Monday 19 July, Champs Hill 7.30pm – 9.20pm Imogen Cooper Piano Sonata in A minor, D845 Franz SChubert (1797-1828) 1) Moderato, 2) Andante, poco mosso, 3) Scherzo: Allegro vivace, Trio: un poco piu lento, 4) Rondo: Allegro vivace ‘Several people assured me that under my hands the keys became singing voices…’, declared Schubert allegedly after a performance of his Piano Sonata’s slow movement. It belongs to the spring of 1825 following a miserable year which had included a brief return to teaching and confirmation of his suspected syphilis. With this devastating news his music matured almost overnight: and in works such as the Octet, the string quartet ‘Death and the Maiden’ and this expansive Sonata in A minor there emerged a new depth of feeling. The work opens with two contrasting themes, one shy, the other defiant, the first dominating in the chromatically rich development, the insistent second later gaining prominence, and the movement ends on a note of tragic grandeur. Five variations on a simple melody, announced in the tenor register, underpin the slow movement. Running figures characterise the first two variations with decorative embellishments added in the second. Dramatic tensions disturb the minor key third, while the fourth unfolds with a certain élan, its rising scales yielding to a final untroubled variation of repeated chord patterns. Persistent patterns in the Scherzo are offset by flexible phrase lengths, varied voicing, with the whole relieved by a central Trio in a gently rocking F major. A busy Rondo Finale, marked by quavers with clear two-part textures, provides a brilliant close to this fascinating work. Sonatine MauriCe Ravel (1875-1937) 1) Modéré - Doux et expressif, 2) Mouvment de minuet, 3) Animae Whether paying tribute to Liszt in Jeux d'eau or the early 18th century harpsichord tradition evoked in Le Tombeau de Couperin, several of Ravel’s piano works make a conspicuous journey into the past. Similarly, the French baroque was the stimulus for Ravel’s Sonatine (1905) where a melodic clarity and conciseness of form are combined with a Gallic preoccupation with elegance and sensuous beauty. The work was prompted by a magazine competition - the Weekly Critical Review – for a first movement of a piano Sonatina to last just seventy-five bars. Despite disqualification because his single entry was two bars too long, Ravel added two more movements to complete the work in its present form. Much of the material for the three movements derives from the interval of a descending fourth which begins the opening ‘Modéré’. The interval’s subsequent transformation appears in inverted form (as a fifth) in the ‘Minuet’ and returning to a fourth for in a series of horn calls for the toccata-like third. Jeux d’eaux à la villa d’Este (Fountains of the Villa d'Este) Franz Liszt (1811-1886) With few exceptions Franz Liszt performed in every European major city and capital during his years as a travelling virtuoso. His peripatetic lifestyle continued into maturity and from 1869 he roamed between three cultural centres: Weimar, Pest (Budapest) and Rome, usually staying in the Eternal City from midsummer until the year’s end. He had already developed a love of Italy and commemorated its art, literature and picturesque scenes in the second of two musical travelogues he called Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). A third volume from this late period would contain Les jeux d'eaux à la villa d’Este inspired by the 16th century mansion (famed for its water-gardens and fountains) in Tivoli near Rome where Liszt would regularly stay. Described by the composer Busoni as ‘the model for all musical fountains that have flowed ever since’, this beautiful soundscape anticipates the work of the French impressionists and was a model for Ravel's own celebrated Jeux d'eau. Liszt's musical description of the fountains is a masterpiece of persuasive pictorial writing, and its imaginative palette of rippling and cascading figuration dazzles the ear in its endless resourcefulness. Jeux d’eau MauriCe Ravel Ravel once claimed his Jeux d’eau to be ‘the starting point of all pianistic innovations that have been noted in my work’. Certainly, its glittering sound world and evanescent textures, so reminiscent of Liszt, marks a new departure in French piano music. It was a revelation to the pianist Marguerite Long who commented on the work’s daring: citing its ‘new expressive ideas in a high register previously too often given up to sleigh bells or cow bells’. Dedicated to Gabriel Fauré, Jeux d’eau derives its fascination from its strikingly illusive harmony and ever- changing textural transparency, both qualities supporting two melodic ideas, one based on arpeggio figuration, the other built on stepwise motion in octaves. Technicalities aside, one might best consider Ravel’s early masterpiece with an inscription at the head of the score by the French Symbolist poet Henri de Régnier: ‘A river god laughing at the water that tickles him’. Rhapsody in A minor, No 13 Franz Liszt Liszt’s legendary playing earned him fame far beyond his native Hungary where he and his family had left aged ten. Yet the region’s folk music was the inspiration behind numerous works reflecting his heritage and include the symphonic poem Hungaria (S.103), the Hungarian Fantasy (S.123) and his nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies (S244). These works occupied the composer over a forty-year period and many adopt the structure of Hungary’s national dance, the Csárdás, in which a slow first section (Lassú) is followed by a fast conclusion (Friss). Published in 1853, Rhapsody No. 13 is not untypical for its broadly designed slow section, a spirited Vivace, featuring a pair of folk songs, and a brilliant finale. Generously sponsored by The Bowerman Charitable Trust .