Boris Giltburg: Notes on the Program
“Virtuosity in service to the sublime”
In today’s program, we are invited to explore the diverse ways in which the ordinary is made extraordinary by three distinctly different, yet similarly virtuoso composers. From 1820s Vienna to pre-Revolution Russia: Listen how pianistic fireworks transform the mundane into magic.
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, op. 110
“[Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas] are completely at ease with themselves, reflecting not the struggles of a creative genius trying to unfetter himself from all convention, but the poetic utterances of a composer who has gone so far ahead of us that one cannot but feel awe facing these inimitable musical worlds, and gratitude at having been granted access to them.”
(Boris Giltburg on opp. 109, 110 and 111)
By the time of composing the sonata we hear today (it was commissioned in 1820 and finally completed in 1822), Beethoven was famous all over Europe and enthusiastic reception of his work could almost be guaranteed. Yet, life was becoming increasingly complex for the aging, ailing composer. He had persistent health troubles (rheumatic attacks, jaundice) and his deafness forced him to isolate himself from society. He was embroiled in legal struggles over guardianship of his nephew Karl, the sole Beethoven of the next generation, which caused him great distress. It was also a time of enormous social and economic changes: the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte; the establishing of the Congress of Vienna; the rise of Germanic pride and steps towards a unified Germany; the rise of industrialization. In short, just like life in 2023, life two hundred years ago was a frustrating mix of anxiety, uncertainty, sadness, existential angst and a yearning to overcome and transcend the mundane.
As with many of his works, Beethoven’s op. 110 can be seen as a hero’s journey – with a beginning, dramatic struggle, and heroic, triumphant conclusion. Where his last works differ from their earlier counterparts, though, is in their textures. Where the early sonatas have an almost symphonic feel, the last sonatas are infused with multiple voices in passionate dialogue and almost “oratorio-like” structure. It is not hard to understand why. At the time of working on op.110, Beethoven was concurrently working on two other dramatic, large scale choral and orchestral works, the Missa Solemnis and the final movement of the Ninth Symphony!
Listen to the very expressive, singing opening motif and marvel at the order and beauty Beethoven created out of only six notes (in technical terms, the hexachord, or first six notes of the diatonic scale.)
In the second movement, listen for the rambunctious German folksongs that Beethoven alludes to (even though the music sounds serious and intense) and stand in awe of a talent that can literally spin gold from straw.
In the third movement, keep in mind Beethoven’s veneration of Händel and try to think of an oratorio. It is in this movement where the parallel to dramatic choral work is most audible. In the second half of the movement, a three-voice fugue emerges – of which Beethoven himself remarked: “It is no great feat to write a fugue. I wrote dozens of them in my student years. But the imagination also asserts her claims, and today another, genuine poetic element must be blended with the antique form.”
Whether the composer succeeded in letting the imagination assert her claim? By the time the final note sounds, every listener should be convinced!
Folk song 1 (“Our cat has had kittens”):
In Beethoven’s hands becomes:
Folk song 2 (“I am a slob and so are you”):
in Beethoven’s hands becomes:
LISZT Sonata in B Minor
Liszt sent Robert today a sonata dedicated to him and several other things with a friendly letter to me. But the things are dreadful! [Johannes] Brahms played them for me, but they made me utterly wretched … This is nothing but sheer racket – not a single healthy idea, everything confused, no longer a clear harmonic sequence to be detected there! And now I still have to thank him – it’s really awful.
(Clara Schumann in her diary, 25 May 1854)
“I would willingly forego all the cheering and the enthusiasm if I could produce one truly creative work.”
(Franz Lizst writing to a friend in 1865)
Had the flamboyant, charming, enigmatic, bewilderingly complex, incredibly contradictory and forever approval-seeking Franz Liszt lived in the era of the iPhone, he most certainly would have been a Tik-Tok sensation, his videos earning him hundreds of thousands of hysterical followers. He carefully and purposefully managed his public image in the same way “influencers” do today, by curating his attire, his movement and his gestures in a concerted effort to impress, bedazzle and awe.
Still, he was human, and after almost a decade as a travelling virtuoso, he retired from the concert platform at age 35, settling in Weimar as Kappellmeister Extraordinaire. It was during this time that the Sonata in B minor was born: completed in 1853, published in 1854 – and not performed in public before 1857, due to its daunting and demanding level of difficulty.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Liszt’s now widely admired Sonata is the structure. Depending on how one looks at the score, it can be convincingly argued that it abides by two completely different structures – simultaneously! Viewed from one angle, it can be seen as one giant movement in traditional sonata form (exposition, development, and recapitulation of the themes.) Looking at it from a different angle, one could also argue that it is in fact a four-movement composition, albeit played without a break. Without entering into a long and technical discussion about the structure of the work, we may content ourselves that the piece is a single, unbroken movement, containing a slow central section and a scherzo-like fugato. Binding the sonata together is the process of thematic transformation, that is: changing the character of musical themes while retaining their melodic outline and essential identity.
What are some of these transformations? To quote Donald Gíslason from the Vancouver Recital Society: “The gruff growling theme of repeated notes is transformed, among other things, into a dreamily delicious, Liebestraum-like lyrical melody in the ‘slow movement’ section. The bold theme in double octaves is tamed and brought to heel as the subject of an extended fugato in the following ‘scherzo’. And the chorale-like theme abandons its dignified ‘churchy’ solemnity and acquires major rhetorical muscle, elbowing its way into your eardrums as an important protagonist in the piece. Meanwhile, the slow descending scales that opened the work recur as boundary markers delineating major sectional divisions.”
Still a bit confused? Simply listen and let the rage and the caresses, the struggles and the drama, the lyricism and the elegance of Liszt engulf you. Liszt himself never commented on the “meaning” or “structure” of the Sonata ... which tells me that the music should simply speak for itself.
RACHMANINOFF Thirteen Preludes, op. 32
Say the word “prelude” to a classical piano lover, and the automatic association would most likely be with Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier – 48 preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys. Although the word “prelude” was once understood to be an introductory piece to a larger work, by the mid-1800’s it had evolved into a short, freestanding piece intended for solo keyboard. Chopin’s conception of the prelude as a character piece expressing mood extended into the 20th century with cycles of preludes by numerous composers, including Gershwin, Ginastera, Kabalevsky, Messiaen – and Rachmaninoff!
Although Rachmaninoff, like Bach and Chopin, also completed a cycle of 24 preludes in all the major and minor keys, his was not a straight-forward journey. Composed over the course of 18 years, Rachmaninoff’s preludes reflect a personal journey of development and growth as an artist – starting with the composition of his Prelude in C# minor in 1892, then followed by the 10 preludes of Op.23 in 1903, and finally concluded in 1910 with the thirteen preludes of Op.32 that we’re hearing today.
A quick refresher on Rachmaninoff’s biography: by the summer of 1910, he had established himself as an internationally acclaimed composer, pianist and conductor and had recently completed his first tour of the United States. On January 16, 1910, the second performance of his Piano Concerto no. 3 was conducted by Gustav Mahler in New York – with the composer himself as soloist. Listening to Op. 32, with its extremely bravura, orchestral scope, it helps to keep in mind that Rachmaninoff had completed work on his preludes only a few months after this momentous event.
Despite the fact that 18 years lapsed between the origin of Op. 3 – the C# minor prelude (which Rachmaninoff, much to his own irritation and disdain, was forced by audiences to play as an encore after every performance) and Op. 32, it is evident that Rachmaninoff carefully planned the tonalities of the two “blocks” of Preludes, Opp. 23 and 32, with eight preludes in Op. 32 paired by opposite modes. The chromatic descending theme of the C# minor prelude returns multiple times throughout the last prelude (Op.32 no. 13) – and some scholars go as far as to interpret all 24 preludes as a cycle of “concealed variations” on the famous C# minor prelude.
Technicalities aside, each prelude in Op. 32 presents itself as a unique, varied and carefully differentiated depiction of character, color and mood. In a blog post dedicated to his recording of all 24 Rachmaninoff preludes, Boris Giltburg himself wrote, “In contrast to the full-hearted Romanticism of the first eleven pieces, the 13 Preludes, Op. 32 present a musical world which is much more angular, muscular and edgy. Their underlying spirit is more modern too, with only two preludes possessing the unashamed, unselfconscious Romanticism of Rachmaninoff’s earlier works: the G Major prelude, Op. 32, No. 5, which is as pure and gentle as a summer’s morning, and the G sharp minor prelude, Op. 32, No. 12 – wintry, heartfelt and personal in its mood.”
There is inner turmoil and anguish, storms and outbursts, ambiguous feelings of painful intensity and sparse barrenness – and, when the cycle finally closes with the victorious coda of the thirteenth prelude, it is as if the composer himself is pounding away at the piano, reminding us (in Rachmaninoff’s famous words) that “music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”