Programme — Andsnes - Wigmore 9/3/96, Sonata in B flat major, Op.22, Allegro con brio …

Andsnes - Wigmore 9/3/96

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata in B flat major, Op.22

Allegro con brio

Adagio con molta espressione

Menuetto

Rondo: allegretto

If the Sonata in B flat, Op.22, is not one of the most popular items in the Beethoven piano repertoire it is not because it is one of the less inspired. On the contrary, inspiration in this work is so intense that it is sometimes uncomfortable to live with, in a way not entirely unlike that of the other B flat Sonata, the “Hammerklavier.” Any resemblance to Mozart - and, as in other major works written round about 1800, there are obvious stylistic similarities - is purely superficial.

Although it would be an exaggeration to claim that the whole sonata derives from the group of four semiquavers heard in each of the four opening bars, the first movement is actually concerned with little else, while the other three at least acknowledge the importance of its long-term structural function. There are few bars in the Allegro con brio - they are nearly all in the second subject - which do not allude to the four-note motif in one way or another. In fact, that figure holds the movement so firmly in its grasp that, while it inhibits expansion of other melodic ideas, it allows the composer to take all kinds of harmonic liberties, above all in the fantasia-like development section, without endangering the structure.

The slow movement is more than melodious enough to compensate, its line so elaborately decorated that it anticipates Chopin in places. So from time to time, but particularly in the emotionally fraught development section, do the harmonies. The clear reference to the four-note motif in the penultimate bar confirms that other, apparently less deliberate allusions, like the group of four semiquavers so prominent in the main theme, are not merely accidental.

A similar group of four semiquavers is still more prominent, even obsessively prominent, in the Menuetto. Beethoven’s efforts to shake off the motif result only in a Trio section grimly dominated by it. The final Rondo, on the other hand, is reconciled to it. The four-note motif is now integrated in the gently flowing main theme without in any way threatening its serenity. There are obstacles on the way, not least a tenacious episode in B flat minor, but the happy ending is never in serious doubt.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Ballade No.2 in F major, Op.38

When Schumann heard Chopin play his First Ballade in G minor in 1836, a year after its completion, he declared it “the best of all his works.” Chopin agreed with him. Three years later, when he had finished the Second Ballade in F major, Chopin dedicated the new work to Robert Schumann (crossing out the description “my friend,” incidentally, and spelling the dedicatee’s name wrong in his instructions to his publisher). This work quickly became a favourite too. Chopin played it frequently but never, apparently, in its entirety. He is said to have played only the first part, in an extended version. Obviously, this is the most attractive part, and it is particularly inspired in the way its gentle pastoral theme grows so naturally out of the repeated notes plucked as though on a harp in the first bars. The parts Chopin did not play are the two stormy presto con fuoco episodes, with the balladeer’s voice rising in an impassioned shout in the left hand. The idyll is definitively drowned by the second episode, which leads not into F major again but to an agitato coda ending in desolate A minor.

Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op.60

The Barcarolle was first performed at Chopin’s last concert in Paris - along with a Mozart piano trio, the last three movements of the Cello Sonata, the Berceuse and the recently completed Waltz in D flat major - in February 1847. It was written during composer’s last few months with George Sand in Nohant and, in spite of her troublesome family and the generally unhappy situation, it represents him at the height of his powers. Its stylistic origin is, of course, the Venetian gondola song: after the short ballade-like introduction, all the attributes of the gondoliera are there - the 12/8 metre, the gentle rocking accompani­ment, the melody sung in seductive thirds. But this is only the beginning of a construction which transcends its origins. Basically, it is a ternary shape with a quicker middle section and, at the heart of that, a still quicker episode with a new theme in A major. The reappearance of that theme in F sharp major inspires the climax of the last section. Already far gone in his final illness by the time of the first performance and too weak to achieve a fortissimo, Chopin played this passage pianissimo with what must have been a peculiarly eerie effect.

Frank Martin (1890-1974)

Fantasy on Flamenco Rhythms

If the idea of a Swiss composer like Frank Martin writing a Fantasy on Flamenco Themes seems incongruous it is really no less likely than, say, a Russian composer like Glinka writing a Jota aragonesa or a German composer like Schumann writing a Fandango. In fact, Martin had a deep affection for Spanish music, an affection unshaken even by Segovia’s failure to play or even acknowledge the Four Short Pieces he dedicated to him in 1933. It was unfortunate perhaps that they were written in the short period when Martin was interested in twelve-note technique, although (at least in the piano version, called Guitar) the combination of serialism and the Spanish idiom works very well. The Fantasy on Flamenco Rhythms was written forty years later for the composer’s daughter, Teresa, who - unlikely though it might seem again - was a dancer in a Majorcan flamenco group. On its first performance the Fantasy was accompanied by Teresa’s choreography.

Martin’s Fantasy is not Spanish picture-postcard music. As the title suggests, it is primarily a study in rhythm and it is not much concerned with the other aspects of Flamenco. Although it does not entirely avoid characteristic Flamenco melody, the harmonic idiom is not so much Spanish as Martin’s own. Similarly, the piano writing, though it owes much to guitar figuration, is nearer to that of Bartok than that of Albeniz. The work is divided into three main sections, the opening Slow Rumba - with attractive hints of the blues in the melodic line - leading to a compulsively articulated and elaborately developed Quick Rumba (or Rumba flamenca). The second section is inspired by rhythms associated with the Soleares which, according to the composer, implies solitude, “a solitude which is at the same time nostalgia, revolt and reconciliation with destiny.” In the Petenera, “a kind of epic poem relating the tragic destiny of a woman abandoned by her lover,” the rhythmic interest recedes at least in favour of melody, the line drawn in octaves with little accompaniment and with characteristic Flamenco decoration.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Sonata in F sharp minor, Op.11

Introduzione: un poco adagio - allegro vivace

Aria

Scherzo ed Intermezzo: allegrissimo

Finale: allegro un poco maestoso

In spite of his admiration for the sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, Schumann - like Brahms - wrote three piano sonatas early in his career and then abandoned the form. An informal kind of variations construction, which allowed him considerably more freedom, proved to be more congenial to his essentially spontaneous manner of creation. Even the first movement of the First Piano Sonata has structurally more in common with variations than with sonata form. Originally a Fandango for piano, it was not intended for a sonata. The slow movement, headed Aria, was also a separate work in its original form - a song, An Anna, written as many as seven years earlier. When, in 1834 or 1835, Schumann put the Fandango and the song together as the first two movements of the sonata he devised an elaborate system of cross-reference to link them and the last two movements together.

The theme of the Fandango and that of An Anna have little in common. So he began by writing an Introduzione which is actually a variation of An Anna. Then in the middle of the Allegro vivace (as the Fandango became in its sonata version) he made a deliberate reference back to the double-dotted rhythms of the Introduzione. There is, moreover, a lyrical A major section, a vestigial second subject to this first movement, which is clearly intended to relate back to the Introduzione and at the same time to anticipate the slow movement.

The Aria is a short and lovely song in ternary form with a curiously abrupt modulation from A major to the F major of the middle section, where the melodic interest passes to the left hand. Then, having so ingeniously linked the first two movement, Schumann is careful to integrate them with the Scherzo. Although it has its own boisterous theme in F sharp minor, the first Trio in A major recalls the dancing fifths of the Fandango and the first five notes of the Aria. The second trio, headed Intermezzo, is a brilliant burlesque of the empty-headed kind of virtuoso keyboard material which, much to Schumann’s distaste, was in vogue at a time when his own more serious piano music was not.

Although the last movement - a bold and excitable rondo, plunging impetuously from one unlikely key to another - is itself in danger of falling apart, it is entrusted with the responsibility of holding the sonata together as a whole. It begins in F sharp minor with an energetic staccato version of the lyrical A major passage of the first movement, and it incorporates numerous other reminiscences in its erratic progress towards the jubilant F sharp major coda.

Gerald Larner©