Program N♪Tes

PROGRAM N♪TES

Till Fellner November 12, 2019 – 7:30 p.m. Mixon Hall

Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959 Franz Schubert Born: Vienna-Himmelpfortgrund, 1797 Died: Vienna, 1828 Composed: 1828

Unlike Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert today belong to the last period—in fact, they never performed in public as a pianist. He are the last ones Schubert ever wrote. was proficient enough on the instrument to The A-major sonata opens with a set of accompany his songs during friendly chords over a pedal point that will return, in gatherings, and he was also fond of playing different shapes, in all four movements, and improvising dance music. In one of his most emphatically (and audibly) in the letters to his father, he was even able to closing measures of the finale. In the first report: “I was assured by many that the movement, these chords, which generate the keys began to sing under my fingers, which, first theme, contrast with a lyrical second if true, gives me great joy, for I can’t stand theme that touches on many keys as it that damned banging that even excellent unfolds, not shying away from some harsh, pianists are guilty of — this delights neither dissonant progressions along the way. At the ear nor the soul.” Yet he was no the repeat, Schubert adds one slight virtuoso, and since in those days composers ornament to the theme that goes by so fast as were typically their own performers, this to be almost unnoticeable; yet these four meant that Schubert’s piano sonatas did not sixteenth-notes, arranged in irregular five- become widely known until long after the bar phrases, become the starting point of the composer’s death. entire development section. The Schubert’s piano sonatas were written recapitulation ends with a recall of the initial during three distinct periods in his life: in series of chords, played softly in a high 1817-18, in 1825, and in 1828, the last year register. of his life. The two sonatas we shall hear The quiet opening theme of the The third movement is a light-hearted Andantino has an even rhythmic flow that Scherzo. Its playful alternation of registers musicologist Alfred Einstein, in his 1951 may have been influenced by Beethoven’s book on Schubert, compared to the song Sonata Op. 2, No. 2 (also in A major). Yet Pilgerweise (“Pilgrim’s Song”) on a text by the tone of Ländler (the Austrian folk dance) Schubert’s friend Franz von Schober. “I am belongs unmistakeably to Schubert, whom a pilgrim on this earth and go quietly from we may also recognize by the abrupt key house to house”—says the text of this song, changes and the simple, laid-back Trio and the sonata melody also goes quietly section. along its way, repeated over and over again, The graceful theme of the final sonata- seemingly wandering without a precise aim rondo is one that Schubert had previously or destination. used in another of his sonatas, the A-minor And then an extraordinary thing work of 1817 (D. 537), where it appears in happens. As in the first movement, Schubert the second movement. In this new starts a seemingly harmless sixteenth-note incarnation, the theme alternates with three motion. In this case, the sixteenth-notes elaborate episodes. The first and third of speed up to triplets and thirty-seconds, over these are identical, mimicking the function unsettling dissonances and daring key of a secondary theme in sonata form (which changes. The notes seem to get out of the is why this movement is called a “sonata- composer’s control and follow their own rondo”). In the central episode, the tonality path as in a dream. In reality, of course, the changes to minor and the music becomes section is carefully planned along a single quite stormy. The return of the rondo theme continuous crescendo. It ends with one of brings back the serene atmosphere. The way Schubert’s most shattering climaxes and Schubert fragments this theme just before stops abruptly after a single strongly- the end, with sudden fits and starts, is accented chord. Only after a number of certainly indebted to Beethoven (as in the weaker “aftershocks” does the music finally last movement of Op. 31, No. 1); yet the calm down sufficiently to resume the ending, with a recall of the motto from the wandering melody of the beginning. first movement is entirely without precedent.

Three pieces for Piano, Op. 11 Arnold Schoenberg Born: Vienna, 1874 Died: Los Angeles, 1951 Composed: 1909

“I can feel the air from another planet”—a language of late Romanticism, which poem by German symbolist poet Stefan Schoenberg had been expanding since George (1868-1933) that begins with these Transfigured Night (1899), increasingly words takes the pace of the fourth approached “outer space.” Overcoming the movement in Schoenberg's String Quartet “gravity” of the traditional major-minor No. 2 (1908). Most unusually, the third and system, it began to glide freely in the fourth movements of this quartet include a uncharted domain of atonality. soprano solo, and “the air of another planet” This bold move was not a gratuitous can be felt in all of Schoenberg's music act, nor was it inimical to musical written around that time. The harmonic expression. It was a logical continuation of a process that started in the 19th century. In emphasizes the minor third D-F. Over this Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, all-pervasive ostinato, we hear a gentle theme with a chromaticism was a means to give voice to symmetrical structure. It could be likened to the composer's Romantic vision of love and a nocturne, were it not for the dramatic death. In Schoenberg's case, atonality fortissimo passage with its powerful, high- served to express feelings of detachment lying trills in the central section. As in the from the everyday world—feelings for first piece, there is an almost literal which the rules of classical harmony were recapitulation at the end. too narrow. The third piece is the shortest, fastest, The Second String Quartet bears the and stormiest of the set. The texture is opus number 10 in Schoenberg's catalogue. dominated by thundering chords and fast His next work, Op. 11, written in 1909, is a runs, requiring a high degree of virtuosity. set of three piano pieces—Schoenberg's first Interspersed with these dramatic materials works for piano solo—in which the atonal are fleeting lyrical moments in a slower style is fully established. Yet atonality does tempo, in one instance recalling the theme of not mean that all ties to the past are severed. the first movement. Gone are the The first piece begins with an allusion to the recapitulations of the first two pieces; rhythm of a slow, melancholy waltz, instead, the energy is suddenly spent at the recognizable even without its underlying end in an entirely novel way. accompaniment. This waltz, detached from The third piece was written several its roots, is varied, developed, and months after the first two. By that time, ornamented. “Thematic” episodes, in which Schoenberg had moved even further into the variants of the opening theme can be heard, exploratio of the new musical “planet,” alternate with what one commentator has having begun work on his revolutionary called “outburst areas”—free and virtuosic song cycle on text by Stefan George, The passages that represent the opposite end of Book of the Hanging Gardens (Op. 15), as the expressive spectrum. well as the expressionist opera Erwartung In the case of the second piece, the (“Expectation”), which seems particularly traditional element is an ostinato—an almost close to the mood of the third piano piece. constant accompaniment in eighth-notes that

Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960 Franz Schubert Born: Vienna-Himmelpfortgrund, 1797 Died: Vienna, 1828 Composed: 1828

Schubert's last sonata covers an enormous sufficient time to savor the two things that emotional ground from the contemplative make Schubert’s mature works so special: opening to the exuberant close, and is his unique melodic writing, and the without a doubt one of the peaks of the ingenuity with which he transforms his entire piano literature. melodies and builds bridges between them. The first movement, significantly, is Schubert had learned from Beethoven the not marked Allegro but rather Molto idea of a ‟three-key” exposition where the moderato. The difference is important. music does not proceeds from the home key Nothing must be rushed, so that one has directly to its goal, the dominant, but instead takes a detour, with the secondary theme scheme. Aside from a few strongly accented appearing in a remote third key (as in notes, the volume never rises above Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata for example). mezzoforte, and the scherzo retains its But Schubert’s route—B-flat major to F- somewhat hushed quality throughout. The sharp minor to F major—is more soft and understated Trio section (in B-flat adventurous than Beethoven’s. The words minor) has the same delicatezza as the ‟route” and ‟adventurous” are used with scherzo itself. good reason here: the initial melody is one The Finale combines sonata form of Schubert’s great ‟wandering” themes, and with certain features of the rondo. Its main it is indeed as if we were embarking on a theme is reminiscent of that of Beethoven’s journey that takes us to many wonderful last composition, the finale replacing the landscapes before returning home for a rest. Great Fugue in the String Quartet Op. 130 (In this, our journey differs from the one in (in the same key of B-flat major). Both Winterreise, where there is no home and no movements start with the same harmony, return.) At the crucial points of the outside the key of B-flat, and both reach the journey—at the beginning, before the home key gradually by the end of the first recapitulation, and at the end—an ominous phrase. Schubert follows this theme with a trill on the low G-flat provides an lyrical secondary melody, suddenly atmosphere of suspense. interrupted by a rest and swept away by a The key of the second-movement sudden dramatic fortissimo that soon gives Andante sostenuto, C-sharp minor, is way in its turn to a lively tarantella dance. extremely remote from the sonata’s main In the middle section, the playful first theme key of B-flat major. Its wistful melody, itself is subjected to some dramatic played in sweet parallel thirds, is surrounded development; a literal recapitulation and a by an accompaniment figure in the left hand brief Presto coda concludes this great that keeps crossing over above the right sonata. hand. A second melody, in A major, serves Schubert had intended to dedicate his as middle section. It gradually grows in three sonatas from the year 1828 to the intensity and reaches forte dynamics after a composer and piano virtuoso Johann series of striking modulations. The first Nepomuk Hummel, but the works were not theme then returns: the movement is published until 1838, ten years after crowned by one of those magical Schubert’s death. At that point, the Schubertian minor-major shifts where the publisher Diabelli dedicated them to Robert sudden tonal change carries a particularly Schumann, whose enthusiastic review strong emotional charge. opened the door to the posthumous The third-movement Scherzo recognition of Schubert’s music outside (Allegro vivace con delicatezza) has a Vienna. simple melody but a very intricate harmonic

-Peter Laki ______Mr. Laki is a musicologist and Visiting Associate Professor of Music at Bard College. He has been the annotator for the Society’s program booklet since 2012, having previously served as annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra from 1990 to 2007. He is a native of Budapest and holds a Ph.D. in music from the University of Pennsylvania.