PROGRAM NOTES: SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

Program notes by Robert Markow

GEORGES ENESCO: TWO PIECES FROM PIANO SUITE NO. 3, OP. 18 (Pièces impromptus) (1881-1955) No. 6 – Choral: Moderato, non troppo lento No. 7 – Carillon nocturne: L’istesso tempo (moderato, non troppo lento)

Although called a “suite,” Op. 18 is really just a collection of seven independent piano pieces Enesco composed over the period 1913-1916 and which the composer himself thought was lost during the war. It was discovered in 1957 (two years after his death) and first performed in 1959. The final two pieces constitute a pair; the score even indicates that they should be played without pause between. The Choral is a mostly quiet, contemplative number reminiscent of Debussy’s Cathedrale engloutie (composed just a few years earlier) with its evocations of distant tolling bells, a melodic line inspired by Gregorian chant, and harmonic language derived from medieval organum. The title of the following piece conveys its content. This is another “bell” piece, with different size notes in the manuscript to indicate just which are the most prominent pitches. Enesco wrote both pieces in mid 1916 in the mountain resort town of Sinaia, the composer’s summer residence.

NICOLAI MEDTNER: DEUX CONTES, OP. 20 SONATA REMINISCENZA, OP. 38, NO. 1 (1880-1951)

Like his countryman Rachmaninoff, Nicolai Medtner was a died-in-the-wool Romantic. He brooked no patience with the modernist directions of contemporaries like Strauss, Debussy or Reger, not to mention Stravinsky or Schoenberg, and believed staunchly in the traditional forms and harmonic practice as used by the great composers of the past. Also like Rachmaninoff, he was renowned as a virtuoso pianist. Medtner's entire catalogue, like Chopin's, consists of music either for piano alone or with piano. As the nocturne was to John Field and Chopin, the Fantasiestück to Schumann, and the étude- tableau to Rachmaninoff, so was the conte to Medtner – a newly-minted genre of short mood pieces for piano. Medtner composed 33 contes over the period of 1904 to 1928 spanning eleven opus numbers, each containing from one to six pieces. As André Lischké notes in the Fayard Guide de la musique de piano et de clavecin, “the usual English translation ‘fairy tale’ does not convey the right nuance of meaning, as these pieces have no connection to fairies, nor do they carry any specific story line. While some of them have subtitles, they present the listener more with container than with content.”

ORIGINAL FRENCH

La traduction anglaise usuelle “Fairy tale” n’en donne pas l’idée exacte, ̶ car ces pièces n’ont pas de prétextes féeriques ni de programme précis. Même si certaines portent des sous-titres, elles proposent davantage à l’auditeur un contenant qu’un contenu

Medtner’s firm grasp of large-scale musical architecture is well illustrated in the single- movement Sonata reminiscenza, one of his more frequently performed works. There are two expositions (not just the same one repeated), each with a different subordinate theme. In the recapitulation the main theme is followed by still another new subordinate theme. The sonata’s motto theme, heard in the opening bars, recurs at the end of the second exposition and again to close the work

FRANZ SCHUBERT: PIANO SONATA IN A MAJOR, D. 959 (1797-1828)

I. Allegro II. Andantino III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace IV. Rondo: Allegretto

The year of Schubert’s death, 1828, saw the birth of an extraordinary number of masterpieces from the pen of this master lyricist: the Great C-major Symphony, the Mass in E-flat, the String Quintet in C, thirteen of his finest songs, and the final trilogy of great piano sonatas. The Sonata in A major, D. 959 is the second of this trilogy, and one of the greatest works in a genre that occupied Schubert all his creative life except for the three-year period of 1820-22. The first movement opens with a grand, majestic subject which breaks off at the end to introduce one of the movement’s most characteristic features, gentle cascades of triplets. Schubert extends both the opening subject and the triplets for some time, spinning out his lyric ideas with ineffable ease. Eventually he introduces the second subject, a serenely reposeful theme as notable for its simplicity as for its charm. The slow movement is a three-part structure. A gently rocking theme of almost hypnotic power slowly unfolds in F-sharp minor. By contrast, the central section is highly dramatic, full of clashing dissonances, long trills, chromatic scales and rumbling. The Scherzo is one of Schubert’s most delightful, its lighthearted, bouncy mood all the more welcome after the seriousness of the two preceding movements. The long rondo-finale reveals Schubert at his most endearing and congenial. The basic mood of steadily flowing lyricism over a triplet accompaniment never abates, calling to mind Schumann’s famous comment about Schubert’s C-major Symphony: music of “heavenly length.”