Kenny Broberg: Notes on the Program
THURSDAY
FRANCK
Prelude, Fugue, and Variation in B Minor, op. 18, FWV 30
CHOPIN
Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, op. 52
MEDTNER
Sonata No. 7, op. 25, The Night Wind
SATURDAY
MEDTNER
Idyll-Sonata-Pastorale in G Major, op. 56
“Medtner’s music astonishes and delights…you may fancy that you have heard the melody before…But where, when, from whom, in childhood, in a dream, in delirium? You will scratch your head and strain your memory in vain: you have not heard it anywhere: in human ears it sounds for the first time…And yet it is as though you had long been waiting for it – waiting because you ‘knew’ it, not in sound, but in spirit”. – Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyn
At an impressive total of 14 sonatas composed and published, Medtner seems to have taken the prize for most-sonatas-composed after Beethoven and Schubert. He has his passionate fans, among them today’s recitalist (who, I understand, even at his young age, plays all 14 sonatas) and Canadian pianist Paul Stewart: “The joy of Medtner is, in part, the joy of discovery: a wealth of little-known but magnificent music, the most significant achievement in this genre by any major composer since Beethoven.”
Today’s recital opens this weekend with Medtner’s last (14th) sonata. On Sunday, we will hear a completely different one, the Night Wind, from opus 25 and they could not possibly be more different from each other. As its title implies, this G Major sonata is gentle, its mood one of happy innocence.
Its genesis was borne of a request of his publisher that he write something less demanding, as the other sonatas are fiendishly difficult, in part to the end that amateur pianists might be more drawn to it and thereby encourage better sales. In just two movements, the first only three minutes long, the second more elaborate with three themes, it concludes sunnily with a sort of hymn.
This last, fine composition is quite touching when one thinks of Medtner being at that time a Russian composer exiled in London. In spite of living in a noisy suburb, and having had pretty much a troubled life, not to mention his decided lack of enthusiasm for modernism in art and bothered by the neglect of his own work, he kept composing, adhering to his own rules of artistic integrity. Fellow Russian composer Alexander Glazunov described him as “. . . the firm defender of the sacred laws of eternal art.”
VON WEBER
Sonata in E Minor, op. 70, J. 287
“The beat must not be like a tyrannical hammer, impeding or urging on, but must be to the music what the pulse-beat is to the life of man. There is no slow tempo in which passages do not occur that demand a quicker motion, so as to obviate the impression of dragging. Conversely there is no presto that does not need a quiet delivery by many places, so as not to throw away the chance of expressiveness by hurrying… Neither the quickening nor the slowing of the tempo should ever give the impression of the spasmodic or the violent. The changes, to have a musical-poetic significance, must come in an orderly way in periods and phrases, conditioned by the varying warmth of the expression. We have in music no signs for all this. They exist only in the sentient soul. If they are not there, then there is no help to be had from the metronome – which obviates only the grosser errors – nor from these extremely imperfect precepts of mine.“ — Carl Maria von Weber
It is a curiosity, at least to me, that the music of von Weber is not better known and more frequently played on solo recitals. But, fashionable as he was in the first half of the 19th century, he was eclipsed by piano composers of the following generation, most of all Liszt, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. However, a close listening will help one to hear his admirable mix of stern Beethoven-like seriousness, charm that would be appropriate in any salon setting, and the wildness of German Romanticism, of which he was a progenitor, that made him famous in his day all across Europe.
Today’s sonata was his final work in the genre and is probably the most adventurous of his four sonatas. Produced in 1822 and three years in the making, it came out at an especially difficult time in Weber’s life, at age 36. He had been bruised from bad performances of his incidental music to Pius Alexander Wolff’s play Preciosa and his feelings are well revealed in the movements of the sonata: first, melancholy and despondency, with a touch of hope; second, outrage and insanity; third, consolation and entreaties of friendship and affection, with a touch of underlying agitation; finally, a fantastic tarantella, with little melody, ending in exhaustion and death. (Oh, my. What a first half!)
CHOPIN
Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, op. 52
“Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor is broadly acclaimed as the pinnacle of Romantic music of the 19th century. Written during Chopin’s later years, the highly structured Ballade No. 4 – expressive of a piano form that he developed as his own along with the polonaise and scherzo – is regarded by some as summing up the achievements of his musical life. The intensity of the chief theme is followed by a pastorally expressive second theme. In the music can be detected his Slavonic roots. The great majority of his works are for solo piano. Though notation on paper rarely captures the freedom of his anticipation and delay of melody, a portion of the Ballade in F minor does indeed capture, in its written form, the magic of this performance art. “ -- Israeli pianist Dror Biran
Anything that a program annotator might say about Chopin, of course, is pretty much “preachin’ to the choir.” His music lies utterly at the heart of any piano lover’s love of the repertory and is universally something that one can listen to many times over. That said, it is handy to remember that Chopin created small pieces to be performed in small spaces, as opposed to the big forms, full of out-sized bravura, with which other composers looked to fill large halls. In his whole lifetime, Chopin gave only about 70 public performances. This is music of subtle sentiment and refinement, best heard close up.
Thus, with today’s Ballade, we are invited to a very intimate story-telling, for, indeed, ballades do just that. They differ from sonatas in that they likewise have contrasting themes, but a ballade, working differently, increases in dramatic intensity along the way. Most typically, they conclude with a grand apotheosis or, in this, the F minor, a furious coda brings a whirlwind of notes and emotion. Chopin’s Ballades are the first known works written for piano under that name.
Bells seem to ring innocently at the beginning, then a little melancholy waltz ensues, then the bells return, but with noticeable pathos. A solemn barcarolle brings relief, even lightness, but that first theme returns, hovering. We are in a daydream. A new theme takes us on quite a ride via left-hand turbulence, then arpeggios and big block chords all over the place – then an abrupt pause.
The five beatific chords that follow lead to the coda’s unparalleled fury and a conclusion fairly called apocalyptic, full of bitterness and tragedy. Robert Schumann claimed that the Fourth Ballade was inspired by the poem The Three Budrys from the Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz.
FAURÉ
Barcarolle No. 9 in A Minor, op. 101
Nocturne No. 7 in C-sharp Minor, op. 74
Barcarolle No. 8 in D-flat Major, op. 96
“Imagining is trying to formulate all one would wish to be better, all that surpasses reality.” – Gabriel Fauré
“Fauré sets to French musicians a matchless example of sincerity and genuineness. Neither following fashion nor listening to would-be advisers, he proceeded untrammelled in his quest for beauty. He remained simple, combining impassioned imagination and lucidity of mind. When one listens to his music one always feels secure that an apex is reached, that here is perfection. In the beautiful proportions of his music, a great lesson is embodied—a lesson that has never been more needful than now, when the younger French school is so deeply thrilled by the innovations of Schönberg, Stravinsky, and Bartók. The main features of French art at its best are continuity and perspicuity.” – French composer and musicologist Charles Koechlin
Fauré’s is certainly not an unknown name to lovers of music, particularly of the late Romantic and early “modern” sort. Indeed, most musicologists think of him as a sort of bridge between those demarcated eras. His deservedly famous “Requiem,” beloved of choirmasters of volunteer choirs for its ease of access, is performed so often that one often sees listeners nodding along, perhaps even humming very quietly, with its gently undulating melodies and subtle yet profound emotive content. It is such a necessary work to have on hand for all sorts of moods and occasions.
Fans of Fauré know as well that he was a prodigious composer of art songs, myriad barcarolles and nocturnes for piano, not to mention sonatas, waltzes, and impromptus among his 60 works for piano, thrilling chamber music, two operas, and much religious music. He was organist of two Paris churches, professor, then director, of the Paris Conservatory, faithful friend and inspiration to many other French composers, most of all Camille Saint-Saëns, and universally admired for his amiability and generosity. The American painter John Singer Sargent painted a wonderful portrait of him.
Nonetheless, his solo piano compositions are not often enough played on recitals, at least for me. I think we are lucky to hear these two Barcarolles and a Nocturne today. They come from different times in Fauré’s life and, thus, different aesthetic modes. His mastery of these “boat songs” in 6/8 time and of revery peculiar to night-time tell us so much about his generosity and respectful ways with balance, proportion, and discretion. I hope that they will give us just the right soupçon of this part of his catalogue so that we all go out and look for more of it.
LISZT
Fantasia quasi Sonata; Après une lecture du Dante
“Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.” – Franz Liszt
With a dizzyingly long catalogue of compositions and a biography full of thrills, spills, and exploits of all sorts, Franz Liszt in his own day and through to our own has been an object of adulation, admiration, and pro- and anti-partisanship forever. Liszt-lovers swoon to his music, most of all when it is well-played, a rare thing; some listeners, many of whom have too often heard less than well-played performances, often come away confused by the bombast and elaborateness of development of ideas, motifs, and melodies in his music.
To say the least, Liszt led an astounding life, part of which was marked by his extensive travels, including longer sojourns, much of it in Italy. He wrote whole series of piano pieces describing his reactions to visited places, calling the collection, in several volumes, the Years of Pilgrimage (Années de Pèlerinage.) From the second volume, today’s Dante Sonata was inspired by a reading of Dante Alighieri’s most famous epic poem, the Divine Comedy. It was originally a small piece entitled Fragment after Dante, with two thematically related movements. In 1849, he revised and expanded that work into the present sonata.
It is developed from two main subjects. First, a chromatic theme in D minor says something about the wailing of souls in hell. That theme also relies heavily on the tritone (an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth – think C natural to F-sharp), an interval sometimes called the “Devil’s interval.” A second, beatific theme in F-sharp Major stands in for the joy of those in heaven. Liszt’s imagination gave him license to project so much of commonly held thoughts about the afterlife into his musical score. As he often did, Liszt used a development technique called “thematic transformation” in which a basic motive is reprised throughout the work, but undergoes constant revision to appear in different roles. These transformation serve his guiding principal of “unity within variety,” a compositional technique for which he is well known. Requiring staggering virtuosity and steel nerves to play it, this sonata holds a quite special place in the piano literature.
SUNDAY
FRANCK
Prelude, Fugue, and Variation in B Minor, op. 18, FWV 30
“How I regret not having told César Franck of my profound admiration for him and his music. After playing the Sonata for violin for the first time, I nearly wept over certain phrases. The beauty of it overwhelmed me.”—French-American conductor Pierre Monteux
César Franck came along at just the right moment in the history of the organ and its music in France. Belgian by birth, he went to Paris early on and there encountered the revolutionary instruments of the organ-builder who was to have possibly the largest influence on organ aesthetics in the whole of the 19th century, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Much could be written about Cavaillé-Coll’s influence (he built some 500 organs in France in his lifetime), but that is a subject for another time. Leave it to say that he turned the instrument into a one-player-symphonic-machine. Franck became one of the builder’s greatest promoters and served the company as an artistic representative. After his appointment as organist at the then-new basilica of Ste-Clotilde, his improvisations on its great organ were a weekly must-hear among le tout Paris. A wonderful statue of him at the console is in the garden right in front of the basilica.
It is a masterful transcription of one of Franck’s most widely recognized and admired organ compositions that we hear in today’s recital. The third of six pieces published as opus 18, and dedicated to Saint-Saëns, the P F & V touches the listener with its balance and clarity, something completely appropriate to its dedicatee.
The prelude, opening in B minor, is gentle and a bit melancholy, but not sad, just poignant. A masterful fugue, with its own little introduction, follows and at its climax presents a perfect segue into the single variation, effectively a repeat of the prelude, but with a subtle, rippling accompaniment, ending surprisingly and very movingly in B Major.
BEETHOVEN
Sonata in E-flat Major, op. 81a, “Les adieux”
“There is no real intelligence without goodness.” – Beethoven
One of the persistent discussions among musicologists is the whole business about “programmatic” and “absolute” music. That is, about music that is derived from another story, another source and that which stands alone. Among his 32 piano sonatas, Beethoven wrote really just one programmatic one. We will hear it today.
The inspiration, if not the “tale,” is that in 1809 Napoleon’s army was just outside Vienna, bombing it repeatedly with cannons. In this situation, Beethoven’s close friend and patron, Archduke Rudolph was forced to flee. Beethoven’s response to this drama was this “Farewell” sonata, with its movement titles of “Farewell, Absence, and Return.”
In the first movement, we hear a theme of three descending notes, mi-re-do, imitating the call of a post-horn on someone’s departure. The notes “setting” the word Lebewohl (farewell), get broken up, re-cast, and developed in so many ways that the distinguished pianist Sir András Schiff once described them as simply “swimming in the Lebewohl motive.”
Diminished seventh chords, desolate in this context, reflect Beethoven’s lament at the absence of his beloved friend, made all the more poignant by piercing sforzandos alternated with sparkling flights of notes in a major mode that somehow reflect happier times, perhaps in a dream.
As is the case in the more familiar Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas, the slow movement leads right into the ecstatic celebration of “The Return.” The happiness of this ending of a tragic moment cannot be contained. We can easily hear in the movement’s themes the restored camaraderie and bonheur of re-joined friends. The development of melodic ideas is not strained and a reflective coda speaks of contentment at the good fortune of the departed one’s return. Just to be certain to reveal the magnitude of the happiness of the rejoining of friends, the movement ends in a fantastic rush up the keyboard in one last shout-out of joy.
BEACH
Ballade, op. 6
“Remember that technique is valuable only as a means to an end. You must first have something to say—something which demands expression from the depths of your soul. If you feel deeply and know how to express what you feel, you make others feel.” -- Amy Beach
“From the year 1675 to the year 1885, women have composed 153 works, including 55 serious operas, 6 cantatas, 53 comic operas, 17 operettas, 6 sing-spiele, 4 ballets, 4 vaudevilles, 2 oratorios, one each of fares, pastorales, masques, ballads and buffas.” – Beach’s published reply to a published criticism from Antonin Dvorak about the inadequacies of women composers.
Various writers about this insufficiently well-known composer will tell you about hearing influences from Fauré, Liszt, even Chopin, but I think that she has a rather unique voice. Her recognizably “romantic” harmonies and well-developed elaborations of themes make it easy to think of her music as heir to those named influences, but there is something unique in Beach’s music. Today’s Ballade is a happy opportunity to become more acquainted with this master.
It tests the innate musicality and poetry of a performer, even after mastering its significant demands technically. Most important, though, is the Ballade’s passion. Written as an elaboration of a song she had previously composed, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, this version allows treatments that couldn’t quite fit the song form. The harmonies are powerful and color the tunes and the “story” vibrantly. Melodies and themes all flow effortlessly, one after the other, in a sort of blossoming out. Herein lies a fine reward for the listener who eschews the ideas of “lady-composers” and “mere salon music.” Viva Amy!
MEDTNER
Sonata No. 7, op. 25, no. 2 “The Night Wind”
“I think one of the reasons Medtner hasn't had a chance is that his music needs very, very committed performances. If you play his works passively, the juice of his music is really not going to be extracted - it's simply not going to come out.” – Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin
To conclude today’s program, Kenny has chosen an exceptionally long and demanding masterwork from one of the lions of the Russian piano tradition. One of Medtner’s 14 piano sonatas, as mentioned above, The Night Wind is the composer’s most extended work in the genre, a really monumental work that requires a lot of both the performer and the listener. It’s worth the effort! Not a few pianists and piano-nuts have called it the greatest piano sonata of the 20th century.
A vast one-movement work of some 35 minutes’ duration, it is headed by a quotation of Fyodor Tyutchev’s 1832 poem, Silentium, “Of what do you howl, night wind . . .?” Dedicated to Sergei Rachmaninoff, who praised it immediately – although he never played it in public himself – The Night Wind bears forth so much of what we know about Medtner’s obsession with things spiritual, transcendental, etc. (He took all that to extreme extremes.)
“Oh, do not sing those fearful songs about primeval native Chaos! How avidly the world of the soul at night listens to its favorite story! It strains to burst out of the mortal breast and longs to merge with the Infinite . . . . Oh, do not awaken the sleeping tempests; beneath them Chaos stirs!”
The first movement, with its time signature of 15/8, probably qualifies as the most extended piece of music ever in that meter. The second movement, a torrential improvisation upon themes from the sonata’s introduction, pushes the possibilities of expression to the limit. Nightmarish frenzy marks the whole work as even the interludes retain an undercurrent of anxiety. Finally arriving at a coda, we are greeted with fragments of all the themes heard prior over a pedal tone and the chaos starts to fade away. The music floats away, vanishing, with two swirling arpeggios.