Sunday, October 20, 2024 | 3PM
Soka
PROGRAM
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Fantasy in C Minor, K.475
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Piano Sonata in C Minor, K.457
Allegro
Adagio
Molto allegro
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903
-- INTERMISSION --
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL
Chaconne in G Major, HWV 435 (fourth version)
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Variations and Fugue in B-flat Major on a Theme by Handel, Opus 24
Fantasy in C Minor, K.475
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg
Died December 5, 1791, Vienna
In the years 1784-85, Mozart did something virtually unique: he wrote two separate works for solo piano–a sonata and a fantasy–that he decided should be joined and performed together. To make his intentions clear, he published them together in the spring of 1785 as his Opus 11. Today, the Fantasy in C Minor and the Sonata in C Minor are almost always performed as separate works, and this recital offers the rare opportunity to hear them performed together, as Mozart wished. Each is a powerful work in its own right, but their combination is particularly potent: the unpredictable expressive freedom of the Fantasy makes an ideal prelude to the controlled and ordered Sonata
Mozart wrote the introductory Fantasy in C Minor seven months after the Sonata: he completed it in Vienna on May 20, 1785. The Fantasy falls into several sections. The piano’s opening Adagio–in octaves–sets the pattern for the entire work: even within the space of one measure, Mozart has already made sharp dynamic contrasts and moved through unexpected tonalities. Such expressive freedom shows up even more violently at the Allegro, where the music rushes ahead ominously. There is a dark urgency to this music, with its powerful accents, clipped phrases, and sudden changes of mood. A brief, gentle Andantino leads to a
return of faster tempos, and Mozart rounds off this varied work with a return to the music from the very beginning. Again, there are the same changes of mood, the same contrasts of dynamics, the same ornate swells of sound, before the powerful rush up the scale to the concluding C-minor chord.
Piano Sonata in C Minor, K.457 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna
Mozart completed the Piano Sonata in C Minor on October 14, 1784, and it remained in manuscript until the following spring. Critics have often commented on the “Beethovenian” quality of this sonata. Some of this results from the terse and dramatic themes of the outer movements and some of it from the choice of key, for C minor was the key Beethoven reserved for his most turbulent music. Yet it should be remembered that C minor also called forth some of Mozart’s darkest and most dramatic music: not just in this sonata and fantasy, but also in the Concerto in C Minor, K.491 and the Serenade in C Minor, K.388. Beethoven knew these works well, and Mozart’s biographer Alfred Einstein suggests that they may have opened up a path for the younger composer, a path Mozart himself did not choose to follow.
In any case, this is a stunning piano sonata, compelling on its own terms rather than interesting merely as a foretaste of Beethoven. Particularly striking are the dramatic outer movements. The opening of the
Allegro stamps out the notes of a C-minor chord, then instantly responds with more restrained material–this contrast of the fierce and the gentle will mark the entire movement. Mozart offers repeats of both exposition and development; in the latter he introduces a ravishing melody that sings its moving song over four measures and then vanishes, never to return. The ending of this movement, where the C-minor tensions gradually dissolve, is a masterpiece of understatement.
Mozart moves to the relative major, E-flat, for the Adagio, in which a singing main theme – marked sotto voce – grows more ornate as it repeats; soon it is embellished with turns, syncopations, sharp dynamic contrasts, florid runs, and arpeggiated chords. The final movement returns to the mood of the first–back come the C-minor urgency and the same dramatic contrasts. Mozart makes striking use of fermatas here: there are fourteen of them, and they punctuate the music with a series of stops. Out of these stops, the music always presses forward, and at the end Mozart drives this impressive sonata to an emphatic conclusion.
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig
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. During his Cöthen years (1717-1723), Bach wrote a number of works for the keyboard (which means for the harpsichord), including Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier and a series of short pedagogic pieces for his children and students. It was during these same years, probably about 1720, that Bach composed his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor. Those who think of Bach as the “safe” composer of church music and preludes and fugues intended for didactic purposes will have that conception mauled by the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue This is wild music–daring, powerful, expressive, brilliant. Bach may initially set this music in D minor, but the chromatic freedom of his writing often dissolves any sense of a stable home key, and there are moments of dissonance in this music that can still surprise the ear centuries after it was written. 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 Fantasia implies a freedom of form, and in fact the opening section of the Chromatic Fantasy should suggest the effect of improvisation, with its great swirls and free flights. This is virtuoso music, with rapid exchanges between the hands and brilliant runs. 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. After the measured conclusion of the Fantasy, the fugue moves at a much quicker pulse. Once again, this is music that demands a virtuoso performer, and–once again–it drives to a close in D major.
Chaconne in G Major, HWV 435 GEORG FRIDERIC HANDEL
Born February 23, 1685, Halle
Died April 14, 1759, London
The Chaconne in G Major was published in several editions during the 1720s and 1730s, but this music was probably written much earlier, perhaps during Handel’s first years in London. Brilliant and expressive, the Chaconne in G Major has become one of Handel’s most famous keyboard works–it has been recorded by Emil Gilels, Annie Fisher, Murray Perahia, and many others.
A chaconne is a variation form built on a repeating ground bass or chord progression. Handel opens with his fundamental theme, marked Maestoso and based on the fournote bass-line progression G-F#E-D, a sequence used by many composers of that era. There follow twenty-one variations, and Handel arranges these into three general sections. The first eight variations remain within the character of the opening theme, and Handel presents them in a sequence of increasing brilliance. Matters change completely at the ninth variation, where Handel moves into G minor, changes the tempo to Adagio, and offers several slow variations. The first two of these G-minor variations bring music of unusual expressive power–slow, poised, and full of chromatic tension. Gradually the tempo eases ahead, and at the seventeenth variation, Handel moves back to G major and concludes with five brilliant variations that drive to the grand and powerful concluding chords.
The Chaconne in G Major exists in several versions. Several of these are manuscript fragments, but two “complete” versions were published during Handel’s lifetime: one by Jeanne Roger (1721) and another by John Walsh (1733); these differ slightly in the number of their variations. At this recital, Ms. Hewitt performs the Walsh edition, which has come to be known as the “Fourth Version.”
Variations and Fugue in B-flat Major on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna
Brahms was fascinated by variation form throughout his life. From his early piano works through the magnificent passacaglia that concludes his final symphony, he returned continually to what was for him one of the most demanding and rewarding of musical forms. Among his works one finds Variations on an Original Theme, Variations on a Hungarian Song, Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Variations on a Theme of Haydn, and Variations on a Theme of Paganini (two sets). The Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, one of Brahms’ finest sets of variations, was written in Hamburg in 1861, when the composer was 28.
Brahms chose the original theme from the last movement of the Suite No. 1 in B-flat Major from Handel’s Suites de pièces de clavecin, published in London in 1733. Handel’s theme falls symmetrically into two four-bar phrases and naturally presents great opportunities for variation: Handel himself wrote five variations on it. In his version, Brahms first states Handel’s theme (like Handel, Brahms titles it “Aria”), creates twenty-five variations, then concludes with a tremendous fugue derived from Handel’s original theme. The variations themselves are extremely ingenious, and Brahms complicates his task by composing some of them not just
as variations on Handel’s themes but also to conform simultaneously with other music forms: Variation 6, for example, is a baroque canon, No. 19 a siciliana. Brahms stays in the home key of B-flat major almost exclusively: only three of his variations are not in that key.
Nearly everyone who has written about the Handel Variations has commented on the “orchestral texture” of the piano writing and has professed to hear the orchestral instruments Brahms “must” have had in mind when he composed each variation. In fact, the Handel Variations have been orchestrated–in 1938 by the English composer Edmund Rubbra–and that version is occasionally performed and has been recorded. Comparison of the two versions inevitably reveals, however, that the music makes best sense on the instrument for which Brahms wrote it.
The Handel Variations figured prominently in a very unusual context. On February 6, 1864, three years after this music was written, Brahms and Wagner spent an evening together at the villa the latter had rented outside Vienna. Wagner later had derisive things to say about Brahms (as he did about virtually everyone else), but this evening at least proved cordial, and on that occasion Brahms played his Handel Variations for Wagner. One would expect the proponent of Zukunftmusik–“the music of the future”–to have no use for so ancient and constrained a form as the theme-and-variations, but in fact Wagner was generous enough
on this occasion to recognize what the younger composer had accomplished. “It shows what can still be done with the old forms by somebody who knows how to handle them,” he said.
Program notes © Eric Bromberger, 2024.
ANGELA HEWITT
Angela Hewitt occupies a unique position among today’s leading pianists. With a wideranging repertoire and frequent appearances in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe, Americas and Asia, she is also an award-winning recording artist whose performances of Bach have established her as one of the composer’s foremost interpreters. In 2020 she received the City of Leipzig Bach Medal: a huge honour that for the first time in its 17-year history was awarded to a woman.
In March 2024, Hewitt embarked on her latest major project entitled ‘The Mozart Odyssey’, comprising the composer’s complete piano concertos, first appearing with Pierre Bleuse and Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. This follows Hewitt’s highly acclaimed Bach Odyssey cycle (2016–22), in which she performed the complete keyboard works of Bach across 12 recitals, also presented worldwide. The Mozart project continues in 2024/25 with a variety of engagements spanning nine countries; conductorled performances include the Brussels Philharmonic, Royal
