Franz Liszt & the 20th Century Program Notes by Barbara Nissman

One of the most charismatic personalities to emerge from the 19th century and probably the greatest pianist to ever grace the concert stage, Franz Liszt was a true “pop star”- our first “celebrity” performer. With his extraordinary technique, Liszt laid the foundation for romantic pianism and influenced so many composers who wrote for the piano: Bartók, Ginastera, Prokofiev. I guess we could call Liszt, the “godfather” of bravura pianism. This evening’s program will demonstrate how all these 20th century composers were connected to Liszt and influenced by his approach to the keyboard.

Béla Bartók is a direct descendant of the “master,” having studied piano with one of Liszt’s pupils. Written in 1926, Bartók’s five-movement Out of Doors suite, emerges as one of his most original works for solo piano and certainly qualifies as one of his most difficult. Using a limited vocabulary and maximum pianism for each movement, this composition is all about sound and color. Bartók was inspired by nature. He liked hiking in the mountains, and each “soundscape” chronicles the many sounds he heard while walking. The suite begins with a percussive rhythmic outline in the lowest register of the piano, and the title With drums and pipes perfectly describes the scene. The calm, rhythmic but irregular patterns of the Barcarolla follow, creating the illusion of a Venetian boat song, but one adorned with much more complexity than usual. In Musettes, Bartók imitates the duple dissonant droning sounds of the bagpipes, complete with their characteristic squeaks and burps. The major focus of the entire suite is the memorable night sounds movement, Musiques Nocturnes. (Bartók used similar material in the slow movement of his Third Piano Concerto.) The writing is complex and multi-layered. Bartók expands the color range of the instrument, imitating bird chirpings, frogs and cricket sounds, creating a haunting evening in the country. Peace is shattered by the opening bars of The Chase. The perpetual motion finale, exciting from the first note to the last, becomes the culmination and the working through of what was only a rhythmic suggestion in the opening piece.

It is interesting that Béla Bartók did not like Liszt’s Sonata in B minor the first time he heard it. Only after careful study did he admit that this one-movement work, divided into four sections was "the perfection of form and a revolutionary innovation." Liszt takes us on a spiritual journey - from birth through life and with its final measures, allows us to feel the peaceful ascent of the soul on its journey to a higher place. Its wide emotional palette was difficult for the audiences of his time to understand-- even Johannes Brahms fell asleep during Liszt's performance of the work. Composed in l853, the sonata is dedicated to Robert Schumann, in appreciation of Schumann's dedication to Liszt of his C major Fantasy of l839. With its opening measures, Liszt states in succession the three basic motifs of the entire sonata that will be combined and transformed thematically. The problem for the performer is to clarify a structure that operates on two levels. The contrasting formal elements within each movement must be balanced so as to contribute to the pacing of the entire one-movement work. Liszt, the ultimate performer-composer, gives the pianist the flexibility to shape the total structure and the opportunity to make a truly personal statement.

Written during a turbulent period in the composer’s personal life, the Sonata provided a refuge for Liszt from the petty, mundane world. In this composition, Liszt seems to be wrestling with greater and more universal conflicts of spirituality and seeking answers to what lies beyond. Liszt incorporates the poetry and intimacy of Chopin and the orchestral sonorities of his friend Berlioz but ultimately synthesizes all these influences to make his own religious statement.

The Argentine composer, Alberto Ginastera was influenced by Bartók’s percussive approach to the keyboard and certainly inspired by his serious use of folk music to forge his own idiom. Ginastera in his Tres Danzas Argentinas, Op. 2 uses Argentine folk music to paint his sound canvases. An early work, written when the composer was 19 years of age and still a student, its Lisztian pianism, infectious and driving Latin rhythms and guitar imitations, hint at his later, more sophisticated style.

The Third Piano Sonata, Ginastera’s final work, was written in 1982 and is dedicated to pianist Barbara Nissman. It is a short work, written in one movement, similar in form to a Scarlatti Sonata, and ending with a virtuosic coda. The composer also drew inspiration from Schumann’s Toccata and Prokofiev’s one-movement Third Sonata. An Adagio introduction was planned but the composer died before this could be realized. Its percussive, virtuosic writing owes much to Bartók, Prokofiev and Liszt. After all the dissonance and difficulties, the composer chooses to end the work within the purity of the C tonal center, even though surrounded by lots of cluster tones.

Poulenc called him the "Russian Liszt" and certainly no other composer of the twentieth century has demonstrated such a natural pianism and extroverted sense of keyboard virtuosity. Sergei Prokofiev is indeed the true heir to Franz Liszt, extending the Romantic tradition of pianism with expansion of orchestral sonorities and even outdoing Liszt with his own brand of Lisztian virtuosity. After many years spent in Paris, Prokofiev returned to Russia in 1936, and in 1939, with the outbreak of World War II, began composing simultaneously three piano sonatas of mammoth proportions. Known as the War Sonatas, the Sixth, the well-known Seventh and the Eighth are true masterworks of twentieth-century keyboard literature. They expand the sonata, not only in terms of structure but as a total concept; they are the equivalent of large-scale symphonies for the piano.

The Sonata, No. 6, cast in four movements and completed in 1940, is the most massive of Prokofiev's nine sonatas, and its first movement invokes the aggressive and brutal face of war and its dissonant conflicts. This movement resembles a late Beethoven Sonata- perhaps it is Prokofiev's equivalent of the Hammerklavier; both works share an economy of material, motivically developed to the extreme. The second movement, a dance-like witty Allegretto, and the slow nostalgic third movement Valse are brief diversions and interludes in preparation for the Finale that unifies the entire work. This movement begins deceptively with a virtuosic dance theme but, as it progresses, Prokofiev leads us back to the poignant cries of the first movement. Here form is used to serve the musical material, and the coda becomes a wonderful example of pianistic effects using motives from the opening movement. The sonata concludes as it began, on a note of tonal affirmation.

Notes by Barbara Nissman