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.