Ilya Yakushev: Notes on the Program
“insistence, delight, a promenade.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Fantasy No. 3 in D minor, K. 397/385g (1782)
“A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Opening a recital with somber arpeggios in a minor key, as our recitalist does today, is a brave thing. Will the audience be intrigued emotionally, wondering what will happen in the ensuing measures, or will they just get frowny? So, good for Ilya for taking a risk.
Indeed, in Mozart’s D minor Fantasy, there is such a whirlwind of musical emotions within its mere five and a half minutes, that the listener can be both thrilled and challenged quite promptly. There are many composers, too, who have used silences to heighten an effect in or between phrases, but few so dramatically as Mozart has in this work.
From the brooding opening, with its subtle arpeggiated chords, to the achingly touching first melody, to boldly descending chromaticism lending an air of anticipation, and on to a flight of fancy in the related major key, we get taken emotionally, if you will, all over the place.
In addition to being a lovely foil to the Beethoven sonata to come, this is a polished, complete musical idea that overcomes its dark opening to reveal a lovely bit of shimmering light. Interestingly, what we will hear is not quite 100% Mozart. The first 97 measures (of 107) are his, but the final ten measures traditionally heard were actually written by another composer because in 1806, the music publisher Breitkopf & Härtel wanted to add another Mozart work to its sales catalogue and the manuscript had been left unfinished. When you have a moment to spend on You Tube, have some fun listening to that ending (many versions) and the alternative that Mitsuko Uchida supplied in her recording. I like both and don’t know which Ilya will use today.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sonata No. 8 in C minor, op. 13 (Grande sonate pathétique, 1798)
“Beethoven’s first successful effort at the sublime.” – Music critic Charles Rosen, describing the emotional depth of this sonata.
With its fierce declamation of a ham-fisted C-minor chord unwinding into a slow introduction, full of startling contrasts of loud and soft, of high and low, of a hopeful, even begging, recitative answered by renewed chords and intrepid dotted rhythms, a listener knows within seconds that this sonata is going to more than live up to its nickname. About that nickname: again it was a publisher who added a little something to a composition, but Beethoven quite approved of the name “Grande sonate pathétique.” We English-speakers must be careful not to get caught by the faux ami from the French, because “pathetic” has such a different connotation.
Indeed, William Kindermann, a profound Beethoven scholar in the 1790s, posited that this music is yet another example of Beethoven’s not merely depicting suffering, per se, as that is not the purpose of art. But, rather, that through genius musical devices, he transforms, as great art does, that sadness into the overcoming of difficulty, into a striving toward hope. It is a sterling example of resistance to despair.
In the second movement, that everyone in today’s audience will immediately recognize, the peerless melody, several times repeated, enchants. We are reminded of Schubert’s counsel that when one finds a great melody not to break it up, but to repeat it, even several times, for deepest effect. One reason that we all will recognize this tune is that it was the theme music of the radio program “Adventures in Good Music” with host Karl Haas from 1970 to 2007 that most of us used to hear on All Classical radio.
Finally, a terrific rondo. But, this one is not just several 18th-century pretty vignettes framed by an oft-repeated charming theme. Rather, we get one of the most dramatically satisfying rondo themes ever, with episodes in between that again remind us of that striving toward a goal of happy resolution. The seamless interplay between C-minor and A-flat major in the proceedings tempers, yet sustains, the fire and drive that propels the sonata to its explosive conclusion. There is even a momentary bright spot in the major key moments before the defiant ending in C-minor.
If at the conclusion of this sonata you feel both exhilarated and a bit wrung-out, I’d think that spot on. Beethoven used C-minor several times to compose music of this very special kind of drama, the one that acknowledges difficulty but overcomes it. Just think of the Fifth Symphony (da-da-da-daah), the funeral march in the Eroica Symphony, or and especially the last sonata, Opus 111. I may never look at three flats in a key signature in quite the same way again.
Bill Crane
SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953)
Sonata No. 2, op. 14 (1912)
“In appraising my music, the critics wrote a good deal of nonsense; for example, the best of them maintained that the finale of Sonata No. 2 made him think of ‘a heard of mammoths charging across an Asiatic plateau.’” -- Prokofiev
Wake any classical music lover in the middle of the night with the question: “Name a composition by Prokofiev!” and the answer would most likely be “Peter and the Wolf”! As much as this Russian contemporary of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff is remembered today as an orchestral composer, it was his iconoclastic role as a pianist-composer that initially made him famous. He achieved notoriety in his native Russia with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuostic works for his own instrument – including his first two piano concertos – and was one of the first in his cohort to boldly experiment with dissonance and polytonality. (According to one account, after the premier of his second piano concerto, the audience left the hall with exclamations of “To hell with this futuristic music!” and “The cats on the roof make better music!”)
Sonata No.2, op.14 – composed in 1912, round about the same time that he started work on the second piano concerto – is considered one of the landmark works of neo-classicism, and brings to the fore the vigorous energy, sharp-edged dissonances and trademark motoric drive that would come to distinguish Prokofiev’s oeuvre from every other. Over the course of his career, he would compose nine sonatas in total, but this “early” example gives us an excellent taste of what truly makes Prokofiev so unique (beyond giving timeless voice to cats, ducks and wolves!).
Written in four movements, the sonata follows an orderly classical structure of exposition – development – recapitulation, but in a decidedly “Prokofievized” form, altering the harmonic content and tonal relationships. Throughout the sonata – from the biting angularity of the first movement, the swagger of the second, the emotional depth of the third and the rhythmic distortions of the fourth – listen out for the layered polyrhythms, the sudden metric shifts and the rich harmonic language. Yes, it may sound “barbaric” to some – but overall, there is something brilliant and fiery about this sonata that showcases just how unique and multi-faceted one composer and one instrument can be.
MODEST MUSSORGSKY (1839–1881)
Pictures at an Exhibition: A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann (1874)
“My dear généralissime, Hartmann is boiling as Boris [Mussorgsky’s opera, Boris Godunov] boiled – sounds and ideas hang in the air; I am gulping and overeating and can barely manage to scribble them on paper. I am writing the fourth number – the transitions are good (on the ‘promenade’). I want to work more quickly and steadily. My physiognomy can be seen in the interludes. So far I think it’s well turned . . . .” – Mussorgsky writing to his friend Vladimir Stasov, the dedicatee.
Confession 1: Not everyone in the PPI office likes Pictures at an Exhibition (gasp!)
Confession 2: Not everyone in the audience likes reading program notes.
Confession 3: Hearing Ilya Yakushev play them and reading these notes may change your whole perception of the piece .
There are a few staples in the classical music repertoire that appears on concert programs like oatmilk and avocados in millennial grocery baskets – seemingly unquestioned and supposedly for the greater good, but still begging the question: Why? If you’ve felt your eyebrows rise at seeing Pictures at an Exhibition on today’s program – it’s a darling of symphony orchestras all over the world, isn’t it? – consider the somewhat lesser-known fact that the version you’re most familiar with is, in reality, Ravel’s orchestration and not Mussorgsky’s original composition. Written over the course of a mere 20 days in 1874, Mussorgsky intended Pictures for solo piano – and it is in this iteration that the drama, humor, intelligence, playfulness, introspection and brilliance of his concept becomes most strikingly apparent (no disrespect to Ravel).
For as dramatic, humorous, intelligent, playful, introspective and brilliant Pictures at an Exhibition is (as well as being a poignant monument to not only a single artist, Viktor Hartmann, in whose memory it was composed), it joins a whole era in Russian history. Keep in mind: Mussorgsky composed this piece in 1874; Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina between 1875 and 1877. We’re dealing with the exact same idealized pastoral landscapes, the same sense of rising nationality, the same struggle between classes that Vrosnky, Levin, and Oblonsky grappled with.
What’s the deal with Pictures, then? In very short summary, Mussorgsky takes us along to a gallery in Moscow, where more than 400 artworks are on display – ranging from architectural designs to whimsical character studies. He then distills his emotional impressions of what he observes into ten movements, bridged by a recurring Promenade that mimics his physical navigation of the gallery. Although many of the original pictures are lost today, the small number that remains (and that Ilya Yakushev chooses to share with us in this recital) add to our understanding and appreciation for what Mussorgsky seeks to achieve: making what is inherently subjective and solitary audible and communal. There is the grotesque (Baba Yaga) and the awkwardly comical (The Gnome), the mysterious (The Old Castle) and the ebullient (The market at Limoges.) No matter how much you may frown at the clichéd overuse, there is something incredibly catchy about the Promenade! (Just like there really is nothing quite as satisfying as a good piece of avocado toast!)
Amelia de Vaal