Rudepoema (1921–26)

Anyone who remembers the playing of Artur Rubinstein – who gave his farewell recital in this hall more than 30 years ago – will find it difficult to believe that Rudepoema by his Brazilian friend Heitor Villa-Lobos was intended not only as a tribute to the great pianist but also as a portrait of him. How, one might ask, could a musician of such urbane elegance and    wit have inspired such a violent, even savage work as Rudepoema? One can only conclude that Rubinstein must have been a very different personality in his early 30s, when he first met the composer and gave him such vital encouragement, not least by securing for him the funds that would subsidise his residence in Paris in the 1920s.

While Rubinstein might not have recognised himself in a work described by the composer as “rude, brutal, and barbaric, full of the music of free sounds, like the exuberance of storms in the virgin forest of Brazil”, he did in fact take Rudepoema into his repertoire and gave its first performance in Paris in 1927. It was then one of the most demanding pieces ever written and, although pianists have since got used to pounding chord clusters and sophisticated pedal effects, it still is. Certainly, in its requirement of strenuous activity for not far short of 20 minutes without a break, it demands uncommon stamina in the performer.

It is also uncommonly demanding for the listener. In theory, its turbulent structure is based on sonata form but, in practice, no one is very likely to hear it as that. A more rewarding way of appreciating its undoubted and yet tumultuous inspiration is to give oneself up to its vastly resourceful energy, to ride fearlessly on its often primitive rhythms, to be jolted its exhilaratingly sudden changes of mood and texture, to be receptive to its dazzling variety of colour – in short, to take on trust a work by composer who, though no pianist himself, uses every (at the time) conceivable piano technique with unfailing effect.

At the same time, there are unifying factors – the most important of which is the theme in even crotchets emphatically presented by the left hand in the otherwise syncopated opening bars. That theme is subject to all kinds of transformations but its deliberate rhythm lives on, surviving an early outburst of savagery (Très sauvage), to keep in touch with reality at several points in the construction. The even crotchet rhythm is present too in a kind of second subject introduced over a heavy ostinato in both hands before it is converted into the first of several apparent allusions to Bartók and, later, a passage of chord clusters. One of the most significant landmarks is a short passage beginning with an unaccompanied three-note trumpet call and, in a kind of march-time, a tattoo of clatteringly percussive clusters. This seems to mark the climax of the development which then winds down by way of a an extraordinary passage of a pp harmonies in both hands topped by ff exclamations from the unoccupied fingers of the right or underpinned by similarly prominent octaves in the left. The ostinato winds down to a silence and then, rather than a recapitulation, a torrential coda recalling in altered form the even rhythms from the start and ending with four clusters punched with the fist at the bottom of the keyboard.