Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Rondo in C Minor, Opus 1
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
Born February 22, 1810, Zelazowska Wola, Poland
Died October 17, 1849, Paris

Chopin’s musical talent was evident very early. He essentially taught himself to play the piano, and he began composing long before he had any idea how to notate music–he would play a piece for his teachers, who would write it down. Chopin published a polonaise privately at age 7, and by the time he entered the Warsaw Conservatory, everyone understood that here was a phenomenal talent. Józef Elsner, the director of the Warsaw Conservatory, wrote a term-end evaluation of the young man that consisted of four words: “Extraordinary talent. Musical genius.”

It was during these years that Chopin had his first “official” publication, the Rondo in C Minor, which was published as his Opus 1 in June 1825, when the composer was 15. The Rondo is very accomplished music, but it is hardly distinctive–no one would recognize the voice of the mature Chopin in this youthful work. The rondo is not a form we identify with Chopin, and listeners have felt a certain formal correctness in this music–it should be heard and enjoyed as the work of an unbelievable talent on his way toward maturity. The stern rondo theme, marked Allegro, is announced immediately, and this soon gives way to the first episode, a lyric idea in E major. Young Chopin alternates these episodes, and the music develops with a certain turbulent brilliance before it finally drives to a firm conclusion.

Four Mazurkas, Opus 24

A mazurka is a Polish country dance that originated in the village of Mazovia, near Warsaw (the residents were referred to as Mazurs). The dance was in triple time, with the accent often on the second (or third) beat rather than the first; in its original form the mazurka was danced by groups of couples who would separate and return; it was sometimes accompanied by the bagpipe. Chopin loved this dance, and he wrote about sixty mazurkas across the span of his life: the first when he was 14, the last in the year of his death. A devout Polish nationalist, Chopin lived his adult life in exile in Paris, and no doubt his use of the form brought an important feeling of contact with his homeland, then under Russian subjugation. Yet Chopin’s mazurkas are not a matter of self-consciously assuming the trappings of Polish folk-music. Instead, he took the general form of the mazurka and used it to write his own music, often quite original in matters of rhythm and harmony.

Having said that, it should be noted that the mazurkas of Chopin’s Opus 24–composed in 1834-35–do incorporate some Polish folk material, which is then woven into his music and developed in original ways. Chopin’s biographer Herbert Weinstock suggests that No. 1 in G Minor “breathes the atmosphere of real folk music, far removed from either the salons of Paris or the introspections of Chopin.” Despite its dancing energy, this music manages to be subdued throughout. No.2 in C Major opens with oscillating, almost static chords before the folktune leaps to life as the main subject of this brief piece. The dance becomes more heavy-footed in the middle section, which moves into D-flat major, and much of the melodic interest here appears in the pianist’s left hand, with the right offering subdued chordal accompaniment. The surprising ending brings back the oscillating chords of the very beginning, but extends them as the music fades away. No. 3 in A-flat Major is built on elegantly-balanced phrases, and that atmosphere of grace and restraint continues through the quiet, suspended final measures. No. 4 in B-flat Minor is one of the most distinctive of all Chopin’s mazurkas, original in a thousand ways. The eerie beginning refuses to establish a clear rhythm or harmony: we are suspended in an uncertain, unsettling world, and this sets the mood for the entire piece, which is mercurial in atmosphere and color. One moment it is dashing and extroverted, the next intimate and mysterious, and this flickering uncertainty is the source of its considerable charm. The folk material appears in its clearest form right at the center, where it is heard in unharmonized octaves. The extended closing section of this mazurka is memorable: Chopin again blurs the harmonies as the dance grows quiet, and finally the music fades away, like the faintest whiff of smoke.

Boléro in C Major, Opus 19

A boléro was originally a Spanish dance and song in triple meter that might be sung by the dancers to the accompaniment of castanets, guitars, or other instruments. The boléro had a vogue throughout Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and various composers (including Beethoven) wrote music in the form; the most famous example, of course, is Ravel’s, composed a century later in 1928.

Chopin arrived in Paris in 1831, and in his first years there he gave a number of public performances to establish his reputation. He composed his Boléro in 1833, when he was 23, probably intending it for use at these recitals–it is his only work in the form. Chopin never visited Spain, so he had no first-hand experience of Spanish music, but he adopted the general idea of the boléro and used it to write a virtuoso piece that would be appealing to audiences. Three strong introductory chords call matters to order, and a rush of murmuring triplets propels the music into the main body of the piece. Chopin builds his Boléro around a lively dance full of rhythmic energy, shifting keys, pauses, and swirling runs. While there is little that is distinctly Spanish about this music, it has some of the vitality we associate with Spanish music, and after a quieter middle section Chopin drives it to a firm close.

Twelve Études, Opus 25

While still a teenager in Warsaw, Chopin heard a performance of Niccolò Paganini’s Caprices for Solo Violin and was astonished–as were so many other musicians of that era–by what the Italian composer had achieved in this music. Here were extraordinarily complex works for the violin that presented specific technical problems for the performer yet managed to be exciting and engaging music at the same time. Chopin resolved to write something similar for the piano, and over the next few years, a difficult time for the composer, he did just that.

Chopin left Poland in 1830, never to return (it was then being swallowed up by Russia), and settled the following year in Paris. Even before leaving Warsaw, Chopin had begun work on a series of étudesfor the piano, and he published this set of twelve in Paris in 1832 as his Opus 10. He continued to write études, and over the next few years he completed a further set of twelve, which he published in 1839 as his Opus 25. Chopin had dedicated the first set to Liszt; he dedicated his Opus 25 to Liszt’s mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult.

This was a period when Chopin had turned away from the life of the public virtuoso and was devoting his time to giving recitals in private salons and to teaching, and the Études should be understood first as teaching pieces. Written for Chopin’s students, these brief studies present different kinds of pianistic problems, ranging from the most finger-breaking virtuoso hurdles to the ability to sustain a long melodic line. Along the way, however, they offer breathtaking music that delights general audiences while it challenges pianists.

The Twelve Études, Opus 25 are in general brilliant music. Some create specific technical problems for the pianist (No. 6 in G-sharp Minor is in thirds, No. 8 in D-flat Major is in sixths), while some present unusual hurdles: No. 4 in A Minor demands treacherous leaps from the left hand, and No. 5 in E Minor is in Lombard rhythms (dotted rhythms with the short note coming first). While most of the Études are fast, that title does not inevitably mean virtuosic music. Some of the most haunting music in the set comes in the one slow étude, No. 7 in C-sharp Minor, a Lento ètude with the melody in the left hand as the right accompanies.

But it is the brilliant études that capture the imagination. No. 1 in A-flat Major was actually the last of the set to be composed, in September 1836. Its rippling arpeggios brought it the nickname “Aeolian Harp,” after Robert Schumann’s description of this music as “an aeolian harp having all the scales and an artist’s hand combining them with all kinds of fantastic embellishments . . .” The floating, dancing rhythms of No. 9 in G-flat Major have earned it the nickname “Butterfly”” (a nickname that did not originate with the composer, who wanted this music considered solely as music, not garnished with fanciful titles); this étude exploits the ringing sound of the piano’s high registers.

The last three études are all extraordinary, in different ways. Chopin gives No. 10 in B Minor the marking Allegro con fuoco and requires legato octaves in the outer sections; the extended center section brings a peaceful interlude before the return of the storm. No. 11 in A Minor opens with a bleak four-bar slow introduction; this figure becomes the main theme at the Allegro con brio, where it is heard in the left hand beneath the right hand’s volcanic accompaniment. No. 12 in C Minor is built on arpeggiated themes that thunder across the range of the keyboard. Its furious energy rushes without relief to the concluding C-major chord.

Three Nocturnes, Opus 15

Anocturne may be music that evokes the character of the night, but the night can have many faces, as the Nocturne in F Major reminds us. This was one of the earliest of Chopin’s twenty-one nocturnes, part of the group of four he composed during the years 1830-1, when he was only 20. The wonderful opening seems an almost perfect example of what music from the night should be: over quiet triplets in the left hand, the limpid main melody sings its poised song. Chopin’s ideas about the kind of performance he wants are made by clear by his unusually extensive performance markings: delicatissimo, dolcissimo, semplice e tranquillo. The music reaches a moment of repose and pauses–and then it explodes. Chopin marks the middle section con fuoco (“with fire”), and the violence of this section reminds us that night can mean more than just a dark and subdued atmosphere. The violence fades away, and the opening theme returns, but its reappearance is not literal. Now Chopin marks it sotto voce, and there are a number of small changes in theme-shape as this section makes it quiet way to the arpeggiated chords on which it fades into silence.

The Nocturne in F-sharp Major has always been an audience favorite. In the opening section, marked Larghetto, the right-hand melody floats easily above the left hand’s steady eighth-note accompaniment. That melody flows and pauses, growing more ornate as the music occasionally erupts into Chopin’s characteristic “rhythmic sprays.” The central episode, marked Doppio movimento, rushes ahead restlessly. The steady left hand accompaniment of the opening section continues here, but now the right hand is full of bristling, complex rhythms. Chopin drives this music forward, gradually reins it back, and returns effortlessly to the opening material. On its return, however, this section is both shortened and elaborated before the quiet close. The Nocturne in F-sharp Major–almost a textbook example of the nocturne–is one of Chopin’s finest works in that form.

Chopin’s manuscript to the Nocturne in G Minor is inscribed “After a performance of Hamlet,” but listeners would do well not to take this music as a depiction of events from that play. Somewhat unusually, this nocturne falls into three different sections: the delicate opening (with the provocative marking languido) gives way to a more animated and chromatic episode; the long closing section, marked religioso, proceeds along a subdued choral melody.

Fantaisie in F Minor, Opus 49

Chopin wrote the Fantaisie in F Minor early in the summer of 1841, which he spent at George Sand’s summer estate in Nohant. This was a happy interlude for the composer: after a bout with tuberculosis, he had regained his strength, and his relations with Sand were–for the moment–comparatively stable. The Fantaisie is one of Chopin’s finest works, and one critic has gone so far as to call it “Chopin’s greatest single composition.” It is also Chopin’s only work in this form, and one needs to be wary of his choice of title, which seems to imply a lack of controlling form. In fact, the Fantaisie is a very carefully structured work, fusing a wide range of expression with unusual formal imagination. This music is also remarkable for its progressive tonality–it may open in F minor, but it passes through some surprising modulations–including a quiet interlude in B major–before concluding unexpectedly in the relative major, A-flat major.

The Fantaisie opens quietly (the marking is Grave), with the music subtly energized by dotted rhythms and staccato notes. Chopin marks this opening Tempo di marcia, but the actual march does not begin for a few measures, and when it appears–moving steadily along its 4/4 meter–it subtly incorporates some of the inflections of the beginning. The march reaches a moment of repose and then eases ahead into music of great brilliance (Chopin marks it agitato) and difficulty. Much of the writing here is in octaves, and along the way Chopin introduces an entirely new march. The excitement of this opening section makes the arrival of the central Lento sostenuto all the more effective. Chopin moves to B major and switches to a 3/4 meter for this interlude, built entirely on a slow chordal melody that he specifies should be dolce. This is expressive music, far removed from the mood of the opening, and it is soon over, for the Fantaisie makes an abrupt plunge back to the principal tempo. The music feels even more dramatic on its return, and one of the jaunty march-tunes leads to an unexpected conclusion–Chopin reins in all this energy for a brief moment of repose before the music rips to its powerful conclusion.

Two Nocturnes, Opus 27

Both these nocturnes were composed in Paris in 1835. The Nocturne in C-sharp Minor has left critics grasping for language that can suggest its unearthly evocation of the night: “night-marmoreal . . . hushed, airless, and miasmic . . . black magic,” says one. “An atmosphere of morbid pessimism, heavy and oppressive,” says another. By comparison, The New Grove Dictionary keeps itself under control, describing this music only as “one of [Chopin’s] best nocturnes.”

This is impressive music, and its haunting night-atmosphere is the result of Chopin’s careful–and very imaginative–technical control. The Nocturne in C-sharp Minor is in the expected ternary form, with an opening section that glides darkly along the left hand’s widely-ranging sextuplets, a pattern that continues throughout. High above, the right hand has the melodic line, quiet but unsettling in its harmonic freedom. At the center section, marked Più Mosso, the music presses forward powerfully. Over triplet accompaniment, the right hand begins quietly but soon hammers its way to a great climax marked appassionato and agitato. This falls away, and the transition back to the opening material brings another surprise: Chopin gives it entirely to the left hand, whose long sequence of octaves is almost a small cadenza in itself. The opening material resumes, but the repeat is not literal, and Chopin suddenly abandons this music for an entirely new idea, which moves easily along a chain of major thirds. The atmosphere, so tense to this point, now seems to relax, and Chopin completes the surprise with an utterly unexpected modulation into C-sharp major at the end.

This technical description, no matter how accurate, misses the essence of this music. That lies in its atmosphere–dark, unsettled, and constantly changing.

The Nocturne in D-flat Major is suffused with that dark and subdued atmosphere we associate with the nocturne. The left hand establishes a steady accompaniment that will continue throughout, while the right hand has the main theme, a flowing and endlessly lyric idea that glides along smoothly (Chopin marks it Lento sostenuto). The music grows more complex and dramatic as it proceeds, and at the climax Chopin first asks that it be con anima, then con forza, and finally appassionato. At the end, the calm of the beginning returns, and the music closes quietly.

Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp Minor, Opus 39

In his four scherzos, Chopin does not copy the forms of Haydn or Beethoven exactly, but adapts the general shape of the classical-period scherzo for his own purposes. He keeps the quick tempo, the 3/4 meter, and (usually) the ABA form of the earlier scherzo, but makes no attempt at humor--the emphasis in this music is on brilliant, exciting music for the piano. The general form of the Chopin scherzo is an opening section based on contrasted themes, followed by a middle section (Chopin does not call this a trio) in a different key and character; the scherzo concludes with the return of the opening material, now slightly abridged.

The third scherzo, composed in 1839, has the most unusual structure; it lacks the clearly-defined ABA form of the others and in some ways approaches traditional sonata-form structure. The beginning, again marked Presto con fuoco, presents tentative bits of sound, and out of these the true first theme bursts to life. Marked Risoluto, this theme is in powerful, plunging octaves, and in fact much of the writing throughout this scherzo is in octaves. The second theme is a quiet chorale tune, but what makes it unusual is Chopin’s elaboration of the end of each phrase: with a falling arpeggio, almost silvery in its quietly sparkling color. These themes alternate until the close, where powerful octave chords drive the scherzo to its cadence.

Mariinsky ORCHESTRA

Valery Gergiev, conductor

Denis Matsuev, piano

LYADOV The Enchanted Lake, Opus 62

(1855-1914)

RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Opus 30

(1873-1943) Allegro ma non tanto

Intermezzo: Adagio

Finale: Alla breve

INTERMISSION

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Opus 36

(1840-1893) Andante sostenuto; Moderato con anima;

Moderato assai, quasi Andante

Andantino in modo di canzone

Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato

Finale: Allegro con fuoco

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

The Enchanted Lake, Opus 62

ANATOL LYADOV

Born May 10, 1855, St. Petersburg

Died August 28, 1914, Novgorod, Russia

Born into a musical family in St. Petersburg, Anatol Lyadov studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and was invited to join the faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age 23. But for all his talent and training, Lyadov was notoriously unable to produce music. Some of this was the product of self-doubt (Lyadov was relentlessly self-critical), but he was also lazy. In the most infamous illustration of this, Lyadov had been Diaghilev’s original choice to compose the music for the Ballets Russes’ new production of The Firebird in 1910, but when Lyadov was unable to write the music, Diaghilev turned to an unknown young composer named Igor Stravinsky, and the course of music was changed.

As a composer, Lyadov was essentially a miniaturist, best remembered for his short piano pieces like The Musical Snuffbox. Perhaps understandably, the larger forms proved difficult for him: he wrote no operas, no symphonies, no concertos, no chamber music–his output consists exclusively of a few brief orchestral works, choral music and songs, and piano pieces. Lyadov, who was very interested in Russian folk music, was happiest when he could enter the magical dream-world of folk legend. He once said: “My ideal is to find the unearthly in art. Art is the realm of the nonexisting. Art is a figment, a fairy tale, a phantom. Give me a fairy tale, a dragon, a water sprite, a wood demon–give me something that is unreal, and I am happy.”

About 1905, Rimsky-Korsakov, trying to get Lyadov to produce something worthy of his talents, suggested that he write an opera on folk legends. Lyadov liked the idea, made some sketches, and then abandoned the project. Those sketches, however, turned into two brief orchestral pieces that have become his most popular works: both The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora spring from that “realm of the nonexisting” where Lyadov was happiest. The Enchanted Lake, first performed in 1909, is not crowded with incident or drama. Rather, this muted and evocative music is a mood-piece, and one understands why Diaghilev thought Lyadov might have been the right composer for The Firebird. The shimmering sounds of the opening set exactly the right mood for Lyadov’s portrait of the magical lake, and throughout this brief piece he shifts colors deftly, so that his lake is by turns misty, moonlit, and murmuring as the music makes its way to the subdued close.

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Opus 30

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Born April 1, 1873, Oneg, Russia

Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills

When Rachmaninoff made his first concert tour of America during the 1909-10 season, he was frank about his motives: he needed money to support his family and he wanted to buy an automobile. During the summer of 1909, he composed a new piano concerto, his third, specifically for the tour, and he brought a dumb keyboard with him on the ship so that he could practice the new piece without disturbing fellow passengers (this experience proved so dissatisfying that he never tried it again). Rachmaninoff gave the première of the Third Piano Concerto with the New York Symphony under the direction of Walter Damrosch on November 28, 1909, and then played it extensively during his American visit: he toured with the Boston Symphony, performing the concerto in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Hartford, and Buffalo, and he gave a further performance with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Gustav Mahler in January 1910.

This is one of the greatest of all piano concertos–and one of the most difficult. Its unusual length, complex textures, powerful chordal writing, and brilliance make it a supremely demanding piece for pianists, so daunting that Rachmaninoff himself authorized four cuts and recorded the concerto in this abbreviated form (modern performances offer the concerto in its uncut version). The Third Concerto has all the Rachmaninoff virtues–gorgeous melodies, lush sonorities, and exciting climaxes–and it is easy to overlook how original this music is: almost the entire concerto grows out of the first movement’s opening theme, one of the most haunting melodies Rachmaninoff ever wrote.

Over rustling, muted strings, the solo piano in octaves lays out this lengthy opening statement, a melody of unmistakably Russian character. So “Russian” does this theme sound, in fact, that many have searched for its source. Years later, Rachmaninoff dismissed these efforts with some amusement: “The first theme of my 3rd concerto is borrowed neither from folk song forms nor from church sources. It simply ‘wrote itself’! . . . If I had any plan in composing this theme I was thinking only of sound. I wanted to ‘sing’ the melody on the piano as a singer would sing it–and to find a suitable orchestral accompaniment, or rather one that would not muffle this singing. That is all!” This “singing” theme will reappear in countless transformations throughout the concerto. The second subject, a precise little march, is laid out first by strings and then woodwinds; soon the piano takes this up and magically transforms it into a soaring episode–such elaboration and extension of basic theme-shapes is one of the pleasures of this concerto.

Rachmaninoff wrote a cadenza for the first movement, then went back and wrote a much more difficult one. This second cadenza is so long that it becomes almost a separate world within the movement, and Rachmaninoff accompanies the piano with brief wind solos in the course of it. The massive first movement winds down with an unexpectedly brief recapitulation: the two principal themes make quick reappearances, and the movement vanishes on barely-audible strokes of sound.

The second movement, marked Intermezzo, is in ternary form. It opens with the orchestra’s wistful introduction (Rachmaninoff marks the falling main theme ben cantabile) before the piano slips in almost unnoticed and then develops the orchestra’s opening ideas at length. Gradually the first movement’s germinal theme appears in the background, and Rachmaninoff builds the central episode–on a quick waltz rhythm–from a subtle transformation of this theme for solo clarinet over rippling piano accompaniment. Once again, there is only a hint of a reprise, and the piano drives the music without pause into the finale, marked simply Alla breve.

Powerful orchestral chords unleash a torrent here, with the piano announcing the propulsive ideas: a pounding march-like main theme and a syncopated chordal second subject. Along the way Rachmaninoff offers reminiscences, transformed once again, of material from the first movement. At the close, the syncopated chordal theme of this movement rises up to become a Big Tune that pushes the concerto to its overpowering climax and the knock-out close.

Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Opus 36

PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia

Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg

The Fourth Symphony dates from the most tumultuous period in Tchaikovsky’s difficult life, and its composition came from a moment of agony. When he began work on the symphony in May 1877, Tchaikovsky had for some years been tormented by the secret of his homosexuality, a secret he kept hidden from all but a few friends. As he worked on this score, one of his students at the Moscow Conservatory–a deranged young woman named Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova–declared her love for him. Knowing that such a prospect was hopeless, Tchaikovsky put her off as gently as he could, but she persisted, even threatening suicide at one point. As fate would have it, Tchaikovsky was also at work on his opera Eugene Onegin at this time and was composing the scene in the which the bachelor Onegin turns down the infatuated young Tatiana, to his eventual regret. Struck by the parallel with his own situation–and at some level longing for a “normal” life with a wife and children–Tchaikovsky did precisely the wrong thing for some very complex reasons: he agreed to Antonina’s proposal of marriage. His friends were horrified, but the composer pressed ahead and married Antonina on July 18, 1877. The marriage was an instant disaster. Tchaikovsky quickly abandoned his bride, tried to return, but fled again and made what we would today call a suicide-gesture. He then retreated to St. Petersburg and collapsed into two days of unconsciousness. His doctors prescribed complete rest, a recommendation Tchaikovsky was only too happy to follow. He abandoned his teaching post in Moscow and fled to Western Europe, finding relief in the quiet of Clarens in Switzerland and San Remo in Italy. It was in San Remo–on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean and far from the chaos of his life in Moscow–that he completed the Fourth Symphony in January 1878.

The Fourth Symphony has all of Tchaikovsky’s considerable virtues–great melodies, primary colors, and soaring climaxes–and in this case they are fused with a superheated emotional content. The composer’s friends guessed, perhaps inevitably, that the symphony had a program, that it was “about” something, and Tchaikovsky offered several different explanations of the content of this dramatic music. To his friend Serge Taneyev, Tchaikovsky said that the model for his Fourth Symphony had been Beethoven’s Fifth, specifically in the way both symphonies are structured around a recurring motif, though perhaps also in the sense that the two symphonies begin in emotional turmoil and eventually win their way to release and triumph in the finale. For his patroness, Madame Nadezhda von Meck, who had supplied the money that enabled him to escape his marriage, Tchaikovsky prepared an elaborate program detailing what his symphony “meant.” One should inevitably be suspicious of such “explanations” (and Tchaikovsky himself later suppressed the program), but this account does offer some sense of what he believed had shaped the content of his music.

The symphony opens with a powerful brass fanfare, which Tchaikovsky describes as “Fate, the inexorable power that hampers our search for happiness. This power hangs over our heads like the sword of Damocles, leaving us no option but to submit.” The principal subject of this movement, however, is a dark, stumbling waltz in 9/8 introduced by the violins: “The main theme of the Allegro describes feelings of depression and hopelessness. Would it not be better to forsake reality and lose oneself in dreams?” This long opening movement (it is nearly half the length of the entire symphony) has an unusual structure: Tchaikovsky builds it on three separate theme-groups which evolve through some unusual harmonic relationships. Like inescapable fate, the opening motto-theme returns at key points in this dramatic music, and it finally drives the movement to a furious close: “Thus we see that life is only an everlasting alternation of somber reality and fugitive dreams of happiness.”

After so turbulent a beginning opening, the two middle movements bring much-needed relief. The contrast is so sharp, in fact, that Taneyev complained that these were essentially ballet music made to serve as symphonic movements; Taneyev may have a point, but after that scalding first movement, the gentle character of the middle movements is welcome. The Andantino, in ternary-form, opens with a plaintive oboe solo and features a more animated middle section. Tchaikovsky described it: “Here is the melancholy feeling that overcomes us when we sit weary and alone at the end of the day. The book we pick up slips from our fingers, and a procession of memories passes in review . . .”

The Scherzo has deservedly become one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular movements. It is a tour de force for strings (which play pizzicato throughout), with crisp interjections first from the woodwinds and then from brass. Tchaikovsky makes piquant contrast between these quite different sounds, combining all his forces only in the final moments of the movement. The composer notes: “There is no specific feeling or exact expression in the third movement. Here are only the capricious arabesques and indeterminate shapes that come into one’s mind with a little wine . . .”

Out of the quiet close of the third movement, the finale explodes to life. The composer described this movement as “the picture of a folk holiday” and said, “If you find no pleasure in yourself, look about you. Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up entirely to festivity.” Marked Allegro con fuoco, this movement simply alternates its volcanic opening sequence with a gentle little woodwind tune that is actually the Russian folk tune “In the field there stood a birch tree.” At the climax, however, the fate-motto from the first movement suddenly bursts forth: “But hardly have we had a moment to enjoy this when Fate, relentless and untiring, makes his presence known.”

Given the catastrophic events of his life during this music’s composition, Tchaikovsky may well have come to feel that Fate was inescapable, and the reappearance of the opening motto amid the high spirits of the finale represents the climax–both musically and emotionally–of the entire symphony. This specter duly acknowledged, Tchaikovsky rips the symphony to a close guaranteed to set every heart in the hall racing at the same incandescent pace as his music.

Richard GOODE, piano

J. S. BACH Partita No. 4 in D Major, BWV 828

(1685-1750) Ouverture

Allemande

Courante

Aria

Sarabande

Menuett

Gigue

HAYDN Piano Sonata in B Minor, Hob. XV1: 32

(1732-1809) Allegro moderato

Menuet

Finale: Presto

BRAHMS Four Pieces for Piano, Opus 119

(1833-1897) Intermezzo in B Minor: Adagio

Intermezzo in E Minor: Andantino un poco agitato

Intermezzo in C Major: Grazioso e giocoso

Rhapsody in E-flat Major: Allegro risoluto

INTERMISSION

SCHUBERT Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960

(1797-1828) Molto moderato

Andante sostenuto

Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza

Allegro, ma non troppo

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Partita No. 4 in D Major, BWV 828

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Germany

Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig

When Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723, his musical duties changed. For his music-loving prince in Cöthen, Bach had written the great part of his secular instrumental music, but now–as Cantor of the Thomaskirche–he was charged with producing music for religious functions, and the music flowed out of him at a pace that would have exhausted even a Mozart: from the late 1720s came several hundred church cantatas and the St. Matthew Passion. But Bach did not altogether lose interest in instrumental music–he had written the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier in Cöthen, and now in Leipzig he continued to compose for keyboard.

Bach’s set of six partitas, originally written for harpsichord, was composed between 1726 and 1731 and published in the latter year as the first volume of his Clavier-Übung (“Keyboard Practice”). In a wonderful introductory note in the score, the composer described these works as having been “Composed for Music Lovers, to Refresh their Spirits, by Johann Sebastian Bach.” Bach understood the partita to be a suite of dance movements–its name implies a set of “parts”–based on the traditional sequence of allemande-courante-sarabande-gigue. He adopted this tradition but made it his own by opening with an introductory movement (a different form in each of the six partitas) and–along the way–including what he called “galanteries”: extra movements, somewhat lighter in character and intended to make the work more attractive to listeners and performers alike.

The Partita No. 4 in D Major dates from 1728, when Bach was 43. It opens with a lengthy Ouverture in the French style: a grand slow introduction, full of runs and dotted rhythms, gives way to a fast fugue in 9/8 that rushes along its staccato main idea; Bach does not return to the slow opening at the end of this movement. Like all the “standard” partita movements in this work, the Allemande is in binary form, and if both halves are repeated this stately movement is by far the longest in the whole work. The Courante is full of a jaunty, snappy energy (that title means “running” in French), while the Aria–one of the “galanteries”–is not so much lyric or vocal in character as it is balanced and precise. The spare Sarabande moves slowly along its 3/4 meter, while the brief Menuett is energized by the showers of triplets in the pianist’s right hand. Bach rounds the partita off with a brilliant Gigue, contrapuntal in character, that rips along its 9/16 meter. This is a tour de force of keyboard writing (and of contrapuntal complexity), and it brings the work to an impressive close.

Piano Sonata in B Minor, Hob. XVI:32

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN

Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau, Austria

Died May 31, 1809, Vienna

Haydn’s 104 symphonies and his 83 string quartets have become–generally–part of the repertory, but his 62 keyboard sonatas remain much less familiar. These sonatas span his creative career (he wrote the earliest about 1750, the last in 1794 when he was 62), yet they are not widely performed, nor is a great deal known about them. There is even debate about the sort of performer Haydn was writing for. Were these sonatas intended for the growing number of amateur pianists at the end of the eighteenth century? Their publication in groups suggests that they might have been. Did Haydn write them for his students? Did he write them for himself? (Haydn was an able pianist but by no means a virtuoso, and these sonatas are at times very difficult.) Even the instrument he had in mind has been debated: while the early sonatas may have been composed for clavichord, the wide dynamic range of the later ones makes clear that he was writing these for the piano. Formally, these sonatas can be more experimental than the symphonies and quartets, and they often have unusual numbers and sequences of movements.

The Sonata in B Minor is part of a group of six sonatas published in 1776 and probably composed over the previous two years–this was the period that saw the creation of Haydn’s Symphony No. 61 and his Opus 20 string quartets. This sonata is unusual for its key: Haydn rarely used B minor (this is his only sonata in that key, and he wrote no symphonies in B minor), and that key seems to call forth serious music from him. The opening Allegro moderato–purposeful, dark, and dramatic–is not music for diversion but for a serious (and very skilled) performer; in sonata form, this movement is full of unexpected modulations. By contrast, the innocent Menuet–in B major–feels as if it comes from a different planet, but in the trio section Haydn brings back the key and powerful manner of the opening movement. The really extraordinary part of this sonata is the concluding Presto, a driving, percussive movement that more readily suggests the steely-fingered piano music of the young Prokofiev than the eighteenth-century drawing room. In its rapidly repeated notes, fast runs, imitative writing, and non-stop energy, this movement is a sort of toccata designed to show off a brilliant pianist’s touch, and it drives the sonata to an impressive conclusion.

Four Pieces for Piano, Opus 119

JOHANNES BRAHMS

Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg

Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

As he approached his sixtieth birthday, Brahms returned to the instrument of his youth, the piano. The young Brahms–the “heaven-storming Johannes,” as one of his friends described him–had established his early reputation as the composer of dramatic piano works: of his first five published works, three were big-boned piano sonatas, and he next produced a series of extraordinarily difficult sets of virtuoso variations. And then suddenly, at age 32, Brahms walked away from solo piano music, and–except for some brief pieces in the late 1870s–that separation would last nearly three decades.

When the aging Brahms returned to the piano, he was a very different man and a very different composer from the “heaven-storming Johannes” of years before. During the summers of 1892-93, Brahms wrote twenty brief piano pieces and published them in four sets as his Opp. 116-119. While perhaps technically not as demanding as his early piano works, these twenty pieces nevertheless distill a lifetime of experience and technical refinement into very brief spans, and in their focused, inward, and sometimes bleak way they offer some of Brahms’ most personal and moving music. Someone once astutely noted that a cold wind blows through these late piano pieces; Brahms himself described them as “lullabies of my pain.”

Brahms’ Opus 119, published in 1893, consists of three intermezzos and a concluding rhapsody. Most of these brief pieces are in ABA form: a first theme, a countermelody usually in a contrasting tempo and tonality, and a return to the opening material, usually varied on its reappearance. One of the shortest of Brahms’ late piano pieces, the Intermezzo in B Minor is also one of the most subtle, particular in matters of rhythm. It opens with chains of falling thirds that seem to ripple like flashes of iridescence, and before we know it, Brahms has seamlessly transported us into the firmer center section. The return is just as subtle, and the music trails off into silence. In the Intermezzo in E Minor, which Brahms marks Andantino un poco agitato, the pianist’s two hands seem to be chasing each other through the murmuring, rhythmically-fluid opening section. The central episode dances gently (Brahms’ marking is teneramente: “tenderly”); the music gradually makes its way back to the opening material, now varied, and Brahms concludes with a faint whiff of the waltz-melody. The Intermezzo in C Major, marked Grazioso e giocoso (“Graceful and happy”), dances easily on its 6/8 meter. This piece has no true contrasting theme in its center–Brahms simply slows down his opening idea and uses that as the central episode before the return of the theme at its original tempo.

Brahms’ late piano music concludes with the powerful Rhapsody in E-flat Major. Brahms marks this music Allegro risoluto, and resolute it certainly is: the pounding chords from the beginning seem to echo throughout–they intrude even into the grazioso middle section. Instead of having that thunderous opening reappear in its original form, Brahms takes it through a subtle evolution on its return, and–rather than returning to the home key of E-flat major–he drives the music to its (resolute) close in E-flat minor.

Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960

FRANZ SCHUBERT

Born January 31, 1797, Vienna

Died November 19, 1828, Vienna

Schubert’s final year was dreadful. Ill for years, he went into steady decline in 1828 and died in November at 31. Yet from those last months came a steady stream of masterpieces, and few of the achievements of that miraculous, agonizing year seem more remarkable than the composition of three large-scale piano sonatas in the month of September, barely eight weeks before his death. In the years following Schubert’s death, many of the works from this final year were recognized as the masterpieces they are, but the three piano sonatas made their way much more slowly. When they appeared in 1838, a decade after Schubert’s death, the publisher dedicated them to Schumann, one of Schubert’s greatest admirers, but even Schumann confessed mystification, noting with a kind of dismayed condescension that “Always musical and rich in songlike themes, these pieces ripple on, page after page . . .” Even as late as 1949, Schubert’s adoring biographer Robert Haven Schauffler could rate them “ considerably below the level of the last symphonies and quartets, the String Quintet, and the best songs.” It took Artur Schnabel’s championing these sonatas to rescue them from obscurity, and today the last of them, the Sonata in B-flat Major, has become one of the best-loved of all piano sonatas: the current catalog lists over forty recordings.

It is dangerous to assume that a composer’s final works must be haunted–as were Mahler’s and Shostakovich’s–by premonitions of death. And in fact, Schubert’s final works do not agonize in the way the Mahler Tenth or Shostakovich Fourteenth Symphonies do. But it remains true that as Schubert’s condition worsened across the span of that final year, his music took on a depth and poignance rare in his works. And it is hard not to hear in the beginning of the Sonata in B-flat Major a direct premonition of mortality. The Molto moderato begins simply with a flowing chordal melody of unusual expressiveness. But in the eighth measure comes a discordant trill deep in the left hand, and the music glides to a complete stop. The silence that follows–Schubert marks it with a fermata to be sure that it is prolonged–is one of the few genuinely terrifying moments in music. It is as if a moment of freezing terror has crept into this flow of gentle song. Out of the silence the theme resumes. Again the deep trill intrudes, but this time the music rides over it and continues. Claudio Arrau has spoken of this movement as one written “in the proximity of death,” and while this music is never tortured, it is some of the most expressive Schubert ever wrote. This is a long movement, full of the harmonic freedom that marks Schubert’s best music; it ends quietly in B-flat major with a chorale-like restatement of the main theme.

The Andante sostenuto is as moving as the first movement. The somber opening melody, in the unexpected key of C-sharp minor, proceeds darkly in the right hand, while the left hand offers an unusual accompaniment that skips–almost dances–through a four-octave range, reaching up above the right hand’s melody. The middle section is of a nobility that might almost be called Brahmsian, were that not absurd; perhaps it suggests why, a half-century later, Brahms admired Schubert’s music so much. By contrast, the quicksilvery Scherzo flashes across the keyboard with a main theme that moves easily between the pianist’s hands; at times the rhythms and easy flow make this seem more like a waltz than a scherzo. Schubert specifies that it should be played con delicatezza, and certainly its smooth modulations between A major and B-flat major are accomplished most delicately; the brief trio is enlivened by off-the-beat accents. The finale–Allegro, ma non troppo–dances along its two main ideas. The writing is brilliant and once again full of harmonic surprises, but in the midst of all this sparkle one hears a wistfulness, an expressive depth that stays to haunt the mind long after the music has ended.