Visiting Artist Series: RESEMBLANCE & REMEMBRANCE

Tuesday, September 12, 2017, 7:30pm

ANTHONY HEWITT PIANO

ALEKSANDR SKRYABIN From Twenty-Four Préludes Op. 11:

No. 1 in C major: Vivace No. 3 in G major: Vivo No. 4 in E minor: Lento No. 5 in D major: Andante cantabile No. 6 in B minor: Allegro No. 11 in B major: Allegro assai No. 14 in E flat minor: Presto No. 15 in D flat major: Lento No. 20 in C minor: Appassionato No. 21 in B flat major: Andante No. 23 in F major: Vivo No. 24 in D minor: Presto

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN From Twenty-Four Préludes Op. 28:

No. 1 in C Major: Agitato No. 2 in A minor: Lento No. 3 in G Major: Vivace No. 4 in E minor: Largo No. 7 in A Major: Andantino No. 8 in F sharp minor: Molto agitato No. 9 in E Major: Largo No. 10 in C sharp minor: Allegro molto No. 11 in B major: Vivace No. 12 in G sharp minor: Presto No. 13 in F sharp major: Lento No. 14 in E flat minor: Allegro - pesante No. 15 in D flat major: Sostenuto No. 16 in B flat minor: Presto con fuoco No. 20 in C minor: Largo No. 23 in F Major: Moderato No. 24 in D minor: Allegro appassionato ‘Resemblance’

It’s astonishing to think that these most beautifully intricate and sonorous of works are to this day known to few, even within the music ‘world’. Skryabin’s Préludes have an incredi- ble depth and variety of material, and it is a joy to both play and listen to these miniatures, each with its own very distinctive character and mood.

Inspired by the 100th anniversary of Skryabin’s death in 2015, I was privileged to record all ninety in two volumes. There are of course many facets and joys in such a project, but one of the aspects I found most fascinating was to trace the development in Skryabin’s style, from the lavish romanticism in the early preludes, to the bleak vulnerability and stark atonality in the later ones. He stretched the boundaries of tonality, and has sadly been giv- en credit for it.

If there is one element which I found encompasses the whole span of the preludes, irre- spective of style, it’s the sense of tonality as a means of conveying colour and feeling, and atonality and dissonance playing a key part in communicating a very specific emotion, of- ten one of rage or violence, and unanswered questions; elevating the spirit but then leav- ing it in suspense. We know that Skryabin sometimes attributed a particular colour to a particular key, and used a musical lamp with different coloured lights to help illustrate the colour of tonal areas (still housed in the Skryabin museum in ). He even devised a colour legend showing the colour of each key within the cycle of fifths, which is the tonal structure of the Op. 11 set. Fast forward to the very end of his life, before he died unexpec- tedly in 1915 of septicaemia, and he was planning a vast project ‘Mysterium’, which would be set in the Himalayas (using the scenery as a stage set) lasting seven days, using ever conceivable instrument, dancers, choirs, and with the wafts of incense to add to the senso- ry overload.

It’s in Skryabin’s set of Twenty Four Preludes Op.11 where there is clearly the unmistak- able influence of Chopin: the shape of many of the preludes feels so similar, and it's hard not to see some of them as a kind of homage. For example, the opening Prélude Op. 11/1 in C major - with its pulsating, sweeping, figurations of falling 2nd’s in the treble - is the in- verse of Chopin’s Op. 24/1 where it’s a rising 2nd. The sombre, repeated chords of Chopin’s E minor no. 4 has haunting echoes in the corresponding Skryabin Prelude Op 11/4, and most audiences will recognise the uncanny likeness in no. 15 with Chopin’s ‘Raindrop’. The penultimate wispy and fleet F major No. 23 and the passionate outbursts of the final one in the set lend further weight to the argument.

Both composers used the same key structure, utilising the cycle of fifths (starting at C ma- jor and alternating between major and relative minor). This tonal structure gives more credibility to performing them as a set, but let’s not forget the original use of the prelude in mediaeval times, functioning as an improvisation to test the acoustic of a venue, or tuning of an instrument. The prelude evolved in the Baroque era as an opener to a Suite or be- fore a fugue, and then into the spacious tone poems of Liszt and Wagner, and tonal paint- ings of Debussy (who incidentally wrote his Two books of Préludes after Skryabin). Skryabin’s late preludes see a return to its original function, with quasi improvisations me- andering in states of transcendental suspension. However he never loses the overall arch structure which forges a clear path to a climax, often suddenly and impulsively. The infu- sion of energy and passion can happen quite out of the blue. There is clearly nothing ‘off- the-cuff’, improvisatory, or in fact ‘prelude’ about these, but each reveal vast possibilities for freedom and spontaneity, and opportunities to let the imagination run riot. Anthony Hewitt INTERMISSION (15mins)

MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition Remembrance on Victor Hartmann

With accompanying animation of paper cut-outs by artist Klara Smith

Promenade The Gnome Promenade The Old Castle Promenade Tuileries - children’s quarrel after playing Bydlo - The ox cart Promenade Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle - two jews, one rich and the other poor Promenade The Market Place at Limoges - the big news Catacombs Con Mortuis in Lingua Mortua The Hut on Fowl’s legs - ‘Baba Yaga’ The Great Gate Of Kiev

‘Remembrance’ Mussorgsky’s masterpiece ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ was inspired by paintings by his friend Viktor Hartmann, after mutual friend had helped curate an exhibition of Hartmann’s works after the painter’s early death. Especially commissioned for this project, artist Klara Smith has drawn ten contemporary takes on each scene/ movement in the form of exquisite paper cut-outs. These creations have been digitised and will be pro- jected in the form of still-life images and animated tours of the designs during the perfor- mance.

1873, was devastated when his friend, the artist and architect Viktor Hartmann, died at the early age of thirty-nine. The next year, an exhibition of over four hundred of Hartmann’s drawings and watercolours was held at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky lent pictures from his personal collection of the artist’s work for the event.

The images of the Exhibition reflected Hartmann’s extensive travels in Europe and fired Mussorgsky’s creative imagination. In a rush of ideas and emotion, he composed a suite for piano, ‘Pictures at an Exhibition - a Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann’. Each move- ment describes a different picture, as the viewer wanders from one to the other. Mus- sorgsky died prematurely in 1881- he was only forty-two. The critic, Vladimir Stasov, has left comments on the pictures portrayed in the music, which are used as the basis of the descriptions below. He had been a friend of both Mussorgsky and Hartmann and all three shared a passion for the revival of traditional Russian art.

The work opens with PROMENADE, as the viewer begins a tour of the Exhibition: the pur- poseful rhythm has the character of a Russian folk song. This theme will be heard again and is woven into many of the movements. GNOMUS (THE GNOME), traditionally a goblin guarding the inner parts of the earth, this now lost sketch of Hartmann’s was actually thought to be a design for a nutcracker with very large teeth but, as Stasov says, the music simply depicts a little gnome, clumsily run- ning with crooked legs. A contemplative PROMENADE now leads us to the second picture:

THE OLD CASTLE. Stasov says: “a mediaeval castle before which a troubadour sings a song”. This explains the mournful, lilting quality of the piece. Perhaps the troubadour is serenading an unattainable lady? His song is full of sadness, regret and yearning. After a shorter, measured PROMENADE, the viewer hesitates and stops to study:

THE TUILERIES, Hartmann’s now lost picture of the famous Parisian gardens, designed for Louis XIV, the Sun King. According to Stasov, it showed an avenue “with a swarm of children and nurses”. This must be the wide, central avenue in the Grand Couvert, a wooded area of chestnut and lime trees. In this short piece, with its secondary title: ’Dis- pute d’enfants après jeux’- ‘squabbling children after play’- we can hear the liveliness of the noisy children and the ordered stateliness of their nurses.

BYDLO In Polish, this word means ‘oxen’. Stasov described the picture as showing “a Polish cart on enormous wheels, drawn by oxen” and in the music we hear the poor beasts wearily dragging their burden. Light, lingering PROMENADE steps now pause at the Hartmann sketch entitled:

BALLET OF THE UNHATCHED CHICKS or CHICKS IN THEIR SHELLS This is a design for the ballet, ‘Trilby’; it was produced at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1871 and was based on the story ‘Trilby, or the Demon of the Heath’. The choreographer was Mar- ius Petipa. The fledglings were, in fact, canary chicks and the design shows the dancer’s body, covered by the egg, with their arms free to move as wings. The headdress was beaked. Mussorgsky uses a scher- zo to portray the little chicks pecking to break out of their eggshells.

SAMUEL GOLDENBERG AND SCHMUYLE, sometimes called ‘Two Old Jews’ - Stasov said: “Rich and Poor”. In the first movement, Andante, we see Goldenberg in his fur hat, sombre and self-important. The second movement, Andantino, is the theme for the portrait of Schmuyle, the Sandomir Jew. It is plaintive and haunting - in 1712, all the Jews in the Polish city of Sandomir had been expelled after being falsely accused of ritual murder. The third movement, Andante, combines both their themes.

LIMOGES - THE MARKET PLACE of the mediaeval city in central France. In Mus- sorgsky’s scherzo, the market buzzes. A secondary title, ‘La Grande Nouvelle’, the big news, would suggest that an animated discussion would be a truer interpretation than Stasov’s description: ‘French women quarrelling violently’. Mussorgsky had originally writ- ten on his manuscript that they were gossiping about a lost cow, a drunken neighbour and someone’s false teeth. And then, in complete contrast:

CATACOMBS These are not the Roman Catacombs but those in Paris - an ancient stone quarry had be- come a charnel house for the bones from old and overflowing graveyards. Later, the re- mains of victims of the Terror were also brought there. Stasov says: “Galleries of bones and skulls lead to a vast ossuary, the detritus of six million skeletons.” Figures explore the Catacombs by the light of a lantern and the Largo conjures up this solemn and fearful place.

Then, the promenade theme is woven into a delicate, sad Andante: CUM MORTUIS IN LINGUA MORTUA - WITH THE DEAD IN A DEAD LANGUAGE Mus- sorgsky dwells on thoughts of death, as he himself wrote on the manuscript: “The cre- ative spirit of the dead Hartmann leads one towards the skulls and invokes them...they be- gin to glow softly from within.”

THE HUT ON FOWLS’ LEGS (BABA YAGA) This drawing is of a clock in the form of the dreadful hut of Baba Yaga, the witch with the iron teeth in that most terrifying of Russian fairy tales. Baba Yaga’s hut had hens’ legs and it could walk about. Mussorgsky’s scherzo suggests the whirring and chiming of a large clock, combined with the fury of the witch’s pursuit of the little girl - Baba Yaga chases her in a mortar, beating with her pestle and sweeping obstacles away with her witch’s broom!

The last picture is THE GREAT GATE OF KIEV sometimes ‘The Heroes’ Gate’, or ‘The Bogatyr Gate’ (bogatyrs being heroes of Russian epics). A national competition had been launched to find a design for a monument to mark the es- cape of Tsar Alexander II from an assassination attempt in 1866 and Hartmann was the winner, although the decision to build it was later revoked. In his sketch, the massive gate, adjoined by a bell-tower, has a central arch topped by a cupola in the shape of a Slavic war helmet. Bells peal, we hear Promenade at its grandest and the echoes of an old, Rus- sian baptismal hymn. Mussorgsky triumphantly celebrates the life and work of his friend.

© Susan Porrett