The Program
ROBERT
SCHUMANN
Six Etudes in Canonic Form, Op. 56 (arr. Claude Debussy)
About the
Composer
Schumann revered J. S. Bach. Like his close friend Felix Mendelssohn, whose
1829 performance of the St. Matthew
Passion laid the groundwork for the 19th-century Bach revival, he regarded
the cantor of Leipzig not as an outdated master, but as a universal genius—the
font and origin of all that was noble and inspired in contemporary music.
Schumann’s lifelong study of Bach’s works reached a climax in 1845, when—in the
grips of what he called “fugue passion”—he composed a series of Bach-like
fugues, canons, and other contrapuntal pieces. Later, he would look back on the
experience as his introduction to a “completely new manner of composing,” in
which he invested the freely lyrical style of his early works with new rigor.
About the Work
As the name implies, the Six Etudes in Canonic Form were conceived as intimate
studies or essays rather than public concert pieces. They were written for the
pedal piano, a piano equipped with an organ-like pedal-board. Schumann had
recently acquired one of these now-obsolete instruments in an effort to polish
his organ technique. He became so enamored
of it that he persuaded Mendelssohn to offer a pedal piano class at the Leipzig
Conservatory. Opus 56 is one of three works that Schumann wrote for
pedal piano in 1845. Years later, Debussy—no doubt intrigued by the
instrument’s unusual sonorities—arranged the etudes for two pianos.
A Closer Listen
Recognizing the lyrical impulse that animates even Bach’s most abstruse
contrapuntal creations, Schumann regarded fugues as “character pieces of the
highest kind.” If none of the six etudes quite rises to the sustained level of
inspiration found in Schumann’s finest piano miniatures, they are captivating
in their own right. All six are canonic—that is, the voices present the same
melodic material in successive entries—and cast in ternary (A-B-A) form, with
contrasting midsections. Within those bounds the etudes range widely, from the
busy Bachian counterpoint of No. 1 to the light Mendelssohnian scherzo of No. 5
and the calmly measured, chorale-like harmonies of No. 6. Perhaps most
characteristically Schumannesque is No. 3, with its rhapsodic melody and
throbbing 16th-note accompaniment framed by tender ruminations at the beginning
and end.
—Harry Haskell
© 2012 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
GYÖRGY
KURTÁG
Selections from Játékok (Games), Vol. 4
About the
Composer
Hungarian composer György Kurtág, who is still going strong in his mid-80s,
once described composition as a process of “continual research” aimed at
achieving “a sort of unity with as little material
as possible.” Like his model, Anton Webern, Kurtág is essentially a miniaturist. Both his aphoristic musical language and the forces he uses to
express it are radically compressed. Yet despite the abundance of white
space in a typical Kurtág score, it would be misleading to characterize such
densely packed and richly allusive music as “minimalist.”
About the Work
For Kurtág, it seems, writing for the piano
is quite literally child’s play. Játékok (Games) is the collective title of an open-ended series of
piano pieces that he began nearly 40 years
ago. It evinces the playful, childlike
spirit that infuses much of the composer’s music. Children, Kurtág writes, instinctively approach the piano as if it were a toy: “They experiment
with it, caress it, attack it, and run their fingers over it. They pile up
seemingly disconnected sounds, and if this happens to arouse their musical
instinct, they look consciously for some of the harmonies found by chance and keep
repeating them.”
A Closer Listen
These four short pieces from the fourth
volume of Játékok illustrate Kurtág’s
free-spirited approach to the keyboard, as well as his way of teasing musical
meaning out of simple gestures and ideas. In “Fog Canon,” rippling scales
punctuated by short, sharp shocks are silhouetted against a resonant haze of
chordal clusters. The savage, feverish twitching of “Furious Chorale,” in which
the two players pummel the keyboard relentlessly, contrasts with the tinkling
tintinnabulations and glacial harmonies of “Bells (Hommage à Stravinsky).” In
the last piece, Kurtág salutes the contemporary Hungarian folk violinist Mihály
Halmágyi in a lumbering dance spiced with hints of modality and cimbalom-like
strumming.
—Harry Haskell
© 2012 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
En blanc et noir
About the
Composer
At once radical and traditionalist, Debussy rebelled
against the French Wagner cult and the ponderous academic style of
establishment composers like Saint-Saëns and d’Indy. At the same time, he urged
his compatriots to return to the “pure French tradition” that he admired in the
music of the 18th-century composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. Debussy first made his mark in the early 1890s
with a series of boldly
unconventional and quintessentially gallic works: the string quartet, La damoiselle élue, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Over the next quarter-century,
he produced the opera Pelléas et
Mélisande, and the great piano and orchestral pieces that came to define
musical impressionism in the popular mind.
About the Work
Composed in the summer of 1915, En blanc
et noir (In Black and White)
marked Debussy’s emergence from a long, fallow period in which he had been
unable to produce any music of substance. “I’ve almost had to relearn it,” he exclaimed. “It was like
a rediscovery and it’s seemed to me more beautiful than ever!” The duet’s
intense vibrancy may also owe something to the restorative landscape of the
Normandy coast, where Debussy had sought refuge from wartime Paris. Although
the title suggests that he was deliberately
restricting his tonal palette—in a letter to a friend, he spoke of
emulating “the ‘grays’ of Velázquez”—the music is as subtly hued as any he ever
wrote.
A Closer Listen
A flood of cascading triplets opens the first movement, marked Avec emportement (“with passion”).
Debussy seems to revel in the sheer power and sonority of the piano; the mood
of the music is by turns ecstatic and capricious. (He originally called the
three pieces “caprices,” but later changed his mind.) The somber second
movement memorializes his publisher’s nephew, who had recently been killed on
the battlefield.
A strangely disjointed and disquieting dirge, it features sharp contrasts of
register, texture, and dynamics, along with haunting evocations of bugle calls,
the tolling of bells, and the chorale Eine
feste Burg. Most elusive of all is the final Scherzando: Debussy’s
mercurial music cuts loose from traditional harmonic and structural moorings,
one idea melding into another in a sensuous riot of colors and
figurations.
—Harry Haskell
© 2012 The Carnegie Hall Corporation
BÉLA BARTÓK
Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
About the
Composer
In his music as in his life, Bartók straddled two starkly different worlds: the
rich peasant culture of his native Hungary, where he conducted his pioneering
ethnomusicological research at the beginning of the 20th century; and the
violent, angst-ridden landscape of W. H.
Auden’s The Age of Anxiety. The late
1930s was a heady and productive period for the composer. Relieved of
his onerous teaching duties at the Budapest Academy of Music, he returned to
the study of Hungarian folk music. Its endlessly varied store of melodies and
rhythms combined with Bartók’s mastery of contrapuntal procedures produced a
string of boldly expressionistic masterpieces, including the Sonata for Two
Pianos and Percussion, the Second Violin Concerto, and the Sixth String
Quartet.
About the Work
Bartók wrote the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion in 1937 at the behest of
Paul Sacher, the Swiss conductor and patron of the arts who also commissioned Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
(1936) and Divertimento for String Orchestra (1939). The first performance took
place in Basel in 1938, under the auspices of the International Society for
Contemporary Music, with the composer and his wife at the pianos. Five years
later, in his final public appearance as a pianist, Bartók played his concerto
version of the sonata with the New York Philharmonic.
A Closer Listen
The sonata is laid out in three movements
centering on C, F, and C,
respectively. The tonal symmetry is reflected in the movements’ characters,
with a dark, mysterious Lento sandwiched between a pair of brilliantly
propulsive allegros. The Assai lento opens with a sinuous chromatic
melody, punctuated by explosive outbursts and shuddering tremolos. The small
battery of percussion instruments adds color and definition to the texture. Out
of this slow, amorphous introduction emerges a brisk, sharply rhythmicized
countersubject—listen for its insistent syncopated pattern throughout the
movement. Bartók’s themes are wonderfully varied, from the nervous stutters and
swooping glissandos of the Lento to the perky, dance-like tune introduced by
the xylophone in the Allegro non troppo. The combination of repetitive
ostinatos and driving, irregular rhythms is the source of the sonata’s extraordinary
vitality.
—Harry Haskell
© 2012 The Carnegie Hall Corporation