The Mazurkas Russell Sherman, Piano

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Also available from Russell Sherman on Avie… Fryderyk Chopin The Mazurkas Russell Sherman, piano

119.5

Claude Debussy Estampes Images, Book II Franz Liszt Préludes, Book II

AV2164 (Compact Disc) Études d’exécution transcendante with interviews and teaching excerpts

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Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) The Mazurkas

CD 1...... 66:43 CD 2...... 59:08

1 Op. 6, No. 1 ...... 2:25 16 Op. 24, No. 3 ...... 2:02 1 Op. 50, No. 1 ...... 2:18 12 Op. 63, No. 3 ...... 2:06 2 Op. 6, No. 2 ...... 1:36 17 Op. 24, No. 4 ...... 4:13 2 Op. 50, No. 2 ...... 2:49 13 Op. 67, No. 1 ...... 1:14 3 Op. 6, No. 3 ...... 1:42 18 Op. 30, No. 1 ...... 1:38 3 Op. 50, No. 3 ...... 5:00 14 Op. 67, No. 2 ...... 2:16 4 Op. 6, No. 4 ...... 0:53 19 Op. 30, No. 2 ...... 1:11 4 Op. 56, No. 1 ...... 4:48 15 Op. 67, No.3 ...... 1:22 119.5 5 Op. 7, No. 1 ...... 1:43 20 Op. 30, No. 3 ...... 2:23 5 Op. 56, No. 2 ...... 1:36 16 Op. 67, No.4 ...... 2:45 6 Op. 7, No. 2 ...... 3:20 21 Op. 30, No. 4 ...... 3:11 6 Op. 56, No. 3 ...... 5:53 17 Op. 68, No. 1 ...... 1:37 7 Op. 7, No. 3 ...... 1:55 22 Op. 33, No. 1 ...... 1:55 7 Op. 59, No. 1 ...... 3:39 18 Op. 68, No. 2 ...... 3:09 8 Op. 7, No. 4 ...... 1:19 23 Op. 33, No. 2 ...... 2:16 8 Op. 59, No. 2 ...... 2:23 19 Op. 68, No. 3 ...... 1:23 9 Op. 7, No. 5 ...... 0:43 24 Op. 33, No. 3 ...... 1:55 9 Op. 59, No. 3 ...... 3:34 20 Op. 68, No. 4 ...... 2:01 10 Op. 17, No. 1 ...... 2:08 25 Op. 33, No. 4 ...... 4:50 10 Op. 63, No. 1 ...... 2:08 21 KK II b No. 4 ...... 3:04 11 Op. 17, No. 2 ...... 2:06 26 Op. 41, No. 1 ...... 2:20 11 Op. 63, No. 2 ...... 1:49 22 KK II b No. 5 ...... 2:07 12 Op. 17, No. 3 ...... 4:13 27 Op. 41, No. 2 ...... 1:04 13 Op. 17, No. 4 ...... 4:19 28 Op. 41, No. 3 ...... 1:30 14 Op. 24, No. 1 ...... 1:59 29 Op. 41, No. 4...... 3:53 Russell Sherman, piano 15 Op. 24, No. 2 ...... 1:55

Not to be danced oberek, in a very rapid tempo, lively in character, strongly and quite irregularly by Jim Samson accentuated) were gathered into a single national genre. It was danced on the stage and it was performed—in both vocal and instrumental forms—in the Prior to the nineteenth century the mazurka appeared from time to salons. It is usually possible to identify which of the regional prototypes informs time in early lute and organ tablatures, but it conspicuously lacked the kind of these early nineteenth-century mazurkas, but they could also invade each other’s significant history in art music that we associate with the polonaise, which was territory, and at times (especially in Chopin) their various idiomatic properties taken up by composers everywhere in the eighteenth century. This is not without were fused into a single composite style. significance. It meant that the mazurka was available for nationalist appropriation Chopin had just completed his studies in Warsaw when the poet and critic right at the start of the nineteenth century, whereas the polonaise, essentially a Kazimierz Brodziński published his short pamphlet O tańcach (Warszawa, 1829). cosmopolitan genre exhibiting a certain couleur locale, had to be re-invented. This In this essay Brodziński attributed a profound significance to national dances, is no doubt why Chopin abandoned the polonaise for a time, and also why there 119.5 assigning them a generative role in creativity, and following Herder in viewing is a very clear generic distinction between the polonaises composed in Warsaw them as somehow emblematic of the spirit of the nation. Chopin was certainly and those composed in Paris, from Op. 26 onwards. familiar with Brodziński’s thought and even claimed to have attended some of In the first three decades of the nineteenth century mazurkas were written his lectures at the University. It seems possible, then, that Brodziński may have by almost all Polish composers: Karol Kurpiński, Józef Elsner, Ignacy Feliks played some part in shaping Chopin’s understanding of what he himself would Dobrzyński, Maria Szymanowska and others. Chopin’s earliest mazurkas belong later call ‘our national music’. But whether or not this was the case, there is plenty to this world. Before he left Warsaw for good in November 1830 he had already of evidence, including the evidence of the music itself, that in his final year in committed to paper at least five, and possibly six, of them (three were published Warsaw Chopin’s attitude to composing and performing changed subtly but posthumously as 1–3 of the Op. 68 cycle), and he had no doubt improvised many irreversibly, and that these changes crystallised into something qualitative when more. It was at just this time that the mazurka made its way from region to nation. he left Poland in November 1830. This was by no means only, or even primarily, Certain distinctive regional types (the mazur, in a medium tempo and with about national dances. But it may well be that the combined effects of Brodziński’s strong irregular accentuation; kujawiak, a slow dance with a singing, sentimental intellectual agenda (notably on the deeper significance of the dances), the melody and a weak, irregular accentuation of the second part of the bar; and political reality of the uprising (which broke out exactly a month after Chopin left

Poland), and the effects of displacement (always a powerful catalyst to nationalist counterpoint in this latter mazurka, like the density of information within its sentiments), worked to transform his approach to the mazurka during the Vienna apparently simple texture, is symptomatic of the considerable advance these early and early Paris years. published mazurkas made over his earlier attempts. It is not far-fetched to view With Opp. 6 and 7, the first mazurkas he composed after leaving Poland and these two sets as the first canonic repertory of European nationalism, predating the first he himself published (in 1832), Chopin signalled a new-found ambition the relevant works of Glinka by several years, and inaugurating a century of for the genre. By presenting these mazurkas in sets of four or five pieces, he romantic nationalism in art music. They registered (in intention and reception) a consolidated the genre, and in a sense defined it for art music. He even spelt principle of authenticity which ceded privileged understanding of the traditional out that these pieces were ‘not for dancing’, which tells us something about how repertory on the basis of nationality. At the same time, and this is the paradox he viewed his earlier mazurkas. From Op. 6 onwards, Chopin thought of the underlying nationalist art music, they stake their claim on our attention today as

mazurka no longer as a functional genre, but as a site for sophisticated dialogues a respected contribution to a generalised high-prestige bourgeois culture. For all 119.5 between so-called ‘folk music’ and contemporary art music, and at the same time their aspiration to speak for the nation, they remain in reality a variety, a species, as a locus for both compositional innovation and subjective expression. Indeed it of that wider culture. was precisely because Chopin’s nationalism was harnessed to an Idealist aesthetic, From Op. 6 and Op. 7 onwards, Chopin carved out for the mazurka a very investing in both subjectivity and organicism (the work was an expression of the special corner within his output, with a singular repertory of technical devices self, but it was also a unified whole, and thus transcended the self), that it was and a singular expressive content, one which linked (by implication) his inner capable of achieving canonic status. emotional world to the spirit of the nation. His usual practice was to gather several All nine of these early published mazurkas are remarkable for their harmonic mazurkas within a single opus (mainly in groups of 4, but later in cycles of 3). sophistication, at times resulting from stylisations of traditional practice (as in Most of the forty-three mazurkas he published himself are organised in this way, the ‘folk’ acciaccaturas in the trio of Op. 6 No. 1, the unorthodox part movement and—at least from Op. 24—the grouping is not arbitrary. If not fully integrated over a bourdon fifth drone in Op. 6 No. 2, or the exotic Lydian modality in the cycles, the pieces within a set are at least conceived as mutually compatible. Op. trio of Op. 7 No. 1), but often signalling rather the highly personal, even intimate, 17, written in Paris in 1833, is perhaps questionable in terms of cyclicity, but the relationship Chopin developed with this genre (the sliding seventh harmonies expressive and structural weight assigned to its final piece undoubtedly gives the of Op. 6 No.1 or the ‘false relations’ in Op. 6 No. 4). Indeed the intricacy of the set a real sense of closure. This is a kujawiak, and its expressive character derives

from chromatic delaying tactics of various kinds (typically, the opening is tonally Folk models are still very apparent in Op. 24: a kujawiak in the G-minor and B - ambiguous), as also from the nocturne-like ornamental variation of the main minor, for example, and an oberek in the C-major. Moreover the interpenetrationb theme, the calculated tonal-modal ambivalence and the distinctly unconventional of these archetypes (discussed earlier) is also evident, with a mazur invading the part movement. Only in the major-mode trio, does the folk model emerge into oberek in the second section of No. 2, and the kujawiak of No. 4 transformed into the foreground, with bourdon fifths and scalar, fujarka-like melodic patterns [the an oberek at the con anima section (bar 61). Such models are more distant in the fujarka is a high-pitched Polish pipe]. two sets of mazurkas Chopin published in 1838, Op. 30 and Op. 33, apart from the The autograph of the Op. 24 set, comprising four mazurkas, was completed in oberek-style D major, Op. 33 No. 2, whose whirling repetitions and foot-stamping the autumn of 1835, though it is hard to be precise about the date of composition, or heel-clicking energy produces one of the most exhilarating mazurkas of the as there are no extant references to these pieces and no evidence of Chopin’s work entire series. Aside from this mazurka, the general mood of these sets is remote

on them from before the period just prior to their publication, around the turn from the raw vitality of the peasant dance. Thus, the opening pieces of both sets 119.5 of 1835 and 1836 (the first reference is the date on the autograph of the Mazurka are poignant and nostalgic in tone, with characteristic chromatic enrichment in in A major, Op. 24 No. 3, offered to Mrs Linde, wife of the Warsaw University the ‘con anima’ central episode of Op. 30 No. 1. The final pieces are also reflective Rector,b on 22 September 1835). As well as issuing the French edition, Maurice in character; indeed Op. 33 No. 4 is actually marked ‘mesto’ by the composer. As Schlesinger also incorporated the Op. 24 Mazurkas into a special New Year before, these fourth pieces are true finales, with greater structural weight than Album des pianistes, and the mazurkas were also printed as a musical supplement their predecessors. Their codas, as so often in Chopin, are especially striking. In to an edition of the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, published by Schlesinger on both cases we have masterly studies in restraint. Thus, in Op. 30 No. 4 the coda 24 January 1836. Here there have been clear attempts to create an integrated set, dissipates all the passion of the work in a falling chromatic sequence, while in with tonal and motivic interrelationship, complementary moods, and a deliberate Op. 33 No. 4 the music plays on the Neapolitan character of the second limb structural weight assigned to the first and especially the last of the mazurkas. This of the main theme to suspend activity through an oscillating falling fifth before last piece in B minor was by far the most ambitious yet attempted by Chopin, cadencing in a deliberately insouciant, almost offhand, manner. with a complex,b multi-sectional form that incorporates a haunting Lydian-mode It is possible to date Chopin’s first draft of the E-minor Mazurka (the first of the episode in octaves and above all a lengthy coda that transforms the main theme Op. 41 set) to 28 November 1838, based on an autograph currently in Maryland, into an extended epilogue to the set as a whole. USA. This means that the piece dates from around the time that Chopin was

completing his cycle of Préludes, Op. 28, and the Maryland autograph also 1 to the unexpected ‘mid-thought’ ending of No 3. The last mazurka is again includes a draft of the fourth Prélude (it may be significant that this Prélude is the longest and most ambitious of the set, and its structural weight once more also in E minor). The Op. 41 cycle therefore comes towards the end of what is confirms that although Chopin was happy to play the mazurkas individually, he usually considered a middle period in Chopin’s creative output, just before some also thought of them as cycles. ‘They seem pretty to me’, was his verdict on the of the major changes that took place in the 1840s. It is closer stylistically to the set as a whole, in what can only be described as a masterpiece of understatement, Op. 30 and Op. 33 cycles of mazurkas than to the later cycles of Op. 50, Op. 56 ‘just as the youngest children appear beautiful to ageing parents’. and Op. 59. The E-minor Mazurka begins evasively with a harmony other than If ‘pretty’ is an inadequate term for these delicately drafted and immensely its tonic, a gesture often found in the mazurkas. Moreover the middle section, subtle pieces, it would be downright unthinkable as a description of the next three following a conventional repeat of the opening sentence, is no less innovatory. sets, Op. 50, Op. 56 and Op. 59 (each containing three rather than four mazurkas),

Here a standard feature of the folk-based archetype—the open fifth bourdon—is where Chopin’s ambition for the genre reached new heights. These later pieces are 119.5 transformed from a generic topos to a powerfully expressive device, combining dance poems on the grandest scale, displaying (or rather concealing) a wealth of with the implicative, ‘endlessly’ repeated melody note d 2 to generate a kind of harmonic and contrapuntal subtlety. They register in many ways a more general, # question mark: an increasingly urgent expectation of change. This first mazurka and much discussed, change of direction in Chopin’s music in the early 1840s. was composed in Majorca, and the other three in Nohant, during Chopin’s first Of course we can still identify the origins of these pieces in the familiar regional summer in George Sand’s manor house. Much of his finest music would be dances. But Chopin’s growing interest in contrapuntal methods in his later years composed during his seven summers in this fairly remote corner of rural France. often forces these models well into the background. Indeed there can even be The Op. 41 mazurkas were the first fruits of Nohant, and they are perhaps the an apparent incongruity in the appearance of strict imitative counterpoint, as at most cyclically integrated of the entire series. If these mazurkas seem closer to the opening of Op. 50 No. 3, in the context of a dance piece. The complex, often recognisable folk idioms than Op. 30 and Op. 33 (note the bourdon pedals and symmetrically-based, harmonies of these later mazurkas are also easily relatable the modal melodic patterns), they are also no less iconoclastic in ways that to Chopin’s late style, though harmonic iconoclasm had been associated with this have nothing to do with folk models and everything to do with Chopin’s highly genre right from the start. Again Op. 50 No. 3 is a case in point, and especially personal relationship to this genre. Thus we find again those whimsical details its impassioned development section, where the intensity is built up by means that characterise Chopin’s earlier mazurkas, from the tonal dislocations of No. of a model and sequence technique whose chromatic part movement within an

enharmonic continuum seems to foreshadow Wagner. The first, in A minor, expands the basic model of the dance piece by transforming Op. 50 was a product of Chopin’s second summer in Nohant (1842). Op. 56 its opening period into a twelve- rather than an eight-bar unit, and allowing this to was composed in 1843-4 and published in 1844, while Op. 59 was composed become the normative unit for the first paragraph: four twelve-bar phrases in all. during the penultimate summer in Nohant (1845) and published later the same The middle section in the tonic major is a remarkable fantasy, whose intricacies year (in a letter to his family, dated 20 July 1845, Chopin announced that he had of harmony and voice leading are signalled by the re-harmonisation of its opening ‘composed three new mazurkas which will probably come out in Berlin, as a man I two-bar motive, and whose hidden repetitions and discreet variations are among know has begged me for them’). The two later sets, also with three mazurkas each, the most sophisticated to be found anywhere in the mazurkas. The second piece continue the ambitious scale and exploratory tone of Op. 50. There is evidence in A major is no less adventurous, notably in the unorthodox part movement in Chopin’s correspondence that he was becoming increasing self-critical in these of itsb middle section, in the dissolution of the reprise into one of Chopin’s most

later years, and the manuscript tradition (especially the sources for Op. 59 No. 2) tonally elusive chains of chromatic harmonies, and in an extended multi-sectional 119.5 bears this out. The Op. 56 mazurkas are among the most reflective, private and coda, whose construction—we know from the sources—cost him much effort. (at times) arcane of the series, teasing the simple dance rhythms with intricate The last piece, in F minor, is a lively oberek with characteristic Lydian modality, # harmonic and contrapuntal puzzles, yet at the same time maintaining contact but note the canonic bridge to an abbreviated reprise, and the flowering at bar with the earlier mazurkas through a background conformity of gesture. The 122 into a passage of astonishing chromatic and contrapuntal resource. alternating sections of No. 1 in B major are characteristic, at once conformant Following these three great opuses, a change of direction is discernible in the and innovatory. But it is in the coda that Chopin’s most individual harmonic evolution of Chopin’s mazurkas. The last complete set, the three of Op. 63, was and contrapuntal writing occurs. The piece as a whole is entirely symptomatic composed in 1846. Here Chopin returned to the simpler outlines and more of Chopin’s capacity to write to certain self-created formulae without repeating modest dimensions of his early mazurkas, as indeed he did again in the G minor himself. Op. 56 No. 2 is an oberek, with discreet canonic treatments in its middle and A minor mazurkas composed a year or two later and published posthumously section, while No. 3 is the most complex of the three, in the irregular phrasing of as Op. 67 Nos. 2 and 4. Nor is this the only sign in Chopin’s last music of a reflective some of its episodes, in its almost Wagnerian enharmony, and in the contrapuntal glance back to the Warsaw period. Along with their simpler outlines, these later intricacies of its coda. mazurkas bring the folk model back a little closer to centre stage. Not that it had Op. 59 represents in some ways the peak of Chopin’s achievement in the genre. ever receded totally, but in Op. 50, Op. 56 and Op. 59 it is often absorbed by more

sophisticated harmonic and contrapuntal structures. There is indeed an attractive Russell Sherman symbolism about this return to Polish roots, as also about the fact that the last completed composition of Chopin was almost certainly a mazurka, albeit not the An eloquent communicator both on and off the concert stage, legend- one wrongly so described by Fontana and a host of later commentators. ary pianist Russell Sherman continues to garner accolades from critics and It has now been demonstrated fairly conclusively that the so-called ‘last audiences alike for his grace, mazurka’ in F minor, whose only extant source is a sketch and which was published imagination and poetry. The posthumously as Op. 68 No. 4, was composed rather earlier than Fontana and New York Times calls him “one others thought. Indeed Jeffrey Kallberg’s hypothesis that this piece was originally of the best pianists in this or intended as the second of the Op. 63 set and that it was subsequently abandoned any other country.” As the

in favour of the present piece in that set, with which it shares not only the F minor author of a highly acclaimed 119.5 tonality but several tonal and thematic features, carries much conviction. It is book Piano Pieces (a rhapsodic sometimes hard to let the old myths die, and they do in any case embody a truth compilation of vignettes and of sorts, as part of what Hans-Georg Gadamer called the ‘effective history’ of art personal anecdotes from Mr. works. Let’s keep the myth alive for a bit by comparing the opening sentence Sherman’s life experiences as of this putative ‘last mazurka’ with the opening sentence of the first published a pianist and teacher), Russell mazurka, Op. 6 No. 1. Each of these two sentences presents both a diatonic Sherman has been praised not affirmation of tonality and a chromatic evasion of tonality. In Op. 6 No. 1 the only as an ingenious virtuoso affirmation precedes the evasion; clarity precedes ambiguity. There is a telling but also as an insightful master. symbolism of ‘first’ and ‘last’—origin and telos—in the fact that this sequence is Mr. Sherman has performed reversed in Op. 68 No. 4. with such major orchestras as the Boston Symphony Or- chestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Phil-

harmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s (with whom he makes Mr. Sherman the first American pianist to have recorded all of the sona- performed the five Beethoven concertos), Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh tas and concertos of Beethoven. His earlier recording of Liszt’s Transcendental Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony. Abroad, Mr. Sherman has played Études was critically acclaimed: Anthony Tommasini in a 1999 New York Times in the major cities of Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, England, France, piece said, “Several impressive recordings of Liszt’s ‘Transcendental Études’ prove Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Korea, China, Russia and South America. that these audaciously difficult works are actually playable and triumphantly pianis- In recital, Russell Sherman has appeared on Carnegie Hall’s Keyboard Vir- tic. But none make Liszt’s visionary understanding of what the piano could do more tuoso Series, California’s Ambassador Foundation Series, the Distinguished palpable and exciting than Russell Sherman’s extraordinary 1990 recording.” Mr. Artists Series at New York’s Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y, and Sherman has also recorded Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, Brahms’s Variations the Bank of Boston Celebrity Series. He has performed at Lincoln Center’s Al- on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 35 and Fantasies, Op. 116, Chopin’s 24 Preludes,

ice Tully Hall, Sarasota’s Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, Boston’s Symphony Op. 28, Schubert’s Sonata in D major, D. 850 and Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960, 119.5 Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Jordan Hall, Columbia University’s both Grieg and Schumann concertos and works by Liszt, including the B minor Miller Theater, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. Sonata, Don Juan Fantasy, and transcriptions. He has also recorded Mozart’s two Additionally, he has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, the concertos in minor keys plus solo fantasies with the Orchestra of Emmanuel Mostly Mozart Festival and the Wolf Trap Festival, as well as recitals at Spain’s Music under Craig Smith. Additional recordings include a GM Recording CD, Santander Festival and Germany’s Ruhr Triennale Festival. In January 2010, he “Premieres & Commissions,” in which he performs contemporary repertoire collaborated with Mark Morris Dance Group alongside Minsoo Sohn and the by Schoenberg, Schuller, Helps, Perle and Shapey. Except for Schoenberg’s Six Orchestra of Emmanuel Music in the Boston premiere of Mozart Dances pre- Piano Pieces, he has personally premiered and commissioned all of these works. sented by Celebrity Series of Boston. Mr. Sherman’s newest releases on Avie Records are a CD of Debussy’s Estampes, Mr. Sherman is a prolific recording artist. He has recorded the five Beethoven Images Book II and Préludes Book II, and a DVD of his live performance of the concertos with the Czech Philharmonic and the Monadnock Festival Orchestra, Liszt Études d’exécution transcendante. Recently, Mr. Sherman performed and and the complete Beethoven sonatas, recorded as five dual-CD sets (each having recorded the complete sonatas of Mozart, the Bach English Suites and the com- been released individually and as a complete set). The entire Beethoven sonatas plete piano works of Schoenberg. project has been called “a set for the ages” by Bernard Jacobson in Fanfare. This Russell Sherman was born and educated in New York, beginning piano studies

at age six. By age eleven, Mr. Recorded June 23-25, 2007 at Jordan Hall, Boston Sherman was studying with Producer: Orpheus Productions Eduard Steuermann, a pupil Engineer: James Donahue and friend of Ferruccio Buso- ni and Arnold Schoenberg. Mastered by: Toby Mountain, Northeastern Digital Recording, Inc. Sherman graduated from Piano technician: John von Rohr Columbia University at age Design: Stephen Kruse nineteen with a degree in the Photographs of Russell Sherman: Henry Grossman (package back and page 18) humanities. He was Visiting Robert Klein (page 15) Professor at Harvard Univer- Front cover photograph: Market Square in Nysa, Poland, by Robert A. Mason 119.5 sity and is currently a Distin- guished Artist-in-Residence Inside package: Fryderyk Chopin, by Eugène Delacroix at the New England Conser- Thanks to Wha Kyung Byun vatory. At age 82, Sherman continues to explore, and to merit the title “a thinking man’s virtuoso.”