetry. The second theme, in the bass register, suggests an aristocratic couple focused on each other, ignoring the passionate, other dancers.

Between 1827 and 1846 Chopin conceived 21 Nocturnes or night pieces, fashioned after the model of Irish composer John Field (1782-1837) but much enriched in design, fluidity, and poetic temperament. Chopin adapted Field’s penchant for ternary form, the melody in the right hand over broken-chord, left-hand accompaniment in steady pulse, sustained by the use of pedal effects. The Nocturne by Chopin became his principal means of Romantic expression, his melodic sense influenced by Italian opera’s bel canto singing style. In the later such pieces, a highly personal, contrapuntal idiom saturates Chopin’s texture, a rare combination of classical form and highly imaginative expressive means.

This 91-measure nocturne evolves in ternary form, with its melodic line’s embracing ornamental and syncopated effects. Opening Andante sostenuto, 4/4, the piece asks for a sad, descending, parlando, fluid line, legato, while its middle section has often elicited the comparison to a (religious), step-wise chorale. The nostalgic prayer of the middle section offers consolation for the staggered main theme, whose martial ethos contains harsh, pained intervals and accents. The work ends, passing into G Major, in soft, modal harmony.

The early sets of nocturnes are set in groups of three. A study in color contrasts, F Major and F Minor, this ternary piece appears relatively free of tragic drama. A serenely lyrical, simple right hand melody appears over descending left hand triplets. The middle section, con fuoco, does reveal a sense of passion, demanding double notes in the right hand. Arpeggios replace the traditional coda, so the piece ends rather abruptly.

This heavily dramatic nocturne of seventy-seven measures in ternary form, like that from Op. 37, is part of a diptych, since Chopin had begun to conceive these works in affective pairs. Set as a Lento in 4/4, the piece exhibits extraordinary, emotional power, on a par with his two late sonatas and the ballades. Its anguish likely reflects a deep torment in Chopin’s soul at the time, a combination of personal anguish and anxiety for the state of the world. The opening, left hand part reveals a bleakly dark, heavy, tired march, rife with spiritual fatigue. The right hand, recitative-like, evolves from two notes. The progression becomes fatefully grim, akin to the famed motif in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, here an expression of personal catastrophe. A ray of light, in C Major, intrudes upon the tragedy to offer consolation. But a disruptive force in triplet octaves forces a confrontation of energies. The theme, now doppio movimento, has transformed into a kind of agitated flight, six times faster than the original, march tempo. The coda resonates with a feeling of exhaustion, the remnants of an existential upheaval that has transcended the “nocturne” medium, as such.

Over the course of 24 years, 1825-1849, Chopin conceived 59 mazurkas, national dances of Poland, adapted by him to suit his own taste and musical development. For Chopin, the mazurka became his experimental laboratory, much as the piano sonata served Beethoven, where Chopin could apply counterpoint, fugue, bel canto, chromatic color, and four-part harmony at liberty, while maintaining the feeling of a folk idiom by entirely original means.

The original folk impulse, the masur, is a triple-time dance, accented on the second or third beat. Most likely, Chopin created from a generalized knowledge of the idiom, using the lively Mazurek, the slowly tuneful Kujawiak, and the exuberantly quick Oberek as the source of his own, idiosyncratic creations. Through his 57 examples of the mediu, Chopin carved out a significant body of work that testifies both to his national identity and his full, epic knowledge of the keyboard as a communicative instrument.

The mazurka from the set of three, Op. 50, presents an often polyphonic masterpiece, excellently designed in the manner of J.S. Bach. Inspired by Luigi Cherubini’s handbook on counterpoint, Chopin gives us a work that incorporates the various masur styles – in canon and in blazing strettos – that projects a solemn, even tragic, dimension. Chopin’s use of repetition proves dramatically compelling, marking the tempestuous sections sostenuto, to maintain the emotional tension. Such rigid counterpoint is rare in any “dance” piece; yet this work combines, in permutation, all of its dance elements, only fading away the last, the storm’s having finally subsided.

Chopin was never fond of the key of C: for him, it caused the hand placement on the keyboard to feel uncomfortable. This C major Mazurka (Allegretto, ¾) produces an earthy, modal peasant dance in ternary form, with stamps and kicks. The tenor remains predominantly gentle, with subtle alterations in the pulse that remind us how Meyerbeer complained that the blurred, metric ambiguities in the pieces fell into waltz or march tempo!

A dark piece (Mesto) of 48 measures in an unusual key, it projects angst and insecurity, with fitful outbursts of energy, with only a brief ray of B Major. Perhaps the correct analogue resides in poetry, as a series of short phrases, built on an economical line, defines the progression. From a brief E Minor, the music begins to dance, set as a kind of duet that lacks dynamic markings (until the ff), thus creating options for the performer. An eruption, appassionato, poses a question whose answer, in octaves, sounds softly. The beginning returns in a chorale setting, filled with nostalgia for what has transpired.

This short but highly energetic piece (of a set of three) projects a sturdy, folkish, oberek character, rife with stamps and bustling motion. Repetition of muscular phrases defines its progression. The middle section becomes dreamy, built in quick scalar motion, then returning, with increasing dynamics to the opening, which serves for a decisive coda. Given the melancholy typical of late mazurkas. This moment of brisk, Polish humor, set in canonic, duet form, offers relief. Its kinship with the lively Mazurka in D, Op. 33/2 seems obvious.

This slow, ternary, tragic keyboard piece occupies a special place in the Chopin canon. Opening Lento, ma non troppo, it resembles the A Minor Prelude, Op. 28/2 in its gloomy, repetitive chromaticism. The feeling of F lingers ambiguously, until the middle voices provide the melody, a sighing motif uneasily in the tonic key, in a quasi-dance mode. The second 16 bars offer variation, a stuttered expression, trying to soar. The music lands on the accent, more dance-like, but melancholy, despite the transition into the major mode with a drone sonority. The emphasis shifts to the second beat, the low A serving as a fulcrum. After four repetitions, the music sounds sweet; suddenly, an outburst to return to the first section. An extra voice appears above the triplets, leading to a mysterious coda in eight bars, almost a waltz in the left hand. The last bars feel fragmented, a ghost of the former progression.

The performers and publishers contemporaneous with Schubert tended to ignore his massive keyboard output, invidiously comparing his works to those of Beethoven, to Schubert’s neglect. Like its companion sonatas in C Minor (D. 958) and A Major (D. 959), this magnificent sonata did not receive publication (by Diabelli) until 1838. It took the 20th Century to rediscover these works, mainly through the advocacy of pianist Artur Schnabel and fellow acolytes, like Eduard Erdmann, Rudolf Serkin, Wilhelm Kempff, and Webster Aitken. Despite a brief period in 1828 of relative financial and burgeoning publication success, Schubert’s long-term battle with the late stages of syphilis had deteriorated his health, and by September of that year, physical signs of the disease became blatantly manifest. Schubert, however, reacted with an extraordinary burst of creative energy, some would argue in anticipation of his mortality: the last three piano sonatas in C Minor, A Major, and B-flat Major, each of which finds inter-connections with its companions.

A broad, singing melody in B-flat Major (Molto moderato, 4/4) opens the D. 960 sonata, ending on the F Major chord, introducing a fateful trill on G-flat that, nervously trembling on A-flat and G-flat, will provide, as the music develops, the fulcrum for harmonic shifts to that same G-flat Major for the main theme’s development. Then, after the music re-establishes B-flat, it moves to F# Minor, which is merely the dark side of G-flat Major, enharmonically speaking. By circuitous routes, Schubert modulates to a third key area in F Major, the dominant of B-flat. Schubert’s extended development manipulates the various motifs, ascending to a dark climax in D Minor that “baits” the home key in B-flat, especially in the recapitulation’s bass line. The trills’ ending on the dotted 8^th note F, marked fortissimo, especially when pedaled, produces an eerie sound, just prior to the written repeat. Should the pianist opt for the repeat, Schubert has a weird, nine-measure series of preparatory chords. Now in B Minor, the secondary theme appears, as in a new variation. The recapitulation has ascended a fourth upward, to establish once more B-flat as the home key. The coda quotes, in part, the opening theme, closing quietly.

The extraordinary second movement, in ternary (song) form, Andante sostenuto, is in C# Minor. Sviatoslav Richter played the movement as an Adagio, not as Schubert intended. The music should walk, even if ever so solemnly. A somber, rocking rhythm supports a dark melody, groping its way, at first through pedal effects. The melody then emerges as a flowing song in A Major, the bass line animated; and the melody will progress into the B-flat home key of the entire sonata. The opening motif returns, the rhythmic pulse varied. More harmonically “circuitous routes” take the music to C Major, then to E Major. The last pages bring a shift to the tonic major, but the bass hints at a lingering darkness in the minor mode.

The animated third movement, Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza, reveals a canny Schubert’s manipulating harmony in unexpected ways, exploiting the subdominant tonality so as to land in D-flat. Another theme rises to G-flat, the key dictating much of movement one. The Trio section, written in two sections, occurs in B-flat Minor, the first appearance of the minor mode of the original key of the sonata. The brisk filigree of the main theme, its snappily executed motion, easily suggests the influence of Domenico Scarlatti. The last movement, Allegro ma non troppo – Presto emerges as a large and complex canvas, presumably conceived as a resolution to harmonic turmoil (namely, the G-flat trill) in the earlier movements. Schubert, even in the course of relentless 8^th notes, inserts fermatas, silences, that create a spatial component to the progression. The music suddenly breaks off in F Minor, fortissimo, to introduce a theme in the parallel F Major. A kind of dance figure, in the manner of an Italian tarantella, will segue back to the main rondo theme. Schubert merges his rondo with sonata form, much like Haydn had done, developing his filigree in 8ths and triplets so as to land in G Major, which softens the dynamic to return to the main tune. The main theme undergoes fragmentation in the coda, but the chromatic instability merely prepares us for a glorious resolution, the Presto section’s reverberating with a sense of hard-won triumph.

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After Gabriel Fauré retired, reluctantly, as head of the Paris Conservatoire in 1920, he had more time for composition, and he originally conceived (in 1922) his Trio for piano, clarinet, and cello. Typical of the composer’s late style, the blurring of traditional, tonal and structural limits set an alluring, hazy tone to his works, which often communicate an autumnal, nostalgically lyric grace. His work exudes intimacy and exoticism at once, given his persistent use of Gregorian modalities and idiosyncratic harmonies, rich in color and degrees of timbre. Fauré’s capacity for color embraces his great gifts for melodies that flow seamlessly into each other.

The first movement, in rondo form, begins with the piano, which introduces an atmospheric backdrop for the grand entry of the cello, soon joined by the violin. This melancholy first theme repeats through the movement in a somewhat rhapsodic way, a reminiscence of romantic longing. A second theme is introduced by the piano, and this no less throbbing, ardent music becomes interlinked with the first theme. Their shared momentum, imbibing several other themes, sweeps the music forward to the fateful, passionate utterance that ends the movement.

The central movement is often perceived as the Trio’s emotional crux, a combination of beauty and spirituality. The music first attempts a rich, simple fervor, typical of the composer’s late psyche. A two-part song form emerges, the piano gently accompanying the nostalgic theme that opens in the violin. In direct contrast, the new section of the movement favors more arch forms, stretched out, meditative melodic tropes that defy the relative simplicity of the opening. Fauré constructs two emotional climaxes: the tension of the first, much in the manner of some of the composer’s Germanic contemporaries, seems to dissolve without having reached a satisfying resolution; it breaks down into disturbed and awkward chords. The second high point occurs tonally, in F major (as he relative major of the home key), an exultant song or hymn of personal gratification after a long-deferred resolution. All three instruments blend to form a peaceful, drawn-out coda.

The third movement returns to the darker drama and rondo form of the first movement; but this time the music, more compressed in scope, displays a dance-like or virtuoso – in the piano part’s runs and scales – character. Starting with unisono strings playing a short, dramatic motif, the piano quickly responds with an aggressive, syncopated, jazzy theme. The movement abounds with muscular interruptions and sprightly interjections, surprising changes in tone and tune. Finally, an exuberant motif takes over, bringing the movement to a joyous, perhaps abrupt, close.

The two works offered from the pen of Lili Boulanger are among her last completed, when her ever-poor health would at last succumb to complications of intestinal tuberculosis. Boulanger had competed for the Prix de Rome twice, first in 1912, but her frail health gave out during a performance of one of her works; but she returned the following year at the age of 19 to win (the first female to do so), for her cantata Faust et Hélène. Both sisters, Lili and Nadia, enjoyed lessons with Fauré, though the influence of Debussy on their work seems more substantial. Like Debussy, Lili Boulanger embraced the Symbolist aesthetic, favoring 7^th and 9^th chords, parallel harmonies, and modal progressions. Given her relative isolation and loneliness, it becomes tempting to read, almost like the American writer E.A. Poe, aspects of personal melancholy and angst into her pieces.

Of a Sad Evening is the longer of the two pieces, opening with a long cello statement of the angular, dissonant theme as the piano plays cold, slow chords. With the addition of the violin, the music is more anguished and expressive, the texture rich in colors that embrace both ends of the musical spectrum. The cello breaks off temporarily to allow the music to become a pained violin sonata. When the three instruments resume, the piano introduces some non-harmonic, punctuated chords. The music has become darkly modal and hazy, a walking nightmare. A semblance of light tries to enter the texture, but the solo piano seems to end such optimism. The music has entered the phase of a slow lament, in which the cello reigns as the spokesman. This dirge evolves into an intense, pained coda that ends in that “whimper” in T.S. Eliot.

Of a Spring Morning emits a radiant energy, busy with signs of burgeoning life. Marked “light” and “rhythmic,” the music flutters with sound effects that resonate almost cinematically. At times, the music becomes insistent, almost a kind of march in favor of life’s renewal. Moments of counterpoint appear as the texture thickens, especially in the two strings above the keyboard. A pounding obbligato in the piano underlies the melodic tropes, another instance of a persistent life force at work. The piece ends with a potent, upward surge of energy.

Mel Bonis (Melanie Helene Bonis 1858-1937) was born in Paris. Having been endowed with gifts in music but discouraged by her parents from pursuing her artistic talent, she suffered the effects of the age, when women composers posed an anomaly. Bonis became an auto-didact, teaching herself the piano through the age of twelve, when her parents granted her formal lessons. Even as she began composing, she adopted the name Mel Bonis to veil her identity as a female creative artist.

Bonis’ music represents a link between the Romantic and Impressionist movements in France. A friend had introduced her to César Franck, who was so impressed with her abilities he made special arrangements for her to be admitted to the then all-male Paris Conservatory in 1876. Bonis won prizes in harmony and accompaniment, showing great promise in composition; but a romance with a fellow student, Amedee Hettich, caused her parents to withdraw her from the institution in 1881. Two years later she married and raised a family. Hettich, meanwhile, developed his repute as a music critic, which proved influential in advancing Bonis’ (limited) acclaim in music.

In 1893 Bonis again encountered Hettich, now a famous critic, and he urged her to continue composing. Hettich introduced Bonis into fashionable Parisian salons, where her music impressed the current leader of the social set, Camille Saint Saens. Though mightily stirred by Benis’ works, Saint-Saens maintained his own prejudice against female composers. Despite the fact that her music was much played and praised, Bonis never rose to the first rank of her contemporaries, perhaps due to her abhorrence for self-promotion. Bonis created some 300 compositions in diverse genres, but her music fell into immediate obscurity after her death. Finally, in the 1960s, historians began to re-examine the contributions of women composers, and this set the stage for Bonis’ posthumous reputation.

Soir-Matin (evening and morning), composed in 1907 evolves in two movements. It presents two different moods. A cantabile, singing melody dominates the material in Soir which evokes a mostly calm, peaceful evening atmosphere. In contrast, Matin though quiet, features a restlessness, characteristic of awakening, which is continually heard in the sparkling running notes of the piano. Bonis’ style embraces a rich chromaticism and unusual modulations, perhaps indebted to Franck, that push but to not pass the boundaries of traditional tonality.

Despite the tendency to pair Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy as “Impressionists,” Ravel always courted Classicism as his preferred taste, even calling his Piano Trio in A Minor “almost too classical.” Nevertheless, the sheer diversity of coloristic effects Ravel produces in this work continues to startle the ear, drawing as it does from both Basque and Javanese impulses. Ravel always questioned the compatibility of stringed instruments in ensemble, so he carefully spaces the lines of the violin and cello two octaves apart, with the top keyboard line between, simultaneously asking for extreme registers to sound that would create a varied, orchestral sonority, rich in trills, harmonics, slides, tremolos, and arpeggios that require deft and virtuosic musicianship. The outer movements conform to traditional – if idiosyncratic – sonata form, while the middle movements offer a scherzo and trio and a slow, Baroque, format as movement three.

1. Modéré: set in A minor, this music derives from a Basque folk-dance form, a zortziko in 8/8 time, subdivided asymmetrically. A step-wise tune moves into an interval leap of a fourth, a devise the other movements employ, though the leap increases in movements two and four to a fifth. Ravel decorates the contours of his themes, playing them against each other for their rich tapestry and color effects. Ravel moves his last page into C major, the music’s most related, relative key, even if the context has made it exotic.
2. Pantuom – Assez vif: Formally based on the scherzo and trio, this movement derives from a Malayan verse form. In a four-line stanza, the second and fourth lines become the first and third lines of the following stanza. Ravel’s analogy is to intertwine the two themes, respectively, nervous and choppy in A Minor and that of the smooth F# Minor. Ravel introduces even more complexity in his choices of meters, with 4/2 in F Major and ¾ in the scherzo section. The idea of polyrhythms in dazzling sound effects may well have been a revolutionary gambit for French chamber music at this point in time, just prior to Ravel’s move into military service as a nurse in WW I.
3. Passacaille: Très large: set in F# Minor, we hear the theme of the preceding Pantuom in the eight-measure bass line of the keyboard. The cello and the violin join the ensemble in turn, at first becoming temporary cello and violin sonatas. The melody passes amongst the instruments, after the piano has its solo, and the music elevates to a series of mighty, sweeping climaxes, though the texture often thins to a transparent, serene character before the whole dies away in a kind of exotic, nostalgic haze, the cello and then the piano having the last utterance.
4. Finale – Animé: is perhaps the most ostentatious presentation of “orchestral” effects, this movement in A Major proffers a tour de force for the ensemble. Violin arpeggio harmonics open the progression, and the piano plays a five-bar theme. Asymmetries abound, especially in the desired metrics, 5/4 and 7/4. The cumulative momentum creates a militant, heaving energy, whose upward thrust continues right into the explosive coda, elongated and vibrant to the very last.

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György Sándor Ligeti (28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006), Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music, has been described as “one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century” and “one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time.” Ligeti’s earliest works are often an extension of the musical language of Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodaly. Ligeti’s piano cycle Musica ricercata (1951-53), though written according to Ligeti with a “Cartesian” approach, in which he “regarded all the music I knew and loved as being… irrelevant,” the piece has been described by one biographer as from a world very close to Bartók’s set of piano works, Mikrokosmos. To free himself of his former influences, Ligeti radically reduced his artistic tools. Ligeti achieves a set of practical pieces whose constructive consistency and density reflect Ligeti’s personal progress as a composer. Ligeti’s set comprises eleven pieces, based on a simple restriction: the first piece uses exclusively one pitch A, heard in multiple octaves, and only at the very end of the piece is a second note, D, heard. The second piece uses three notes (E♯, F♯, and G), the third piece uses four, and so on, so that in the final piece resounds with all twelve notes of the chromatic scale.

1. Sostenuto—Misurato—Prestissimo: This movement uses the pitch class A almost exclusively, until the final note D. A thunderous beginning leads into a gradual crescendo and accelerando consisting of layered polyrhythms in various registers. The coda, a metered accelerando, pounds out several more octaves of A before we finally hear D.
2. Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale: Stanley Kubrick used this haunted piece for Eyes Wide Shut, with its tiny, intervallic space of E# and F#. until an intrusive G makes itself felt, tremolo, while the main theme returns, eerily. The tones then fade away.
3. Allegro con spirito: We hear blues in the modes of C, moving freely among several registers. The piece moves to a low C near the coda, with intrusions by E and E-flat.
4. Tempo di Valse: This is a kind of rustic, gypsy waltz that pits 3/4 against 2/4. Ligeti instructs the player to take rhythmic licenses and dynamic licenses, “the manner of an organ grinder.” An intrusive, loud G# interrupts for three octaves, soon obscured by the waltz tune.
5. Rubato. Lamentoso: Here, the dark tenor of movement II returns, providing tension between G and A-flat, while Ligeti exploits the diabolus in music, the tritone. A haunted bell-tone effect resounds as the music moves in G’s that end fff.
6. Allegro molto capriccioso : Ligeti in a playful, virtuosic mood creates a musical toy-box effect, employing a swift descent from A to E that shifts dynamics, registers, and hand position. The A Major scale seems to combat itself, until the unruly, polytonal whole lands on E.
7. Cantabile, molto legato: A seven-note, left hand ostinato opens this movement, while Ligeti insists, étude-like, that the hands remain independent of each other. The right hand develops a rich, varied, contrapuntal version of itself, an enriched folk dance. Both hands move up an octave, so the right hand can assume the high ostinato, which loses notes, a la Haydn or Schumann, so only an F-G trill remains, then silence.
8. Vivace. Energico: Like the succeeding movement, we feel strongly the influence of Bela Bartók. Loud, octave D’s and E’s break the silence imposed by the last piece, as a potent dance, 7/8 in begins, relying on a low melody in scales in which an upper E accompanies each note. Each hand will play with the melody, which soon sound in full ascendancy. But rhythmically, Ligeti subverts any “classical” effect by dropping beats in the manner of a rustic, coarse dance. He uses open fifths and other “unrefined” effects to produce something like Mozart’s K. 522 Musical Joke.
9. (Béla Bartók in Memoriam) Adagio. Mesto – Allegro maestoso: One wonders if both Liszt and even Mussorgsky influenced this somber movement along with Bartók, saturated as it is by bell tones. Low octave C’s begin a grim, mournful progress, in minor thirds moving in 16ths and dotted 8ths. If the right hand retains a degree of stately somberness, the left hand restates the theme “in a panic.” The music temporarily assumes a lighter. tremulous texture before the ineluctable low C’s peal once more.
10. Vivace. Capriccioso: Highly dissonant and chromatic, this movement provides a virtuoso revel, a blazing proliferation of the bitonality of D versus C#. A low melody is buffeted between 2/4 and 3/8, with a higher melody in arpeggios inserted as a consolation. Ligeti wants the development to proceed capriccio e burlesco, a clear call to parody via the minor seconds initiated by D and C#. The texture thickens into tone clusters that Ligeti calls ”spiteful.” A huge cluster erupts without the D-C# that is indicated “mad.” Only a brief pause allows some relief when the music resumes, with the arpeggio theme’s landing, a thump, on D.
11. (Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi) Andante misurato e tranquillo: Ligeti honors the Baroque composer Giralamo Frescobaldi as the great instigator of the ricercare or fugal procedure. In a manner echoing Schoenberg, Ligeti fashions a 12-tone subject that will evolve into a loosely structured fugue. The design means to “punish” and extend the range of expression, even as the entries begin properly at the fifth degree; but the thickening texture allows parallel motion to break tradition. The piano must indulge in its extreme range of sounds, as short and long note values compete, indulge in layering, and finally dissipate, so that the melodic sequence ends on A, where the original journey began. Shades of the Bach Goldbergs, infinitely compressed?
Six Sonatas
DOMENICO SCARLATTI (1685-1757)

Born in Italy where he became noted for his choral compositions and (less successful) operas, Domenico Scarlatti moved first to Lisbon and then to Spain, especially to Seville and Madrid, where he imbibed “the melodies of the common people,” which would provide the impetus for many of his 555 keyboard sonatas which were to expand the repertory significantly. But even earlier, during his tenure in Venice, Italy, a young Irishman, Thomas Roseingrave, described – years later – Domenico’s harpsichord playing to the English musicologist Charles Burney as sounding as if “ten hundred demons had been at the instrument.” He had never heard such passages of execution and effect before.

The first flower in the record of Scarlatti’s life and character blooms in the series of harpsichord sonatas that began with the publication of his Esercizi per gravicembalo (Exercises) in 1738, which contained 30 sonatas. While Scarlatti’s invention continued to flourish between 1742 and 1749 for the Spanish court, the principal evidence of Scarlatti’s own activity continues to reside in the final great series of harpsichord sonatas copied out for the queen, Maria Bárbara, from 1752 to 1757, the year of Scarlatti’s death.

In 1906 Alessandro Longo organized Scarlatti’s works, arranging them in keys as pairs, but often altering the more adventurous aspects of Scarlatti’s harmonies and technical demands. Ralph Kirkpatrick solved the problem chronologically, with the help of Kenneth Gilbert; and as such, they restored much of the composer’s intentions. What had been originally in Scarlatti a simple, binary dance form evolved as sophisticated variations and expansions of the expressive range. Even though limited by a single manual harpsichord, Scarlatti introduced spectacular feats of virtuosity, like hand crossings, striking dissonances, daring voice leadings, and unconventional modulations. “The predominance of fast movements in the earlier sonatas gives way to a greater frequency of slow movements in the middle period, to a wider range of lyricism, and in the later sonatas to a leaner, more concentrated style.”

1. K. 19 in F Minor is a stately masterpiece (in 2/4) filled with intricate melodies and lively rhythms. It unfolds with grace and charm, a flowing treble line over a punctuated bass, exemplifying the syncopated, sectionalized beauty of his keyboard artistry. The dynamic range remains predominantly mp and at the last, pp.
2. K. 430 in D Major is designated “Tempo di Ballo,” and its light, accented gestures and witty trills have made it extremely popular, even orchestrated. A playful dialogue occurs between the voices, with the bass seeming to add a nod of assent. If the left hand imitates a cuckoo, the effect may well be intentional.
3. K. 32 in D Minor presents a brief but delicate, intimately chromatic line; its very simplicity begs the influence of plainchant. Its closest analogy is the “dry recitative” in period operas.
4. K. 40 in C Minor bears the designation “Minuet.” Depending on the tempo (Moderato, ¾) the pianist assumes, the piece may change its character, which can be intimate, even tragic, or more assertive in its Stoic resolve.
5. K. 95 in C Major combines an ostinato (staccato, ad libitum) bass and a trilled subject in crossed hands, moving melodically with periodic halts in the line. The melody gains power through slight alterations of the line, while the repeated bass adds a dramatic insistence, right up to the abrupt coda.
6. K. 1 in D Minor moves Allegro, pert and wittily, in staccato notes and trills. It offers a brilliant exercise in touch and adjusted levels of dynamics, especially as the trill and tolled staccato notes prove intrinsic to the line, a presage of what Chopin would require in his own brilliant keyboard works.
FRANÇOIS COUPERIN (1668-1733)

Born into a distinguished musical family, François Couperin is often designated “Le Grand” to single out his immense contribution to music. Organist as well as harpsichord virtuoso, Couperin entered the court of Louis XIV to instruct the royal children in music. Couperin’s fondness for the music of Corelli engendered in him a permanent taste for the Italian tradition while he cultivated character pieces and chamber works clearly French in sensibility as derived from Lully. Couperin often spoke of the “fusion” of styles as an ideal of a more cultivated taste. His music combines, in a manner both cosmopolitan and rural, rich tapestries and insinuations of eroticism, wistful, tender, playful, and intimate.

Le Carillon de Cythère is marked Allegramente 2/4 and proceeds as a stately processional in D Major with hints of polyphony. The various gradations of dynamics and application of rubato may impart a fine color to the sound of the bells on the Isle of Cythera, depicted by the artist Watteau (1717) as an amorous, celebratory party.

Les Barricades mystérieuses (1717) derives from the Ordre 6ème de clavecin, the fifth piece, set in B-flat Major, Vivement, as a rondeau. The title has eluded specific designation, although speculation posits both religious and sexual connotations to the ambiguity of Couperin’s use of progressive suspensions as its major gambit. The entries quickly overlap to create a sonorous veil of legato harmony.

Les Folies françaises, ou les Dominos offers an extended, connected series of 12 vignettes from the Treizième Ordre, describing the follies of love, going from Virginity and Fidelity to Jealousy and Despair. The “dominos” in the title of each piece represent Carnival Masks, and the color of each corresponds to the situation described. The opening Gravement is in B Minor, but the progression assumes different colors, some more “transparent” than others, to suggest the intensity of the occasion. We may suppose, in the manner of arranged dominoes, that if any of the emotions topples, the others follow.

From Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917)
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

Despite the tendency to pair Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy as “Impressionists,” Ravel always courted Classicism as his preferred taste, and even Igor Stravinsky saw in Ravel’s scores the precision of “a fine Swiss watchmaker.” While the title of the original six-movement suite for solo piano pays homage to François Couperin le Grand, the notion of “Tombeau” serves to memorialize deceased friends of Ravel who perished in WW I. What Couperin provides Ravel is the Baroque sensibility in the selection of dance pieces set in modal harmony, augmented by neo-Classical chromatic dissonances. For this performance, pianist Colli has omitted the second movement, Fugue in E Minor. When critics complained that Ravel’s suite did not sound somber enough for a tragic memorial, he replied that “the dead are sad enough in their eternal silence.”

1. Prélude is marked Vif, 12/16 in E Minor in memory of First Lieutenant Jacques Charlot. The running eighth-note melodic pattern produces a watery, gurgling effect, sparkling in its sad modality. The limited dynamics, p and pp, restrain the mood, mostly in the bass until the final bar, which surges upward.
3. Forlane is marked Allegretto 6/8 in E Minor, in memory of First Lieutenant Gabriel Deluc. Taken from an Italian folk-dance model, Ravel’s Forlane possesses a stately, optimistic quality, employing crossed-hand technique to increase the melodic lilt. The soft trills add a shimmering effect to the intimate occasion.
4. Rigaudon is marked Assez vif 2/4 in C Major, in memory of Pierre and Pascal Gaudin (two brothers and childhood friends of Ravel, killed by the same shell in November 1914. An assertive dance from Provençal in A-B-A form, it breaks off into a new section quite Baroque in its poised elegance, almost an equestrian trot in leaping figures that becomes bemused. The assertive opening returns, closing quickly.
5. Menuet is marked Allegro moderato ¾ in G Major, dedicated to the memory of Jean Dreyfus. A lyrical song without words, this dance occupies perhaps the most tragically intimate moment of the suite.
6. Toccata is marked Vif 2/4 in E Minor, in memory of Captain Joseph de Marliave, a musicologist who wrote a fine study of the Beethoven string quartets. A true staccato étude, the piece bristles with excitement, changing color as the last page converts the texture into a glowing C Major.
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