Sheep May Safely Graze, from Cantata 208, BWV 208 (arr. Petri)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig

Bach wrote approximately 200 church cantatas, but he also wrote about thirty secular cantatas intended to mark special occasions within his community. These include cantatas for new years, memorials, weddings, coronations, and name-days. Most often, however, Bach's secular cantatas were written to mark birthdays, and in fact his first secular cantata was a birthday cantata. On February 23, 1713, Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels celebrated his birthday. The Duke liked to hunt, and for that celebration Bach-then the 28-year-old organist at the Weimar court-composed the cantata Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd! ("What I Enjoy Is the Merry Hunt!"). That cantata is seldom performed today, but one of its movements-an aria for soprano with two obbligato recorders titled Schäfe können sicher weichen ("Sheep May Safely Graze")-has become some of the most famous music Bach ever wrote. The aria makes a point that would have appealed to the Duke: sheep (the citizens) are safe when they are guarded by a good shepherd (the prince). This aria's gently-rocking accompaniment and soaring melodic line have made it an audience favorite over the last three centuries. It is heard on this recital in an arrangement by the Dutch pianist and Bach scholar Egon Petri (1881-1962).

Capriccio in B-flat Major, On the the Departure of his Most Beloved Brother, BWV 992

The departure in 1704 of Bach's older brother Johann Jacob to join the army of King Carl XII of Sweden as an oboist was a source of concern for the whole family. For the occasion, Bach-who was then nineteen-wrote his Capriccio in B-flat Major, On the the Departure of his Most Beloved Brother, a charming and affectionate work. It is one of the few examples of programmatic music by Bach, for it depicts the actual departure of his brother on a carriage: each movement has a subtitle that describes the events. The opening Arioso is subtitled "a coaxing by his friends to dissuade him from the journey." The Andante "is a picturing of various calamities that might overtake him in foreign parts," and Bach depicts these calamities by modulating into wrong keys. The Adagissimo is "a general lament of his friends," and in the Andante "come the friends, since they see it cannot be otherwise, to take their leave of him." The fifth movement-Aria de Postiglione-echoes the horncall of the carriage that will carry the brother away, and the final movement is a "Fugue in Imitation of the Postilion's Horncall."

Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903

In December 1717, Bach left his position in Weimar to become Kapellmeister in Cöthen to Prince Leopold, a music-lover who encouraged him to write instrumental music. It was during these years, probably about 1720, that Bach composed his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor. This is wild music-daring, powerful, expressive, brilliant. The chromatic freedom of his writing often dissolves any sense of a stable home key, and there are moments of dissonance that can still surprise the ear. Bach assumes that many decisions will be left to the performer. There are no tempo markings and few dynamic indications, and he leaves chords to be arpeggiated and resolved at the performer's discretion-this music can be a very different experience in the hands of each performer.

The term fantasy implies a freedom of form, and the opening section of the Chromatic Fantasy suggests the effect of improvisation, with its great swirls and free flights. After this opening flourish, Bach proceeds to a section he marks Recitative in the score: here the pulse feels slower, and the free flights of the opening give way to chords, trills, and complex rhythms that can suddenly erupt into the free manner of the opening.

The ending of this section is extraordinary: over a series of twelve descending-and quite dissonant-chords in the left hand, the right hand offers a fragmentary and subdued final statement before the section resolves firmly on a D-major chord. The Fugue returns to D minor, and Bach builds it on a long subject that rises sinuously and chromatically in its original statement. The fugue is in three voices, and textures remain quite clear-this fugue shows Bach the contrapuntalist at the height of his powers.

Chaconne from the Violin Partita No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004
(arr. for piano left-hand by Brahms)

The magnificent Chaconne that concludes the Partita No. 2 for Unaccompanied Violin is some of the most intense music Bach ever wrote, and it has worked its spell on musicians everywhere over the last two and a half centuries. The violin is a linear instrument, and the full harmonic textures implied in the original seem to cry out for performances that can project these more satisfactorily than can the solo violin. Schumann and Mendelssohn both wrote piano accompaniments for Bach's solo violin music, and the Chaconne itself has been transcribed for many other instruments and combinations of instruments. But the most distinctive transcription was made by Johannes Brahms, who arranged it for left hand only.

Brahms knew and loved the music of Bach at a time when it was still primarily a historical curiosity to audiences (and to many professional musicians): in Vienna he conducted the St. Matthew Passion and several of the cantatas, and he edited works by two of Bach's sons. For the Chaconne in particular Brahms felt an admiration that left him almost helpless. In 1877, the same year he composed his Second Symphony, Brahms made his piano transcription of the Chaconne and sent a copy to Clara Schumann. The letter that accompanied the manuscript is worth quoting at length:

The Chaconne is in my opinion one of the most wonderful and incomprehensible pieces of music. Using the technique adapted to a small instrument the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving, such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad. If one has no supremely great violinist at hand, the most exquisite of joys is probably simply to let the Chaconne ring in one's mind. But the piece certainly inspires one to occupy oneself with it somehow . . . There is only one way in which I can secure undiluted joy from the piece, though on a small and only approximate scale, and that is when I play it with the left hand alone . . . The same difficulty, the nature of the technique, the rendering of the arpeggios, everything conspires to make me-feel like a violinist!

The final note is important: the Chaconne is rigorous violin music, and Brahms preserves some of that discipline by making the transcription for left hand only. In contrast to the Busoni arrangement, which uses both hands and aims for an almost organ-like voluptuousness of sound, Brahms limits himself to the resources of five fingers. There may have been a purely academic reason for this-Brahms occasionally made transcriptions of other composers' music for one hand just to improve his technique in that hand-but more likely Brahms was drawn to Bach's ability to wring so much from the relatively limited resources of the solo violin and wished to present himself a similar compositional challenge. And it should be noted that Brahms did compose music of his own that fuses the intellectual rigor with the emotional depth of the Chaconne when he composed the passacaglia-finale to his Fourth Symphony eight years after making this transcription.

A chaconne is one of the most disciplined forms in music: it is built on a ground bass in triple meter over which a melodic line is repeated and varied. Here the four-bar ground bass repeats 64 times during the quarter-hour span of the Chaconne, and over it Bach spins out gloriously varied music, all the while keeping these variations firmly anchored on the ground bass. At the center section Bach moves into D major, and here the music relaxes a little, content to sing happily for awhile; after the calm nobility of this interlude, the quiet return of D minor sounds almost disconsolate. Bach drives the Chaconne to a great climax and a restatement of the ground melody at the close.

Fantasie in F Minor for Piano Four-Hands, D.940
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Born January 31, 1797, Vienna
Died November 19, 1828, Vienna

The Fantasie in F Minor for Piano Four-Hands is one of the creations of Schubert's miraculous final year of life, which saw a nearly unbroken rush of masterpieces. Schubert wrote most of the Fantasie in January 1828 but ran into problems and set the work aside for several months, returning to complete it in April. He and his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld gave the first performance on May 9 of that year, six months before the composer's death at age 31.

In early nineteenth-century Vienna, there was a growing market for music that could be played in the home, where there might be only one piano but several pianists, usually amateur musicians. Such music often had an intentionally "social" appeal-it was not especially difficult, and it tended to be pleasing rather than profound. Much of Schubert's four-hand piano music was intended for just such "home" performers (he often wrote music for his students to play together), but the Fantasie in F Minor is altogether different: this work demands first-class performers and contains some of the most wrenching and focused music Schubert ever wrote.

The title "fantasia" suggests a certain looseness of form, but the Fantasie in F Minor is extraordinary for its conciseness. Lasting barely a quarter of an hour, it is in one continuous flow of music that breaks into four clear movements. The very beginning-Allegretto molto moderato-is haunting. Over murmuring accompaniment, the higher voice lays out the wistful first theme, whose halting rhythms and chirping grace notes have caused many to believe that this theme had its origins in Hungarian folk music. The second subject, based on firm dotted rhythms, is treated at length before the music drives directly into the powerful Largo, which is given an almost baroque luxuriance by its trills and double (and triple) dotting. This in turn moves directly into the Allegro vivace, a sparkling scherzo that feels like a very fast waltz; its trio section (marked con delicatezza) ripples along happily in D major. The final section (Schubert marks it simply Tempo I) brings back music from the very beginning, but quickly the wistful opening melody is jostled aside by a vigorous fugue derived from the second subject of the opening section. On tremendous chords and contrapuntal complexity the Fantasiedrives to its climax, only to fall away to the quiet close.

La Valse for Piano Four-Hands (arr. Garbon)
MAURICE RAVEL
Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées
Died December 28, 1937, Paris

Though Ravel, like many French composers, was profoundly wary of German music, there was one German form for which he felt undiluted affection-the waltz. As a young piano student, Ravel fell under the spell of Schubert's waltzes for piano, and this led him in 1911 to compose his own Valses nobles et sentimentales, a set of charming waltzes modeled on the Schubert dances he loved so much. Somewhat earlier-in 1906-Ravel had planned a great waltz for orchestra. His working title for this orchestral waltz was Wien(Vienna), but the piece was delayed and Ravel did not return to it until the fall of 1919. This was the year after the conclusion of World War I, and the French vision of the Germanic world was quite different now than it had been when Ravel originally conceived the piece. Nevertheless, he still felt the appeal of the project, and by December he was madly at work. To a friend he wrote: "I'm working again on Wien. It's going great guns. I was able to take off at last, and in high gear." The orchestration was completed the following March, and the first performance took place in Paris on December 12, 1920. By this time, perhaps wary of wartime associations, Ravel had renamed the piece La Valse.

If La Valse is one of Ravel's most opulent and exciting scores, it is also one of his most troubling. Certainly the original conception was clear enough, and the composer left an exact description of what he was getting at: "Whirling clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds scatter little by little. One sees an immense hall peopled with a twirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of chandeliers bursts forth fortissimo. An Imperial Court, about 1855."

The music gives us this scene exactly: out of the murky, misty beginning, we hear bits of waltz rhythms; gradually these come together and plunge into an animated waltz in D major. If La Valse concluded with all this elegant vitality, our sense of the music might be clear, but gradually the music darkens and drives to an ending full of frenzied violence, and we come away from La Valse not so much exhilarated as shaken. Ravel made a telling comment about this conclusion: "I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an impression of a fantastic and fatal sort of dervish's dance."

Is this music a celebration of the waltz-or is it an exploration of the darker spirit behind the culture that created it? Many have opted for the latter explanation, hearing in La Valse not a Rosenkavalier-like evocation of a more graceful era, but the snarling menace behind that elegance. Ravel himself was evasive about the ending.

He was aware of the implications of the violent close, but in a letter to a friend he explained them quite differently: "Some people have seen in this piece the expression of a tragic affair; some have said that it represented the end of the Second Empire, others that it was postwar Vienna. They are wrong. Certainly, La Valse is tragic, but in the Greek sense: it is a fatal spinning around, the expression of vertigo and the voluptuousness of the dance to the point of paroxysm."

In the course of its composition, Ravel arranged La Valse both for solo piano and for two pianos. Ravel and Italian composer Alfredo Casella gave the first public performance of the two-piano version in Vienna at an unusual concert that also featured Arnold Schoenberg conducting his Gurrelieder.

The concert took place in the Kleiner Konzerthaussaal in Vienna on October 23, 1920, two months before the première of the orchestral version, and on that occasion La Valse proved a huge success in the city that had originally inspired it. At this concert, La Valse is heard in an arrangement for piano four-hands by Lucien Garbon.