Programme — Wigmore 26/3/96, Piano Variations

Wigmore 26/3/96

Aaron Copland (1900- 1990)

Piano Variations

Leonard Bernstein guaranteed that he “could empty a room in two minutes by playing this wonderful piece.” Copland himself included it among his “hard-bitten” works, along with two other scores written during the Depression in the early 1930s, Statements for Orchestra and the Short Symphony. And yet, while declaring it “as hard as nails,” Bernstein confessed himself “a lover, a fanatical lover” of the Piano Variations. Copland too expressed his affection for it, if in less lyrical terms. “From the start,” he said, “it had a ‘rightness.’ The piece flowed naturally and never seemed to get ‘stuck,’ although I worked on it for about two years, off an on.” He was aware of “a certain amount of contemporary reality” in it… “Frugality and economy were the order of the day.”

The economy of the Piano Variations is such that it is based on a theme of just four notes. “Almost every note and every chord in the piece,” Copland said, “relates back to those four notes.” Since that small melodic cell contains mainly dissonant intervals, the melodies derived from it are predominantly angular in shape and the harmonies predominantly austere (though not, in the end, atonal). On the other hand, the stark clarity of the textures, the brilliance of the piano writing, the rhythmic ingenuity and the dramatic orientation of the work ensure that it will hold the attention for rather more than Bernstein’s two minutes.

There are twenty variations in all, each one merging into the next in an unbroken continuity. Broadly, however, there are two main sections of ten variations each: the first accelerates from the Grave tempo in which the theme is presented in the opening bars and then falls back to Largamente in the tenth variation; the mainly quick second section runs by way of a witty little scherzo to a climax at the end of the twentieth variation, where it is forcibly arrested by another Largamente in the declamatory coda.

Walter Gieseking having declined the honour - “I do not know an audience which would accept such crude dissonances without protest” - the first performance was given by Copland himself in a League of Composers concert in New York in 1931.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Sonata in A major (D.959)

Allegretto

Andantino

Scherzo: allegretto

Rondo: allegretto - presto

Schubert begins his Sonata in A major - the second of the great series of three written in the last year of his life - with a gesture of far-reaching importance. In the first movement itself the percussive downward leaps in the left hand do not seem very significant. They are not heard again in the exposition, the most obsessive feature of which is the persistent triplet figuration and the most attractive the beautiful E major melody of the second subject. The version of that melody heard at the end of the exposition is particularly inspired and so captivating that it dominates almost the whole of the development. The opening bars take their due place in the recapitulation of course but are given no special emphasis until the coda.

The rhythmic shape adopted by the downward leap at one point in the coda of the Allegro is not unlike that of the left-hand accompaniment to the first theme in F sharp minor of the Andantino. The relationship is uncertain and would not be worth mentioning but for other indirect indications of Schubert’s concern for long-term unity here. The surprisingly vehement middle section is quite deliberately and equally surprisingly echoed in the next movement.

The beginning of the Scherzo is perhaps another allusion to the opening bars of the work, in spite of its position at the opposite end of the keyboard. Basically, the movement is one of Schubert’s German dances, in A major but with an incongruous intrusion of C sharp minor vehemence in a brilliant descending scale and a tiny echo of the F sharp minor theme of the previous movement. In the middle of the Trio section, which is slower and in D major, the right hand crosses the left in an unmistakable allusion to the opening bars of the first movement.

The relationship between the broadly shaped last movement and the rest of the sonata is left dangerously unsecured until the very end. Reluctant to labour the structural point and happy to luxuriate in the lyrical atmosphere suggested by a main theme derived from his song Im Frühling - “As I sit quietly on the hillside, the sky above so clear…” - Schubert avoids referring back. The entry of the more urgent second subject scarcely disturbs the serenity, in spite of its tendency to veer off course into the minor. It is not until after Schubert has explored the potential for drama in both main themes, has masterfully restored tranquillity, has tested the equanimity of the first subject by fragmenting it between bar-long rests, and has thrust it into a Presto coda that, with a gesture that could almost be ironic, he recalls the opening bars of the work at the very end.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Waldscenen (Forest Scenes), Op.82

Eintritt (Entry)

Jäger auf der Lauer (Huntsman on the Watch)

Einsame Blumen (Lonely Flowers)

Verrufene Stelle (Evil Place)

Freundliche Landschaft (Friendly Landscape)

Herberge (Inn)

Vogel als Prophet (The Prophet-Bird)

Jagdlied (Hunting Song)

Abschied (Farewell)

After his marriage to Clara Wieck in 1840 Schumann all but abandoned the piano as a solo instrument for as long as eight years. By then his eldest child, Marie, was seven and it was on her birthday that he started writing the Album für die Jugend (Album for the Young) - which had the happy effect of re-awakening his interest in the piano, leading directly to the Waldscenen later in 1848 and eventually to the Fantasiestücke, Op.111, and the Gesänge der Frühe, Op.133.

The success of the Album für die Jugend reminded Schumann of the value of brevity and simplicity. “The musical content of my earlier compositions,” he wrote to Joseph Joachim, “was damaged by my belief that they must be especially interesting for the performer and contain technically new difficulties.” The Waldscenen are certainly not as difficult as Carnaval or Kreisleriana but, in their peculiarly intimate and unambitious way, they are no less expressive. There is a touchingly understated insecurity in these pieces - even in the, for the most part, delightfully serene “Entry.” In this first case it is a matter of subtly applied dissonances and minor harmonies within the basic B flat major tonality. In the “Huntsman on the Watch,” where - except in two or three bars of D major near the D minor ending - the hunter seems more nervous than the hunted, it is a matter of jumpy dynamics, impetuous triplet rhythms and the tritone in the melodic line.

The “Lonely Flowers” are grazed by dissonances, including a particularly poignant ninth just before the confirmation of B flat major at the end. But this is nowhere near as unsettling as the transformation undergone by the gently legato main theme of that movement when it reappears, staccato and in D minor, a few bars into the stealthily articulated and eerily harmonised “Evil Place” (where, according to a few lines by Hebbel quoted in the score, a red flower draws its colour from human blood). After that experience, there is an opportunity to recover, emotionally and thematically: “Friendly Landscape” incorporates a motif familiar from both “Entry” and “Lonely Flowers” in its cheerfully B flat major main theme; the congenially melodious “Inn” makes similar allusions both in its eccentric middle section and just before it finally falls asleep in E flat major.

The supernatural element returns in G minor with the “Prophet-Bird,” whose warbled arpeggios have little respect for harmonic conformity in spite of the earnest but easily deflected plea for G major security in the middle. “Hunting Song,” which takes refuge again in the congenial key of E flat major, brushes the premonitions aside, but not without tripping over the rhythms and bumping into a few wrong notes in the tipsy middle section. The lingeringly affectionate “Farewell” - nostalgic for what has gone before and harmonically disturbed by the gathering shadows towards the end - is the crepuscular counterpart of the sunlit “Entry.”

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds

He lifted up his eyes and saw the trees which stood by the wayside filled with a countless multitude of birds; at which he marvelled, and said to his companions: “Wait a little for me in the road and I will go and preach to my little brothers the birds.” And he went into the field and began to preach to the birds that were on the ground; and forthwith those which were in the trees came round him, and not one moved during the whole sermon; nor would they fly away until the Saint had given them his blessing.

As far as anyone knows, Liszt never made field studies of birdsong, notating it and transcribing it for piano as Olivier Messiaen was to do. He was aware of the problems involved, however, as he indicated in his preface to the score of St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds by confessing to his “lack of ingenuity” and regretting that the piano is “so lacking in variety of accent and tone colour.” But Liszt’s piano writing is never lacking in colour, least of all in this work, which is quite extraordinary in the way it anticipates Messiaen not only in some aspects of his piano realisations of birdsong but also in his expression of religious sentiment. Certainly, it is so precisely evocative of every detail of the famously picturesque episode in Chapter 16 of The Little Flowers of Saint Francis that one scarcely needs to refer to it to keep up with the musical narrative.

St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds is the first of Two Legends written in 1863, the other being the equally eloquent St Francis of Paolo Walking on the Waters.

Après une Lecture de Dante, Fantasia quasi Sonata

The full title of Liszt’s Dante Sonata - which was first written in 1837 and revised to take its place in the second set of Années de Pèlerinage in 1849 - is a clear indication, surely, that the work was inspired by the poem Après un Lecture de Dante in Victor Hugo’s Les Voix Intérieures. Like the poem, the sonata is a reflection on Dante in general rather than a detailed description of a particular episode, although it is obviously closer to Inferno than Paradiso.

According to Hugo, “When the poet depicts hell he depicts life, a shadow in flight, pursued by spectres.” The idea of pursuit is strangely, even obsessively present in the Dante Sonata. It is present for example in the impressively lugubrious series of tritones - “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” - with which the work opens. In fact, the two-note persecution motif, the rhythmically stronger note following hard on the weaker, is scarcely ever absent. The Presto agitato assai first subject, desperately spiralling from D minor to F sharp minor, is based on it. Apart from the appearance of a rising and falling triplet figure, also from the introduction, there is no respite until the diabolic tritones are purged and emerge as perfect fifths. This encourages a change to the major and the birth of a heroic chorale-like theme, glorified by precipitous double octaves.

Actually, this second subject is derived from the first by a characteristic process of thematic transformation, which is the most significant anticipation in the Dante Sonata of the great Sonata in B minor. One could also claim the first part of the development section as a slow-movement equivalent, and perhaps as a reference to Hugo’s lines alluding to the story of Francesca da Rimini, “Love, an embracing couple, sad and ardent still, passing in a whirlwind, a wound in their sides.” The tritones are restored, however, and the rest of the development is a drastic, persecuted effort to exorcise them - in which the second-subject hero is eventually successful. So the recapitulation (in D major) is concerned mainly with the glorification of the heroic and reserves the recall of the first subject for a Presto coda.

Gerald Larner©