Rodolfo Leone: Notes on the Program
F. Schubert: Impromptu Op. 90 No. 1
Two tangential links to Schubert’s life that makes today’s performance of this work all the more poignant: Cold and gloomy January is not only Schubert’s birthday month (he was born on January 31st, 1791) – but Op.90 was also composed during the same time as his iconicaly sombre song cycle Winterreise. It goes without saying, then, that a winter-weary Portland audience should be able to relate to the feeling of desolation and gloom that suffuses Impromptu Op.90 no. 1. Despite the poetic, timeless beauty of the work, there is an unshakeable chill that sets in with the arresting, bare G of the opening and that never fully thaws, despite lyrical and nostalgic “sun breaks” in A-flat major. Much like a January hike in Forest Park: The beauty of the journey is undeniable, and the eventual reward guaranteed – but your boots are going to get muddy all the same.
L. van Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 53 Waldstein
Even though Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein, the hapless Austrian aristocrat to whom this sonata is dedicated, died penniless in a shelter for the destitute, we are eternally grateful to his lack of financial savvy. Were it not for his lavish sponsorship, Beethoven would never have relocated from Bonn to Vienna, and one of the most foundational and beloved of piano sonatas may never have been written. Completed in 1804, Sonata no. 21 in C major, Op.53, marks the beginning of what is known as Beethoven’s “heroic” period. The sonata’s technical challenges were beyond the abilities of most amateur pianists at the time and set a new standard for piano composition by pushing the instrument to its utmost limits.
F. Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 Op. 31
If Schubert were a rainy-day hike and Beethoven a mountaineering expedition … then what better way to recuperate than with a cup of tea and some light Chopin? Be warned, though: Despite the title “Scherzo”(which literally translates as “joke”) there is nothing trivial or lightweight about this second of Chopin’s four famous Scherzos.
Chopin wrote the b-flat minor scherzo in 1837, in the same year that he traveled incognito to London in the company of French piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel, and met George Sand, who would become is lover and muse. The whole piece exudes a boldness of spirit and a sense of drama that catches our attention from the very opening “question-and-answer” – and plunges us into a buoyant and breathless world of dazzling passages. A happy dance, one could say.
F. Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 Op. 35
As much as most piano lovers revere Schumann, we have to agree that he, too, had his moments of limited vision and misjudgment. Case in point: Along with other critics, he argued that Chopin’s Piano Sonata no.2, op. 35 was structurally inferior, proclaiming with great indignance: “The idea of calling it a sonata is a caprice, if not a jest, for he has simply bound together four of his most reckless children, thus under his name smuggling them into a place into which they could not else have penetrated.” Regardless of whether this opinion has musicological validity or not, this sonata would become one of Chopin’s most popular compositions, and one of the “reckless children” is, in fact, the lynchpin of the whole sonata: Chopin’s Marche Funébre or funeral march. Although by itself this third movement has become almost cartoonish in its archetypal evocation of death, as part of a larger dramatic narrative it has a simple, dry-eyed poignancy that is nothing short of genius.