Jon Kimura Parker: Notes on the Program
SATURDAY
Mozart, Sonata in D Major, KV 311
Mozart was a young fellow traveling with his mother to Paris via Mannheim (where they remained for five months before continuing on) in 1777 and probably composed this sonata for performance en route, in some measure to show his bona fides to that city’s discerning audiences. Le tout Paris, of course, was delighted with his music and he would go on to spend considerable time there on multiple visits.
This sonata reveals elaborate pianistic treatment and an exciting rondo finale with a big cadenza like what might be found in one of his concertos. The first movement, opening with a flourish, may take a moment to get going, but then it breaks forth with gushing sixteenth notes to stirring effect. The third movement is full of contrasts of dynamics, mood, and texture. All through the whole sonata, the left hand gets an equal work-out, with themes covering all the registers of the keyboard.
Note from Bill Crane: I made a significant error in crafting the notes for this program and my mistakes were found at the last minute, meaning that the comments on the next four very worthy pieces must be unusually brief. Thank you for your forbearance.
Schubert, Impromptu in B-Flat Major, op. 142., no. 3
One wonders if there is ever a moment in Schubert’s music in which a commentator would not remark upon a theme’s charm and beguiling nature (unless, of course, it is stormy and dramatic), but in this Impromptu, those characteristics are especially true. A really lovely theme sets a wonderful stage upon which he crafted ingenious and even more beguiling variations. The third of a set of four, it and the rest of the opus were published in 1839.
Maurice Ravel, Jeux d’Eaux
Although Ravel had not done well in his classes at the Paris Conservatory, failing to win annual prizes, etc., at only 26 he had “a sudden surge in imagination” (according to his biographer Gerald Larner) and brought forth this well-known and much beloved “portrait” of the play of waters in a fountain, most probably inspired at some level by Liszt’s Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este or possibly by the poem “Fête d’eaux” by his friend Henri de Régnier. He dedicated it to his teacher, Gabriel Fauré, who had tutored him even after he was expelled from the Conservatory.
Frédéric Chopin, Ballade No. 4 in F Minor
According to English pianist composer John Ogdon, this Ballade, fourth of four, is “the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions . . . It is unbelievable that it lasts only twelve minutes, for it contains the experience of a lifetime.” A ballade, of course, is a tale, although one must not conjecture exactly what it tells, for Chopin always insisted that he did not compose with that sort of specificity. Reveries might well come to the listener, nonetheless. Little is known about the circumstances of the Ballade being composed, but Chopin offered it to Breitkopf & Härtle for publication in 1842.
Clara Schumann, Scherzo No. 2, op. 14
With a concert career that lasted 61 years and some 1,300 documented performances throughout Europe, during which time she raised eight children, most of the time as a single mother, and with a surprisingly large catalogue of splendid compositions, Clara Schumann, to my mind, deserves considerably more recognition and praise than she gets now, even after the “re-discovery” of her music in the 1970s. Composed in 1845, this Scherzo amply reveals her brilliance on the piano with its fast pace and formidable technical demands. Piano students will quickly perceive in this work why they (we) all must practice arpeggios more assiduously!
Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, op. 24
Sets of variations, of course, are hugely popular with just about all listeners because, as young folks might say, they are so “user-friendly.” What’s not to love with a clearly stated theme, most typically a beguiling one, then explored and/or fancied up by a composer: the best of them create something really engaging, oftentimes profoundly moving. Such is the case in this wonderful set, with the theme being an “Air” from Handel’s Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B-flat Major, HWV 434.
Of these “Handel Variations,” the late great musicologist Donald Tovey considered it among “the half-dozen greatest sets of variations ever written.” The authoritative biographer of Brahms, Jan Swafford describes the Handel Variations as "perhaps the finest set of piano variations since Beethoven", and wrote additionally, "Besides a masterful unfolding of ideas concluding with an exuberant fugue with a finish designed to bring down the house, the work is quintessentially Brahms in other ways: the filler of traditional forms with fresh energy and imagination; the historical eclectic able to start off with a gallant little tune of Handel's, Baroque ornaments and all, and integrate it seamlessly into his own voice, in a work of massive scope and dazzling variety."
That terrific, simple theme allows for great freedom, but within that, Brahms remained true to the original’s structure (binary form – two halves, each repeated, etc.), but stepped away in key and meter in just a couple of places, to add drama. We hear a siciliana, a music box, what seems to be a Hungarian dance, a canon, even “variations on variations.” All of that adds up to a thrilling whole and then we get a stupendous fugue for the conclusion.
The fugue’s theme is so cleverly devised from the original thematic material and proceeds in an orthodox manner, four voices in remarkable dialogue. The drama builds and, then, a great “pedal point” strengthens the whole structure to a degree best described as patrician or heroic or one of those kinds of words. (I will find it very difficult during the performance not to stand up at that moment!) This big, noble fugue functions as a sort of capstone for the “achievement” of all the variations, a real triumph of the spirit.
The work is yet another piece he created for his friend, the widowed Clara Schumann, and we know that she was delighted with it. Written in 1861 when he was 28 years old and not yet really established in his career, he nonetheless knew what approach he wanted to take in the form. One of his letters bears witness to this: "In a theme for a [set of] variations, it is almost only the bass that has any meaning for me. But this is sacred to me; it is the firm foundation on which I then build my stories. What I do with a melody is only playing around ... If I vary only the melody, then I cannot easily be more than clever or graceful, or, indeed, [if] full of feeling, deepen a pretty thought. On the given bass, I invent something actually new, I discover new melodies in it, I create."
SUNDAY
Beethoven, Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, op. 27, no. 2 (“Moonlight”)
Nobody ever gets accused of bad taste for programming Beethoven piano sonatas. – Scott Fogelsong of the San Francisco Conservatory.
The “Moonlight Sonata,” along with the Mona Lisa, the Michelangelo David, the Venus de Milo, etc., is so well entrenched in our modern brains that any of us listening this afternoon would do well to strive to bring fresh, new ears to it, perhaps even pretending never to have heard it before. The list of derivative uses to which the first movement has been put would, indeed, be insanely long. It is not wrong, though, just to love the sonata on hearing it today, as it is, like the other things mentioned above, a mighty fine piece of art.
It is a remarkable departure from the orthodox matters of form and structure that had helped to define a sonata. In 1801, Beethoven departed significantly from those normal practices and even marked the indication “sonata like a fantasy.” Musicologist Eric Blom said of both sonate quasi fantasie of opus 27 that they “show the composer emancipating himself from the classical sonata pattern and doing it as drastically as possible by substituting pieces in a freely chosen form for the traditional first movement that was always the most important part of a sonata, though not invariably in what we now call sonata form.”
Curiously, Opus 27 No. 1 is one of Beethoven’s least known sonatas and No. 2 is no doubt the best known. It’s nickname over which so many swoon, Moonlight, was not given by Beethoven, but rather from the German critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab, who once commented that the first movement made him think of “a vision of a boat on Lake Lucerne by moonlight.” Well, Beethoven never saw that lake and that fay description works only for the first movement. Twenty-seven number two was very popular in Beethoven’s lifetime, although it was decidedly not his favorite and he was annoyed that the public afforded it greater status than many of his other works.
Altogether, it is marked by some odd characteristics: it is in the key of C-sharp minor, unusual for that time and all three movements are based around that key center, minor for the outer movements, major (enharmonically) for the middle; the vigorous part of the sonata, usually in the opening sonata allegro movement, happens (a real tempest, with all those arpeggios and dramatic chords) in the final movement.
All the above said, we do, after all, listen to music with both heart and head. Only someone really cranky would object to anyone in today’s audience swooning over this exceptionally beautiful sonata, so much the inspiration of many memories in anyone’s life.
Liszt, Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, S. 161, no. 5 from Années de pèlerinage, deuxième année: Italie
Having recently travelled to many new countries, through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions. – Liszt
“Other tourists will pull out their snapshots to show you what a country looks like, but a composer wants to show you what a country sounds like.” -- Aaron Copland
All piano lovers know, no doubt, that Liszt was an astonishing virtuoso concert pianist and astoundingly productive composer – both activities yielded him hundreds of adoring (even swooning!) fans, but it is valuable to remember that Liszt was also a great transcriber of music. Liszt wrote nearly 400 transcriptions, arrangements and paraphrases for solo piano. The material he used includes music in many forms, such as songs, symphonies, organ works, and operatic excerpts. Also included are many transcriptions of his own works that were originally conceived for other media. According to musicologist Maurice Hinson, "His piano transcriptions probably represent the greatest body of unperformed music in any instrumental repertoire.”
Thus, today’s selection from that body of work, the Petrarca Sonata, is a virtuoso transcription of his own song composition. The history is elaborate: the title, “Years of Pilgrimage,” refers to a famous novel of self-realization by Goethe; this piece comes from his own second year of wandering, this time in Italy, and was composed some time between 1837 and 1849, transcribed from his original Petrarca work composed some time earlier. The version to be heard today is actually his second transcription of that material for solo piano and, as far as scholars can discern, the original song form that preceded it has been lost. Today’s version is among the most frequently performed works in the piano repertoire.
That “wandering/pèlerinage” is about the three years he spent living and traveling with the Countess Marie d’Agoult, who had left her husband for him. Marie wrote under a male pen name -- Daniel Stern. Just as Liszt competed with his sometime friend Chopin, Marie competed with Chopin's companion, the woman writer George Sand. A year and a half of their travels were spent in Italy, with concerts in Venice, Genoa, Milan, Florence, and Bologna, and an extended stay in Rome, where the French painter Jean August Dominque Ingres, director of the French Academy at the Villa Medici was their guide. (Ingres did a now-famous portrait of Liszt, inscribed to Marie.) One can imagine that this time afforded much real pathos to fuel the exceedingly dramatic effect in the music!
According to Liszt authority Louis Kentner, the “Sonnet No. 104” (“Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra”— “I find no peace, and know not how to make war”) speaks of “restlessness, tears, self-hate, vain search for inner peace—all caused by the loved one.... It is understandable that pianists revel in its eloquence.” Listeners can easily do the same.
Schubert, Fantasie in C Major, op. 15 (“Wanderer”)
“Schubert would like in this work to condense the whole orchestra into two hands. The enthusiastic beginning [movement] is a seraphic hymn to the Godhead; you can see the angels praying; the Adagio is a gentle meditation on life and removes the veil from it; then fugues thunder forth a song of endless humanity and music.” -- Robert Schumann
Thus, on to more “wandering.” Composed in late 1822, the C-Major Fantasy proved to be one of the pianistically most difficult and structurally advanced music he had ever composed up to that time. The sub-title comes from his own song of the same title (written when he was 19!) and the slow movement incorporates the tune of that original song. With a text about happiness, estrangement, and, of course, wandering, a very popular Romantic subject, the song became one of the most popular art songs of the entire 19th century. The fantasy that followed is from a year in which he faced ruinous financial, social, and health problems all at once. It was a deeply unhappy time for the composer but he remained productive nonetheless.
It was not Schubert who appended the “Wanderer” title, but rather an enterprising publisher thinking about increased sales. The work opens with a “motto” – the melodic-rhythmic pattern that pervades the entire composition – a long-short-short pattern on the same pitch. As the fantasy proceeds, that motto is preserved, albeit varied to significant extent, gets a series of variations in the Adagio, gets transformed into triple meter in the third movement, and even is the basis for a fugue subject in the final, fugues being rather rare in Schubert’s writing. The concluding moments all make, plainly stated, for unparalleled exultation.
Very quickly after its publication in February 1823, a notice in the Wiener Zeitung (newspaper) noted, “The present Fantasy stands worthily side-by-side with similar products by the foremost masters and therefore merits in every way the attention of all artists and lovers of art.” Very interestingly, this very technically demanding piece, apparently, was beyond Schubert’s own playing abilities, even though he was as skilled pianist!
The “Wanderer” Fantasy was of intense and sustained interest to the pianist and composer Franz Liszt. Liszt played it extensively and published arrangements of the work, one for two pianos and another for piano and orchestra, as well as his own edition with various modifications. Liszt eventually would go on to model his own Sonata in B minor after the “Wanderer” Fantasy.
Americana!
The Minneapolis music critic Janet Horvath, in Interlude in 2013, called Jackie Parker “the diabolical pianist,” noting that he has become a force in many genres of music. His terrific success in all sorts of music beyond the “classical,” jazz to film score composition, improvisation to orchestral conducting, at all of which he is masterful, have propelled him into arguably the most diverse career ever among contemporary pianists.
Within all that carrying-on, of course, Jackie is famed for his embrace of the unique American popular song tradition and in this concluding half of today’s program (and our ’21-’22 season), he brings us his own special spins from that wonderful literature. I am not the right kind of musicologist to comment on these great tunes. You will probably know them and take great delight in them.
In the middle of this “set,” he also gives us fellow Canadian Alexina Louie’s marvelous “Memories,” a movement from her Scenes from a Jade Terrace, composed for him in 1987. In her own program notes, she counseled about the opening of “Memories” to “. . . play the opening chordal passage in a rubato style, ‘as if intoxicated with the scent of a thousand blossoms.’” (Jackie played the complete Scenes on this series in 2008. Other music from Ms. Louie was heard in Nicolas Namoradze’s recitals on this series in April.)
Thus, with these joyful, sophisticated tunes, we at PPI say welcome to summer. We hope to see you at our summer festival in late July and, certainly, for our 2022-23 season.