Natalia Kazaryan: Notes on the Program
A fine pastiche of notes by Bill Crane and Natalia Kazaryan
Subito is a great Italian musical term (nearly all musical terms are Italian, of course), meaning “suddenly, immediately, at the last minute.” At PPI headquarters in recent days, we have been living in a world of subito. We have had to make many sudden decisions.
Impossible complications concerning visa requirements have prevented our previously scheduled recitalist, Aristo Sham, from joining us for this long-anticipated opening weekend of PPI’s live recitals for 2022. We hope to present him some time soon in the future.
Happily, the wonderful pianist Natalia Kazaryan, heard by many of you in her virtual recital last October, was able to come to us on very short notice. You will remember her sparkling artistry and distinguished programming, no doubt. Her response to my inquiry about whether she could come to play two recitals on this weekend was subito, instantly “yes;” it was also allegro, sincero e genuino, cheerful, sincere, and genuine. On your behalf, I say to Natalia, Welcome to Portland!
Here are a few thoughts on the music in these recitals.
SATURDAY
CHOPIN
Bill says . . .
All this time into the dreaded Covid pandemic, there is something so comforting, as we finally begin live recitals of a new season, to have the very first notes of this very first recital be very much akin to floating gently along calm waters, for, indeed, that is exactly what barcarolles are meant to be. The source is the folksongs of Venetian gondoliers, appropriated into opera, then appropriated into piano works. Most often, piano barcarolles are quite straightforward and stay mostly in that idyllic mood appropriate to a sonic float in a musical canal. Of course, in Chopin’s hands, all the characteristics (12/8 meter, moderate tempo, a gentle ostinato accompaniment, a singing melody) got radically changed. Chopin created a real monument: this is his only barcarolle – although some would note that the G-Major Nocturne really is a barcarolle in disguise – and through its complex formal organization, overt romance with a slight touch of wistfulness, exceptionally chromatic wanderings in the harmonies, and just the overall magnitude of the piece, it takes us on quite a ride. (Uh-oh, another metaphor for the past two years.) It is one of his very last compositions and does so much to transform the genre. It remains a constant favorite of pianists and audiences. I like to think of the loud “plunk” of a C-sharp octave in the left hand that opens the introduction as a sincere invitation to sit back gently and be carried away by this grand voyage.
Natalia says . . .
One of Chopin’s most beloved compositions, the Barcarolle is a masterpiece of Romantic expression. Written in 1845, Chopin’s Barcarolle (a gondola song) came at a time when the genre was becoming increasingly popular. Gondola songs are characterized by their gently rocking accompaniment in flowing triplets that evoke the motion of water. In the Barcarolle, Chopin takes the folk-like genre and turns it into a musical jewel. The primary melody, accompanied by the oscillating figures in the left hand, is a beautiful moment of musical poetry. The second melody closely follows the contour of the accompaniment, giving the music an even stronger sense of swaying back and forth. The almost improvisatory feeling of phrases and the iridescent sparkle of the high register transports the listener into another dimension, evoking the many hours Chopin spent listening to bel canto opera. The two melodies are restated in their most dramatic form, and after a powerful moment of dramatic culmination, the music begins to slowly subside in energy, finally giving way to gentle ripples before the triumphant final cadence.
BRAHMS
Bill says . . .
Musicologists, program annotators, and other fanatics often-times like to refer to opus 116 and opus 118, both favorite sets of fantasies, intermezzos, and capriccios, as coming from the “autumn” of Brahms’s life. But, I don’t like that designation with its faintly pejorative whiff as, it seems to me that late in life he distilled his peerless manipulations of concise motives, complicated rhythms, and love of deep registers into shorter, but equally, or even more, powerful works compared to larger forms from earlier times. These “miniatures” are astonishing, whole, profound music that delivers so much oomph in so little time.
The Seven Fantasies are altogether a wonder of musical construction. Brahms seems to have used every compositional means of expression that he ever devised. Here are myriad wonderful moments of the meter being shifted around, of deeply affecting harmonies that exude from his affinity for those bass overtones. Here are delayed resolutions in cadences that make the poignancy of a phrase ache just a little bit more.
Of opus 116, much could be, and has been, said about how each movement is in ternary form (original idea, other idea, back to the original idea), that they are all quite song-like, that, as a whole, Opus 116 quite resembles a piano sonata (the three Intermezzi in the middle standing in for the slow movement, etc.), but I would much rather think about how deeply reflective and personally revealing this set is. Of these pieces, along with the other late works of that time, vis opera 116-119, Clara Schumann remarked, “a true source of enjoyment, everything, poetry, passion, rapture, intimacy, full of the most marvelous effects.”
BOULANGER
Bill says . . .
Most piano lovers are more familiar with the name Nadia Boulanger, famed Parisian teacher who was an unparalleled influence on musical composition in the 20th century as mentor to pretty much everyone striving to be a composer, but it was Lili who made stellar, recognized achievements as a composer, albeit in a very short life, dying at just 24. She was the first female winner of France’s utmost prestigious award in music and other art, the Prix de Rome in 1913, and left a surprisingly large catalogue of works in a variety of forms and instrumentations. Nadia always thought her younger sister was the more talented of the two and, in fact, promoted Lili’s music throughout her life and career. An international foundation continues that promotion and celebration of this extraordinary woman. She even had an asteroid, “1181 Lilith,” named after her at its discovery in 1927 by the Russian-French astronomer, Benjamin Jekhowsky!
Her father was 77 years old when she was born and he died when she was only seven. She spoke openly of her persistent grief at losing her father. It is not hard to hear reflections of that grief and loss in most of her music, including in these three pieces for the piano. “From an old garden,” “In a bright garden,” and “Procession” are evocative and full of adventuresome harmonies. It is not too much, I think, to call them poetic. To my ears, it would be unfair to call this “salon music” as that term nowadays usually connotes something disparaging. This is rare, evanescent music, wherever it might be played.
Natalia says . . .
The first piece “D’un jardin clair” (“Of a Bright Garden”) is based on a single melodic line whose fragments appear throughout the piece. The parallel fourths and fifths create the unmistakably French sound world, with the serene accompaniment of the melody evocative of Satie, an episode of calm and contemplation. The second piece, “D’un vieux jardin” (“Of an Old Garden”) is another musical episode closely related in style. The elegant melody of the opening measures becomes intertwined in fuller harmonic textures, leading into a series of cascading intervals of fourths that spans every register. The third piece “Cortège” (“Procession” or “March”) is a solo piano transcription of a violin and piano duo, written in the same year. The piece, less than two minutes long, is a cheerful and energetic musical episode. Lili gives this piece a positive meaning to the word “cortège,” ending the morceaux with a jubilant celebration.
DIEMER
Natalia says . . .
I have always been drawn to large-scale compositions - particularly sonatas. This musical form demonstrates a composer’s mastery of her art, because it takes a great deal of creativity to come up with enough interesting musical material to create a large-scale sonata. Since women were not allowed to formally study composition for centuries, my hope was to find sonatas written in the 20th century. My most recent discovery is Piano Sonata No. 3 by Emma Lou Diemer, a contemporary American composer, combines her many stylistic influences, including her affinity for Ravel, jazz, and the older masters like Bach and Mozart. This work is a musical kaleidoscope. The melodies are catchy, and the writing is colorful and exciting. The Serenade/Toccata is a brilliant juxtaposition of poetic lyricism and rhythmic intensity - a deeply satisfying synthesis of characters. The Interlude is a moment of meditation, while Tango Fantastique delivers the flashy, well-choreographed dance. Her use of atmospheric harmonies and exciting rhythms gives the three movements so much life that I come away either humming the music or wanting to dance to it.
Bill says . . .
The incredibly touching songfulness in the paradoxically titled “Serenade/Toccata” that is the opening movement of Emma Lou Diemer’s third piano sonata caught me quite by surprise when I first heard it last fall in a recording. Growing up in the country outside Kansas City, I had heard her name, as she is a native daughter, and I vaguely knew that she is an organist, as I am, but I had never looked into any of her compositions (my bad, as the young folks say.) It is not easy to admit that, like all too many classical music lovers, most of all men, I had failed to investigate her music. Her plain mid-western name probably has prejudiced many people, preventing them from learning about the immense collection of compositions she has brought forth.
From a distinguished family of educators, musicians, and all-around achievers, Diemer has explored and exploited most all of the corners of musical styles, including having created a highly recognized electronic music program at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where is she a professor emerita. Educated with distinction at Yale and Eastman, and recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to study composition in Belgium, she has been commissioned to write new music for symphony orchestras, for the carillon at the University of California, Berkeley, for marimba, for organ, for choruses, and on and on.
That first movement with the odd title has already become a favorite. How does one juxtapose a serenade (beguiling tune, mostly sung in the evening) on a toccata (notes flying all over the place, usually to a triumphant, bombastic ending)? That question will bear more reflection, but in this brilliant composition, Diemer achieves a synthesis that is much more than the sum of its parts, tender and evocative, sonorous enough to seduce even those who worry about adventuresome harmonies.
Enigma and irony, to my taste, are all too facile features of too much contemporary art and music, so often displayed when a creator is, in fact, merely uncertain of what she or he is trying to portray. In so much contemporary music, the listener gets handed a big bunch of “huh?”, rather than an actual something that makes the ear or eye want to engage more. In marked contrast, though, Diemer, in her Interlude here, has given us an arousing theme, elaborated marvelously, that intrigues, charms, makes one long to know more. There is no need to imagine a program here (musicologists would bark at me that this is absolute music!), but I think that I will spend a lot of time in the days to come wondering about why this rapturous music moves me so.
The concluding Tango Fantastique much more than lives up to its fun title. Here are well-choreographed, athletic polyrhythms. Here are moments of passion, flashing eyes, perfect steps on the imagined ballroom floor, then the lyric counter-theme singing of the longing heart, and, of course, the thrilling conclusion. Along the way, keyboard pyrotechnics abound, including the left hand dampening strings while the right taps out a tiny, inviting new theme, just for intrigue. Having now listened to the whole sonata dozens of times, I cannot stop thinking about favorite moments in favorite films by Pedro Almodovar, they, too, being marked by such drama, humor, color and complexity. If at the conclusion of this marvelous recital you feel that you just must jump up and dance, do! I’ll join you!
SUNDAY
BACEWICZ
Bill says . . .
If the name Grazyna Bacewicz is not new to you, you are ahead of me in exploring the edges of piano literature. That said, I was thrilled to hear this astonishing, thrilling sonata from a Polish/Lithuanian composer and violinist who was supported financially in her early studies by Ignaz Paderewski and who spent time with the famous teacher and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, noted above. With an enviable career as performer, composer, and teacher, including time as the principal violinist of the Polish Radio Orchestra and secret underground concerts during World War II in Warsaw, Bacewicz brought forth a big catalogue of compositions in her short life (dying at 59 of cancer) and I look forward to exploring more of it.
Natalia says . . .
When I first heard this sonata, it blew me away with its unapologetic power, passion, and force. Dark and stormy in character, the first movement requires vivid imagination and virtuosity. The second movement is a moment of introspection and poetry, though it never ceases in intensity even in the most lyrical passages. The toccata seals the work with an exciting tour-de-force conclusion.
RAVEL
Natalia says . . .
Ravel’s Jeux d’eau might have never been composed without a pioneering work Liszt composed at the Villa d’Este in the hills near Rome a few decades before. I visited the villa on my way to Florence and discovered a chain of inspiration that led from a 2nd century emperor looking for respite from the heat and politics of Rome, to Liszt seeking sanctuary, and then to Ravel’s quest for a new musical language. Ravel is famous for works that evoke water, like “Une barque sur l’océan” and “Ondine,” but it was Liszt’s pioneering Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este that paved the way for these compositions. The cascading arpeggios and splashing dance of the music in Ravel’s Jeux d’eau call to mind the sound of water spouting up and running down the hundreds of fountains in the villa’s garden.
CHOPIN
Bill says . . .
There is such a grand tour of emotions to be undertaken in listening to all the 24 preludes of opus 28, not to mention playing them! Thus, getting ready to enjoy all of them, as we will this afternoon, it is good to remember as well that these preludes, like Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier, actually form an orderly process of all the major and minor keys. (Many other composers, including Busoni, Kabalevsky, Scriabin, and Shostakovich, also wrote sets of preludes in the whole circle of keys, but Chopin’s and Bach’s remain the best known.) Chopin wrote the preludes mostly in Mallorca, in the days when he and George Sand, along with her children, had fled there in the winter of 1838-39 to escape damp Paris.
Some will be immediately familiar (“Raindrops,” “Funeral March”) and others a bit less so. No matter, as each contains a refined distillation of feelings/experiences/ideas. While one might think that the term “prelude” means that something will come after, in this case each serves, rather, as a provocation to the listener to fill in the details of what comes to mind from such evocative, “miniature” musical statements. Franz Liszt was full of praise for Opus 28: “This composition is of a kind by itself … poetic preludes, analogous to those of a contemporary poet [Lamartine], which soothe the soul with golden dreams and raise it to ideal regions. Admirable in their diversity, they reveal a labor and knowledge that can be appreciated only by careful study. Everything is full of spontaneity, élan, bounce. They have the free and great features that characterize the works of genius.”
In later years, famed pianists Hans von Bulow and Alfred-Denis Cortot both offered their own descriptive captions, variously “Feverish anticipation of loved ones,” “Tolling Bells,” Sensational memories float like perfume through my mind,” “The Polish dancer,” and so on. We are left to wonder whether these nicknames have been helpful to piano students through the years.