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Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Piano Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:50
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau
Died May 31, 1809, Vienna

Haydn’s approximately sixty keyboard sonatas are almost unknown to general audiences, who are daunted by their sheer number and more readily drawn to the famous nineteenth-century piano sonatas that followed. Yet there is some very fine music here indeed. The Sonata in C Major is one of a set of three he composed in London in 1794 and dedicated to pianist Therese Jansen, presumably with her talents in mind. Everyone notes the full sonority of these sonatas, but this has been explained in different ways. Some believe that these sonatas consciously echo the sound of the series of grand symphonies Haydn was then writing for London orchestras. Others have felt that the brilliance of these sonatas is the best evidence of Therese Jansen’s abilities, while still others explain it as a sign that the English fortepianos were much more powerful than the instruments Haydn was used to in Vienna.

Whatever the reason, Haydn’s Sonata in C Major rings with a splendid sound. The opening Allegro is full of forthright energy. The initial pattern of three notes repeats throughout: it is sounded tentatively at first, then quickly repeated in full chords. Haydn plays this pattern out with great energy and brilliance across the span of a fairly lengthy movement (more than half the length of the entire sonata).

The central movement is an expressive Adagio in abbreviated sonata form whose main subject is built around the rolled chords heard at the very beginning. The concluding Allegro molto, barely two minutes long, is full of high comedy. It feels like a very fast waltz that starts and stops and modulates throughout, as if the composer cannot quite make up his mind how he wants it to go. Haydn of course knows exactly how he wants it to go, and this lurching, stumbling dance should leave us all laughing.

Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 35, Books I and II
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

Nicolò Paganini–rumored by some to be in league with the devil–published his Twenty-Four Caprices for Solo Violin in 1820, and the theme of the final caprice, full of angular leaps and coiled energy, has haunted composers ever since. Among those who have written extended works based on this sprightly theme are Paganini himself (Twelve Variations), Liszt (Transcendental Etudes), Schumann (Paganini Variations), Rachmaninoff (Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini), and–more recently–Witold Lutoslawski and Boris Blacher (both of whom have composed a set of Variations on a Theme of Paganini) and George Rochberg (Fifty Caprice Variations). Further sets of variations may still come, for the possibilities of this theme appear inexhaustible.

Brahms composed his Variations on a Theme of Paganini in 1863, shortly after moving from Hamburg to Vienna, and published them as two books of fourteen variations each. These variations are extremely compact: each set–consisting of the theme, fourteen variations, and a blazing finale–lasts only about eleven minutes. Brahms himself described them as exercises (“Studies for Pianoforte”) and gave the two sets the slightly dry and academic title of “Books,” but listeners should not be put off by the composer’s usual self-deprecation: this is ingenious and exciting music, pleasing for the verve of the writing for piano and for the sheer exhilaration of hearing Paganini’s theme put through so many transformations.

It is also fiendishly difficult for the performer, and Brahms’ Paganini Variations are regarded as one of the supreme tests for pianists. Brahms’ close friend Clara Schumann, one of the finest pianists of the nineteenth century, found them so difficult that she called them Hexenvariationen (“Witches’ Variations”), implying that it would take supernatural powers to solve all the technical problems they present. Brahms himself gave the first performance of the two Books in Vienna on March 17, 1867.

The Paganini Variations may succeed brilliantly as concert music, but there is at least an element of truth in Brahms’ description of them as exercises. Each variation presents the pianist with a particular technical problem: some are written in thirds, some in sixths, some in octaves; some present several rhythms simultaneously, while others require difficult trills or staccato or legato passages; still others require awkward hand-crossings. The music itself is quite varied, ranging from gentle passages that Brahms marks molto dolce to an explosive variation marked Feroce, energico. A generalization sometimes made is that Book I is distinguished by the difficulty of its technical hurdles, while Book II is more satisfying from a purely musical point of view, though such a distinction may not matter much: it should be noted that a century ago pianists sometimes assembled their own sets of Paganini Variations by drawing variations from the two Books. Brahms’ music at its best fuses technically complex writing with engaging musical ideas, and the Paganini Variations can be enjoyed on many levels: for the virtuosity of the playing, the ingenuity of the variations, and the beauty of the music, as Paganini’s theme is made to sing in ways its creator never dreamed of.

Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Opus 58
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
Born February 22, 1810, Zelazowska Wola, Poland
Died October 17, 1849, Paris

Chopin wrote the Piano Sonata in B Minor, his last large-scale composition for piano, during the summer of 1844, when he was 34. He composed the sonata at Nohant, the summer estate in central France he shared with the novelist George Sand. That summer represented a last moment of stasis in the composer’s life–over the next several years his relationship with Sand would deteriorate, and his health, long ravaged by tuberculosis, would begin to fail irretrievably. Dedicated to Madame la Comtesse Emilie de Perthuis, a friend and pupil, the Sonata in B Minor was published in 1845. Chopin himself never performed it in public.

Chopin’s sonatas have come in for a hard time from some critics, and this criticism intensifies to the degree that they depart from the formal pattern of the classical piano sonata. But it is far better to take these sonatas on their own terms and recognize that Chopin–like Beethoven before him–was willing to adapt classical forms for his own expressive purposes. The Sonata in B Minor is a big work–its four movements stretch out to nearly half an hour. The opening Allegro maestoso does indeed have a majestic beginning with the first theme plunging downward out of the silence, followed moments later by the gorgeous second subject in D major, marked sostenuto. The movement treats both these ideas but dispenses with a complete recapitulation and closes with a restatement of the second theme. The brief Molto vivace is a scherzo, yet here that form is without the violence it sometimes takes on in Beethoven. This scherzo has a distinctly light touch, with the music flickering and flashing across the keyboard (the right-hand part is particularly demanding). A quiet legato middle section offers a moment of repose before the return of the opening rush.

Chopin launches the lengthy Largo with sharply-dotted rhythms, over which the main theme–itself dotted and marked cantabile–rises quietly and gracefully. This movement is also in ternary form, with a flowing middle section in E major. The Finale: Presto, non tanto leaps to life with a powerful eight-bar introduction built of octaves before the main theme, correctly marked Agitato, launches this rondo in B minor. Of unsurpassed difficulty, this final movement–one of the greatest in the Chopin sonatas–brings the work to a brilliant close.

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp Minor, S.244/2 (cadenza by Rachmaninoff)
FRANZ LISZT
Born October 22, 1811, Raiding
Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth

Though he was born in what is now Hungary, Liszt left his homeland as a boy and had early declared himself a citizen of Europe at large: his career as a performing virtuoso took him from Ireland to Russia, from Spain to Turkey, and he lived for extended periods in Paris, Switzerland, and Rome. In his late twenties, however, Liszt rediscovered his Hungarian roots. The plight of Hungarian flood victims moved him to give benefit concerts on their behalf, and when he returned to Budapest in 1839, he found himself a national hero. Now, fired with national sentiment, he embarked on a study of Hungarian music and made Hungarian tunes the basis of fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies largely composed between 1851 and 1853 (later he came back and wrote four more). Since that time, there has been much debate about the authenticity of these tunes, about what is gypsy music and what is not, and about just how Hungarian this music really is. Such a debate is beside the point, for the real issue is not the source or authenticity of the material but what Liszt does with it, and there is no question that his Hungarian Rhapsodies offer some of his most rousing and characteristic piano music.

The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, composed in 1847, has become the most famous of the sequence. It falls into the two-part slow-fast sequence of the Eastern European rhapsody, and Liszt marks these sections Lassan and Friska (nearly a century later, Bartók used exactly the same structure in his violin rhapsodies, marking the two sections Lassu and Friss). First, however, Liszt opens with an ominous slow introduction, built on great ringing chords that seem to coil up energy that is only partially relieved by the Lassan. This slow section, with its swirls, grace-notes, and trills, sounds particularly exotic, and many have felt that Liszt is here trying to imitate the jangling sonority of the gypsy cimbalon. The Friska, marked Vivace, leaps ahead on the sound of ringing bells, and Liszt drives this music to a knock-out close.

This performance presents the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in a collaborative version. Sergei Rachmaninoff performed the Rhapsody often, and in the fall of 1918, just as he took up residence in the United States, he composed a cadenza for it. Liszt would have welcomed this: near the end of the Friska, just before the Prestissimo rush to the close, Liszt marked one bar Cadenza ad libitum, fully expecting pianists to write a cadenza of their own at this spot. That is exactly what Rachmaninoff did, and his cadenza is a substantial affair, based on Liszt’s own themes but with much pianistic brilliance of its own. Rachmaninoff gave the first performance of his version of the Liszt Rhapsody in Boston on January 10, 1919, and those interested in his version should know that he also recorded it in that same year.

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