Bruce Liu

Program

Joseph Haydn Piano Sonata in B minor Hob.XVI:32

Fryderyk Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor Op. 35

Nikolai Kapustin Variations Op. 41

—Intermission —

Jean-Phillipe Rameau
Les Tendres Plaintes
Les Cyclopes
Menuets I et II
Les Sauvages
La Poule
Gavotte et six doubles

Sergei Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 7

JOSEPH HAYDN

Born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, May 31, 1809

Sonata No. 47, in B minor, Hob.  XVI:32 (1776)

“Six sonatas from the year 1776” is how Haydn referred in his catalog to a collection that includes the sparkling Sonata No. 47, in B minor.  He appears to have written the collection with the amateur market in mind, though the technical demands of the B minor Sonata are notably greater than those of its companions.  It opens with a crisply articulated theme that is rich in ornamentation – suggesting that Haydn had not yet given up on the harpsichord and was publishing his music “per il clavicembalo o fortepiano” (for the harpsichord or the piano).  As a transitional work, the B minor sonata ranges widely over the available keyboard of the day.  The urgency of the writing and dramatic contrast within the opening movement have elements of the emotional language of the sturm und drang.  There is no slow movement and the tension in the music of the opening movement continues in the stormy central trio section of the minuet that follows.  To carefully balance this, Haydn surrounds it with a calm, gracefully poised, elegantly decorated minuet.  The finale remains resolutely in the minor key and further develops the rhythmically driven momentum of the opening movement, simultaneously marrying contrapuntal ingenuity with technical brilliance. 

FRYDERYK CHOPIN

Born in Żelazowa Wola, nr Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 1810; died in Paris, October 17, 1849

Piano Sonata No. 2, in B-flat minor, Op. 35 (1837)

Chopin was in his late twenties when he put the finishing touches to his second piano sonata.  He was in the middle of a passionate love affair with the notorious, cigar-smoking author George Sand, living in her house at Nohant in France.  A funeral march he had written earlier was the starting point.  But something profound seems to have happened in the two years since he first conceived its solemn pages.  The funeral march was to become the emotional and structural focal point of the sonata; the other movements complement its emotional intensity and frame its structural position. 

The opening movement immediately establishes a turbulent sound world.  Its two poles, where melancholy and tragedy alternate with consoling lyricism, are hallmarks of both the Scherzo which follows and the famous Marche funèbre.  So established is this slow movement as a requiem for the dead that, when we listen to the solemn tread of its dotted rhythms, associations beyond the music itself inevitably come to mind.  At the conclusion of its broad expanse what can possibly follow?  The whirlwind one-and-a-half- minute finale is at one level an enigma.  Chopin provides few performing indications to help the interpreter make sense of its turbulent course in which the hands play rapid triplets an octave apart.  At a deeper level, however, there is a logic and power to the music which make the final fortissimo chord conclusive and inevitable.

NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN

Born in Gorlovka, Donetsk province, Ukraine, November 22, 1937; died July 2, 2020, Moscow

Variations for piano, Op. 41 (1984)

Ukrainian-born, but a long-time Moscow resident, composer Nikolai Kapustin’s large output – much of it including piano – is deeply influenced by jazz.  Although classically trained in the Russian tradition at the Moscow Conservatoire, Kapustin explores a unique synthesis of classical musical structures and the language of mainstream 20^th century jazz.  Both Oscar Peterson and Chopin come to mind in compositions like the 1984 Variations for Piano, Op. 41.  Kapustin does not ask the performer to improvise, as would a jazz performer.  “All improvisation, as far as I am concerned, is written down, and it is all the better for that; it is allowed to mature,” Kapustin says.  The 32-bar theme of the Variations takes flight from the high bassoon opening of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, teasing the rhythm inside and across the barline through a kaleidoscope of mood swings; the music is sophisticated and urbane, with great rhythmic drive.  The tempo doubles before an extended transition leads to a Larghetto variation full of soulful Slavic sentiment.  A final salvo of coruscating right-hand virtuosity marked Presto concludes this brilliant recital showpiece.  

JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU

Born in Dijon, France, bap. September 25, 1683; died in Paris, September 12, 1764

Selections from the harpsichord Suites (1706-29)

In 18^th century France, Rameau was renowned as a music theoretician and opera composer, with a reputation, too, as an organist.  Rameau did not endear himself to his colleagues.  His prickly character and keen intellect frequently provoked argument.  Physically, he was “lean and scraggy, with more the air of a ghost than a man,” by one account.  Musically speaking, others portrayed him as “like a long organ pipe,” “with legs like flutes.”  Throughout his career, Rameau wrote short harpsichord pieces which he grouped into suites.  For many years after his death, performances of these attractive, often illustrative 50 or so keyboard works, were chiefly responsible for keeping his name alive, while, in the past half century, revivals of his 30 or so operas have re-established Rameau’s high place among composers of French opera. 

Rameau’s first keyboard collection, Premier livre de pièces de clavecin, appeared in 1706.  Another was published in 1724.  Then, five or six years later, Rameau introduced a third anthology, the Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin.  Here, the various dance movements are grouped together into two Suites.  The first is centered on the keys of A major/minor and concludes with the Gavotte and six doubles (variations).  The structure of Rameau’s theme and the textures and figuration of the first three variations closely resemble those of Handel’s Air with five doubles in his Third keyboard Suite.  By exploring many aspects of keyboard technique, Rameau delivers an even greater virtuoso vehicle. 

SERGEI PROKOFIEV

Born in Sontzovka, Russia, April 11/23, 1891; died in Moscow, Russia March 5, 1953

Piano Sonata No. 7, in B-flat, Op. 83 (1939-42)

Inquieto (restless), caloroso (warm), and precipitato (impetuously) are the descriptive tempo markings that Prokofiev provides for this, the most popular of his nine piano sonatas, and they reflect the uncertainty of the times when the Russian composer wrote it.  Prokofiev completed the sonata in 1942 in Tbilisi, Georgia where he and many other Soviet artists had been evacuated to escape the Nazi advance in the ‘Great War of the Fatherland.’  It is one of his three so-called ‘War Sonatas,’ Nos. 6, 7 and 8, which represent the composer at the peak of his skill.  He worked on all ten movements of the three sonatas concurrently between 1939 and 1944 and they were his first piano sonatas in 16 years.  The three movements of No. 7 contain all the hopes and aspirations of a nation struggling for victory.  The great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter was eager to give the first performance of the sonata, after learning it in just four days.  At the time he said: "The sonata immediately throws one into the anxious situation of a world losing its equilibrium.  Disorder and uncertainty reign.  Man observes the raging of death-dealing forces.  Full of the will for victory, he makes a headlong running attack, clearing away all obstacles.  He will become strong through the struggle, expanding into a gigantic and life affirming force."

The ferocious first movement contains some of Prokofiev's finest, most uncompromising music.  Its nervous intensity and bitonality dramatically contrast with the warm lyricism of the slow movement.  Here, a disarmingly simple melody seems to be drawn from the opera War and Peace, on which Prokofiev was working at the time.  It is, in fact, closely related to the song Wehmuth (Sadness) by Schumann.  The driving, motoric, moto perpetuo finale, with its thrilling seven-beats-to-the-bar, propels the sonata to a decisive end.  The composer Miaskovsky, who was also evacuated to Tbilisi, described it as ‘superbly wild.’

— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner.  Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca