Programme — Seven Bagatelles Op.33, No.1 in E flat major: andante grazioso, quasi allegretto, No.2 (Scherzo) in C major: allegro …

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Seven Bagatelles Op.33

No.1 in E flat major: andante grazioso, quasi allegretto

No.2 (Scherzo) in C major: allegro

No.3 in F major: allegretto

No.4 in A major: andante

No.5 in C major: allegro man non troppo

No.6 in D major: allegretto quasi andante

No.7 in A flat major: presto

The more eccentric Beethoven’s shorter piano pieces the more likely they were to end up as bagatelles. It is true that the Op.33 Bagatelles are neither as short nor as eccentric as those of Op.119, the next set in the series, but at least twenty years and a whole new dimension in Beethoven’s development came between them. What he was bold enough to publish in 1822 he wouldn’t even have thought of in 1802.

Even so, for a piece written at the same time as the Second Symphony (or still earlier perhaps) the Bagatelle in E flat is eccentric enough. Straightforward in its ternary form, unsurprising in its decorative figuration, charming in its melodic content, it is also disconcertingly aggressive as it gets hold of an unsuspecting four-note phrase, shakes it and castigates it in angry downward scales. No.2 in C is of a less uncertain humour, in spite of its suddenly passionate episode in A minor. Reassuringly, the composer himself labelled it as a Scherzo and the grotesque element in it is no more than a matter of forcibly displacing the rhythmic emphasis from the first beat of the bar.

Although a desirable quality in a Beethoven bagetelle, eccentrictiy is clearly not a necessary qualification. No.3 in F is peculiar only in the charmingly innocent way it has of slipping into D major and out again, while No.4 in A is a placid Andante with a rather more agitated middle section in the minor. No.5 in C, on the other hand, exults in the extravagantly wide leaps of its main theme, gets rather cross in the middle and has an apparent failure in confidence as it winds itself up to take its last fortissimo leaps. Like some of the late-period bagatelles, No.6 in D is a kind of experiment. “Con una certa expressione parlando” is the composer’s instruction to the pianist and, indeed, although it begins as a song without words, it develops with the spontaneity of a recitative avoiding the ternary symmetry observed by most of the others. As for No.7 in A flat, propelled on its vigorous left-hand ostinato, it sounds like a parody of the “Waldstein” Sonata Beethoven was to write a couple of years later.   

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Sonata in C minor HXV1: 20 (1771)

Moderato

Andante con moto

Finale: Allegro

(No.36 or 33?)

Ludwig van Beethoven

Variations on La stessa la stessima WoO73 (1799)

p373

John Dowland (1563-1626)

In darkness let me dwell (1610)

Thomas Adès (b 1971)

Darknesse Visible (1992)

The title comes from Milton’s Paradise Lost: “No light but rather darkness visible/Served only to discover sights of woe.” The material comes from John Dowland’s In Darknesse Let Mee Dwell. Adès’s luminous treatment of the song doesn’t so much shed light on it as make its components visible from any number of different points of view, isolating them, realigning them, recolouring them. The composer himself refers to the piece as an “explosion” of the song – which, presumably, shouldn’t be taken to mean a sudden release of energy but rather its aftermath, with the notes of In Darknesse Let Mee Dwell scattered through the whole range of the keyboard in new melodic, harmonic and rhythmic relationships. They are not, however, beyond at least partial reassembly. The process, though shorter and very much more crytpic, is not unlike that of Britten’s Lachrymae, his “reflections on a song of John Dowland,” which reveals its source only at the end.

At the same time – as befits a piece written for first performance in the recital hall of the Franz Liszt House in Budapest – Darknesse Visible is a formidable, though not at all showy, study in piano sonorities. It might be attributing too much to the Hungarian connection but it could be the inspiration for a consistently prominent feature of the scoring: the cimbalom-like repeated notes which, usually very quietly, colour one or two lines of the multi-faceted, multi-coloured texture. It is not easy to discern the background influence of the song while the ear is more likely to be caught by the extremes of pitch and dynamics but it is certainly present – most clesarly of all in the closing bars where Adès silences the distractions and adds a legatissimo (ppppp) echo of Dowland’s first line.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata in A flat major, Op.110

Moderato cantabile molto espressivo

Allegro molto

Adagio ma non troppo -    Fuga: allegro ma non troppo -

l’istesso tempo di arioso - l’istesso tempo della fuga

Beethoven’s last two sets of Bagatelles were both written after he had completed the last of his major piano works. It is as though, after thirty-two sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, he had exhausted the piano’s capacity for long-term thought and, turning now for sustained argument to the string quartet, he found it better equipped for cryptic little confidences like the Bagatelles.     

Certainly, there is something conclusive about the last three Piano Sonatas which, although each one is shorter than the “Hammerklavier” that immediately precedes them, can be taken to add up to one vast work on the same philosophical theme. “Written,” according to Beethoven “in a single breath,” they actually occupied him for well over a year, but they are all inspired by the same vision of serenity - which in the Sonata in A flat major finds expression in a sublime fugal finale. Completed in 1821, a year after Op.109 in E major and a year before Op.111 in C minor, Op.110 is an epic of an A flat major paradise lost, partly through the sinister influence of F minor, and with difficulty regained.

    The ideal is expressed in A flat major and con amabilità by the first theme of the first movement. Although it is immediately reshaped in a sort of inversion and although the inversion itself is reshaped to make a more excitable second subject, there is nothing in the exposition to disturb the prevailing calm. In the development, however, there is.    The brief and apparently unsensational appearance of the first subject in F minor proves to be a traumatic experience - even though that melody quickly regains its original key to introduce a recapitulation heightened in its serenity by an episode in E major and confirmed in its stability by an A flat major coda.

    The memory of the F minor experience haunts the Allegro molto scherzo. It is inevitable that the lovely D flat major middle section should provide only brief relief, for it must soon be swept aside by the return of the F minor material from the beginning. But it is also ironic that, when the scherzo has quite unexpectedly and insecurely come to an end in F major, the last movement should choose a key as inimical as B flat minor in which to voice its opening complaint.

    From there, by way of a recitative, the Adagio ma non troppo breaks into what Beethoven describes as an arioso dolente. It is a lament in A flat minor, the direct antithesis of the serene opening of the sonata in spite of certain melodic similarities. The first of the two fugal episodes does not regain that ideal state, even though it begins in A flat major, since the arioso returns not only dolente this time but also perdende le forze (“losing strength”) and eventually falling apart in isolated chords. However, poi    a poi di nuovo vivente (“gradually returning to life”), the fugue resumes its search. By turning its subject upside down, by apparently slowing it down and by taking it through a variety of major and minor harmonies, the fugue eventually finds its way back to A flat major, transforming itself from quest to celebration as it approaches its end.