Programme — John Lill, Piano Sonata in E flat major (H.XVI/52), Allegro …

John Lill

Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

Piano Sonata in E flat major (H.XVI/52)

Allegro

Adagio

Finale: Presto

Haydn’s last piano sonata - one of three written for Therese Jansen in London in 1794 - is also one of his longest. Even so, its three movements put together are shorter than the slow movement alone of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier.”

While the statistics indicate how far Beethoven had extended the dimensions of the piano sonata in the intervening twenty-five years, they conceal the fact that in other respects the difference between the two works is not so enormous. It is more than a question of style, of Haydn assuming a heroic tone in the E flat major in the main theme of the first movement and of indulging the virtuoso element in his piano writing. It is also a question of harmony, of Haydn adopting modulations so adventurous that by the end of the development he is presenting his playful second subject in E major, which is as far from the starting point as he can get. Beethoven does just the same thing, though by a different process of harmonic thinking, in the first movement of the “Hammerklavier.” Both composers then have to exercise considerable technical skill in restoring the tonic key within a few bars before the beginning of the recapitulation.

Haydn persists in his harmonic adventure by setting his Adagio in that same remote key of E major. Like Beethoven’s Adagio sostenuto, it is abundant in decorative devices, linear beauty and variational ingenuity. The two slow movements are very different in structure, however, both in shape and - not least because Haydn’s is based on only one main theme - in scale. The Presto finale, which has no direct equivalent in the “Hammerklavier,” is another monothematic structure: it offers as its second subject a heavily emphatic version of the repeated notes which are the principal feature of the first subject. It is not, on the other hand, lacking in melodic interest, still less in harmonic inspiration and textural variety. The baroque-style toccata episodes are particularly remarkable phenomenon in this classical context.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Four Impromptus, D.899

No.1 in C minor: allegro molto moderato

No.2 in E flat major: allegro

No.3 in G flat major: andante

No.4 in A flat major: allegretto

Although he was a master in the art of building extended movements on one theme only, Haydn never wrote anything as obsessive in its attachment to its singular material as Schubert’s Impromptu in C minor. It is a miracle of spontaneous development, its march-like theme recurring literally dozens of times and yet scarcely ever in a form in which it has been heard before. Unpredictable in which key it will alight on next, it is similarly unpredictable in mood: the same theme can be grim in C minor, expansively luxuriating in A flat or G major, melanchoy in G minor. Indeed, it is only in the last few bars that, after much vacillation, it settles for a mutedly happy ending in C major.

The other three Impromptus in the present set - which was written in 1827 for a publisher with so little faith in them that he withheld the last two until twenty-seven years after the composer’s death - are all in ternary form with dramatically contrasting middle sections. The triplet figuration of the Allegro in E flat runs on without interruption, though not always as cheerfully as it begins, towards an abrupt modulation to B minor for the belligerent middle section. Although it is only briefly recalled after the reprise of the first section, the B minor material secures an unexpectedly grim ending in E flat minor.

The Andante in G flat major is a wonderfully sustained song not quite without words - it is closely related to Schubert’s Schlegel setting Die Gebüsche - which retains its characteristic broken chord accompaniment between melodic line and bass line from the first bar to the last. In spite of its seamless continuity, however, there is a clearly defined middle section where, stirred by the change of harmony to E flat minor, the left hand joins in a passionate duet with the right.

Structurally, the Allegretto in A flat major seems to be little different from the Allegro in E flat major. In fact, it is its exact opposite in the sense that the charming melodious first section remains quite unaffected by the dramatic and recklessly modulating middle section in C sharp minor. On its reprise it waltzes unconcernedly towards the A flat major ending as though nothing had happened in the meantime.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata in B flat major, Op.106 (“Hammerklavier”)

Allegro

Scherzo: allegro vivace

Adagio sostenuto

Largo - allegro risoluto

“Hammerklavier,” the nickname inseparably associated with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in B flat major, Op.106, could with equal documentary justification be applied to the Sonatas in A major, Op.101, and E major, Op.109. They too were first published - on the insistence of a composer who at that time preferred good German words to foreign ones - as Sonatas for “Hammerklavier“ rather than “pianoforte.”

The name has stuck to Op.106 presumably because it seems to suit the hammered B flat major harmonies in the opening bars. Certainly, beginning with an upward leap of two octaves and a third in the left hand, the opening gesture is a salient feature of the work. It is crucial to its unprecedentedly massive construction, both for its dramatic effect and the way it draws attention to the all-important interval of the third. That interval is not particularly prominent in the melodic material of the first movement but it does have a profound harmonic influence on the rest of the exposition and the fugal development, where the tonality repeatedly falls by a third - which is how the serene second-subject melody alights on the remote key of B major towards the end of the development, just before the harmonies are jolted back to B flat at the beginning of the recapitulation.

The second movement, a short and dynamic scherzo, echoes this bold opposition of tonalities. Conventionally enough, the outer sections, which are based on a theme of rising and falling fourths, are in B flat major and the more melodious middle section is in B flat minor. But just before the end, at first quietly and then violently, Beethoven confronts B and B flats in naked octaves.

The way out of the conflict, temporarily at least, is a sublime slow movement in the unrelated key of F sharp minor. Interestingly, however, the contemplative opening theme twice touches on G major, as though to catch a glimpse of the serenity already experienced in that key in the exposition of the first movement. After that, the F sharp minor lyricism is still more inspired, the melody poised con grand’ espressione over a syncopated counterpoint in the right hand and a simple chordal accompaniment in the left. As a valuable textural contrast, the second-subject melody alternates between the bottom of the keyboard and the top, the right hand crossing the undulating D major harmonies in the left. Bearing in mind the wealth of material, the development is surprisingly short. The recapitulation, on the other hand, is not. After the return of the first theme, elaborately disguised in decorative figuration, the con grand’ espressione passage reappears not in the expected F sharp minor but in D major. The anomaly has to be resolved in the coda, which functions as an abbreviated second recapitulation in F sharp vacillating between the minor and the major and ending in the major.

The massive contrapuntal structure with which the work ends is headed Fuga a tre voci, con alcune licenze (“Fugue in three voices, with some liberties”) - which is not so much an apology for breaking the rules as an advertisement. “To make a fugue requires no particular skill,” Beethoven said. “In my student days I made dozens of them. But the imagination wishes also to assert its privilege, and today a new and really poetical element must be introduced into the old traditional form.” But before demonstrating his modern fugue, Beethoven crosses the gap from F sharp major Adagio to B flat major Allegro risoluto in a visionary transition, the tonality once again falling repeatedly in thirds.

In its initial leap up a tenth - an octave and a third, topped by a trill -the fugue subject is clearly related to the opening theme of the sonata. The course it pursues, in a construction as complex as that of the Grosse Fuge, is not so clear: it is as much a virtuoso performance for the listener to follow it in detail as for the pianist to play it. Broadly, the movement is divided into two unequal parts by the intervention of a restful (though still fugal) episode in D major, where the motion in semiquavers stops for the first time.Towards the end of the second part of the movement the fugue subject, which has been presented by now in all kinds of backwards and inverted version, makes a climactic last appearance in its original form high in the right hand. The three-part texture is abandoned for the first time in the coda, a free and dramatic fantasy on the trill which has sustained the whole massive construction.

Gerald Larner©