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Program Notes: István Várdai

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Felix Mendelssohn

Variations  Concertantes Op. 17

Felix was not the only musician in the Mendelssohn family. His older sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847) was a prodigiously talented pianist and composer, although she chose marriage over a public career, and his younger brother Paul Mendelssohn (1812-1874) was no slouch as a cellist, to judge by the Variations Concertantes that Felix wrote for him in 1829.

The adjective concertantes in the title underlines the notion that this work was written for two solo instruments, not one instrument accompanying another. In the late 18th century sonatas for cello and piano were grossly lopsided affairs. In an age without sound technicians to turn a knob and boost the bass frequencies

in a chamber ensemble, piano sonatas were often published with an optional cello part doubling the bass line. This gave a bit of “oomph” to the lower regions where the sound of the early fortepiano, forerunner of the modern concert grand, was lamentably thin.

It was Beethoven who elevated the cello to the status of equal interlocutor in duo chamber works with cello, beginning with his Op. 5 sonatas for cello and piano. And Beethoven is an important point of reference in the musical style of this work (especially his Piano Sonata in A flat Op. 26), although the spirit of Mozart hovers over the variation theme with its feminine cadence patterns, as well.

The compositional task, in sets of variations such as these, is to keep the listener’s interest engaged by constantly varying the texture and mood. Mendelssohn accomplishes this in pairs of tag-team variations that see first the cello, then the piano taking a leading role.

It is Var. 7, in which the cozy, parlour haze of Biedermeier domesticity is stripped from the theme in a minore variation with flying octaves in the piano part and operatic recitative in the cello, that points clearly in the direction of the Romantic era to come. Then, after reprising the opening theme in all its simplicity in the manner of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the final variation takes things further in an extended coda of Beethovenian proportions that nonetheless tapers the work to an elegant conclusion in a mood of tranquility and repose.

 

Igor Stravinsky

Suite Italienne  (arr. Gregor Piatigorsky)

Stravinsky’s music for the ballet Pulcinella, which premiered at the Paris Opéra in May 1920, exemplifies the new neo-classical style which he adopted after the First World War. Setting aside the bold rhythmic experiments and gargantuan orchestral ensembles that had propelled his pre-war ballets Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and Rite of Spring  (1913) to international success, he looked instead to create more transparent textures, with fewer instruments, in direct imitation of music of the past.

The ballet Pulcinella features stories about the traditional stock characters of Italian commedia dell’ arte and Stravinsky’s musical score is equally traditional, using melodies from the gracious scores of Neapolitan opera composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736). Music this easy on the ears was bound to spawn arrangements and in 1932 Stravinsky and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky set to work on a version for cello and piano, completed in 1933.

Stravinsky’s aim was not to produce a mere pastiche of the earlier composer’s style, but rather a modernist re-imagining of Pergolesi’s melodies in a post-World-War world. He preserved the clear phrasing, courtly cadences and Baroque ornamentation of the originals, but signalled a new modernist context for the work by means of numerous irregularities such as strong accents on weak beats of the bar and exaggerated dissonance in the bass-line—a clever way of increasing sonic resonance without thickening the score.

The Introduzione is the overture to the ballet, written in the Baroque ritornello style; that is, structured as a regular alternation between sections played by the whole orchestra (ripieni) and sections played by a small group of soloists (concertino). These structural divisions are still audible in the cello and piano version, as well.

The gentle lilt and dotted rhythm of the Serenata  identifies it a sicilienne. It is based on the tenor canzonetta Mentre l’erbetta pasce l’agnella (While the little lamb grazes) from Pergolesi’s Il Flaminio (1735) but its overall mood of pastoral tranquillity also contained an odd hint of melancholy.

In the following Air, the cello plays the role of the socially awkward basso buffo Bastiano from Il Flaminio pleading his suit to the love of his life—unsuccessfully, to judge from the lyrical love lament from Pergolesi’s Lo frate ‘nnamurato (1732) that follows.

The virtuoso showpiece of the suite is the Tarantella, set in the high register of the cello and featuring a whirlwind of melodies spun out at breakneck speed.

The Minuetto and finale  builds up gradually in excitement from its opening tone of sustained elegy until it finally explodes into an exuberant fanfare of excitement worthy of an 18th-century comic opera finale, from which emerges a series of nostalgic reminiscences of the most hummable phrases from the overture.

 

Zoltan  Kodály

Sonatina for Cello and Piano

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) and Béla Bartók (1881-1945) are considered the fathers of Hungarian art music. Their work collecting wax-cylinder recordings of folksongs in the Hungarian countryside and in Hungarian-inhabited areas of Slovakia and Romania counts among the earliest contributions to the field of ethnomusicology. While the music of both composers displays clear signs of both their Classical training and their interest in folk culture, Kodály’s synthesis of these two influences was more easily received by the Hungarian public than that of Bartók.

At the heart of Kodály’s music is an interest in melody and his Sonatina for Cello and Piano of 1922 overflows with a passionate lyricism that situates it a direct line of descent from the cello works of Beethoven, Schumann, and Dvořák.

Structured in a type of sonata form without formal development, the work owes much of its pentatonic style of melody construction to Hungarian folk music, while its often shimmering piano textures, remarkable in their variety, are clearly influenced by the composer’s exposure to French impressionism and the music of Debussy in particular.

 

György Ligeti

Sonata for Solo Cello

György Ligeti (pronounced LI-ge-ti) was a leading figure of the avant-garde in the latter half of the 20th century. He is perhaps best known to popular audiences for the use of his searing scores Atmosphères (1961), Lux Aeterna (1966), Requiem (1965), and Aventures (1962) used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

His early career, before he emigrated from Hungary in 1956, was beset with the difficulties inherent in working under a communist regime suspicious of artistic innovation and other “bourgeois” tendencies. His Sonata  for Solo Cello, which was banned by the Composers’ Union for its modernity, comes from this period.

The Sonata comprises two contrasting movements, the first composed in 1948 and the second five years later in 1953. The first movement Dialogo is written without fixed metre and depicts a conversation between a man and a woman—a conversation narrowly focused on a small range of topics, it would appear, given the amount of repetition of the opening phrases.

The second movement, entitled Capriccio, is a strictly metered moto perpetuo in 3/8 time that pays tribute to the virtuoso exuberance of Paganini’s famous Caprices for violin.

 

Johannes Brahms

Sonata for Cello and Piano in F major Op. 99

The Sonata in F major Op. 99 is an adventurous work combining the restless energy characteristic of the young Brahms with the lyrical luxuriance of the composer in his mature years. Composed in the summer of 1886 while the 53-year- old Brahms was vacationing in the Swiss countryside, it breathes the clean fresh air of the mountain slopes and often echoes with hints of rural folksong. The sound palette is full and resonant, especially the piano part, which is written with a symphonic sonority in mind.

The first movement Allegro vivace opens in sweeping fashion with a feverish quivering of piano tremolos over which the cello sets out its thematic agenda in a series of bold fanfares. This pattern of tremolos will form an important unifying motif throughout the movement as a stabilizing counterbalance to the melodic fragmentation that characterizes the principal theme.

The second movement Adagio affettuoso is in simple ternary form. Its principal theme, sung out with full-throated fervour by the cello after a brief introduction, is remarkably chromatic but vocally lyrical nonetheless. The piano takes the spotlight in the minor-mode middle section, but then welcomes the cello back to sing out once again, its theme graced with an even more decorative accompaniment than before.

If the second movement belongs to the cello, it is the piano that captures the ear in the third movement Allegro passionato, a scherzo featuring strongly assertive keyboard writing that makes the piano a major presence in the sonority. Adding to its punch and impact are the typical Brahmsian techniques of 2-against-3 rhythms and “oomphy” syncopations reminiscent of those in the scherzo from the composer’s Quintet in F minor.  In this movement it is the cello that gets to shine in the middle section, where it hums out a wistful melody of irregular phrase lengths that suggests the influence of folksong.

The sonata concludes with a gentle rondo of uncomplicated design written in the relaxed vein of the last movement of the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat Op. 83. The simple, rhythmically repetitive tune that opens the movement alternates with a series of short contrasting episodes that, even when cast in the minor mode, seem only designed to highlight all the more the contentment to be gained by returning to the major.

Program Notes: The Danish String Quartet

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Johann Sebastian Bach
Well-Tempered Clavier II
Fugue No. 7 in E-flat major BWV 876 (arr. Mozart)

In 1782 Mozart’s patron, Baron Gottfried van Swieten, showed the composer a number of manuscripts of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and encouraged him to make string arrangements for performance at the Baron’s regular series of Sunday afternoon concerts in his home. The result was a collection of Bach fugues arranged for string trio and for string quartet.

The E-flat fugue from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier  is a four-voice fugue of remarkable design. Its voices enter in ascending order (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) to build up a four-voice texture firmly grounded in the home key, and almost all subsequent appearances of the theme enter in the same keys as the opening: E flat and B flat.

The harmonic stability that characterizes the formal plan, however, is enlivened by a fugue subject of great vitality, created out of an ear-catching mix of melodic leaps laid out in a pattern of note values accelerating from slow to quick. Combined with the built-in phrase repetition in the theme itself, the result is almost dance-like.

Arranging this fugue for string quartet allows the work’s contrapuntal texture to be presented in higher sonic relief to the listener’s ear, with long notes swelling in the middle in a way impossible on the keyboard, and short notes articulated crisply by means of adroit bowing.

 

Dmitri  Shostakovich
Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor Op. 144

Dmitri Shostakovich was the ugly duckling of 20th-century composers, a thickly bespectacled, chain-smoking musical intellectual whose scores, while contemporary in their sound palette, often bristled with the contrapuntal intensity of a previous age. No stranger to the larger forms of symphony, concerto, and opera, he focused increasingly at the end of his life on the more intimate genres of the song cycle and the string quartet. Following the diagnosis of a heart condition in 1965, his works became darker in spirit, beset with a tragic undertow no doubt influenced by the experience of his declining health.

His 15th string quartet was his last, composed in 1974, the year before his death. Written in the dark key of E-flat minor, it unfolds as an uninterrupted sequence of six slow movements, all marked Adagio. Beneath the death-inspired melancholy of this work glimmers faintly the memory of living human emotions, expressed in the titles given to each movement.

The first movement Elegy opens with an eerily subdued fugal exposition in the low range of the instruments. Its melodically inert, death rattle of a theme whispers out three notes on the same pitch, then continues to circle listlessly around it in the modal style of medieval chant. A second theme, based on a C major arpeggio, eventually emerges but brings scant cheer, as the entire movement, the longest of the work, never rises above the dynamic level of mp.

Not so the sharply profiled second movement Serenade,  which begins with a 12- tone row of snarling—or perhaps shrieking—crescendos, each on a single note played by a single instrument, swelling from ppp  to sffff. In the course of this movement these violent gestures play against an absent-minded waltz, to curious effect.

The short Intermezzo features a similarly odd pairing between an exuberant, almost ecstatic cadenza in the first violin and scattered melodic musings in the other instruments. Genuine sustained lyricism arrives for the first time in the Nocturne, as the viola pours out its soul against a delicate tracery of arpeggios in the other instruments. Played with mutes, this movement rarely features more than three instruments playing at a time, giving it a quality of nocturnal intimacy.

There is no mistaking the grave, commemorative tone of the following Funeral March, in which we hear the pure minor chords and dotted rhythms of traditional funeral music projected with surprising aggressiveness in both chordal declarations and solo laments.

The concluding Epilogue sums up the previous emotional terrain with cadenza-like flights of fancy alternating with dull echoes of both the first and second themes from the first movement. Its flurry of trills has been compared to “the sounds of wind whistling through a graveyard”.

 

Ludwig van Beethoven
Quartet in E-flat major Op. 127

The late quartets of Beethoven are known for raising the bar in terms of formal experiment and range of expression, but the first of these, the Quartet in E flat, Op. 127, is almost shockingly conventional in this regard. Tuneful in the most popular manner, its expressive aspirations rarely exceed those of the common air or folksong, and its four separate movements are laid out in the most traditional of formal patterns: a sonata-form first movement, theme-and-variations second movement, followed by a scherzo and a sonata-form finale.

What this quartet does have in common with many late-period works is the extravagant dimensions of its theme and variations movement—it clocks in at over a quarter of an hour in length, in a league with the variation movements of the late piano sonatas Opp. 109 and 111. Equally remarkable is the sustained lyrical impulse that broadly dominates the first two movements, to the detriment of Beethoven’s trademark penchant for striking contrasts and high-voltage drama, which only join the party in the scherzo.

A hint of the more “muscular” Beethoven is given in the first movement’s opening fanfare, a fanfare that recurs several times throughout the movement. But at each appearance it can’t help melting into song, the operating principle of the movement seeming to be that of leisurely continuous variation rather than dramatic set-up and release. This is evident in the minor-mode second theme, which is minimally contrasting and echoes fragments of the first, while the development, for the most part, prefers to stretch out its melodic lines like toffee instead of fragmenting them like peanut brittle. The question “Why can’t we all just get along?” seems to have found its answer in this movement.

The theme of the second movement’s variations is a lyrical ascent of scale notes extending over more than an octave followed by a series of gracious descents. Eminently vocal in character, this melody was actually split off from the quartet and published separately as a song after Beethoven’s death. The six variations that follow unfold calmly with an admirable simplicity. They maintain the gentle flow and relaxed feel of their founding melody, and rather than dressing it up with ornamental curlicues, they simplify it, as in many of Beethoven’s late variation sets, seeking to reduce it to its core constituents.

The Beethoven of contrast and drama returns in the scherzo. Its theme is a mischievous collection of little gestures comprised of dotted rhythms and purring trills, creeping up the scale in stages, answered imitatively by its mirror opposite coming down in the opposite direction. The opening and closing sections of the movement swing wildly between clever counterpoint and rampaging unisons while the trio alternates between breathless scurrying and rustic swagger.

This rustic quality is much in evidence as well in the final movement Allegro. Its folk-like character is conveyed in a seemingly endless stream of simple, tuneful, and symmetrically phrased melodies (Joseph Kerman calls it a “medley”), imprinted with the oafish good humour of drunken village dancing. Near the end, a heavenly trill in the first violin summons the rustics to heed the angels of their better natures, and the husky rhythms of their revels give way to the smooth flowing lines of human concord as the work ends.

 

Donald G. Gíslason 2016

Program Notes: Ksenija Sidorova

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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 the accordion oozes nostalgia. Indeed the sound of accordion music has long been cinematic shorthand for identifying a film’s setting as the city of Paris, even before the Eiffel Tower comes into view.

It took a long time to develop the idea that the accordion might be taken seriously as a concert instrument, partly because opportunities for developing skill in performance through professional instruction were few. Then, of course, there was the problem of repertoire. What pieces were there for concert accordionists to play? And finally, the instrument itself needed to be improved, in the way the piano and orchestral instruments had been strengthened and made more versatile in the 19th century, in order to provide a worthy vehicle for the compositional inspirations of major composers.

In the early 20th century, major progress on these issues was made in the Soviet Union, with meaningful contributions from Denmark and England. Folk music, the core of the accordion repertoire, was at the centre of Soviet policy on music education and so the first professional accordion program was established at the Kiev Conservatory in 1927, with similar programs subsequently appearing in Moscow, Leningrad, and other Russian cities.

On May 22, 1935, the renowned accordionist Pavel Gvozdev gave the first accordion recital in the Soviet Union in Leningrad and two years later performed a new concerto for accordion and orchestra by Feodosiy Rubtsov (1904–1986) in the Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic, events which greatly stimulated interest in the artistic potential of the accordion.

 

The Accordion Gets a Makeover

Of even greater importance were changes made to the instrument itself in the period following WWII. Two types of accordions were in use. The traditional Russian accordion, the bayan, had buttons on both sides of the bellows while the piano accordion featured a regular piano keyboard on the right and buttons on the left. Both used the Stradella bass system for the left hand, an arrangement of single bass notes over a single octave alternating with buttons that played major, minor, diminished, or dominant 7th chords. While this configuration was ideal for the ‘oom-pah-pah’ pattern of dance music, it represented a serious barrier to composing for the concert repertoire.

With the arrival of the free-bass system with its arrangement of single-note buttons extending over a wide range, accordionists were able for the first time to play bass melodies and create their own chords, instead of having to use the pre-set chords of the Stradella system. In addition, new stops were devised that expanded the range of timbres available on the instrument. The accordion had now become a fully polyphonic instrument, capable of performing in chamber ensembles and of performing transcriptions of classic works in the concert repertoire.

 

The Modern Accordion

One of the first to exploit the new possibilities of these improvements was the Danish accordionist Mogens Ellegaard (1935–1995) who, from the 1950s onward, challenged composers to write serious works for the accordion. One of his first commissions was the Symphonic Fantasy and Allegro for accordion and orchestra (1958) by the Danish conductor and composer Ole Schmidt (1928-2010).

While the Russian bayan virtuoso Friedrich Lips (b. 1948) moved the bar forward in his country, championing in particular the music of Astor Piazzola, Ellegaard’s student, the Scots-born Owen Murray, brought his teacher’s enthusiasm for the accordion back to Britain. After graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Music in 1982, Murray made history by being appointed professor of accordion at the Royal Academy of Music in 1986, marking the arrival of academic respectability for the accordion in one of the most prestigious musical institutions in Europe.

Murray’s student at the Royal Academy, Ksenija Sidorova, continues the work of creating a place for the accordion on the concert stage, playing both transcriptions of established works in the classical canon and a growing number of modern and contemporary compositions written specifically for the accordion. She plays an artisan-crafted instrument from the workshops of the Italian manufacturer Pigini in Ancona, considered the Rolls-Royce of accordion-makers. Her instrument (which she calls “the Beast”) has a left-hand range of four and a half octaves, and a special chin-activated stop which allows lightning-fast changes in timbre.

 

Program Notes

 

Piotr Londonov

Scherzo-Toccata

Piotr Petrovich Londonov was a prolific contributor to the accordion repertoire through his many arrangements of Slavic and Scandinavian folk songs. This breathless, almost frantic, Scherzo-Toccata is extremely popular among accordionists, judging from how often it has been played at international competitions and the number of YouTube videos of the piece currently online.

Written for bayan virtuoso Friedrich Lips as a test piece for a competition in Geneva in 1979, it combines the repeated-note figuration of the traditional chattering toccata with the repeated short phrase fragments of the scherzo, alternating between sections of purposeful drive and carefree cheerfulness.

From Kesenija Sidorova: Scherzo-Toccata was a compulsory piece for several accordion competitions, and is frequently performed by accordionists all over the world. It is a cheerful short piece, which explores different techniques on this versatile instrument.

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Twelve Variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman” K. 265

The sheer audacity of writing piano variations on a theme so childlike and innocent as “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman” (aka “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”) is a gesture uniquely Mozartean in its impertinence. The only modern equivalent would be the fugues based on tunes by Britney Spears that are so impudently posted on YouTube nowadays by composition students with too much time on their hands.

Mozart’s treatment of the theme is for the most part figural. He slices & dices the structural harmonic outline of his thematic material to re-present it with pearly right-hand decorations and insurgent left-hand runs, in coy echoes and ever-so- serious imitative entries, and finally with the obligatory set pieces: a poised and elegant operatic adagio followed by a rousing eggbeater of a finale.

 

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Barcarolle Op. 10 No. 3

Rachmaninoff completed his group of Salon Pieces Op. 10 in 1894. The third of the set is a barcarolle, a type of character piece patterned after the boat songs of Venetian gondoliers. But the rocking motion typical of the barcarolles of Chopin and Mendelssohn is here given a mere suggestion by Rachmaninoff in the quavering triplet figures that flutter throughout the first section, perhaps in imitation of water lapping at the edge of a boat.

In the middle section, the accompaniment evolves into an animated swirl of frothy running figures that only serve to further emphasize the lonely isolation of the main melody singing out below in the baritone range. This hauntingly timid, rhythmically uncertain melody comes across particularly well in the plaintive reed timbre of the accordion, so well that one could easily imagine this mood piece having been originally written for the instrument.

 

Anatoly Kusyakov

Autumnal Sceneries

Composer Anatoly Ivanovich Kusyakov paints the autumnal geography of his native Russia in six musical landscapes that employ the full sonorous resources of the accordion. His musical language is a modernist extension of traditional harmony that features dense chordal structures marbled through with contrapuntal motives.

Autumn reveries introduces us to the Russian landscape in a series of bellows-heavy sighs alternating with simpler phrases of a more optimistic stamp. Leaf-fall paints the dance of leaves in the wind with a fast-moving treble scurrying above a slower- moving melody in the bass below. The quirky gate of Soiree Mood conjures a vision of some character out of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. One could easily imagine the scene of an ugly duckling moving slowly and awkwardly across the landscape.

Forgotten Chimes has a chorale-like dignity reminiscent of Bach’s organ music with its monumental build-up of harmonic tension and instrumental sonority. Cranes describes the passing of majestic birds overhead in a series of soulful dissonant chords over a relentless ostinato bass. The final scene, Wind Dance, is the most virtuosic of the set, featuring both hands moving in fast figuration at a breathless pace.

From Kesenija Sidorova: The first movement, Autumnal reveries, immerses us in the spirit and mood of autumn—rain drops, wind, distant memories of summer. The second movement reminds us somewhat of the last movement (Presto) of Chopin’s B flat minor piano sonata, Op.35, “wind howling around the gravestones”.

The third movement is very picturesque, with interweaving lyrical and wild themes.

The fourth movement, Forgotten chimes, depicts the ruins of the cathedral and the distant sound of the church bells. The fifth movement, Cranes, is inspired by a poem of the same name by Rasul Gamzatov about the souls of the fallen soldiers, who,

“Were buried not in soil to be forgotten,

But turned into white cranes in flight instead.”

The final movement dispels the heavy dark mood with its sarcastic accentuated patterns and melodies inspired by Russian folklore.

 

Semionov Viatcheslav

Red Guelder-Rose (“Kalina  Krasnaya”)

From Kesenija Sidorova: Semionov is regarded as one of the pioneers of the contemporary accordion and is a well-known concert performer, pedagogue, and composer. Since 1995 he has held the title of People’s Artist of the Russian Federation. Guelder  Rose was composed in 1976 in memoriam to a great Russian film director, Vassily Shukshin, who directed and acted in the movie of the same name. It was the most successful film of the year (1974) and is widely known even outside of the USSR.

The song is about an unrequited love. It instantly became popular and sometimes is mistakenly regarded as traditional.

 

Alfred  Schnittke

Revis Fairytale

Satire is a powerful force in politics. The Soviet authorities knew this when, in 1978, they banned The Inspector’s Tale, a stage adaptation of Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 novel satirizing official corruption in czarist Russia. But Alfred Schnittke’s incidental music to this production survived the ban to resurface in in the 1985 ballet Esquisses (Sketches), which added a whole host of other Gogol characters to the mix. The music from this ballet lives on in the suite created by accordionists Yuri Shishkin, Friedrick Lips, and Ksenija Sidorova, entitled Revis Fairy Tale.

This is music with satiric intent woven deep into its fabric. Chichikov’s Childhood attempts to reveal the psychological make-up in early childhood of the central protagonist in Dead Souls, who absurdly seeks to buy from Russian landowners the ownership rights to their deceased serfs. The musical styles of Haydn, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky bear witness to the grotesquely simplistic thinking that was Chichikov’s special gift since birth.

Officials scurries along in mock-bureaucratic haste, helped along by snippets of Mozart’s Magic Flute  overture, while Waltz channels Shostakovich’s genre-deflating practices with slow-motion oom-pah-pahs and a comic choice of timbres.

The last piece in the set, Polka, evokes the improvisational whims of the gypsy violinist, starting slow but then accelerating to an exhilarating pace, flickering all the while between major and minor tonalities.

From Ksenija Sidorova: This fairy tale was first transcribed by Russian accordion virtuoso Yuri Shishkin, and subsequently by F. Lips and K. Sidorova. In the first movement, the happy childhood of Pavel Chichikov is polystylistic, combining familiar themes from many sources such as Mozart’s Magic Flute  and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

The waltz represents one of the scenes in Gogol’s Dead Souls, and the last movement, a Polka, recalls the character Akaky Bashmachkin from a short story, The Overcoat, also by Gogol. In the story the hero scrimps and scrapes in order to buy himself an overcoat to replace his threadbare one, but late one night he is mugged by two robbers who steal it. Receiving no help from the authorities, but rather a reprimand, Bashmachkin becomes ill and dies but his ghost haunts the city, stealing other people’s coats in revenge.

 

Program Notes: Narek Hakhnazaryan

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Program Notes: Narek Hakhnazaryan

César Franck: Sonata in A major

For most of his life, Franck led a relatively quiet existence as an organist and pedagogue, emerging from obscurity as a composer only near the end of his life. His only violin sonata (which has also been arranged for numerous other instruments, notably flute, viola and cello) was created in 1886 as a wedding gift for his friend, the famous Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who gave the premiere the same year. This sonata remains one of the composer’s most popular works, and well demonstrates his spontaneous, exuberant variety of romanticism.

The first three notes (D – F# – D) of the cello’s initial statement serve as the sonata’s principal thematic link. This opening movement is in standard sonata form, with the first theme assigned initially to the cello, the second to the piano. The serene lyricism of the first movement is replaced by restless excitement and intense passion in the second. The tension gradually abates, and a less stormy Quasi lento section follows. After restatements of material from both sections, the movement closes with a coda, which consists of a long crescendo building to an exciting climax. The third movement has an improvisatory nature, and features cadenza-like passages for the cello. The finale is without doubt one of Franck’s most charming and inspired creations. Canonic imitation (one voice following the other at a specified time interval) at the octave is used throughout, creating between the two instruments a remarkable dialogue seldom matched in the repertory of the accompanied sonata.

Frédéric Chopin: Introduction and Polonaise brillante, Op. 3

Everyone knows that the piano was the heart and soul of Chopin’s existence, but if the composer could be said to have had a second love, it was for the cello. His interest in this instrument began in his teens. Scattered among his many piano pieces are four works that include cello: the Introduction and Polonaise brillante; a Trio for piano, violin and cello; the Grand Duo Concertante for cello and piano; and the Cello Sonata – in fact, the sum total of his chamber music output except for a set of variations for flute and piano.

The work we hear this afternoon was composed in two separate parts. First came the Polonaise in October of 1829 when Chopin was just nineteen, written for the amateur cellist Prince Radziwell and his teen-age pianist daughter Wanda. However, the dedication went to another cellist, the Viennese virtuoso Josef Merk. For still a third cellist, the Pole Józef Kaczynski, Chopin wrote the Introduction in April 1830 for a performance together with the Polonaise. The brilliante part of the title may be Chopin’s or it may be the Viennese publisher Mechetti’s. The polonaise is indeed brilliant in its effect, despite the composer’s own opinion that there was “nothing to it but dazzle.” True, “there is dazzle, and plenty of it,” writes Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski. “After all, brillant means sparkling. But there is also bravura, verve and a Slavic, typically polonaise vigor, as well as an undeniable feel for the spirit of the dance.”

György Ligeti: Solo cello sonata

György Ligeti followed in the line of distinguished twentieth-century Hungarian composers that runs from Bartók and Kodály through Sándor Veress and Miklós Rózsa. When he died seven years ago at the age of 83, he was internationally recognized as one of the leading composers of his generation. Since the early 1960s, Ligeti (pronounced LIG-ih-tee) had been on the cutting edge of experimental music as one of the leaders in the emancipation of sound effects, timbres and textures from their traditionally subordinate roles, giving them a raison d’être of their own. Many of us became aware of his music through Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the instrumental sonoric tapestries of Atmosphères (1961), the Requiem for voices and orchestra, and the choral Lux aeterna (1966) were used as fitting backdrops for desolate moonscapes.

The two movements of this nine-minute sonata were written five years apart in very different character, though the composer refers to this period of his stylistic development as “prehistoric.” “Dialogo,” composed in 1948, consists of alternating statements of pizzicato chords – brief, submissive, conciliatory – and lyrical outpourings – expansive, reflective, ruminative. “Capriccio” is a virtuosic display of madly scurrying fragments of varying lengths that exploit to the fullest the cello’s enormous range.

Due to the repressive Hungarian regime under which Ligeti lived until 1956 (when he fled the country) and to his unsettled life for years thereafter, the first public performance of the sonata was given only in 1983. The score was published in 1990 and first recorded that year by Matt Haimovitz.

Mikhail Bronner: The Jew: Life and Death

Mikhail Bronner studied composition with Tikhon Khrennikov and orchestration with Yriy Phortunatov at the high School of the Moscow Conservatory, then continued his studies at the Moscow Conservatory where he completed graduate work in 1981. Soon thereafter he began attracting professional recognition, particularly for his ballet scores for An Optimistic Tragedy (1985) and The Taming of the Shrew (1996), both presented at leading theatres in Moscow. Much of his music is theatrically oriented, and much of it relates to Jewish history and/or Old Testament themes and characters. His Jewish Requiem (1994), performed throughout Germany, is a notable example. The Jew: Life and Death dates from 1996. It is a deeply introspective, passionate work that portrays with grim realism in the space of ten minutes the tragic element in Jewish history. Images of sighing, weeping, the desperate wringing of hands and the anguish of darkly troubled souls are portrayed with grim realism.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Nocturne, Op. 19, no. 4, and Pezzo Capriccioso, Op. 62

As Tchaikovsky is one of Bronner’s favorite composers, it is entirely appropriate that Bronner’s work be followed by music of the Russian master. The Nocturne is a transcription Tchaikovsky made in 1888 of a piano piece dating from 1873 (the fourth of the Six Pieces Op. 19). Written in simple ternary form (ABA), its central, slightly faster episode was borrowed years later by Stravinsky as one of the tunes he incorporated into his ballet score The Fairy’s Kiss. When the melancholic opening material returns it is slightly varied.

Tchaikovsky wrote the Pezzo capriccioso for his cellist fried Anatoly Brandukov, who gave the first performance on December 7, 1889 with the composer conducting. The title is meant to suggest a kind of flippancy or “toying around” with a basic mood. In doing so, the soloist gets to demonstrate a variety of skills:  tone quality, singing line, technical agility and control in the high range.

 

Program notes by Robert Markow, 2013.

Program Notes: Eric Owens, bass-baritone

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Eric Owens, bass-baritoneEric Owens’ recital divides neatly into two halves – a German half and a French half, with the final song a true rarity that bridges the geographical and cultural divide. The German songs (Lieder) all tend to be of a dark, serious or melancholic nature, while the French songs (mélodies) are lighter, even airy and effervescent, the perfect antidote to the German half. As Eric Owens puts it, Debussy “brings us out of the land of despair.”

Hugo Wolf may well be the only major composer who is remembered today for his songs alone. If it was Schubert who put the Lied on the musical map, it was Wolf who epitomized this genre to the exclusion of almost everything else. In his musical depictions of poets’ words, Wolf has few equals and no superiors. Accents, pauses, harmonic twists, modulations, textures and figurations all play a role in illuminating the text, in both the vocal and the piano writing. The Michelangelo Lieder were Wolf’s last songs, written in March of 1897 as he was approaching the onset of dementia from the syphilitic infection that later killed him. In their bare harmony, declamatory style and absence of melodic lines, these songs show the composer’s single-minded intent to concentrate on the essence of the words to the exclusion of all else. The texts are three sonnets (in Walter Robert-Tornow’s German translation) of the famous painter, sculptor and architect Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), written when he was an old man reflecting pessimistically on life. In the first, the poet thinks back to the days when he was young and unknown. The second is an observation on the ephemeral nature of all earthly things, and the third a memory of lost love.

Although Robert Schumann wrote less than half as many songs as Schubert, his achievement is hardly less impressive, for most of them were composed in a single year, 1840, the year of his marriage to Clara Wieck. Schumann’s wedding present to Clara was the collection of 26 songs entitled Myrthen (myrtles, the flowers traditionally associated with weddings). No. 15 of this collection is the strangely despondent “Aus den hebräischen Gesängen” (From Hebrew Melodies), set to words by Lord Byron in German translation. Muttertraum” (Mother’s Dream), set to words of Hans Christian Andersen, paints a consoling picture of a mother gazing fondly at her infant son while outside ravens lurk. They look forward to feasting on his corpse hanging from the gallows, as they know the child will grow up to be a criminal. Gruesome imagery is found also in Der “Schatzgräber” (The Treasure-seeker), a magnificent and graphically realistic setting of Joseph von Eichendorff’s morality tale of a man obsessively seeking buried treasure and finally being buried himself. A different kind of desperation pervades “Melancholie,” a song of unrequited love.

The three songs of Franz Schubert on Eric Owens’ recital all deal with epic subjects of classical mythology, carry dark messages, and were composed by a young man still in his early twenties. “Prometheus,” with its frequent changes of texture, tempo and mood, and with its essential instrumental component, is more an operatic scene than a mere song. “We may all be made of Promethean clay, but only genius can be fired to produce a work as extraordinary and highly-colored as this,” writes pianist Graham Johnson. “Fahrt zum Hades” (Journey to Hades) is another impressive setting, this one to a description of a despairing man’s crossing of the River Styx and his last glimpse of earthly beauties. The poem by Schubert’s friend Johann Mayrhofer inspired the composer to create what John Reed calls “a dramatic aria of solemn grandeur, tragic in tone and classical in its combination of deep feeling and formal restraint.” In “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus” (Scene from Tartarus) we find a viscerally powerful song that none other than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau claimed can leave a listener “stunned and terrified.” Set to a passage from Schiller, its text alone is frightening enough, but underscored by Schubert’s chromatic, discordant music, this through-composed song in several linked sections takes on colossal proportions.

The majority of Claude Debussy’s 85 known, authenticated songs are early works, composed between 1880 and 1892. So too are the three we hear tonight. “Beau soir” was his second song to be published, yet, as Barbara Meister notes, “it is already the work of a master. From the very first measure one is intrigued by the rhythmic pattern …” There are numerous harmonic felicities as well. Despite the song’s title (Beautiful evening), the message of Paul Bourget’s poem is that happiness turns to sorrow, life leads to death. “Fleur des blés (Wheat flower) immediately followed “Beau soir,” but whereas in the earlier song the piano had essentially an accompanying role, now it is nearly an equal partner with the voice. André Girod’s poem invites images of pastoral loveliness, which are compared to features of the poet’s beloved. “L’Âme evaporée (The evanescent soul), another Bourget setting, is the first of two Romances published in 1891. Meister calls it “really a perfect duet for the two performers.” For the most part each has his or her own part, but at the song’s climax their lines join.

Cervantes’ picaresque novel Don Quixote, which recounts the adventures of the legendary “knight of the sorrowful countenance,” has inspired no end of musical compositions. Maurice Ravel’s contribution to this literature took the form of three short songs that Don Quixote addresses in homage to his ladylove Dulcinea. Composed in 1932, it was his last work. Ravel had already proven himself a master at composing music to Spanish subjects (L’heure espagnole, Rapsodie espagnole, Boléro, Alborada del gracioso). The first song is a highly fanciful Chanson romanesque, in which Don Quixote offers to fulfill whatever whimsical requests Dulcinea may present. It is set to the meter of the Spanish guajira, which alternates between 6/8 and 3/4. The second is a prayer at the shrine of the Madonna, set to the 5/4 meter of the Basque zortzico. Finally comes a drinking song in the manner of an Aragonese jota. The first performance was given by baritone Martial Singher in Paris on December 1, 1934.

During his Paris sojourn of 1839-1841, Richard Wagner composed half a dozen songs to French texts as part of his effort to become better known there. He hoped the popular singers of the day would add them to their repertories, but, as musicologist Werner Breig informs us, “the songs did not meet with much success at the time, perhaps because they were too complicated for the function they were supposed to serve.” For “Les deux Grenadiers,” Wagner used a translation by François Adolphe Loeve-Veimar of Heinrich Heine’s original ballad in German. Two of Napoleon’s troops are en route home from the disastrous Russian campaign. They mourn the capture of their beloved Emperor. One wants only to get back to his family, the other wishes for the comfort of the grave on French soil. To the sounds of the Marseillaise, the latter imagines his heroic deeds in defense of Napoleon.

SOME THOUGHTS ON OUR UPCOMING 12-13 SEASON

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Today we want to share with you a few thoughts and facts about our recently announced 2012-2013 season:

UP FIRST: On October 5 András Schiff will open the 33rd season with an all-Bach program. In fact, András was one of the first artists who launched the Vancouver Recital Society in 1981. Like so many artists who followed, he made his Canadian debut in Vancouver.

CHEZ NOUS: The earliest performances were presented at the Granville Island Stage, but the Vancouver Playhouse was soon chosen as the ‘home’ for the Vancouver Recital Society. In the upcoming season we will present six afternoon performances at this downtown location.

HOME AWAY FROM HOME: The VRS established its second ‘home’ soon after the opening of the Chan Centre at UBC in the spring of 1997. Now going into our 16th (!) season at this venue, we continue to present four afternoon performances along with four evening performances. Of course, Mr. Schiff adds a very special ninth performance at the Chan Centre.

In total, the 2012-2013 consists of 15 performances of which 10 are scheduled on Sunday afternoons.

THE PRICE IS RIGHT: we are very excited with our new, low “entry” price. For the first time it is possible to select a series of four performances for only $80 – or $20 for each performance.

AH, TO BE YOUNG AGAIN: our young audience members now have greater access then ever before with our Youth Club and Ru35 programs. Throughout the season, tickets can be had for as little as $16.

A POPULARITY CONTEST?: In our recent survey you ranked your favourite composers and, perhaps not surprisingly, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin came out on top. Happily, our 2012-2013 artists will give us a lovely dose of these top-rankers. As we have seen, Bach is in the best hands with András Schiff. Schubert is well represented throughout the season, most notably by Paul Lewis whose program is dedicated to the monumental three late piano sonatas. Adding to the Schubert repertoire are Simon Trpceski and Behzod Abduraimov. Behzod also brings us the ever-popular “Appassionata” sonata by that ever-popular composer, Beethoven. Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan brings Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise brillante, and pianist Stephen Hough includes Nocturnes on his program.

2012-2013 is shaping up to be a most exciting season. Series tickets are currently offered at exceptional prices with fantastic benefits (complimentary parking passes!). Call our office at 604-602-0363 and we’ll be happy to discuss all our subscription options.

SAFEGUARDING THE ARTS IN VANCOUVER

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By now, many of you have heard the sad news that the Playhouse Theatre Company commenced to wind down operations as of March 10.

On the preceding day, Leila and I attended the announcement, which could only be described as a wake for a departed loved-one. An unusual silence fell over the assembled group of arts workers and press people, and many shed tears when it was made clear why we had been brought together. The unimaginable had happened.

 The Playhouse Theatre Company has been a part of our cultural fabric for 49 years. Children, who grew up with this company, now take their children and maybe even their grandchildren.

 The current climate for the arts is anything but sunny and, even a venerable company can run into storm clouds. But no one should think an arts organization blindly moves towards the precipice. I cannot think of one Vancouver colleague who is not completely dedicated to providing the best programming to the community they serve and doing their utmost to build a thriving and vital business.

 Running an arts organization takes fortitude, dedication, passion, nerve, and endless energy and focus. But even that is often not enough to sustain an arts business.

 Just a couple of days ago I received a note from a patron thanking the VRS for presenting Murray Perahia. The writer went on to point out that artists of this stature would not appear in Vancouver were it not for the support of the Martha Lou Henley Charitable Foundation and of Odlum Brown, our Season Sponsor.

How very true. Simply put, we would not have undertaken a recital of this magnitude without this level of support.

Equally, we could not undertake any of our work without the support of our other corporate sponsors and advertisers, the large number of individuals who make donations, and the dedication of our ticket buyers.

This level of giving, and the passion shared by this large group, inspires our own passion to bring the very best musicians to Vancouver.

The writer mentioned above, went on to say the demise of the Playhouse Theatre Company is a ‘wake-up call’ for our community.

The arts have always been in a somewhat precarious situation, but a new level of fragility has set in.

This is indeed our wake-up call. This is a time when we must all work for – no, fight for – the cultural vibrancy and diversity we love. We need to tell politicians how the arts influence our lives; we need to experience culture in all its multifarious forms; we need to introduce children and neighbours to performances and galleries; we need to support with donations and volunteered time.

The arts are there for us – let’s make sure we are there for the arts.

Paul Gravett

Executive Director
Vancouver Recital Society
Email: paulgravett@vanrecital.com

p.s. The Playhouse Theatre Company and the Vancouver Playhouse are often confused. The former is the production company that will cease operations; the latter is the venue in which it presented plays. The venue will remain available for other presenters such as the Vancouver Recital Society.

PROGRAM NOTES: ELIAS STRING QUARTET

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: String Quartet no. 18 in A major, K. 464

This is the fifth of the six “Haydn” quartets – everyone a masterpiece – that Mozart wrote in the mid-1780s. The identification with Haydn derives from the older composer’s direct influence on his colleague in the matter of string quartet writing. Specific elements of this influence can be seen in the equal importance given to all four parts, and in the masterful contrapuntal, imitative, and rhythmic manipulation of motivic fragments throughout an entire movement. It was after a performance of this quartet, plus two others in the set, that Haydn made this oft-repeated remark to Mozart’s father: “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.”

That “profound knowledge of composition” reveals itself everywhere in the quartet. In the first movement, both main subjects (the first of which contains no fewer than four motivic fragments) are developed contrapuntally almost immediately after being presented. In the Minuetto the opening subject consists of a rising lyrical element and a falling articulated one; these are immediately combined, superimposed on each other and developed accordingly. The movement is also remarkable for the expressive use of silences and for frequent and dramatic alternation of loud and soft. Characteristics like these pervade the quartet. But what gives this music its almost magical appeal is Mozart’s supreme ability to combine this high order of craftsmanship with artistic beauty, elegance of expression and a sense of a totally natural unfolding of musical events.

Leo Janáček: String Quartet no. 1 (Kreutzer Sonata)

Very few works of chamber music owe their inspiration to extramusical sources. Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1 is one of these. (Other well-known examples include Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 (From My Life) and Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2, entitled Intimate Pages.

Janáček, unlike most other composers, did not produce a string quartet until late in life (to be technically correct, he wrote a quartet during his student days in Vienna in 1880, but this has been lost). The First Quartet dates from 1923, when the composer was 69, the Second from 1928, the year of his death at age 74. The First Quartet’s subtitle refers to both a short novel by Tolstoy and a sonata for violin and piano by Beethoven. Both have relevance to Janáček’s quartet.

Tolstoy’s novella (1889) is the story of a married woman caught in the dilemma between remaining faithful to a man who treats her cruelly and having an affair with a violinist who adores her. The violinist, ironically, was introduced to the woman by her husband at a soirée during which Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata (No. 9, Op. 47) was performed. Tolstoy describes in detail the effect the music had on those present. Among other observations, the author believes music generally to be “one of the main intermediaries for encouraging adultery in our society.” At any rate, the husband returns unexpectedly early from a business trip several days later to find his wife and the violinist in passionate embrace. The “poor, exhausted, beaten, sorrow-worn woman” is thereupon murdered. Janáček’s compassion for this unfortunate woman found its way into artistic expression through his First String Quartet, which was given its premiere by the famed Bohemian Quartet on October 24, 1924 in Prague.

In preparing to write the quartet, Janáček annotated a copy of Tolstoy’s work with specific ideas about the relationship between the sonata and the novella. However, the composer made no effort to trace any kind of dramatic program in his quartet. Rather, it presents and expands emotional and psychological states to which various musico-dramatic touches have been added. To some listeners, the opening of the third movement of Janáček’s quartet is a veiled quote from the slow movement of Beethoven’s sonata.

One might assign specific themes to characters or moods, if one wishes, but it is the overall sense of theatre that makes the quartet such a compelling work. Not one of its four movements is in sonata form. Instead, motifs and rhythmic devices are presented, repeated, juxtaposed and combined in constantly changing tempos and metres. In a work lasting less than twenty minutes in performance, there are no fewer than 61 changes of tempo and 25 changes of metre. Over and above all this we find liberal use of such special effects as sul ponticello (playing on the bridge of the instrument, which produces an eerie, ghostly sound), harmonics and ostinatos in addition to more traditional effects like trills, pizzicatos and muted passages.

Robert Smetana, in his introduction to the score published by Hudebni Matice, recommends that we approach this music “as a passionate confession of the principle and power of emotional relations between man and woman in life and in art, to grasp the music not as decor, but as an integral part of life, a part that is often excessively painful, and to hear in it the intense personal participation of the composer.”

Felix Mendelssohn: String Quartet no. 2 in A minor, Op. 13

Three great composers wrote a great string quartet in A minor within just a few years of each other in the early nineteenth century: Beethoven (Op. 132), Schubert (No. 13, Op. 29; D 804) and Mendelssohn. But while Beethoven’s and Schubert’s quartets are among their last compositions, composed in 1824-1825, Mendelssohn’s is the work of a young man who has not even reached his maturity. He was eighteen when he wrote it. Although it is assigned No. 2, it was actually his first (not counting an even earlier, unnumbered composition), composed in 1827 but it was published second. The first performance was given in Paris on February 14, 1832.

Listeners will easily note a number of special features of this quartet. First and foremost, it is an astonishingly mature work for an eighteen-year-old. A composer twice or three times Mendelssohn’s age would have been proud to offer it as his own. But then, Mendelssohn had been writing music on this level at an even earlier age – the Octet and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream come readily to mind.

Mendelssohn’s quartet opens and closes in A major, which normally would lead us to call it a quartet “in A major.” But those opening and closing passages are only a prologue and epilogue framing the main body of a work in A minor (the second movement alone is in a different key). It is difficult to think of another multi-movement work that behaves like this.

Then there is the powerful influence of Beethoven’s late quartets which Mendelssohn obviously knew, even though they had been written but a few years earlier. This influence can be seen in the advanced harmonic language, tightly knit counterpoint, recitative passages and use of motivic fragments for developmental purposes. Another Beethovenian device is the use of a three-word question as the source of inspiration. The last movement of Beethoven’s quartet Op.135 has as its motto “Muss es sein?” (Must it be?). For Mendelssohn it was “Ist es wahr?” (Is it true?). But while Beethoven’s impetus came from a trivial incident involving payment of a fee, for the youthful Mendelssohn it was something more serious. He was all aflame over a young lady (we’re not sure who), who inspired him to set a song to a short poem, possibly by himself, possibly by a friend named Gustav Droyson (pen name J. N. Voss). “Is it true that you’ll always be waiting for me beneath the leafy path?” runs the opening line.

The quartet begins with a warmly consoling, richly scored, chorale-like passage that gives no hint of the emotional turmoil and contrapuntal displays about to be unleashed. It is the perfect foil. Near the end of this short passage Mendelssohn twice presents the “Ist es wahr?” motif (long-short-long), exactly as it appeared at the beginning of the song. Then a rumble from the viola, a few bars of “scurrying” for all four strings, and we’re off on a deeply troubled journey through a long, sonata-form movement pervaded by the “Ist es wahr?” motif. Its rhythm is everywhere, even if its melodic profile is not. As a further measure of the emotional heat of this movement, the second theme, announced by the first violin, is in E minor, not major, as would be the case in most any other sonata-form movement of the period. Here, incidentally, is one of the few moments where the “Ist es wahr?” rhythm is absent. The development section consists of an intense, at times almost violent working out of the “scurrying” figure and, to no one’s surprise by now, the rhythmic pattern of “Ist es wahr?”.

The spirit of Beethoven is nowhere more pronounced than in the adagio movement, with its soulful, hymnlike opening subject and aura of Innigkeit (inwardness). More Beethovenian influence is seen in the use of fugato (a short passage in fugal style but not a fully developed fugue) and in the highly advanced harmony of the central episode. Perhaps nowhere else did Mendelssohn ascend to such levels of expressive dissonance as he did in this movement.

The main theme of the Intermezzo has a folk-like simplicity to it, gently wistful, as if “smiling through the tears.” The movement’s central episode has the characteristic feathery lightness of touch we associate with the Mendelssohn of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Octet, though even here imitative counterpoint holds sway, even to the point of two different ideas – one lightly tripping, the other lyrical – bounced about simultaneously at one point.

The finale begins with one of Mendelssohn’s most daring and dramatic gestures – the equivalent of a recitative delivered by an impassioned operatic character, sung by the first violin to throbbing accompaniment from the other strings. It is a gesture Mendelssohn may well have learned from the analogous passage in Beethoven’s Ninth or his A-minor quartet (Op. 132). In fact, the similarity in both rhythm and melodic outline is remarkably close to the corresponding passage in Op. 132. Thereafter it returns in varied form three more times interspersed with fresh melodic ideas. The incisive, five-note pattern (three short, two long) that constitute the recitative’s rhythmic hallmark turn up again and again throughout the movement like a kind of musical genetic code. Again, as in the first movement, the second theme is in E minor, not E major.

Mendelssohn saves his greatest surprise for the end. The music seems to be hurtling toward a thrilling conclusion. The fourth recitative passage interrupts the proceedings, and we revert to the tranquil music that opened the quartet nearly half an hour ago. Here Mendelssohn expands that material into a postlude of 25 measures, exactly the length of the song that was the quartet’s raison d’être. It brings a satisfying sense of closure; “Ist es wahr?” has come full circle.

Programme notes by Robert Markow, 2012.

Tine Thing Helseth: program notes

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Tine Thing HelsethTine Thing Helseth, trumpet
Havard Gimse, piano

Next Generation Series at The Vancouver Playhouse
Sunday, February 5, 2012

Bohuslav Martinů: Sonatina for Trumpet and Piano
Bohuslav Martinů followed in the footsteps of his compatriots Dvořák, Smetana, Janáček and Suk in the incorporation of elements from Bohemian and Moravian folk music into his works. Martinů was driven from his homeland by Nazi oppression to settle in America and never returned to his native country. He arrived in New York in 1941 and found himself disoriented, unknown, and barely able to cope with the new language. Salvation came in the person of conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who offered Martinů a commission for a major work (his First Symphony) to be premiered by the Boston Symphony.

Martinů was an enormously prolific composer, particularly in the realm of chamber music. He left multiple examples of everything from duos to nonets with a single exception (no octets). The Sonatina for Trumpet and Piano dates from January of 1956 while Martinů was living in the Great Northern Hotel on 57th Street in New York and commuting to Philadelphia to teach at the Curtis Institute. This seven-minute, one-movement, tuneful work is free in form and employs elements of folk dance, jazz, chorale and neoclassicism.

George Enesco: Légende

Most concertgoers tend to think of Georges Enesco (the commonly Gallicized form of George Enescu) as the composer of a famous Romanian Rhapsody (actually, he wrote two) and leave it at that. However, Romania’s most outstanding composer was also one of the twentieth century’s most unfairly neglected musical geniuses. He was a virtuoso violinist, a conductor, a teacher, an administrator, and a tireless champion of music in Romania. His centenary in 1981 went largely ignored outside his native country, but so highly respected is he in Romania that there is a festival, a museum, a composer’s prize, a violin competition, a symphony orchestra and even a town (his birthplace) named after him.

Enesco wrote the Légende in 1906 as a competition piece for students at the Paris Conservatoire and dedicated it to Merri Franquin, head of the trumpet department there. (Enesco also wrote, about the same time, competition pieces for flute, viola and harp.) According to Noel Malcolm, in his biography of the composer, the Légende “awakened an interest on Enseco’s part in the trumpet’s powers of soft and muted evocative expression.” The title suggests something along the lines of a ballad or rhapsody – a story told in music, though anything more specific is left to the listener’s own powers of imagination. The trumpet is treated in the three slower, reflective sections in a lyrical manner almost as if it were a violin, while virtuosity is demanded in the two brief intervening passages.

Rolf Wallin: Here

Born in Oslo, September 7, 1957; now living in Oslo.

Rolf Wallin – teacher, music critic, essayist, trumpet player and above all composer – is one of the leading figures on Norway’s contemporary music scene. He was the first composer in residence with the Oslo Philharmonic (2006-07), which performed one of his most important works, Act, on a European tour. When Oslo’s new opera house opened in April of 2008, Wallin’s dance piece Urban Bestiary was the first work to be heard there. Music inspired by computer systems, mathematical formulae like fractals, “crystal chord” technique (chords based on a 3D harmonic model in which three main intervals are constantly repeated) and human breathing, brain wave and speech patterns have played roles in his music, all tempered by a free musical intuition. Ligeti, Xenakis, Stockhausen and Berio are often cited as the composers who have influenced Wallin’s musical thinking.

Here is a four-minute piece composed for Tine Thing Helseth, who gave the first performance in Münster, Germany on February 6, 2011. On February 18 of that year she gave the American premiere in Carnegie Hall; tonight she gives the Canadian premiere.

Here (obviously intended as a homonym for hear) refers to the concert hall experience where the constant barrage of technological assaults on our attention are momentarily put in abeyance while we listen to music (Wallin calls attention “an endangered species of our times.”) – sanctuaries where the mind is active but not distracted,” as Jacob Cooper put it in his Carnegie Hall notes last year. Wallin writes that “this little piece is made in gratitude for these sanctuaries, and it is made in gratitude for amazing musicians like Tine Thing Helseth, who devote their lives to making our attention blossom.” Cooper adds that Here “presents a series of phrases, each divided by considerable rest as if to encourage a meditative state. The phrases themselves are usually characterized by a certain focus as well, with grace notes and quick turns presenting a halo around one or two central pitches.”

Paul Hindemith, Trumpet Sonata, Op. 137

No major composer has written more sonatas for a greater variety of instruments than Paul Hindemith. There are sonatas for all the expected ones – piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, etc., but also for instruments that often get slighted – English horn, trombone, bassoon, saxophone, double bass and tuba. All of these are with piano.

Hindemith wrote the Trumpet Sonata in 1939, a year that also saw the birth of sonatas for violin, viola, clarinet and horn. Hindemith was not Jewish, but by now he was living in Switzerland, exiled from his native Germany because of pressure from the Nazi Party attempting to regulate what was acceptable and unacceptable music. In 1939, Germany annexed Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland. Perhaps as a reflection of these ominous events, Hindemith’s Trumpet Sonata took on a rather somber hue. Hindemith held this sonata in high esteem. To a friend he wrote that “it is maybe the best thing I have succeeded in doing in recent times.”

The sonata opens with the trumpet proclaiming a sturdy theme over piano figuration to the performance direction mit Kraft (with strength). Two more ideas are presented, with the movement’s eventual form set out in the neatly symmetrical arrangement of A-B-C-A-C-B-A. The second movement has a quirky, whimsical air to it, somewhat like a comical march. The last movement is the longest and the sonata’s center of emotional gravity. Entitled Trauermusik (music of mourning), it takes the trumpet, so often used as an instrument of brilliance and pomp and celebration, on a troubled, meditative journey that culminates in the somber intoning of the chorale-theme Alle Menschen müssen sterben (all men must die), which Bach had set as a chorale-prelude (BWV 643).

Edvard Grieg: Haugtussa, Op. 67

As Grieg had studied in Leipzig, it is hardly surprising that he was at ease in following the romantic Lied tradition as manifested in Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms. He wrote more than 180 songs, published and unpublished, making them one of the most significant genres in his catalogue. They are largely unknown outside his native Norway, owing largely to the language barrier, but nearly all are imbued with the characteristics that have endeared his far better known works to the public, including engaging melodies, distinctive Norwegian modal inflections and the rhythms of native folk dances. Grieg scholar Robert Matthew-Walker claims that Haugtussa is “Grieg’s masterpiece. [It is] certainly one of the greatest song-cycles for the female voice ever written, revealing the composer at the very height of his powers.” (Tine Thing Helseth performs the cycle on trumpet with the vocal line virtually untouched.)

Haugtussa (The Mountain-Maid) dates from 1895, the year Arne Garborg’s eponymous verse-novel was published. It made a deep impression on the composer, who composed twenty songs (some incomplete) set to Haugtussa texts, eight of which went into the cycle at hand. Although we hear no words tonight, the trumpet nevertheless conveys the essence of the poems. The first song is something of a siren call (the title Det syng is variously translated as “singing” and “enticement”), luring the listener into the mountain-maid’s realm. The second song gives a physical description of the girl – fair, young, slender, with deep grey eyes and an impassive, dreamy manner. “Blueberry Slope” is a frisky, exuberant portrait of outdoor life, each of its five stanzas devoted to a different subject: berries, a bear, a fox, a wolf, and, what is really on the singer’s mind, “that nice boy from over by Skare-Brôte.” She meets him in “The Encounter,” which quickly leads to “Love.” The “Kids’ Dance” is the only song besides “Blueberry Slope” with a frivolous or light-hearted tone, serving as a sort of interlude within the serious business of having a love affair. But the affair is a short one, for already in the following song the mountain-maid has been jilted. In the final song she pours out her heart’s sorrow to a babbling brook.

Grieg: three songs transcribed for piano

Grieg made two sets of his own song transcriptions, one in 1884 (Op. 41) and one in 1890 (Op. 52), six in each. Eleanor Bailie, in her volume on Grieg’s piano music, remarks that “each transcription takes the form of variations on the melody of the song – the theme set out in simple form, much as in the original, and then embellished, sometimes elaborately, in varied accompaniments. … Grieg undoubtedly loved these songs, and, sensitive to mood and atmosphere as he was, these poems and their melodies evoked some of his most rapt piano music.”

The “Cradle Song” has a rather somber cast to it, but its gentle rocking rhythm provides the necessary sleep-inducing agent. “A Mother’s Grief,” set to the same rocking rhythm, is even more doleful in mood and leaner in texture, as its original text concerns a mother mourning the death of her infant son. “The Poet’s Heart,” on the other hand, is, in typically Romantic fashion, a turbulent affair set to a poem of Hans Christian Andersen. Surging waves of sound from the piano underscore the imagery of the text, whose theme is the misunderstood poet as a reflection of nature and which includes numerous action words like “swell,” “flaming,” “longing” and “struggle.”

Manuel de Falla: Siete canciones populares españolas

Manuel de Falla was one of the most Spanish of all Spanish composers. He regarded the promotion of Spanish music as his mission in life, and his Siete canciones populares españoles (Seven Spanish Folkongs) are just one of the many manifestations of this purpose. The texts are anonymous, but the tunes have been traced to actual popular songs from all over Spain. De Falla’s treatment of the songs ranges from free composition to slight alteration to nearly untouched originals.

Written in 1914-1915 for voice and piano, the Seven Spanish Folksongs were first heard in Madrid sung by Luisa Vela with the composer at the piano on January 14, 1915. The songs were later orchestrated by the composer’s friend Ernesto Halffter in 1938-1945 and by Luciano Berio in 1978. Additionally there exist arrangements for violin (by the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski in 1924), viola and cello (by Maurice Marechal) replacing the voice, in which form the songs are known as Suite populaire espagnole. Tonight we hear still another version, with trumpet replacing the voice.

“El paño moruno” (The Moorish cloth) is set to a pulsating Moorish rhythm from the southeastern province of Murcia. The singer (or trumpet player) deplores the stain on the lovely cloth that will cause its selling price to plummet.

“Seguidilla murciana” is also inspired by Murcia, A seguidilla is a moderately fast dance in triple meter. The song’s text begins with the famous adage, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

In “Asturiana” a weeping woman seeks consolation under a pine tree, which itself breaks into tears out of compassion. The melody comes from Asturias, in Spain’s far north.

From Aragon, another northern province, comes a “Jota” in rapid triple meter about two lovers in a clandestine relationship.

“Nana” is a lullaby from the southernmost province of Andalusia, whose songs have a decidedly oriental cast.

“Cancion” (song) is another love song, this one about eyes with traitorous qualities.

“Polo” is a wailing lament from Andalusia over the heartache of unrequited love. The fiery flamenco idiom will be familiar to those who know de Falla’s famous ballet score The Three-Cornered Hat.

Tine Thing Helseth

Program Notes

Bohuslav Martinů: Sonatina for Trumpet and Piano

Bohuslav Martinů followed in the footsteps of his compatriots Dvořák, Smetana, Janáček and Suk in the incorporation of elements from Bohemian and Moravian folk music into his works. Martinů was driven from his homeland by Nazi oppression to settle in America and never returned to his native country. He arrived in New York in 1941 and found himself disoriented, unknown, and barely able to cope with the new language. Salvation came in the person of conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who offered Martinů a commission for a major work (his First Symphony) to be premiered by the Boston Symphony.

Martinů was an enormously prolific composer, particularly in the realm of chamber music. He left multiple examples of everything from duos to nonets with a single exception (no octets). The Sonatina for Trumpet and Piano dates from January of 1956 while Martinů was living in the Great Northern Hotel on 57th Street in New York and commuting to Philadelphia to teach at the Curtis Institute. This seven-minute, one-movement, tuneful work is free in form and employs elements of folk dance, jazz, chorale and neoclassicism.

George Enesco: Légende

Most concertgoers tend to think of Georges Enesco (the commonly Gallicized form of George Enescu) as the composer of a famous Romanian Rhapsody (actually, he wrote two) and leave it at that. However, Romania’s most outstanding composer was also one of the twentieth century’s most unfairly neglected musical geniuses. He was a virtuoso violinist, a conductor, a teacher, an administrator, and a tireless champion of music in Romania. His centenary in 1981 went largely ignored outside his native country, but so highly respected is he in Romania that there is a festival, a museum, a composer’s prize, a violin competition, a symphony orchestra and even a town (his birthplace) named after him.

Enesco wrote the Légende in 1906 as a competition piece for students at the Paris Conservatoire and dedicated it to Merri Franquin, head of the trumpet department there. (Enesco also wrote, about the same time, competition pieces for flute, viola and harp.) According to Noel Malcolm, in his biography of the composer, the Légende “awakened an interest on Enseco’s part in the trumpet’s powers of soft and muted evocative expression.” The title suggests something along the lines of a ballad or rhapsody – a story told in music, though anything more specific is left to the listener’s own powers of imagination. The trumpet is treated in the three slower, reflective sections in a lyrical manner almost as if it were a violin, while virtuosity is demanded in the two brief intervening passages.

Rolf Wallin: Here

Born in Oslo, September 7, 1957; now living in Oslo.

Rolf Wallin – teacher, music critic, essayist, trumpet player and above all composer – is one of the leading figures on Norway’s contemporary music scene. He was the first composer in residence with the Oslo Philharmonic (2006-07), which performed one of his most important works, Act, on a European tour. When Oslo’s new opera house opened in April of 2008, Wallin’s dance piece Urban Bestiary was the first work to be heard there. Music inspired by computer systems, mathematical formulae like fractals, “crystal chord” technique (chords based on a 3D harmonic model in which three main intervals are constantly repeated) and human breathing, brain wave and speech patterns have played roles in his music, all tempered by a free musical intuition. Ligeti, Xenakis, Stockhausen and Berio are often cited as the composers who have influenced Wallin’s musical thinking.

Here is a four-minute piece composed for Tine Thing Helseth, who gave the first performance in Münster, Germany on February 6, 2011. On February 18 of that year she gave the American premiere in Carnegie Hall; tonight she gives the Canadian premiere.

Here (obviously intended as a homonym for hear) refers to the concert hall experience where the constant barrage of technological assaults on our attention are momentarily put in abeyance while we listen to music (Wallin calls attention “an endangered species of our times.”) – sanctuaries where the mind is active but not distracted,” as Jacob Cooper put it in his Carnegie Hall notes last year. Wallin writes that “this little piece is made in gratitude for these sanctuaries, and it is made in gratitude for amazing musicians like Tine Thing Helseth, who devote their lives to making our attention blossom.” Cooper adds that Here “presents a series of phrases, each divided by considerable rest as if to encourage a meditative state. The phrases themselves are usually characterized by a certain focus as well, with grace notes and quick turns presenting a halo around one or two central pitches.”

Paul Hindemith, Trumpet Sonata, Op. 137

No major composer has written more sonatas for a greater variety of instruments than Paul Hindemith. There are sonatas for all the expected ones – piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, etc., but also for instruments that often get slighted – English horn, trombone, bassoon, saxophone, double bass and tuba. All of these are with piano.

Hindemith wrote the Trumpet Sonata in 1939, a year that also saw the birth of sonatas for violin, viola, clarinet and horn. Hindemith was not Jewish, but by now he was living in Switzerland, exiled from his native Germany because of pressure from the Nazi Party attempting to regulate what was acceptable and unacceptable music. In 1939, Germany annexed Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland. Perhaps as a reflection of these ominous events, Hindemith’s Trumpet Sonata took on a rather somber hue. Hindemith held this sonata in high esteem. To a friend he wrote that “it is maybe the best thing I have succeeded in doing in recent times.”

The sonata opens with the trumpet proclaiming a sturdy theme over piano figuration to the performance direction mit Kraft (with strength). Two more ideas are presented, with the movement’s eventual form set out in the neatly symmetrical arrangement of A-B-C-A-C-B-A. The second movement has a quirky, whimsical air to it, somewhat like a comical march. The last movement is the longest and the sonata’s center of emotional gravity. Entitled Trauermusik (music of mourning), it takes the trumpet, so often used as an instrument of brilliance and pomp and celebration, on a troubled, meditative journey that culminates in the somber intoning of the chorale-theme Alle Menschen müssen sterben (all men must die), which Bach had set as a chorale-prelude (BWV 643).



Edvard Grieg: Haugtussa, Op. 67

As Grieg had studied in Leipzig, it is hardly surprising that he was at ease in following the romantic Lied tradition as manifested in Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms. He wrote more than 180 songs, published and unpublished, making them one of the most significant genres in his catalogue. They are largely unknown outside his native Norway, owing largely to the language barrier, but nearly all are imbued with the characteristics that have endeared his far better known works to the public, including engaging melodies, distinctive Norwegian modal inflections and the rhythms of native folk dances. Grieg scholar Robert Matthew-Walker claims that Haugtussa is “Grieg’s masterpiece. [It is] certainly one of the greatest song-cycles for the female voice ever written, revealing the composer at the very height of his powers.” (Tine Thing Helseth performs the cycle on trumpet with the vocal line virtually untouched.)

Haugtussa (The Mountain-Maid) dates from 1895, the year Arne Garborg’s eponymous verse-novel was published. It made a deep impression on the composer, who composed twenty songs (some incomplete) set to Haugtussa texts, eight of which went into the cycle at hand. Although we hear no words tonight, the trumpet nevertheless conveys the essence of the poems. The first song is something of a siren call (the title Det syng is variously translated as “singing” and “enticement”), luring the listener into the mountain-maid’s realm. The second song gives a physical description of the girl – fair, young, slender, with deep grey eyes and an impassive, dreamy manner. “Blueberry Slope” is a frisky, exuberant portrait of outdoor life, each of its five stanzas devoted to a different subject: berries, a bear, a fox, a wolf, and, what is really on the singer’s mind, “that nice boy from over by Skare-Brôte.” She meets him in “The Encounter,” which quickly leads to “Love.” The “Kids’ Dance” is the only song besides “Blueberry Slope” with a frivolous or light-hearted tone, serving as a sort of interlude within the serious business of having a love affair. But the affair is a short one, for already in the following song the mountain-maid has been jilted. In the final song she pours out her heart’s sorrow to a babbling brook.

Grieg: three songs transcribed for piano

Grieg made two sets of his own song transcriptions, one in 1884 (Op. 41) and one in 1890 (Op. 52), six in each. Eleanor Bailie, in her volume on Grieg’s piano music, remarks that “each transcription takes the form of variations on the melody of the song – the theme set out in simple form, much as in the original, and then embellished, sometimes elaborately, in varied accompaniments. … Grieg undoubtedly loved these songs, and, sensitive to mood and atmosphere as he was, these poems and their melodies evoked some of his most rapt piano music.”

The “Cradle Song” has a rather somber cast to it, but its gentle rocking rhythm provides the necessary sleep-inducing agent. “A Mother’s Grief,” set to the same rocking rhythm, is even more doleful in mood and leaner in texture, as its original text concerns a mother mourning the death of her infant son. “The Poet’s Heart,” on the other hand, is, in typically Romantic fashion, a turbulent affair set to a poem of Hans Christian Andersen. Surging waves of sound from the piano underscore the imagery of the text, whose theme is the misunderstood poet as a reflection of nature and which includes numerous action words like “swell,” “flaming,” “longing” and “struggle.”

Manuel de Falla: Siete canciones populares españolas

Manuel de Falla was one of the most Spanish of all Spanish composers. He regarded the promotion of Spanish music as his mission in life, and his Siete canciones populares españoles (Seven Spanish Folkongs) are just one of the many manifestations of this purpose. The texts are anonymous, but the tunes have been traced to actual popular songs from all over Spain. De Falla’s treatment of the songs ranges from free composition to slight alteration to nearly untouched originals.

Written in 1914-1915 for voice and piano, the Seven Spanish Folksongs were first heard in Madrid sung by Luisa Vela with the composer at the piano on January 14, 1915. The songs were later orchestrated by the composer’s friend Ernesto Halffter in 1938-1945 and by Luciano Berio in 1978. Additionally there exist arrangements for violin (by the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski in 1924), viola and cello (by Maurice Marechal) replacing the voice, in which form the songs are known as Suite populaire espagnole. Tonight we hear still another version, with trumpet replacing the voice.

“El paño moruno” (The Moorish cloth) is set to a pulsating Moorish rhythm from the southeastern province of Murcia. The singer (or trumpet player) deplores the stain on the lovely cloth that will cause its selling price to plummet.

“Seguidilla murciana” is also inspired by Murcia, A seguidilla is a moderately fast dance in triple meter. The song’s text begins with the famous adage, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

In “Asturiana” a weeping woman seeks consolation under a pine tree, which itself breaks into tears out of compassion. The melody comes from Asturias, in Spain’s far north.

From Aragon, another northern province, comes a “Jota” in rapid triple meter about two lovers in a clandestine relationship.

“Nana” is a lullaby from the southernmost province of Andalusia, whose songs have a decidedly oriental cast.

“Cancion” (song) is another love song, this one about eyes with traitorous qualities.

“Polo” is a wailing lament from Andalusia over the heartache of unrequited love. The fiery flamenco idiom will be familiar to those who know de Falla’s famous ballet score The Three-Cornered Hat.

George Li: program notes

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George LiLi at piano
Programme Notes
Performance: Vancouver Playhouse, Sunday, December 4, 2011

Carl Czerny
Variations on a Theme by Rode, Op. 33 (“La Ricordanza”)

Most concertgoers know Carl Czerny only as the early nineteenth-century pedagogue who churned out endless dull exercises that continue to be inflicted upon piano students this day. True, he did compose a tremendous amount – 861 opus numbers and an even greater amount published without opus numbers – and true, the exercises are dull. But Czerny composed much else that is decidedly not dull.

Unlike his teacher Beethoven, and unlike his star pupil Franz Liszt, Czerny was no innovator, but within the parameters of his time much of his music is eminently pleasing, charming, tasteful and sensitively written. He wrote voluminously in nearly every known form and genre of the time: sonatas, fantasias, theme and variation sets, piano concertos, symphonies, sacred choral music, string quartets and much other chamber music. His most frequently recorded composition would seem to be an Andante and Pollaca for horn and piano, with the Variations on this afternoon’s program not far behind.

The variation form and its close cousin the fantasia were immensely popular in the early nineteenth century. Beethoven wrote some twenty sets of variations for piano. Czerny mined dozens of operas, symphonies, overtures, oratorios and ballets by Beethoven, Bellini, Cherubini, Donizetti, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, Weber and others for his variation sets and fantasias. From the famous French violinist Pierre Rode (1774-1830) he borrowed the tune “La Ricordanza” and set it as a theme with five variations for solo piano. A stately one precedes the final and most brilliant variation, which in turn is followed by a return to the theme for a quiet closing.

Arnold Schoenberg
Sechs kleine Klavierstücke (Six Little Piano Pieces), Op. 19

Schoenberg, unlike the other composers represented on this program, was not a keyboard virtuoso. Nevertheless, he turned to the piano as a medium of experimentation on more than one occasion. One such occasion came in 1909, when he produced his first atonal composition, the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11.

Essentially what Schoenberg achieved in these pieces was the emancipation of dissonance from its ties to traditional harmony. A “dissonant” note or chord no longer had any contextual relationship to surrounding pitches; it existed in and of itself. It is traditional to view these pieces as a milestone, a break with the past, a giant step forward in the development of music history. Yet Schoenberg always regarded this music as an absolutely logical continuation of the past, something “distinctly a product of evolution, and no more revolutionary than any other development in the history of music.”

Schoenberg’s next piano music, Op. 19, appeared in 1911. But whereas the three pieces of Op. 11 require about a quarter of an hour to perform, the six pieces of Op. 19 require barely five minutes. “A novel in a sigh” was the expression coined for such pieces.

Continuing where he left off in Op. 11, Schoenberg made the non-recurrence of thematic material the operating principle in Op. 19. The dynamic level is also telescoped, with emphasis on the softer end of the spectrum. And as David Burge points out, the performance direction mit sehr zartem Ausdruck (with very delicate expression) three bars before the end of the last piece “might well serve as an overall injunction for performance of the entire set.”

The first five pieces were written in February of 1911, possibly all in a single day. Microcosmic wisps of sound flutter about in No. 1, which is played nearly all pianissimo (very quiet). No. 2 features a single interval, the major third, repeated playfully (or obsessively, if that is your response) throughout. The third is notable for its opening bars in which the right hand plays forte (loud), the left hand piano (soft or quiet). No. 4 opens in a mood of frolic, but comes to a crashing end just twenty seconds later in brutally hammered fortissimo chords (very loud). Not even Schoenberg was immune to the waltz – it seems to run in the veins of nearly all Viennese; No. 5 suggests its characteristic rhythmic pattern.

The final piece was written in June, one month after Schoenberg accompanied Mahler to his grave. Bell-like sonorities evoke the remote, pastoral landscapes Mahler conjured up in his symphonies. Paolo Petazzi sees this haunting music as “motionless planes of sound set against one another [to] create a chill, insubstantial timbre which hovers on the edge of silence, as if pointing to a dimension the ear cannot perceive.”

Ludwig van Beethoven
Sonata no. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 (“Appassionata”)

The “Appassionata” Sonata, composed in 1804-06, remains one of Beethoven’s greatest and most frequently heard works in any medium. The title helps, of course. It does have passion – to a generous degree. But it has much more than that. Czerny regarded the sonata as “the most perfect carrying out of a mighty and colossal plan.” As with so many of Beethoven’s compositions, the title was affixed not by the composer but by a publisher, in this case the Hamburg firm of Cranz, which brought out the sonata in a duet version in 1838. Strange as it may seem today, Czerny thought that an earlier Beethoven sonata ought to bear the title “Appassionata”, Op. 7 in E flat, a relatively tame work compared to Op. 57.

The opening movement is largely music of sound and fury, defined above all by rhythmic insistence. Both the defiantly rising principal subject (opening measures) and the lyrical, rising-and-falling second subject share a similar rhythmic pattern (long-short-long; long-short long), and both are built from arpeggios. “How wondrous that the composer can establish such diverse moods with the same material,” remarks pianist Anton Kuerti, “and especially that he can create such noble tranquility with this bumpy rhythm.” Additionally, there is a rhythmic motto appearing often throughout the movement that corresponds exactly to that of the opening of the Fifth Symphony (da-da-da-daahh).

The second movement offers an oasis of tranquility and repose. It is a theme-and-variations movement, built, like the second movement of the Seventh Symphony, more from a harmonic progression than from a melody. Each of the three variations employs increasingly rapid note values (eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds). Following is a small coda that disintegrates into a mysterious chord, which, as if jolted with an electric shock, reenergizes itself and launches into the finale.

This concluding movement, in sonata form like the first, is one of the most demonic things Beethoven ever wrote, a musical juggernaut of relentless forward momentum and almost frightening power. To Kuerti, “the accompaniment is the very substance of the music; its perpetuum mobile pervades all. It is quiet but chilling, like the waves in the middle of the ocean.  Over this rises a series of desolate, penetrating cries…” Tension builds to almost unbearable levels, finally bursting its bonds in the presto coda, which roars to an apocalyptic conclusion.

Mauric Ravel
Oiseaux tristes
Alborada del gracioso

In 1904-05, Ravel composed a set of five piano pieces collectively entitled Miroirs, which he claimed “marked a change in my harmonic development great enough to disconcert even those most accustomed to my style up to that point.” “Oiseaux tristes” (Sad Birds) is the second of the collection, “Alborada del gracioso” is the fourth. Each of the five Miroirs was dedicated to a different friend or colleague. “Oiseaux tristes” went to the famous Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, who gave the first performance of the entire set in 1906. Ravel wrote “in this work, I evoke birds engrossed in the torpor of a dark forest during the peak hours of summer heat.”

“Alborada del gracioso” is one of Ravel’s most brilliant and effective evocations of Spain, richly informed with coloristic detail, evocative images, percussive effects and pyrotechnical displays (particularly the rapidly repeated notes played at all-but-impossible speeds). The title resists direct translation; it implies something along the lines of a court jester singing to his ladylove at dawn, and perhaps dancing a bit as well. Ravel later orchestrated the work, in which form it is often heard at symphony concerts.

The ten-minute work is laid out in three connected sections. The brilliant outer parts are characterized by alternating patterns of vibrant rhythms set to the clack of simulated castanets and raucous strumming of a guitar. Boston Symphony annotator Steven Ledbetter refers to this music as “a glorious racket. As a real ‘dawn song,’ the work would be catastrophic; in addition to waking the lovers, it would arouse the entire neighborhood.” The somewhat meditative central section evokes more the clownish aspect of the work’s title.

Franz Liszt
Waldesrauschen
Gnomenreigen
Consolation no. 3 in D flat major
Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2

In 2009 it was Mendelssohn. In 2010, Chopin and Schumann. This year, another giant from the annals of the world’s greatest composer-pianists, Franz Liszt, takes the spotlight on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Liszt was the quintessential figure of nineteenth-century musical Romanticism. His long life encompassed any number of emotional upheavals, quasi-mystical religious experiences, a visit from the Pope, an attempted murder, a cancelled marriage at the eleventh hour, enough love affairs (including with royalty) for any ten normal men, at least half a dozen occupations, visionary ideas of Music of the Future, a compulsion to be different (he was the first to give a complete solo recital without sharing the stage with other artists), an all-consuming sense of destiny, pianistic powers beyond belief, and a mind of near-genius proportions. Liszt was a biographer’s dream.

In 1848 Liszt abandoned his career as a spectacular touring piano virtuoso to settle in Weimar as a conductor. Concurrently, his output for piano slowed considerably, but he did produce two final etudes in 1862-1863. Formally known as Two Concert Etudes, they are more commonly referred to by their poetic subtitles, which, incidentally, do not appear on the autograph manuscript. Both are dedicated to Liszt’s pupil Dionys Prunker.

In Waldesrauschen (Forest Murmurs), the trees rustle almost continuously as portrayed in the sextuplet figuration that alternates from right hand to left while the other hand spins out a single tranquil melody dolce con grazia (sweetly and gracefully). This music comes from the romantic world of the mysterious, dimly-lit forest (Schumann’s Waldszenen appeared just fifteen years earlier, and Wagner’s “Forest Murmurs” in the opera Siegfried were just a few years down the road), yet it is nevertheless highly chromatic. As Ben Arnold points out, there are no fewer than ten changes of key within its 97 measures.

While Waldesrauschen is a study in lyricism and tranquility, Gnomenreigen (Round Dance of the Gnomes) glitters and sparkles. Its spiritual ancestors are the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the “Queen Mab” Scherzo from Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliet. “One of Liszt’s cleverest and most facetious works,” claims Arnold.

The six Consolations were published as a group in 1850 (all but No. 5 were composed in 1848). “Their reflective, self-communing character reveals a new and much more thoughtful Liszt,” writes Liszt scholar Alan Walker. The title has two possible derivations, both poetic. Most scholars, including Walker, attribute it to a collection of poems by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the Consolations of 1830. Another possibility is Lamartine’s poem “Une larme, ou consolation.”  In either case, a quality of melancholy and introspection permeates the music, as it does the poems (“music tinged with a secret sorrow,” as Walker writes). No. 3, marked Lento placido, is the longest, probably the best known, and the one closest in style to Chopin nocturnes – comparison with the one in the same key, D flat major (Op. 27, No. 2) is almost inevitable.

Liszt was captivated by Hungarian gypsy music all his life, right from childhood. He collected melodies he heard played at campsites and other locations. His writings are peppered with references to them and their music, and he even wrote a 450-page treatise on the subject, published in 1859. Liszt was mistaken in equating “gypsy” music with that of the Hungarian Magyars, as research by Bartók, Kodály and others has proven. The themes he used actually came from “urban” sources, mostly popular tunes recently composed. The gypsy flavor derives from use of the so-called “gypsy scale,” sectional structure punctuated by sudden breaks, abrupt transitions, and a freely improvisatory style. Contrast and gathering momentum are the principal shaping forces of this music.

The nineteen rhapsodies were composed across a span of more than four decades. No. 2, by far the most popular, comes from 1847. Thereafter came arrangements, rearrangements and disarrangements for everything from simplified versions for young piano students to full orchestra, and in everything from Bugs Bunny cartoons to feature films (100 Men and a Girl).

No. 2, like many of the Rhapsodies, begins with a slow introduction leading into an Andante mesto, which features a lush, passionate theme. The second main part is the friska, which begins quietly and gradually builds in speed, texture and volume.

Programme notes by Robert Markow, 2011.

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