Clayton Stephenson: Notes on the Program
“charisma, metamorphosis, nostalgia”
BACH, arr. BUSONI
Chaconne in D minor
“I love Bach because his music is the most formidable elation machine ever engineered.”
-Bernard Chazelle
In the three hundred-plus years since its composition, there are few instruments for which Bach’s Chaconne in D minor has not been arranged. Originally intended for the solo violin, there have since been saxophone, organ, marimba and guitar transcriptions, orchestral arrangements, a transcription for violin and four voices, and not one but two piano transcriptions for only the left hand. Whichever version you’re familiar with or used to prefer … I’m fairly confident that after today’s performance, Busoni’s piano transcription will be near the top of your list. To my ears, and I hope to yours, there is something about his lush, sensuous harmonization that bores straight to the heart of Bach and amplifies its essence more acutely than a new set of B&W speakers.
Composed between 1717 and 1720, purportedly after the unexpected and tragic death of his first wife, Maria Barbara, the Chaconne is the last movement in the Partita in D minor for solo violin (a “partita” being a collective term for a series of dance movements, composed for a single instrument or small ensemble). Although we will never know exactly why Bach composed this piece (it wasn’t performed in a concert setting until 1840), he probably had some pedagogical motivation for it. The grappling with death, the reckoning with loss, the profound sadness and emergence of hope that contemporary audiences like to hear in the Chaconne … are all Romantic attributions quite foreign to the cultural context in which Bach operated – and yet! It is nearly impossible not to be deeply touched by what the music is “trying to say”, and to be awed by how the composer achieves it.
Bach builds a monument on the foundation of a surprisingly simple structure: 64 four-bar loops with a very basic harmonic outline: tonic – dominant – tonic. Over 256 measures, starting in a minor mode, switching to major and eventually returning to minor, he wrestles with the same material, increasing and decreasing tension and texture more deftly than an expert knitter crafting intricate cables.
The question remains: Does a transcription fairly “represent” the original? Would Bach himself have “approved”? Well … this falls in the realm of scholarly debate and severely diminishes the sheer joy of listening. I cannot help but imagine Busoni envisioning Bach at the organ – and in transcribing for the piano, trying to elevate a solo voice to a polyphonic chorus. The end result is exhilaration, amplified.
SCARLATTI
Sonata in E Major, K. 380 (L. 23)
While some writers point to the “total originality”and “spectacular innovations” in the sonatas, the reality is that many of them are boring, generic, or just plain bad. A fact that completist musicians should remember when recording these pieces: someone has to listen to them. But there is also incredible music here. The best works often restored my faith not just in Scarlatti but in humanity.
-Jeffrey Arlo Brown
Remember the year 2020, when sourdough starters were all the rage and Zoom parties were the highlight of our weekends? Well, in the summer of 2020, Jeffrey Arlo Brown, a devoted but bored music journalist wrote an exhaustive article for VAN magazine, ranking all 555 Scarlatti sonatas in order of greatness. His quote above – and the project in its entirety, of course! – should certainly be read with a hefty dose of humor, but when I sat down to really listen to the familiar sounds of the Sonata in E major, K. 380, I couldn’t help but immediately wonder: How does one even begin to “rank” a piece that simply shines and shimmers like a gold nugget?
Let’s forget everything we think we think about Scarlatti (piano recitals, sound-proof exam rooms and sweaty palms, anyone?) and consider not only what his music lead to – the significant expansion of the technical and musical abilities of the harpsichord, and, by extension, the piano – but also where his music came from. The Italian-born Scarlatti spent the bulk of his career in Spain and Portugal, absorbing the vibrant cultures with their Moorish and Arabic influences and translating them into his music. In his myriad sonatas (all in a single movement; all featuring cascading arpeggios, hand-crossing, chromaticism, and percussive effects), Scarlatti does for the keyboard what paprika and saffron does for Spanish cuisine: enlivens, colors, elevates.
The Sonata in E Major, K. 380 was composed in 1738, when Scarlatti was employed as court composer in Madrid. Some refer to it as the “Trumpet Sonata”, as one can easily imagine it as an antiphonal fanfare for two brass choirs – one nearby, and one far away. The exuberance of the opening is followed by a slower movement where lyricism and expression offers a moment of reflection before the A section returns and ends the piece in triumph. There is a sense of ceremonial formality, but at the same time an irresistibly joyful, spirited zestiness that, to my ears, is perfectly summarized by the sales pitch for the sonata’s sheet music on Henle Verlag’s website: “Bach’s Preludes are on holiday at the Mediterranean”. If this doesn’t restore your faith in Scarlatti and humanity, you’d better go bake some sourdough!
BEETHOVEN
Sonata No. 30 in E Major, op. 109
“Whereas the Hammerklavier feels probing, exploring, challenging, the last three [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
Beethoven’s Sonata no. 30 in E major, op.109 was not the last of his piano works – he would still compose two more piano sonatas, the Diabelli Variations and the 6 Bagatelles, op.126 before his death in 1827 – but with op.109, Beethoven starts down a path that would never lead back to the piano sonata model. And, as the incomparable Boris Giltburg so accurately explains: Whereas a monumental earlier work such as the Hammerklavier (op.106) wrestles with the form and clearly presents as a creative struggle, the Beethoven we encounter in op.109 seems to be operating on a new plane. The sonata is no longer an artificial, imposed mold, but becomes simply a vehicle for building and releasing tension, and, regardless of one’s own creeds or leanings, for Beethoven himself certainly contained a sense of the religious and the transcendent.
The structure of the sonata is strikingly different from the “standard model” used in Beethoven’s earlier works. Unlike the Waldstein or the Appasionata, there is no expansive opening movement: conversely, the weight of op.109 falls on the third and final movement, a theme with variations (in itself unusual for a sonata). All three movements are played without interruption, and we never leave the tonality of E (E major for the first and last movements, E minor for the second).
The surprisingly short opening sounds almost improvisatory, unspooling with a gentle lyricism that is then immediately betrayed by the prickly, stormy character of the minor Prestissimo. The final movement, labeled “Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung” (singing, with utmost feeling), is described by Sir András Schiff as “the most beautiful movement that Beethoven ever wrote.” Beginning from a stately and expressive Sarabande, Beethoven gradually spins out mosaics of the theme. He masterfully subdivides the note values, accelerates and elaborates on the thematic material and finally brings us back to simple theme … as if we haven’t just been completely and utterly transformed.
GERSHWIN, arr. FAZIL SAY
“Summertime” Variations
“This guy literally talks piano.”
-Comment on a YouTube recording of Fazil Say’s 2023 performance of his own variations
Nothing in the year 2024 seems uncomplicated. Try to do some simple research on the history of George Gershwin’s 1935 hit song “Summertime,” and a sticky trail of muddy footprints emerges: Neither the lyrics nor the melody are truly by Gershwin, it transpires. The lyrics are from the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward. The melody is strikingly similar to an African American spiritual, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child”. Both Gershwin and Heyward were white. Did they steal traditional African American music for their profit? Are the characters in the opera Porgy and Bess nothing more than cheap stereotypes? Certainly not questions to be dismissed, but decidedly more complex than the easy living suggested by the dreamy laziness of the tune!
What does present as effortless (although that is what all virtuosos do: make the fiendishly difficult seem as natural as sipping iced tea in a hammock), is Turkish born contemporary pianist and composer Fazil Say’s interpretation of “Summertime”. Say, who often incorporates elements of folk music in his work, was so inspired by the ballad-like qualities of the original song that he arranged it not once, but three times. “Summertime” Variations for solo piano was composed in 2005 – and can often be heard as an encore piece in Say’s regular performances at jazz festivals. “It begins and ends very quietly and cantabile with a meditation on the well-known opening motif,” says the composer of his own creation on his personal website. “The complete melody then forms the basis for the swinging and extremely virtuoso Presto Variations of the central section.”
What sets this apart from traditional repertoire, such as the Bach, Scarlatti and Beethoven preceding the Variations on this program, is that “straying from the score” becomes part of the creative process. Embellishment and modification occur on melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic levels and form an integral part of the aesthetic, rendering no two performances quite alike. Easy to do? Not even a bit. Easy to listen to? For sure!
-Amelia de Vaal
ALBENIZ
Iberia
“I want the Arabic Granada, that which is art, which is all that seems to me beauty and emotion.” – Albeniz
There are many intriguing tales to be told from music history about the dialogue between French and Spanish musical styles and composers (for instance, Debussy wrote some very evocative Spanish-sounding music, but never visited that country), but for today we must concentrate on the marvelous music of Albeniz. A son of Spain, he was a child prodigy with his public debut in Barcelona at age four and he even applied to the Paris Conservatory at age seven! Shortly thereafter, he traveled extensively, sometimes with his father, first as a stowaway to Cuba, then months in South American and the U.S. Studies and performances took him all around, from San Francisco to Leipzig. During his days in Paris, Albeniz was quite influenced by French music. Debussy inspired him greatly, as can be detected in today’s three pieces from Iberia.
This monumental work in 12 movements is not actually a suite, in that the various pieces, gathered in four books of three each, can be played in any sequence. Clayton has chosen the three from Book 1 for today. All are of dizzying difficulty technically and reveal thrilling rhythmic impulse from the Spanish dance tradition. All are informed (think of his time in France) by Impressionist harmonies, particularly the use of whole-tone scales (yay for Debussy!), fusillades of notes à la Liszt, and wonderfully evident Spanish nationalism, of which he was one of the greatest progenitors.
All the pieces, save Evocación, portray particular places. But, in this movement, Albeniz renders a very interior mood or memory of his homeland, with a good bit of nostalgia. Of it, noting how Albeniz had melded native melodies and rhythms so well, Debussy remarked that “they have passed into his music, leaving no trace of a boundary line.”
Next, a dance rhythm in 6/8, a zapateado, tells us about the busy seaport of El Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cádiz. Its atmosphere of noisy good spirits is quite a contrast to the first movement.
The Fête-Dieu à Séville (El Corpus en Sevilla in Spanish) paints quite a vivid picture of the Corpus Christi procession in Sevilla, a robust annual event with marching bands, singers, penitents, and statues of the Virgin Mary carried through the town. In its three-part form, we hear first wild dancing, then a march, then the soulful music of religious ecstasy. After all the tumult, the piece ends in a tranquil mood, as if the parade has passed by and we are left in quiet reflection.
HIROMI
Two pieces
“I'm always interested in writing. I keep music in journals on an everyday basis. I'm always looking for ideas that can be music.” – Hiromi
In response to my question about whether he perhaps played music of any women composers, Clayton proposed the inclusion of these two works from a Japanese wild woman (I use that term with affection and respect), new to me, but immensely admired around the world. Hiromi actually goes by only her first name and you might want to look her up on-line because she currently leads a really fascinating artistic life.
(Writer’s confession: There are a number of people in the world who are color-blind. Alas, I am jazz-deaf. It took me quite a few times of listening to “dig” these remarkable pieces.)
For the most “traditional” listeners among us, this music will be a bracing tonic. Because she blends styles and phrasing in a quite personal way, it is difficult to pin her to a specific genre. Today’s two works might be called “tone poems” by the musicologists; Hiromi herself refuses to define what her style is. Constantly evolving, and still quite young, she relies a good deal on the intuitive side of composition as well as the technical. Much of her work is improvisatory, then notated.
Blues-y in style, Green Tea Farm is an homage to her parents, who are green tea farmers in Japan. Its gently melancholic mood infuses a piece that actually comes from an album she prepared for the benefit of the Jazz Musicians’ Emergency Fund.
The Tom & Jerry Show is a wonderful explosion of her virtuosic technique, blending influences that she obviously loves from stride, post-bop, progressive rock, and classical (thank goodness) traditions. The wild storm of notes, with a very touching tender bit in the middle, is entirely notated, amazingly. You can see the score simultaneously with Hiromi’s own recording of it on YouTube.
LIEBERMANN
Gargoyles
“Lowell Liebermann is an epicure among American composers, savoring glittery chords, gossamer lines, and velvety textures that more self-consciously intellectual colleagues might be scared to put on paper.” – Alex Ross for the New Yorker
This recital concludes with a highly acclaimed work of contemporary American classical music, Liebermann’s Gargoyles. A set of four piano pieces that, in a way, resemble concert etudes of earlier times, the work eschews the old twelve-tone practice of many (too many) composers and rather delves into the vitality of tonality, albeit with a liberal dose of much chromaticism. (Translation of such a musicological comment: dense harmonies, but we’ll always feel that we’ll get back home to a good old comfortable cadence.)
The title does not refer to any particular gargoyles, those ornaments of ancient cathedrals and other buildings, but does hint at the general mood of the music, eerie and mysterious, sometimes scary or threatening. Many will be reminded strongly of the music of Prokofiev. Gargoyles was commissioned by the Tcherepnin Society for the pianist Eric Himy, who played its premiere in Alice Tully Hall in New York.
With a wild opening at astonishing speed, the first movement is full of quick, unsettling changes in tempo and volume. Thrilling, but what a toccata! The following Adagio is quite romantic in mood, although with more modern harmonies. Some will think of Impressionism in the third movement, with its voluptuous filagree enrobing a touching melody, sometimes in canon. Presto feroce is the tempo indication in the score for the last movement and, indeed, ferocious it is. A wild, even grotesque, dance in the model of a tarantella, it may leave most folks in the audience quite breathless. Its pounding rhythms swirl ever more densely, with a flamboyant (may I say “ecstatic”?) finale.
-Bill Crane