Tag: Sergei Rachmaninoff
-
-
-
-
PROGRAM NOTES: ISATA KANNEH-MASON
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sonata No. 14 in C minor K. 457 In 1785 Mozart’s Sonata in C minor was published together with the composer’s Fantasia in C minor as a single opus, with the Fantasia forming a kind of introductory ‘prelude’ to the sonata. Given that the Fantasia was composed many months after the sonata,…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: JAEDEN IZIK-DZURKO
Alexander Scriabin Valse Op. 38 It is easy to see why Alexander Scriabin was known as “the Russian Chopin.” Like his Polish musical forebear he wrote almost exclusively for the piano and began his career by composing mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, preludes and études. In this Valse we catch the composer near the end of his…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: GEORGE AND ANDREW LI
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sonata in D major K. 381 for Piano Duet In the 1760s, when Wolfgang & his sister Nannerl were touring Europe as child prodigies, the keyboard duet was a popular novelty item on their programs, one that offered a fuller range of sound from a single instrument while still allowing each performer…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: SHEKU AND ISATA KANNEH-MASON
Ludwig van Beethoven 12 Variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from The Magic Flute Op. 66 Beethoven’s set of variations on a theme from Mozart’s Magic Flute features twelve sharply chiselled operatic duets between piano and cello, widely differentiated in character like the comic personalities in the Singspiel from which the theme is derived. Audiences…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: EVGENY KISSIN
Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann “…calling it a sonata is a caprice if not a jest for Chopin seems to have taken four of his most unruly children and put them together possibly thinking to smuggle them, as a sonata, into company where them might not be considered individually presentable.” That’s the perceptive way Robert…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: GEORGE LI
Franz Joseph Haydn Sonata in B minor Hob. XVI:32 It is not often that you catch the congenial, ever-chipper Haydn writing in a minor key. But minor keys were all the rage in the 1770s, the age of Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), an age when composers such as C. P. E. Bach sought to…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: YEKWON SUNWOO
Franz Schubert Sonata in C minor D 958 Schubert’s unabashed admiration for Beethoven is vividly on display in the opening bars of his Sonata in C minor D 958, composed in September 1828, shortly before his death. Schubert had served as a pallbearer at Beethoven’s funeral the year before, and his own death from tertiary…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: HARRIET KRIJGH & MAGDA AMARA
Felix Mendelssohn Cello Sonata No. 2 Op. 58 Mendelssohn’s second sonata for cello and piano reveals him as the Classical-Romantic hybrid that he was. An effortless practitioner of Classical etiquette in the construction of symmetrically balanced phrases, he eagerly took part in the Romantic age’s fascination with tonal colour and virtuoso keyboard writing. This sonata…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: WINTERLUDE – SUPER SUNDAY WITH ALEXANDER MELNIKOV
Sergei Rachmaninoff Variations on a Theme of Chopin Op. 22 Chopin’s funereal, passacaglia-like Prelude in C minor from his collection of 24 Preludes Op. 28 provides the theme for Rachmaninoff’s first large-scale work for solo piano, his Variations on a Theme of Chopin, completed in 1903. Taking as his point of departure the prelude’s hymn-like…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: ANNA FEDOROVA
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Fantasia in D minor K. 397 Mozart’s D minor Fantasia is a bundle of mysteries; an intriguing sound-puzzle for the listener but a labyrinthine minefield of interpretive choices for the pianist. Mere slavish attention to the details of the printed score—the motto and creed of historically informed pianism—risks missing the point entirely in a…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: KSENIJA SIDOROVA
The Concert Accordion Early Beginnings The accordion has for centuries been associated with music of a light or popular nature. Its portability, full harmonic texture and penetrating, reedy timbre have made it the ideal mini-orchestra for country dances and the perfect one-man house band for city cafés and music halls. The very sound of…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: YUN-CHIN ZHOU
Domenico Scarlatti Three Sonatas The 550-odd sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti are perhaps the most successful works to migrate from the harpsichord to the modern grand piano. Their transparent texture of simple two- and three-part keyboard writing has one foot in the imitative counterpoint of the Baroque while anticipating the Classical era of Haydn and Mozart…
-
PROGRAM NOTES: MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN
Alban Berg: Piano sonata, Op. 1 “Among the most auspicious Opus Ones ever written,” was Glenn Gould’s assessment of Alban Berg’s piano sonata. Berg wrote this work in 1907-08 while studying with Arnold Schönberg. Originally it was intended to have three movements but, after completing the first, Berg found that “for a long time nothing…