Rafal Blechacz - Program Notes

Notes on the Program

By Aaron Grad Partita No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 826 [1726] JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Born March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, Germany Died July 28, 1750 in Leipzig, Germany Even with the overwhelming demands of his new position managing church music for the city of Leipzig, Bach found time to keep advancing a pet project to write and self-publish solo keyboard suites, both as a source of supplemental income and as a way to burnish his reputation beyond Leipzig. Building on the so-called “English” and “French” Suites that had originated during his earlier period working a secular job in Cöthen, he started writing new suites in 1726; this time he used the label of Partita, using a term that had become popular with German musicians for multi-movement suites in the French style.

He published them individually as each was finished, and once he had a full set of six in 1731 he printed the six Partitas under the title Clavier-Übung, or Keyboard Practice.

Keyboard players have always needed plenty of practice to meet the demands of these virtuosic and endlessly inventive suites. Instead of a standard overture in the French style, Bach began the Partita No. 2 in C Minor with a Sinfonia that borrowed the Italian convention of a three-part form, with a suave Andante sandwiched between the ceremonial introduction and the culminating fast fugue. After a series of stylized dances, the Partita foregoes the customary Gigue and ends instead with a Capriccio that lives up to its title’s promise of exciting, capricious music.

Piano Sonata No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 1 [c. 1795-97] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 1770 in Bonn, Germany Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria While Beethoven worked toward his grand ambitions to compose symphonies and operas, he spent his early years in Vienna hustling for work as a freelancer. Within the flurry of public concerts, piano lessons and sheet music publications, he recognized the need to cultivate patrons who could advance his interests, including one Russian emissary, Count Johann Georg von Browne, to whom Beethoven dedicated the string trios he published in 1798 as Opus 9. With his next opus, a set of three piano sonatas, he extended the same honor to the count’s wife, who might have also been a piano student.

The Piano Sonata No. 5 in C Minor (Op. 10, No. 1) comes from that early phase of Beethoven’s career when he was still internalizing the styles mastered by Mozart and Haydn. In the wake of this sonata, composed between 1795 and 1797, Beethoven wrote two more landmark works in the same key, a string trio (Op. 9, No. 3) and another piano

sonata, the Sonata Pathétique (Op. 13). These experimental compositions chafed against the pleasant stereotypes of salon music, and they established a tradition wherein Beethoven channeled his most inflamed passions into music in the key of C minor—most famously in the Fifth Symphony that came a decade later.

The tempo marking of this sonata’s first movement challenges its performer to play “very fast and with vigor,” and the dynamic markings, already bold from the outset in their forte and piano alternations, soon escalate to the more extreme contrast of fortissimo and pianissimo. After the aggressive arpeggios of the first theme, the contrasting music in Eflat major indulges in shapely melodies and fluid “Alberti bass” patterns in the left hand, a sound redolent of Mozart.

Within the “very slow” middle movement, songlike phrases dissipate or veer off path in stark and surprising ways. The music is understated and spacious, enriched by silences and simplifications where more notes would only have diluted the impact.

The finale shifts to the opposite extreme of tempo, calling for a breakneck Prestissimo tempo. It takes a bouncier, more playful approach to the C-minor tonality, but still it is uncompromising in its manipulation of the material. One cascading phrase bears a striking resemblance to a moment in the Fifth Symphony’s opening movement, with both examples tumbling down the same unsettled sequence of diminished harmonies.

32 Variations in C Minor, WoO 80 [1806] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN For a performer of Beethoven’s caliber, improvising variations on a simple or familiar tune was a surefire way to delight an audience. The fact that he took the trouble to commit some of his keyboard variations to paper shows that he recognized their appeal to the public, but he usually printed them without opus numbers, relegating them to a disposable, second-class status in his output. Most of the surviving Variations came from Beethoven’s first decade in Vienna, when his keyboard wizardry was central to his public identity, and before his hearing loss derailed his concert career.

The 32 Variations in C Minor were the last of their kind, composed in 1806 and published the next year in Vienna. (For his next set of variations in 1809, Beethoven elevated them by assigning an opus number, and he wrote no more until the encyclopedic “Diabelli” Variations that occupied some of his final years.) Set in Beethoven’s favorite key for high drama, these variations race by in eight-measure segments that preserve the length of the original theme, making them almost like a Baroque chaconne in which the short variations flow continuously.

Prelude, Fugue and Variation, Op. 18 [1860-62]

CÉSAR FRANCK Born December 10, 1822 in Liège, Belgium Died November 8, 1890 in Paris, France In his lifetime, César Franck was best known for his organ improvisations, which could be heard at the Basilica of Saint Clotilde in Paris for more than thirty years. Between 1856 and 1864, Franck composed the six pieces for organ that included the original version of this Prelude, Fugue and Variation. He made his own transcription for two pianos (or piano and harmonium), and the twentieth-century composer and pianist Harold Bauer followed with a version for solo piano. Franck had the privilege of playing on a revolutionary new instrument designed by the king of French organs, Aristide CavailléColl, and any pianist rendering Franck’s organ music must consider the tonal spectrum that would have been possible with both hands and feet playing an instrument with fortysix different stops. The musical structure honors the all-important organ music of Bach, who like Franck possessed the gift of endless originality when improvising at the keyboard.

Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58 [1844] FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN Born March 1, 1810 near Warsaw, Poland Died October 17, 1849 in Paris, France Frédéric Chopin was a child wonder who published his first piano music at age seven. He left his native Warsaw in 1830 for what was meant to be a debut European tour, but a populist uprising in Poland and the subsequent crackdown by Russian forces ruled out the possibility of Chopin returning to his homeland. His travels eventually brought him to Paris, where he made a name for himself performing at exclusive salons, teaching private students, and publishing a steady stream of piano collections.

Chopin wrote mostly in small-scale formats—Nocturnes, Mazurkas, Polonaises, Waltzes and the like—that rewarded his poetic sense of phrasing and his intuitive development of themes. Multi-movement sonatas, which had been so central to the solo piano and chamber music repertoire in the days of Mozart and Beethoven, represented a tiny sliver of Chopin’s output.

If a Beethoven sonata is an impeccably tailored suit, with every stitch in its place and no material going to waste, then Chopin’s is a couture gown, draped luxuriously over the same recognizable form but achieving a wholly different silhouette. In the Third Piano Sonata from 1844, the standout music of the first movement is its lyrical counter-theme, which breaks with tradition and launches the final recapitulation instead of the main theme. In the scherzo that follows, the perpetual motion statement comes and goes in just about half a minute, ushering in another chance to linger on beautiful contrasting passages.

Cutting against the expectation set by the stern octaves of its introduction, the Largo uses a song-like melody and dotted rhythms to evoke a nostalgic mood in the parallel key of B-major. The finale returns to the home key of B-minor and the established Classical template of the Rondo, with the most thrilling filigree appearing in the episodes that separate the statements of the primary theme. Š 2019 Aaron Grad.