Franz Schubert - Winterreise

"The breadth of scholarly approaches to Franz Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise testifies to the structural and dramatic complexity of the work; assessments range from complicated graphs, complete with interlocking axes and cryptic semantic labels, to outright sighs of resignation over the work's intractability. Perhaps this intrigue is what attracts performers and academics alike to the work; singer and scholar Michael Besack traces the ambiguous dramatic trajectory of Schubert's cycle back to antiquity. 'Epic poetry and the tragic theater never produced a story with a moral,' he pointed out.

"A central question concerning the cycle is whether it really is one. The two dozen poems by Wilhelm Müller that Schubert took as his texts appeared piecemeal in three separate publications between 1822 and the completion of Schubert's setting in 1827; Müller's third publication, finally bearing the title Schubert would adopt, featured the newest poems along with the ones previously published (though the latter were reordered). The chronology of Schubert's setting also calls the idea of a continuous cyclical narrative into question: he set Müller's initial 12 songs early in 1827, then completed the other dozen later that year. Still, while some of the individual songs are frequently performed alone, one can easily read a composite story into the cycle. Literary scholar Cecilia Baumann describes the work as 'a simple story of a rejected lover who leaves the town where his love resides and sets out in winter on an aimless journey.' Schubert biographer Jacques Chailley reads a different kind of journey: 'not simply that of a scorned lover - he is only a phantom - but an image behind which one can discern at each moment the journey of man toward the tomb: 'Die Winterreise' is the sinister voyage of life.' Such existential ideas gain support from the bleakness of 'Auf dem Flusse' ('At the River'), in which the lover's description of the frozen stream seems to shade into one of a physical corpse, and of the melancholy hurdy-gurdy-man's lament that ends the cycle.

"The songs ruminate on, rather than depict, events that have befallen the rejected lover; as the first two lines of the first song indicate ('A stranger I came hither, a stranger hence I go'), the journey has already taken place: the famous fifth song, 'Der Lindenbaum', likewise centers on symbols of remembrance. Schubert's introduction establishes a tranquil major mode with an airy, fluttering accompaniment; it becomes apparent that this figure represents the rustling of the eponymous lime tree. 'Upon its bark when musing, fond words of love I made,' the wanderer tells listeners, 'and joy alike and sorrow still drew me to its shade.' Only briefly do the mode and mood of the music change to minor, in direct correlation to the image of passing the tree in darkness. These pictorial elements lie only on the surface, however. Certain musical elements create a sense of geographical and chronological remove: the rustling figure is constantly interrupted by a leap up to a quaint stepwise descent; the echo of a 'hunting horn' figure suggests distance - spatial and temporal; the wind blows off the wanderer's hat, but he trudges forward without even turning around. The cold wind listeners that it is winter; the presence of leaves is unlikely. The rustling sound is not a real, but an imagined, phenomenon: 'Now many leagues I'm far from/The dear old linden tree/[But still] I ever hear it murmur/'Peace thou wouldst find with me.'' Schubert's song does not evoke images; it evokes the act of remembering images." (Description by Jeremy Grimshaw. From AllMusic. Read here.)

Performers: Christoph Prégardien, Andreas Staier

1. Die Winterreise, D. 911: I. Gute Nacht
2. Die Winterreise, D. 911: II. Die Wetterfahne
3. Die Winterreise, D. 911: III. Gefrorene Tränen
4. Die Winterreise, D. 911: IV. Erstarrung
5. Die Winterreise, D. 911: V. Der Lindenbaum
6. Die Winterreise, D. 911: VI. Wasserflut
7. Die Winterreise, D. 911: VII. Auf Dem Flusse
8. Die Winterreise, D. 911: VIII. Rückblick
9. Die Winterreise, D. 911: IX. Irrlicht
10. Die Winterreise, D. 911: X. Rast
11. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XI. Frühlingstraum
12. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XII. Einsamkeit
13. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XIII. Die Post
14. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XIV. Der Greise Kopf
15. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XV. Die Krähe
16. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XVI. Letzte Hoffnung
17. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XVII. Im Dorfe
18. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XVIII. Der Stürmische Morgen
19. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XIX. Täuschung
20. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XX. Der Wegweiser
21. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XXI. Das Wirtshaus
22. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XXII. Mut!
23. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XXIII. Die Nebensonnen
24. Die Winterreise, D. 911: XXIV. Der Leiermann

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Othmar Schoeck - Das Schloss Dürande

"''Das Schloss Dürande' was his last opera, by far his longest, and in many senses the one with the highest degree of musical inspiration. But the libretto is so drenched with Nazi vocabulary that it will in future at best be heard in concert or on CD. It shall probably never been seen on stage again – and let’s hope it isn't.' Back in 2002, this was the apodictic opinion of Schoeck’s biographer Chris Walton about the opera 'Das Schloss Dürande', which was first performed at the Berlin State Opera in 1943, at the height of the Second World War.

"The libretto by Hermann Burte, for which Schoeck was also in part responsible, remains from today's perspective the weak point of the opera. Its style is awkward, and the quality of the verses is variable. Alongside pretty, ingenuous, folksy verses and hearty revolutionary songs, we also find amateurish rhymes and linguistic embarrassments. Today, it’s the national-socialist phrases and ideological elements of the libretto that are most problematic. But Schoeck’s music is of such high quality that it is more than worth re-engaging with the opera today.

"The Bern University of the Arts (HKB) accordingly embarked on a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) to investigate the opera’s genesis in the context of the German/Swiss cultural exchanges of its time (the results have since been published in book form: ''Als Schweizer bin ich neutral'. Othmar Schoeck's Oper 'Das Schloss Dürande' und ihr Umfeld' – ''As a Swiss, I’m neutral'. Othmar Schoeck’s opera 'Das Schloss Dürande' and its milieu'. Schliengen: Edition Argus 2018). At the same time, Francesco Micieli was commissioned to get to grips with Burte’s text and embark on a radical act of prising it apart – the rhymes in particular. After some hesitation, Micieli agreed: 'It needs a large-scale act of de-kitschification. For me, the novella remains the source we must draw upon, and whose language we should endeavour to approximate'.

"Micieli’s new text is an object lesson in libretto-writing. In it, he endeavours to re-engage with Eichendorff's original text in a reflective, mediating fashion. The ideological, artistically problematical verses are here replaced, while the dramaturgical significance is heightened of the struggle songs and the folk-like verses inserted by Burte.

"So in concrete terms, what were the challenges Micieli faced, and what was his approach to solving
them?

(Armand, hält den Becher)
'Heil dir, du Feuerquelle,
Der Heimat Sonnenblut!
Ich trinke und küsse die Stelle,
Wo deine Lippen geruht!'

(Armand, holding the goblet)
'Hail to thee, thou spring of fire,
The blood of our homeland's sun!
I shall drink, and kiss the spot
where your lips touched!'

'Heil', 'Feuerquelle', 'Heimat', 'Sonnenblut' – all these are core words in the vocabulary of the Third Reich (the 'Lingua Tertii Imperii' as Victor Klemperer called it). They are here condensed in a pathosladen context and intensified by the exclamation marks and the end rhymes. The alliteration 'Heil – Heimat', with its echoes of Stabreim, serves to dot the i's, as it were. The second half of the strophe is pedestrian, pretentious and crassly different in tone. These four lines alone demonstrate how the duo of Burte and Schoeck accommodated themselves to the Nazi regime and how the vocabulary, pathos, rhymes and linguistic banalities of the text disqualified their opera for later generations. The solution proposed by Micieli is radically different – it is a kind of textual counter-proposition, though one that actually reflects the pianissimo that Schoeck wrote in his score at this point: 

'Komm leise da herüber
zum schattig verschwiegenen Baum.
Ich trinke und küsse die Stelle,
die deine Lippen berührt.'

'Come softly over here
To the secluded shade of the tree.
I shall drink, and kiss the spot
That your lips have touched'.

Francesco Micieli’s new version sees itself as a creative experiment in reaction to the original libretto. It is without rhyme, without any pomp, and it is gentle. Astonishingly, the prosody of the German text fits better here, too. The furtive invitation 'Komm leise da herüber' masks the metre, suppressing all accents. And 'schattig, verschwiegend' points to a different world, to that of dreams.

"Micieli’s chosen artistic approach to his task is intentionally ahistorical, for he is convinced that the opera cannot be performed any other way (as already explained through its reception history above). His arrangement in a sense carries over the procedures of historical performance practice into the creative process, taking up ideas that Schoeck and his contemporaries had already considered at the time, but had only realised in part.

"Schoeck reacted critically to the text that Burte gave him, even while he was at work on the opera. He did not like its dramaturgy at all, and his own scenario pointed more clearly back to Eichendorff. Schoeck was also vehemently opposed to any psychological simplification. Burte was obviously out of his depth in trying to turn his personae into operatic characters possessed of an equal degree of ambivalence to their originals in the novella. His depictions are overwhelmingly simplistic. The dreamlike quality of Eichendorff is lost, and everything is translated into concrete action. Schoeck brought his own suggestions, but often felt as if he was banging his head against a brick wall, and complained bitterly about it. In some places he simply changed the text himself, though from our viewpoint today he didn’t do so often enough. His first biographer, Hans Corrodi, was able to get him to include two poems by Eichendorff in the finished libretto. All the same, not all the problems of Dürande can be laid at Burte’s door as commentators have been wont to do. The composer himself also brought in a number of ideas that cannot but seem dubious to us today.

"After the opera's second production was a flop – it took place at the Zurich City Theatre, also in 1943 – Schoeck’s circle of friends endeavoured to save what they could and proposed making the necessary repairs. The literary scholar Emil Staiger suggested cuts to Schoeck, along with improvements to the worst of the libretto's rhymes. Gerd Albrecht made a half-hearted attempt to revive the opera in Berlin in 1993, but this failed too – though the music itself received praise: 'The music more or less tries to win back the typically Eichendorffian atmosphere that the libretto had lost.' One critic even suggested writing a new libretto: 'They didn’t succeed in saving the opera. For that, it will need a new text.'

"Our new text has adapted some 60% of the original and succeeds in both creating a different tone and reinventing the characters. The demeanour, dramaturgy and overall utterances have been altered. It is as if a new opera has emerged, whose motto is 'Back to Eichendorff!'. This approach uses literary means to analyse what goes on when you re-write a libretto. What happens with the language, how does its demeanour change, and how does this alter the psychology of the characters, their disposition and the dramaturgy? And what does this mean for the text’s relationship to the music? How does the process of enlarging on Eichendorff actually take shape? It is essentially a kind of restitutive update (Willi Schuh, the former music critic of the 'Neue Zürcher Zeitung', might have called it a 'retrotransfer').

"Practical issues come first: 'Just how slavishly do you have to keep to the number of syllables and stresses, and how freely can we let it unfold?' Time and again, the discussion about the work in progress came back to the significance of the actual process: 'This engagement with the libretto sees itself as a kind of 'artistic laboratory', and doesn’t really aim to be complete.' 

"In a further step, the initial, poetic version had to be made congruent with the vocal lines, which was Mario Venzago’s task. A syllable was omitted here, one added there, while this or that stress was altered and the melodic line and the rhythms adjusted appropriately. The varying literary quality of the original text posed a particular challenge. The style of Micieli’s language – and of Eichendorff’s – is at times fundamentally different from that of Burte, making 'fractures' evident when they clash up against each other. Leaving such ruptures visible might be an acceptable mode of operation when restoring a physical work of art, for example, but they can hinder the musical flow of an opera. As a result, smoother transitions had to be achieved: 'Francesco [Micieli] can also proceed more freely. Often the right words come through simply when you play the music.' 

"It is relatively easy to cope with small changes to the numbers of syllables and to shifts in the placement of accents, but the challenge is far greater when you’re dealing with a quite different amount of text to be sung. As a shrewd man of practice, however, Venzago was able to make suggestions that might otherwise have seemed quite unusual: 'Because I had too much text (and because you simply can’t churn out the text when you’re singing high notes), I’ve place the voices on top of one another.'

"When adopting passages from the original novella, some passages intentionally remained in the third person, which creates quite new effects. Here, the participants in the process had to rethink things scenically. What happens when you speak in the third person; when is this at all feasible, and when not? If it’s not just a matter of Gabriele speaking in the third person, but of having her words divided up between her and her brother Renald, then the result is a double act of alienation that reflects her somnambulistic character, but also her uncertainty, indeed her heteronomy. Ultimately, the interlacing of the siblings' text creates a subtle sense of inner commonality.

"This reworking of 'Das Schloss Dürande' aims to restore to the international operatic stage a significant opera of late-tonal Modernism that in the long term will have to find its own way into the repertoire alongside the works of Richard Strauss, Leoš Janáček, Franz Schreker and Alexander Zemlinsky. Its late-Romantic style, which is common to the 'lyrical' Schoeck of the songs and the 'dramatic' Schoeck of the opera 'Penthesilea', here explores the very boundaries of what the idiom would allow. At the same time, both these aspects of his oeuvre are so closely interwoven that the result in Dürande – which we are now able to rediscover for ourselves – is wholly autonomous and appropriate to its subject, almost postmodern in conception, and still capable of sweeping us off our feet today." (Thomas Gartmann. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Berner Symphonieorchester, Mario Venzago

1.1. Akt I: 'Ein Junger, Fremder Mann'
1.2. Akt I: 'Am Liebsten Würd Ich Nach Dem Fremden Zielen'
1.3. Akt I: 'Still! Da Amtet Es Im Wald'
1.4. Akt I: 'Renald, So Falsch, So Dumm!'
1.5. Akt I: 'Sie Beteuerte, Dass Sie Es Nicht Wisse'
1.6. Akt I: 'Wie Heuchlerisch Du Das Erzählst!'
1.7. Akt I: 'Was Hast Du Da-Zeig Her!'
1.8. Akt I: 'Gute Nacht, Mein Selig Vater Und Mutter'
1.9. Akt I: 'Gabriele, Sie Lauschte Am Fenster'
1.10. Akt I: 'Verzeih Mir, Bruder, Im Zimmer Ist Eine So Dumpfe Luft!'
1.11. Akt I: 'Was Will Sein Stampfen Und Pochen?'
1.12. Akt I: 'Gabriele! Alles Leer!'
1.13. Akt I: 'Ich Hab Gesehn Ein Hirschlein Schlank'
1.14. Akt II: 'Angelus Domini'
1.15. Akt II: 'Eine Gems Auf Dem Stein'
1.16. Akt II: 'Sie Legte Den Kopf Auf Ihr Bündel'
1.17. Akt II: 'Es Ist Nun Der Herbst Gekommen'
1.18. Akt II: 'Ich Möchte Mich Gerne Bei Nacht Verirren'
1.19. Akt II: 'Wein Gereift Im Sonnenstrahl'
1.20. Akt II: 'Renald Dubois, Warum So Gehetzt?'
1.21. Akt II: 'Wie, So Geschwind Wieder Bei Kräften?'
1.22. Akt II: 'Wer Beschreibt Die Große Freude'
1.23. Akt II: 'Ich Schwang Mich Auf Vom Gitter'
1.24. Akt II: 'O, Wie Mich Der Gedanke Mitten Ins Leben Trifft!'
1.25. Akt II: 'Der Zweite Schluck Vom Neuen Wein'
1.26. Akt II: 'Er In Paris, Sie Hier Im Kloster!'
1.27. Akt II: 'Gestern, Brüder, Könnt Ihrs Glauben!'
1.28. Akt II: 'Endlich Am Ort Der Ehrwürd'gen Frauen'
1.29. Akt II: 'Zum Teufel, Wo Sind Meine Sachen?'
1.30. Akt II: 'Hi Hi! Sie Sind In Paris!'
1.31. Akt II: 'Bleibe Er Brav!'

2.1. Akt III: 'Ihr Leute Von Paris!'
2.2. Akt III: 'Sie Kommen Aus Dem Süden Her, Sagen Sie?'
2.3. Akt III: 'Er Will Sein Recht Vom Grafen Von Dürande'
2.4. Akt III: 'Ein Advokat, Ein Niemals Angelangter'
2.5. Akt III: 'Herz, In Deinen Sonnenhellen Tagen'
2.6. Akt III: 'Wer Ist Der Herr, Den Wir Erwarten?'
2.7. Akt III: 'Mein Diener Nicolas Hat Den Raum Bestimmt'
2.8. Akt III: 'Ich Kann Dein Held Nicht Sein!'
2.9. Akt III: 'Fortgespült Der Garten'
2.10. Akt III: 'Nachts Durch Die Stille Runde'
2.11. Akt III: 'Herr Wirt, Die Polizei!'
2.12. Akt III: 'Nun, Lieber Graf, Erwacht Vom Träumen?'
2.13. Akt III: 'Der Liebste Ist Davongegangen'
2.14. Akt III: 'Gefunden! In Nacht Und Bangen'
2.15. Akt III: 'Der Jäger Frei'

3.1. Akt IV: 'Was Für Eine Welt!'
3.2. Akt IV: 'Achille, Hyppolit Ferdinande!'
3.3. Akt IV: 'Nur Knapp Entkommen!'
3.4. Akt IV: 'Da Draussen Gellt Die Verrückte Zeit'
3.5. Akt IV: 'Lasst Mich Herein, Ich Muss Zum Grafen!'
3.6. Akt IV: 'Könnt Ich Mich Niederlegen'
3.7. Akt IV: 'Auf Die Höh'n! Die Schauer Wehen!'
3.8. Akt IV: 'Wie Von Nacht Verhangen'
3.9. Akt IV: 'Da Steht Im Wald Geschrieben'
3.10. Akt IV: 'Ich Bin Zu Spät!'
3.11. Akt IV: 'Mein Liebster! Bei Dir!'
3.12. Akt IV: 'Der Wind Hat's Gebracht Und Genommen'
3.13. Akt IV: 'Gerächt Die Schande Der Schwester'
3.14. Akt IV: 'Da Ist Der Alte Baum Nicht Mehr'

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Franz Schubert - Lieder After Mayrhofer

"1817 is the beginning of a period in Schubert’s life, called his 'years of crisis,' when he was forming and asserting his personal and musical autonomy. His songs from this time concentrate on mythology and on the poetry of his friend Johann Mayrhofer. Thirteen mythological Mayrhofer songs sing through the 'I' of a mythological character and address a god for aid. [...]

"Both Mayrhofer’s poems and Schubert’s songs present difficulties. Mayrhofer’s language and treatment of myth occlude his poetry’s meaning. Schubert’s settings obscure what they might communicate to readers or listeners through experimental formal, harmonic, and text-setting strategies. To discover the order and meaning behind the abstruse surfaces of the poems, music, and songs, I turn to four analytical perspectives immanent in Mayrhofer’s poems. Though mythological on the surface, Mayrhofer’s poems tell a gnostic narrative of man’s desire to unite with god. The poems are also masochistic: Mayrhofer’s mythological heroes are all in pain, static, and devoted to a goddess. These two simultaneous subtexts exemplify the ambiguity of Mayrhofer’s poetry, that it both keeps its meaning indistinct and means many things at once. Mayrhofer’s use of mythology and Gnosticism direct us to Carl Jung’s use of the same in his psychoanalytic researches into the self.

"Gnosticism, masochism, ambiguity, and the Jungian self are elements of Schubert’s songs just as they are elements of Mayrhofer’s poems. Each of the dissertation’s four main chapters focuses on one of these concepts. In analysis, I give the greatest attention to the music, that is, how the music is Gnostic, masochistic, ambiguous, and psychologically self-expressive. The musical analyses are largely motivic, but also involve musical form, harmony, meter, genre, and vocal style. I understand song as a multiplicity, as an interaction of individual voices. Since each of the four analytical perspectives - as distinct as they are - says something about the relationship between the self and the other, they are means to assess the relationships resulting in song, and how meaning and understanding emerge from the interaction of multiple voices." (The Abstract from Michael Shaw's doctoral thesis 'Schubert's Mythological Mayrhofer-Lieder: Historical, Philosophical, and Psychological Contexts'. Available in full here.)

Performers: Christoph Prégardien, Andreas Staier

1. Fahrt Zum Hades, D. 526
2. Freiwilliges Versinken, D. 700
3. Der Entsühnte Orest, D. 699
4. Der Zürnenden Diana, D. 707 Op. 36 No. 1
5. Lied Eines Schiffers An Die Dioskuren, D. 360 Op .65 No. 1
6. Auf Der Donau, D. 553 Op. 21 No. 1
7. Der Schiffer (Im Winde, Im Sturme Befahr Ich Den Fluß), D. 536 Op. 21 No. 2
8. Die Sternennächte, D. 670 Op. Posth. 165 No. 2
9. Abschied, D. 475
10. Nachtstück, D. 672 Op. 36 No. 2
11. Fragment Aus Dem Aeschylus, D. 450
12. Antigone Und Oedip, D. 542 Op. 6 No. 2
13. Memnon, D. 541 Op. 6 No. 1
14. Philoktet, D. 540
15. Atys, D. 585
16. Der Sieg, D. 805
17. Wie Ulfru Fischt, D. 525 Op. 21 No. 3
18. Der Alpenjäger (Auf Hohem Bergesrücken), D. 524 Op. 13 No. 3
19. Nachtviolen, D. 752
20. Abendstern, D. 806
21. Nach Einem Gewitter, D. 561
22. Gondelfahrer, D. 808
23. Auflösung, D. 807

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Franz Schubert - Schwanengesang & Songs After Seidl

"In January 1829, a good two months after  Schubert's death, the Viennese music  publisher Tobias Haslinger, with whom  Schubert had worked very closely in the final  years of his life, placed an advertisement in  the Viennese press, in which he announced  Franz Schubert's 'Schwanen-Gesang, 14 Lieder', 'the final fruits of his noble power  [...], written in August 1828, shortly before  his decease.' Haslinger had obtained the  rights to the songs in December 1828  from Schubert's brother Ferdinand, who  had been handling the composer's estate,  and had given them the collective title of 'Schwanengesang'. In reality there were two groups of songs: seven songs on texts by Ludwig Rellstab and six on texts by Heinrich Heine. These two groups are contained in a common manuscript of August 1828 and are today collected together as 'Schwanengesang' (D. 957), along with a single Lied, 'Die Taubenpost', on a poem by his friend Gabriel Seidl (D. 965 A). The Lieder do not form a single cycle, for each group appears complete in itself. In the Heine group are collected together all the songs Schubert composed on poems by Heine; the same almost applies for the Rellstab group of Lieder: apart from the Lieder in 'Schwanengesang' the only Rellstab poems on which Schubert wrote songs were the large-scale song for voice, horn and piano 'Auf dem Strom' (D. 943), the strophic Lied 'Herbst' (D. 945), which survives as an album leaf for Heinrich Panofka, and the incomplete 'Lied Lebensmut'. 

"[...] Schubert came across Heine's poems — in particular the cycle 'Heimkehr in the Buch der Lieder', published in 1827 — in January 1828, in a volume in the library that his friend Franz von Schober had furnished for him. In the autumn of 1828 Schubert had bequeathed the volume to the singer Karl von Schonstein, who several years later stated that all the poems in the volume 'that had appeared in the Schwanengesang' were marked by 'Einbucie' - a sign that here too Schubert chose his texts carefully. In his manuscript the texts are in a different order from the one Heine had chosen for his cycle. Since then, several attempts have been made to restore to the songs to the order followed by Heine. However, since the composer chose only six of the 88 'Heimkehr' poems continuously numbered by the poet, there is no unity of content that has to be restored, so Schubert's ordering should be preserved, as is the case in this recording. 

"[...] The Viennese poet Gabriel Seidl, who was a friend of Schubert, was the source of a whole series of poetic texts that Schubert set to music between 1826 and 1828; some of these were solo Lieder, some were polyphonic songs. This is remarkable, since on 4 August 1828 - at about the time that he was working on one the Rellstab and Heine Lieder - Schubert wrote to the poet: 'Dear Herr Gabriel! [this unusual appellation, using the first name, shows that the two men were on a familiar footing] In this letter I am sending back these poems, in which I can discover nothing poetical or useful for music.' That this verdict applied only to the poems that had presumably had been sent directly to Schubert, and not to Seidl's poetry as a whole, can be seen from the fact that Schubert in the past sent his Seidl settings 'en bloc' to the publisher, in volumes containing only Lieder on texts by Seidl (Op. 80, 95, 105); one of these, Op. 95, was dedicated to the poet. This volume - a Lieder group to which Schubert or his publisher gave the title 'Refrain-Lieder' - plays a particular role in this: Thaddaus Weigl, the publisher, announced the Lieder in an advertisement: 'For a long time the public has cherished the wish to receive [from Schubert] a composition with cheerful, comic content.' This wish had been granted by the composer in the four songs, which are 'in part genuinely comical, in part bear the character of naivety and humour.' In fact the 'comic' Lieder are no. 1 ('Die Unterscheidung') and no. 3 ('Die Manner sind mechant!'), Lieder in which young girls mirror the conventions of society. On the contrary, the two Lieder recorded here are neither 'naive' nor 'humorous' - though both, like the two young girls' songs, are structured with a refrain, 'Bei dir allein' in no. 2 and 'dock gewiss ein Gluck' in no. 4. The groups of songs op. 105 and op. 80 document - as do many others - Schubert's predilection also for endowing a central thematic focus to songs already connected by assignment to a single poet. In op. 105 this theme is 'Sehnsucht' - longing - (indeed the title of the fourth song), which is caught within a contradiction - 'Widerspruch' - (the title of the first song in the group) between an internally directed and an externally directed longing. Thus the singer in 'Am Fenster' ('At the Window') turns to the 'lieben Mauern, hold and traut, die ihr mich kohl umschlielßt' ('you dear walls, sweet and trusted, that cool enclose me'), but then thinks 'Du Mauer wahnst mich trob wie einst, das ist die stille Freud; wenn du vom Mondlicht widerscheinst, wird mir die Brust so weit' ('You walls suppose me as cheerless as before - but this is a tranquil joy; when you shine from moonlight, my heart swells'). In contrast, op. 80 is a series of songs of a wanderer through the night. In the first song the singer (he actually does wander: a continual pacing rhythm moves him forwards) calls on the moon sailing through the endless sky to be his companion. The second song refers to 'Das Zügenglöcklein' ('The Passing Bell') (expressed by the piano in the incessantly struck octaves E flat' — E flat"), the death knell reconciling the 'glad pilgrim to the world' — as so often in Romanticism, 'night' is here a night of death. In the third song the Wanderer recognises at last whither the moon is leading him— it shines on 'the little hut' in which 'my beloved friend' is resting. The Wanderer scarcely moves in this song; he is rapt in the nocturnal vision, and the Piano evokes for us the shimmer of the stars and of the moon, and the trembling of his restless heart. 

"Of the Lieder that Schubert was still able to hand to the publisher himself in the second half of 1828, eight are from Seidl alone. As such, these too may be counted as part of Schubert's 'Schwanengesänge'." (Walther Dürr, tr. James Chater. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Christoph Prégardien, Andreas Staier

1. Herbst, D. 945
2. Schwanengesang, D. 957: I. Liebesbotschaft
3. Schwanengesang, D. 957: II. Kriegers Ahnung
4. Schwanengesang, D. 957: III. Frühlingssehnsucht
5. Schwanengesang, D. 957: IV. Ständchen
6. Schwanengesang, D. 957: V. Aufenthalt
7. Schwanengesang, D. 957: VI. In Der Ferne
8. Schwanengesang, D. 957: VII. Abschied
9. Schwanengesang, D. 957: VIII. Der Atlas
10. Schwanengesang, D. 957: IX. Ihr Bild
11. Schwanengesang, D. 957: X. Das Fischermädchen
12. Schwanengesang, D. 957: XI. Die Stadt
13. Schwanengesang, D. 957: XII. Am Meer
14. Schwanengesang, D. 957: XIII. Der Doppelgänger
15. Die Taubenpost, D. 965a
16. Sehnsucht, D. 879
17. Am Fenster, D. 878
18. Bei Dir Allein, D. 866
19. Der Wanderer An Den Mond, D. 870
20. Das Zügenglöcklein, D. 871
21. Im Freien, D. 880

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Franz Schubert - Piano Trios, Op. 99 & 100

"'One glance at Schubert's trio, and the miserable hustle and bustle of human existence vanishes, the world takes on fresh lustre', wrote an enthusiastic Robert Schumann in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik of 1836, at the end of a long 'critical survey' of various newly published compositions for piano trio. In fact, Franz Schubert's 'Trio in B-flat major, D. 898' had only just been published by Anton Diabelli as 'op. 99', that is, eight years after the composer's death. His other great trio, the 'E-flat major, D. 929' (op. 100), by contrast, had already been printed by the Leipzig firm of Probst during the composer's lifetime – although it is not quite certain whether Schubert had seen a copy of it before he died on 19 November 1828.

"Our knowledge of the genesis of and stimulus for the two works is as disparate as this publication history. With the E-flat Trio we are on firm ground – it was begun in November 1827 and premiered as early as 26 December, when it 'was received with extraordinary applause at my concert in a packed hall', according to Schubert's account to the publisher Schott. About the B-flat major Trio, on the other hand, there is only speculation. This too is certainly a mature work and may have been the earlier of the two (as is suggested by the opus number, which may well stem from Schubert himself ); but the situation is unclear and has given rise to conflicting theories. One thing, however, is incontrovertible: both trios are among the greatest works of the 'late' Schubert.

"Although it is always slightly overshadowed by its more dramatic brother, the 'Trio in B-flat, op. 99' is a work with a beauty all its own. As it happens, the tone of both trios – very unlike that of Schubert's late chamber music for strings – always remains engaging; the music historian Alfred Einstein (a cousin of the physicist) pointed out that they were, 'after the 'Trout' Quintet, the two works in which Schubert achieved the purest blend of the 'sociable' spirit with that of true chamber music'. The 'Trio in B-flat' is characterised by broad, sweeping melodies over what might be called 'organic' pulsating rhythms, as at the very beginning when the exuberant first theme, in spite of its expansive nature, is immediately repeated. After just two bars of transition – a solitary a'' on the cello – the second subject follows on directly: one of Schubert's most beautiful inspirations, which suddenly gives a conventional opening formula a poignant harmonic twist. If Schubert was stimulated here by the 'Romantic' Beethoven of the 'Archduke' Trio, he radicalised the older composer's procedures.

"Yet the piece is not all unproblematic euphony. Einstein drew attention to the similarities of the first movement to the song 'Des Sängers Habe' ('The minstrel's possessions'), D. 832, which begins:

Schlagt mein ganzes Glück in Splitter,
Nehmt mir alle Habe gleich,
Lasset mir nur meine Zither,
Und ich bleibe froh und reich!

And one of the characteristic piano figurations that makes the movement flow so smoothly is indeed anticipated in this song written in 1825.

"The 'Andante un poco mosso' is an affecting example of Schubert's 'organic counterpoint'. While the opening cello melody initially has a very simple chordal accompaniment, its recurrences are increasingly decorated with freely invented countermelodies and accompanying voices, which further heighten the melodic intensity: 'a blissful dream, reflecting the ebb and flow of deeply human feelings' (Schumann).

"More low-key, but no less expressive is the central part of the movement, which begins in C minor. The 'Scherzo', with its waltz-like middle section, in which the 'organic counterpoint' blossoms between the strings in similar, albeit more moderate fashion, and more especially the finale are shining examples of Schubert's technique of 'rhythmic-motivic working', in which a four-bar macro-rhythm (long - long - short, short - long) dominates the music over long stretches (and is already anticipated in the accentuation of the rondo theme itself, which plays a lesser role). Here it is not themes or melodies that occupy the foreground, but the actual pulse of the music, an eminently reliable companion, since it never seems to end. 'May his surviving oeuvre be a precious heritage for us!', Schumann concluded his review. 'However numerous and beautiful the progeny of Father Time may be, he will not soon give us a second Schubert.'

"Around the same time as this trio, Schubert also wrote an Adagio for the same forces that poses a conundrum. Was it the discarded first draft of a slow movement for the Trio in B-flat? Or a sketch for a planned 'continuation'? It seems hardly credible that Schubert would have composed such a large-scale movement simply as a freestanding entity. What is certain, in any case, is that when the publisher Anton Diabelli printed the piece in 1846 (long after Schubert's death), he arbitrarily added the title 'Notturno'. This name was probably inspired by the harp-like chords in the piano at the beginning, over which the violin and cello then enter with a slowly swaying, hymn-like melody in thirds. As so often with Schubert, this one-bar motion module (harp music in the piano, semiquaver anacrusis in the strings), once established, is maintained over long stretches, with strings and piano subtly exchanging roles – the last bar of the strings is already the first bar of the reprise of the melody, which is in fact to be entrusted to the piano, and the latter in turn anticipates the first bar of the brief coda, which moves into A-flat minor. Entirely different from this is the contrasting section, which changes not only key (E major) but even time signature (3/4), and strikes up an almost triumphal ascending melody over rushing triplets – as if the struggle were already over. That this is not the case is shown by the very subdued lead-back to the main section, which is decorated on its repetition with dreamy garlands in the high register. Finally – after the return of the contrasting section, now in C major – bright trills in the piano, twittering like birds, sound above the string melody in a short coda.

"Schubert's second great piano trio (op. 100) also adopts a more ingratiating, sociable tone than others among his 'late' works. The first movement is pert, even playful; a recurring turn-like figure developed from the swashbuckling main theme holds its diverse episodes together, but takes on brooding traits in the (pensively extended) closing group and even tends towards grimness in the development. The sad and tender second theme, which begins by modulating erratically into the third-related key of B minor and ends in E-flat major, also demonstrates in its way that in late Schubert there is always but a single step from sociability to solitude.

"The heart of this work, however – preceding the 'Scherzando', whose playfully light tone almost conceals the fact that its main theme is composed as a strict canon between piano and violin – is the slow movement, 'Andante con moto'. This has the paradoxical character of a C minor funeral march, but one that leaves an impression not of statesmanlike solemnity, but of deeply intimate melancholy (Schumann: 'a sigh that rises to shrieking anguish'); even the contrasting major episode seems more nostalgic than liberating.

"This movement is something of a special case. According to Leopold von Sonnleithner, writing thirty years later, a Swedish tenor named Isak Albert Berg gave 'exquisitely lovely' performances of Swedish folksongs while staying in Vienna in the winter of 1827/28. Sonnleithner adds that Schubert was so entranced by this that he used 'the most delightful of them as themes in the E-flat Trio'. This remark long remained puzzling, because scholars searched in vain for Schubertian themes in the folklore of Sweden. Only in 1978 was a manuscript of Swedish songs discovered in a Viennese library that probably contains copies of the repertory sung by Berg – doubtless less those elusive Swedish 'folksongs' than his own compositions 'in folk style'. One of them, 'Se solen sjunker' ('See, the sun sinks'), served as a stimulus for the bewitchingly beautiful theme of the slow movement; a stimulus, no more. The melody of the fine song initially shows little resemblance to Schubert's movement: the most noticeable borrowing is the repeated octave drop on the word 'Farväl' ('Farewell') and the subsequent concluding phrase. The compelling elegiac opening is wholly Schubertian. No one else would have been capable of deriving such a movement from this song.

We can get a precise idea of the genesis of the trio, and this movement in particular, because the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna preserves in its archives a draft score of the first three movements that comes from the estate of Johannes Brahms. It shows both great assurance in the overall design and some fascinating details that deviate from the final version. For example, the second group of the first movement was originally pitched a fifth higher; the 'Scherzando' began without an upbeat; and in the slow movement, before the entry of the melody in the cello, there were initially not two, but three bars in the piano drumming out the march-like rhythm. But in the 'Andante con moto' the differences are even more numerous and striking. The movement seems harsher, more angular, more troubled; many lyrical counterpoints and smooth transitions are absent, and in one passage the violin intones, over a surging chromatic run in the piano, a motif that unmistakably recalls the 'Fate' motto from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Was this movement intended as a funeral march for Beethoven himself, who had died on 26 March 1827, and to whom the music could in this way wordlessly bid 'Farväl'? If so, then Schubert subsequently obscured this reference, because along with many other changes he deleted the 'quotation' in the final version.

Schubert underlined the exceptional status of this movement by – uniquely in his entire instrumental output – quoting it at length in the playful finale, not as a foreign body, but integrated into its structure. In a passage of the first version, the funeral march theme was even combined in counterpoint with the repeated quavers of the finale's cheerful second theme – a not entirely convincing idea that he struck out of the final version. At the end, as if at the last minute, the gloomy march brightens up and emerges in the major key (a dramaturgical device frequently used by Beethoven but seldom by Schubert): Death and Transfiguration, as it were. It may be just a coincidence that this piece was premiered on the actual first anniversary of Beethoven’s death, in the only concert Schubert ever organised himself – but it is a highly symbolic one." (Wolfgang Fuhrman. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Andreas Staier, Daniel Sepec, Roel Dieltiens

1.1. Piano Trio In B-Flat Major, D. 898 Op. 99: I. Allegro Moderato
1.2. Piano Trio In B-Flat Major, D. 898 Op. 99: II. Andante Un Poco Mosso
1.3. Piano Trio In B-Flat Major, D. 898 Op. 99: III. Scherzo - Allegro
1.4. Piano Trio In B-Flat Major, D. 898 Op. 99: IV. Rondo - Allegro Vivace
1.5. Nocturne In E-Flat Major, D. 897 Op. 148: Adagio

2.1. Piano Trio In E-Flat Major, D. 929 Op. 100: I. Allegro
2.2. Piano Trio In E-Flat Major, D. 929 Op. 100: II. Andante Con Moto
2.3. Piano Trio In E-Flat Major, D. 929 Op. 100: III. Scherzando. Allegro Moderato
2.4. Piano Trio In E-Flat Major, D. 929 Op. 100: IV. Allegro Moderato

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Samuel Barber - Cello Concerto; Medea (Suite); Adagio

"The years immediately following the end of World War II saw a consolidation of the success that Samuel Barber had encountered in the concert hall with his 'Symphony No. 1' and 'Essay for Orchestra' (Naxos 8.559024). While the romantic and expressive traits that inform these works remained at the heart of his idiom, the 'Cello Concerto' and 'Medea' are marked by an increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra, as well as a greater harmonic stringency and emotional variety. 

"The 'Cello Concerto' was written for Raya Garbousova. The short score was completed in November 1945, coinciding with Barber's discharge from the air force, with orchestration taking until December. The premiere, by Garbousova, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Sergey Koussevitzky, took place on 5th April, 1946. Despite initial success, and the receipt of the Fifth Annual Award of the Music Critics Circle of New York, the concerto has established itself only at the margins of the repertoire. Barber revised the score prior to his recording with Zara Nelsova in 1950, and made minor changes thereafter. 

"The opening movement, 'Allegro moderato', begins with an abrupt gesture on strings. An understated melodic complex, rather than a theme as such, now unfolds across the orchestra and the soloist joins in almost matter of factly. Only belatedly is the theme stated as a coherent entity. A slower version of the theme becomes a musing soliloquy for the soloist, but the central development quickly emerges as an incisive orchestral tutti. The soloist responds with brusque pizzicati, and a resumption of the initial mood, broadening as before into the theme's more expressive version. The scene is set for a lengthy cadenza, subjecting the theme's constituent elements to the full panoply of cello techniques. The orchestra re-emerges, growing restive in its response, and leading to an agitated coda. 

"The central movement, 'Andante sostenuto', opens with a plaintive siciliana melody on the oboe, subtly derived from that of the first movement and intertwined with the soloist's barcarolle-like motion. A harmonic shift reminiscent of Vaughan Williams brings a more expressively-wrought continuation, before the initial tonality and melody are restored. The orchestra effects a brief but poignant climax, from where the movement sinks into ominous reverie. 

"The finale, 'Molto allegro e appassionato' , opens with another abrupt tutti gesture, before the soloist leads the way with a vaunting melody, inviting vigorous repartee with the orchestra. An inward second theme involves eloquent passage-work for the soloist, building up dramatically in the orchestra. A short solo passage leads to an atmospheric episode, lightly scored in the orchestra's upper reaches and featuring cello harmonics. The initial momentum is now restored, before the second theme returns in sombre hues to effect the work's expressive climax. A further brief cadenza, follows, after which soloist and orchestra steer the movement towards its fateful conclusion. 

"The ballet 'Medea' has a complex history. Commissioned by Martha Graham for the Second Annual Festival of Contemporary Music in May 1946, Barber began work to a scenario entitled 'Cave of the Heart'. The first version, completed in April and scored for thirteen instruments, was first performed at Columbia University on 10th May, under the title 'Serpent Heart'. The original title was reinstated for the New York premiere on 27th February, 1947, by which time Barber had reworked the score into a seven-movement suite for full orchestra, preferring the title Medea, after the principal character. The suite received its first performance on 5th December, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy. In 1955, Barber telescoped the suite into one continuous movement, 'Medea's Meditation' and 'Dance of Vengeance'. This was first heard in New York on 2nd, February, 1956, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. Yet the additional music and greater emotional range of the suite merit revival. 

"'Parodos' introduces the characters with brazen fanfares on brass and xylophone. A melodic sequence unfolds in some of Barber's most tensile orchestration, abounding in subtle harmonic dissonances. 'Choros I' depicts Medea and Jason, though the cool colouring of solo woodwind and brass, later upper strings, offsets any overt expression. The music gains in animation, though the brief climax subsides without inciting a greater emotional response. 'The Young Princess' opens capriciously in solo woodwind and piano. Forceful brass and strings denote the arrival of Jason, the music trying in vain to regain its initial charm. 'Choros II' is a ruminative solo for Medea, her 'meditation', a lilting violin figure punctuating the music's rhapsodic course. 

"'Medea' is the focal point of the suite and, indeed, the whole ballet. The mood is sombre and agitated, tension building gradually and ominously as her 'dance of vengeance' takes shape. A sudden pick up in tempo finds solo wind in an acerbic exchange over a syncopated piano ostinato. The music generates increasing rhythmic aggression, before launching into a tragic climax. 'Kantikos Agonias' follows, an enigmatic and uneasy interlude, before 'Exodos' erupts in violent fashion, aptly evoking Medea's crime, the murder of her children. Gaunt brass and yearning strings provoke a brief climax, enshrining the 'jealousy' underlying her actions, before the music winds down to an equivocal close: human actions are no less real for being the stuff of legend. 

"Few twentieth century pieces have caught the public imagination more than the 'Adagio for Strings'. Barber's original score dates from 1936, when it formed the central movement of his 'String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11'. In 1937, Toscanini heard Barber's 'Symphony No. 1' at the Salzburg Festival and asked the composer to supply a piece for his first season with the newly-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra. Barber offered the 'First Essay' and the 'Adagio', which were both broadcast on NBC radio on 5th November, 1938. The inward nature of the latter probably helped reinforce its public significance, with performances at the funerals of such luminaries as President Roosevelt and Albert Einstein. 

"The hushed but expressive theme, its modal flavour imparting an evocative timelessness, unfolds in a series of dynamic terraces; intensity increasing as the rapt mood is effortlessly sustained. Cellos take up the theme, and the music reaches an impassioned climax. A heartfelt pause, and the melody resumes its elegiac course, resolving as if with a benediction. The extent to which the 'Adagio' overshadowed his other works understandably caused Barber frustration in later years. Yet it is difficult to gainsay Aaron Copland's description: 'The sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch that it creates from beginning to end [...] makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it.'" (Richard Whitehouse. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Wendy Warner

1. Cello Concerto, Op. 22: I. Allegro Moderato
2. Cello Concerto, Op. 22: II. Andante Sostenuto
3. Cello Concerto, Op. 22: III. Molto Allegro E Appassionato
4. Medea Ballet Suite, Op. 23: I. Parodos
5. Medea Ballet Suite, Op. 23: II. Choros. Medea And Jason
6. Medea Ballet Suite, Op. 23: III. The Young Princess. Jason
7. Medea Ballet Suite, Op. 23: IV. Choros
8. Medea Ballet Suite, Op. 23: V. Medea
9. Medea Ballet Suite, Op. 23: VI. Kantikos Agonias
10. Medea Ballet Suite, Op. 23: VII. Exodos
11. Adagio, Op. 11

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Johannes Brahms - 4 Ballades, Op. 10; 2 Rhapsodies, Op. 79; 10 Intemezzi

"Occasionally unsure what title, if any, he should give a piece, Brahms came to use the term intermezzo as a rubric under which he could file anything that was not especially whimsical or fiery. The Three Intermezzi, Op. 117, do not require the technical facility necessary to perform many of his earlier works, but an incisive musicality is paramount for a proper understanding of these musical miniatures. The fact that they are all marked Andante also presents a problem for the performer, who must probe the details of each work and stress the contrasting elements. All three Intermezzi of Op. 117 were written in the summer of 1892, the year of their publication. This is one of the rare cases in which Brahms gave a specific title for an entire set of pieces. Two of the three Intermezzi received their first performances shortly after they were written: No. 1 on February 18, 1893, and No. 2 on January 30 of the same year.

"Prefaced by lines from Herder's translation of Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament, a Scottish lullaby, the first Intermezzo is in E-flat major and cast in ABA' form. The central section, on E flat minor, obscures the 6/8 meter before returning to the major mode for the modified reprise of the first section.

"A sonata-form movement in B-flat minor, the second Intermezzo provides an excellent example of thematic transformation. The first theme, traced by the uppermost thirty-second notes in the arpeggios of the first two measures, becomes the second theme, played in the top notes of block chords 30 measures later. Because the rhythmic movement from note to note is changed and the textures of the two passages are very dissimilar, it takes a perceptive pianist to locate and bring out the transformed melody. Brahms chooses the relative major, D flat, for the second theme while the development section is built around the fluid arpeggios of the first theme. In the recapitulation, the second theme, truncated and transformed, vacillates between the tonic major and minor.

"Brahms once referred to the third Intermezzo of Op. 117 as 'the lullaby of all my grief.' In C sharp minor, the piece is in ternary form (ABA'), with a central section on A major. Section A consists of two ideas, the first stated in parallel octaves. The entire complex is repeated, although the melodies are accompanied differently and some segments appear in a higher register. The move to A major for the B section creates a sense of relaxation as the leaping theme, again with right-hand octaves, provides a stark contrast to the linear, opening idea. A brief transition leads to the return of section A, re-harmonized and in a form more akin to its second half than to the beginning." (Description of the Intermezzi by John Palmer. From AllMusic. See here.)

Performer: Glenn Gould

1.1. 4 Ballades, Op. 10 No. 1 In D Minor 'Edward Ballade': Andante
1.2. 4 Ballades, Op. 10 No. 2 In D Major: Andante
1.3. 4 Ballades, Op. 10 No. 3 In B Minor 'Intermezzo': Allegro
1.4. 4 Ballades, Op. 10 No. 4 In B Major: Andante Con Moto
1.5. 2 Rhapsodies, Op. 79 No. 1 In B Minor: Agitato
1.6. 2 Rhapsodies, Op. 79 No. 2 In G Minor: Molto Passionato, Ma Non Troppo Allegro

2.1. Intermezzo In E-Flat Major, Op. 117/1: Andante Moderato
2.2. Intermezzo In B-Flat Minor, Op. 117/2: Andante Non Troppo E Con Molta Espressione
2.3. Intermezzo In C-Sharp Minor, Op. 117/3: Andante Con Moto
2.4. Intermezzo In E-Flat Minor, Op. 118/6: Andante, Largo E Mesto
2.5. Intermezzo In E Major, Op. 116/4: Adagio
2.6. Intermezzo In A Minor, Op. 76/7: Moderato Simplice
2.7. Intermezzo In A Major, Op. 76/6: Andante Con Moto
2.8. Intermezzo In B Minor, Op. 119/1: Adagio
2.9. Intermezzo In A Minor, Op. 118/1: Allegro Non Assai, Ma Molto Appassionato
2.10. Intermezzo In A Major, Op. 118/2: Andante Teneramente
2.11. Intermezzo In A Major, Op. 118/2: Andante Teneramente

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Johannes Brahms - Sonatas for Clarinet & Piano; 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118

"The aspiration of instrumental music to gain its independence by shaking off the influence of vocal music and extra-musical references, a central issue in the aesthetic debates that raged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had to struggle against somewhat more conservative listening habits on the part of the public. Those extra-musical elements (deriving in large part from the heritage of eighteenth century rhetoric, from the commedia dell’arte and the theatre in general, from literature, and from opera, which remained extremely popular) were still very present, and emerge clearly when one analyses thereactions of audiences and performers, who continued to associate music with gestures, movements, expressions, characters, images.

"Although Brahms himself did not feel close to the world of opera and did not encourage frequent recourse to such external references, there are many hints to suggest that things did not always go as he would have wished. For example, in his score of the Brahms sonatas, the celebrated English clarinettist Charles Draper (1869-1952) [...] noted his impressions of the character of certain episodes: 'Trouble ahead!', 'Prayer', 'old man grumbling'. The critic and musicologist Alexander Berrsche (1880-1940), a fierce guardian of Brahmsian tradition, nonetheless used expressions like 'the frightened fluttering of a bird' in his reviews of the composer’s symphonies. Again, in her 1905 biography of Brahms, Florence May (1845-1923) has this to say of the 'Quintet, op.115': 'Here "the brooks of life are flowing as at high noon", though the tone of gentle loving regret which pervades the four movements, and holds the heart of the listener in firm grip, suggests the composer’s feeling that evening is not far from him in which no man may work.'

"Is it possible today to adopt a similar viewpoint on the music of Brahms, and to imagine a link between music and moods, feelings, characters, to go so far as actually to reconstruct a virtual dramatic action on the basis of his music? Can today’s musicians and listeners conjure up, from these sounds alone, images drawn from multiple experiences, lodged in our memories from the operas, the literature, the plays we have known? Many of these art forms have over time acquired an expressive, often dramatic dimension, and have become part of a collective imagination which earlier listeners were doubtless capable of calling upon.

"In the examples that follow, the association of musical gestures with concrete personalities, characters and images is totally arbitrary and without direct historical reference. It is merely a personal attempt to make those gestures tangible, as a contemporary musician or listener might have done: trouble ahead, prayers, old men grumbling, frightened birds, but also funeral bells, Orpheus and his lyre, Eurydice, Susanna and Figaro, love duets, tears and smiles, conflicts and reconciliations, farewells and welcomes.

"Op. 120 no. 1, first movement. At 4'28" (tr. 1), the sudden sforzando in the piano and the wide intervals in the clarinet suggest two people weeping and sobbing. Later on (6'37"), one has the impression, as in the second movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, of hearing Orpheus' lyre and his despairing song. All of a sudden the lyre falls silent, trombones and bassoons announce the end (7'17"), and funeral bells (7'24") accompany the abandonment of all hope, evoked by the final lament on the clarinet (7'30"). Often, around a cadence, a modulation will underline a frustration, or perhaps a surprise, introducing a new mood, a new protagonist, as in this same movement (2'57") or at 3'35" in the finale (tr. 4).

"In the Andante of op. 120 no. 1 (tr. 2), at what is perhaps one of the most moving moments in the First Sonata, two characters exchange roles: the clarinet takes over the piano line, plays the bass (2'03"), then abruptly falls silent (2'15"), leaving the piano alone, in search of its companion; the piano then hesitates among several keys, and is finally reunited with the clarinet in a consolatory A-flat major, a meeting indicated by the return of the main theme, now presented in an intimate, murmuring tone, embraced by warm arpeggios. At the very end of the movement (3'59"), the clarinet evokes the resigned attitude of someone departing into the distance – perhaps Eurydice's gentle farewell to Orpheus?

"The wide intervals in the clarinet, comical and arrogant, which boldly interrupt the piano’s attempt to start up a fugue at the beginning of the finale (tr. 4, 0'06") and the rapid detached notes that follow, as if in mockery (0'13"), are gestures typical of commedia dell'arte and opera buffa. Shortly after this the wild 'Hungarian' section (2'11") reminds us of the cafés of Budapest and Vienna and their Gypsy musicians.

"The appoggiaturas of the clarinet theme that opens op. 120 no. 2 (tr. 11) emphasise its feminine, sensual character, notably the spectacular leap at 0'12", which may remind us of the vocal virtuosity of Susanna or Fiordiligi. The second theme, a tight-knit canon, seems more evocative of the badinage of two lovers than the art of counterpoint (0'56"). Towards the end of the movement (6'42"), the touching interrupted cadence leads us into a calm, exotic E major, but the protagonists’ disquiet suddenly increases (6'48") until we reach the surprising piano subito at 6'54". This inaugurates a change of character with the wistful plaint of the clarinet, which, exhausted, is struck dumb (7'01"), followed by the piano, which also has its moment of doubt and hesitation (7'03").

"After a brief silence charged with expectation, release comes with the grandiose, even pompous coda (7'05"), built entirely from repeated elements (here again are the characteristic topoi of opera buffa), seemingly leading up to a reconciliation. But this is to some extent thwarted by the final gesture: an improbable intruder (7'39"), a comic A natural that is quite out of place in E-flat major; a smile, a nod before the door closes once and for all." (Lorenzo Coppola, tr. Charles Johnston. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Lorenzo Coppola, Andreas Staier

1. Sonata, Op. 120 No. 1 In F Minor: I. Allegro Appassionato

2. Sonata, Op. 120 No. 1 In F Minor: II. Andante Un Poco Adagio

3. Sonata, Op. 120 No. 1 In F Minor: III. Allegro Grazioso

4. Sonata, Op. 120 No. 1 In F Minor: IV. Vivace

5. Sechs Klavierstucke, Op. 118: I. Intermezzo. Allegro Non Assai, Ma Molto Appassionato

6. Sechs Klavierstucke, Op. 118: II. Intermezzo. Andante Teneramente

7. Sechs Klavierstucke, Op. 118: III. Ballade. Allegro Energico

8. Sechs Klavierstucke, Op. 118: IV. Intermezzo. Allegretto Un Poco Agitato

9. Sechs Klavierstucke, Op. 118: V. Romanze. Andante

10. Sechs Klavierstucke, Op. 118: VI. Intermezzo. Andante, Largo E Mesto

11. Sonata, Op. 120 No. 2 In E-Flat Major: I. Allegro Amabile

12. Sonata, Op. 120 No. 2 In E-Flat Major: II. Allegro Appassionato

13. Sonata, Op. 120 No. 2 In E-Flat Major: III. Andante Con Moto - Allegro - Piu Tranquillo

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Sonatas K. 330, 331 'Alla Turca', 332

"Mozart scholars long took it for granted that the three piano sonatas K. 330-332 were written in Paris in the year 1778. However, some twenty years ago, detailed research on the only partly extant autographs made it necessary to revise this dating: both Mozart’s handwriting and the type of paper used point to 1783 as the year of composition. But it is still unclear whether Mozart composed the sonatas in Vienna, where he had been living as a freelance musician since the spring of 1781, or on a trip to Salzburg in the summer and autumn of 1783. The musicologist Alan Tyson, who also undertook the paper research, thought it more likely that they were written during his stay in Salzburg.

"Mozart set out for Salzburg in July 1783, along with his wife Constanze, whom he had married in Vienna on 4 August 1782. Since the wedding had taken place in the absence of both his father and his sister, he was obliged to introduce his wife to his closest relatives at some stage – it is probable that this 'presentation' of Constanze was his main reason for travelling to the city for which he had so little affection. Later commentators have surmised that Mozart’s father and sister gave his wife none too warm a welcome. Yet there can be little truth in this, for during their time there the whole family went to call on acquaintances in Salzburg, and passed the time with excursions, visits to the theatre, and making music together. In the three months or so that he spent in Salzburg, Mozart seems to have composed little, to judge from the fairly solid information we have. It was during this time that he wrote the two Duos for violin and viola K. 423 and K. 424, with which he is supposed to have helped Michael Haydn out of a tight corner. But the 'Mass in C minor, K. 427', specifically intended for performance in Salzburg, remained unfinished. Mozart had already made a start on the composition in the winter of 1782/83, but he wrote only two of the movements that were still lacking while in Salzburg. Perhaps he spent his time there on these three piano sonatas instead. But if he really did compose them in Salzburg, they were apparently not yet finished when he returned to Vienna in November. So much is indicated by the letter he wrote to his father from Vienna on 9 and 12 June 1784 (which incidentally is the only document in the Mozart correspondence in which these sonatas are mentioned): 'Now I have given Artaria for printing the three sonatas for solo keyboard which I once sent my sister, the first in C, the second in A, and the third in F.' If Mozart had already completed the sonatas in Salzburg, he would hardly have had to send them to his sister from Vienna.

"The quotation from this letter also shows that Mozart sent the three works to press together. They were published by the Viennese firm of Artaria in the summer of 1784 as 'Trois Sonates pour le Clavecin ou Pianoforte composèes par W. A. Mozart. Oeuvre. VI.'; the edition was advertised in the 'Wiener Zeitung' of 25 August as a 'novelty'. Mozart certainly conceived the sonatas from the beginning as a homogeneous group of three, that is to say as an 'opus'. Not only did he give the Sonatas K. 330 and K. 332 the respective headings 'Sonate I.' and 'Sonate III.', as can be seen on the extant pages of the autographs, he also coordinated the three works with regard to formal design and characteristics. The tonic keys of the three sonatas stand in a relationship of falling thirds to one another, and each sonata presents a different combination of tempo directions and time signatures in its individual movements. One need go no further than a comparison between the opening movements of the Sonatas K. 330 and K. 332 to realise Mozart’s concern with diversity of artistic resources: whereas K. 330's 'Allegro moderato' in 2/4 begins with a capricious-seeming, diatonic descending phrase, the 3/4 'Allegro' of K.332 starts with a rising melody built on a broken tonic triad, whose cantabile character makes it seem like the second subject of a sonata allegro, rather than the first. The respective themes of the slow movements of these two sonatas offer a similar contrast in design. What is more, the movements' formal layout is quite different: the ternary form of the first sonata's 'Andante cantabile' is answered, in the 'Adagio' of the third, by a sonata form without development. The only thing the two movements have in common is their great wealth of expression.

"At the centre of this trilogy stands K. 331, the most unusual of the sonatas. Not only do its three movements – theme and variations, minuet, rondo finale – represent types that occur in neither of the other two sonatas, but a sonata that opened with a variation movement was at that time something quite new in Vienna. Another special feature is the finale with its flavour of janissary music, the celebrated 'Alla Turca'. Here Mozart takes up once more the Turkish style he had already exploited in his 'Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K.384', yet at the same time seems almost to caricature it through stylistic exaggeration. It is interesting to note that, in the first three impressions of the Artaria edition, the Alla Turca bore the unusual tempo marking 'All[e]grino', which was later changed to 'Allegretto'. Without this alteration, not a single tempo indication would have been repeated in the course of the three sonatas' total of nine movements – which was clearly Mozart’s intention.

"With the ingenious layout, sophisticated details and rich substance of his three sonatas K. 330-332, Mozart provided enough to satisfy any connoisseur (Kenner). But above all, he could use this opus 6 as a forceful reminder to the well-off Viennese amateur pianists (Liebhaber), from whom he earned his living as a teacher and performer, that he was also a composer of piano sonatas. Just why these sonatas might be attractive to potential buyers is summed up in a nutshell by an announcement in the 'Staats- und Gelehrten Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten' from the year 1785: 'Three splendid sonatas which, if properly played, make an excellent effect.'" (Andreas Friesenhagen, tr. Charles Johnston. From the liner notes.)

Performer: Andreas Staier

1. Piano Sonata In C Major, K. 330: I. Allegro Moderato
2. Piano Sonata In C Major, K. 330: II. Andante Cantabile
3. Piano Sonata In C Major, K. 330: III. Allegretto
4. Piano Sonata In A Major,  K. 331 'Alla Turca': I. Andante Grazioso (Thème Et Variations)
5. Piano Sonata In A Major,  K. 331 'Alla Turca': II. Menuetto - Trio
6. Piano Sonata In A Major,  K. 331 'Alla Turca': III. Alla Turca. Allegretto
7. Piano Sonata In F Major, K. 332: I. Allegro
8. Piano Sonata In F Major, K. 332: II. Adagio
9. Piano Sonata In F Major, K. 332: III. Allegro Assai

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Richard Wagner - Götterdämmerung

"Wagner’s tetralogy, 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' ('The Ring of the Nibelung') was first performed as a whole in August 1876 at the new Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The complete cycle consists of a Prologue, 'Das Rheingold' ('The Rhinegold'), followed the next day by 'Die Walküre' ('The Valkyrie'), and then by 'Siegfried', leading up to the final 'Götterdämmerung' ('Twilight of the Gods'). Wagner’s first sketches for the libretto of the fourth projected opera, initially under the title 'Siegfrieds Tod' ('Siegfried’s Death'), and later 'Götterdämmerung' ('Twilight of the Gods'), is dated 1848. To this he found it necessary to add an explanatory prologue, for which he made the first musical sketches in 1850. He interrupted his work in order to draft the three earlier operas of the cycle, then returning to 'Götterdämmerung', in which he now made considerable changes. The first complete draft of the work was written between 1869 and 1872 and the full score was finished in 1874. The work was first heard at Bayreuth in 1876 when the whole of the tetralogy was performed. As before, leading motifs associated with characters, events and ideas in the drama, recur, interwoven to unify the whole conception.

"The sources of the plot were found in Icelandic sagas, the 13th-century Middle High German 'Das Nibelungenlied' and the Old Norse 'Thidreks Saga af Bern', but Wagner had recourse to a wide range of other reading, while the structure of the tetralogy and the underlying theme of the curse owes a strong debt to Aeschylus and Greek tragedy." (Keith Anderson. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Chorus, Jaap van Zweden, Gun-Brit Barkmin, Daniel Brenna, Shenyang, Eric Halfvarson, Amanda Majeski, Michelle DeYoung

1.1. Vorspiel
1.2. Prolog: 'Welch Licht Leuchtet Dort?'
1.3. Prolog: Zwischenspiel. Tagesgrauen
1.4. Prolog: 'Zu Neuen Taten, Teurer Helde'
1.5. Prolog: 'Mehr Gabst Du, Wunderfrau'
1.6. Prolog: Siegfrieds Rheinfahrt
1.7. Aufzug I, Szene I: 'Nun Hör', Hagen, Sage Mir, Held'
1.8. Aufzug I, Szene I: 'Was Weckst Du Zweifel Und Zwist?'
1.9. Aufzug I, Szene I: 'Vom Rhein Her Tönt Das Horn'

2.1. Aufzug I, Szene II: 'Wer Ist Gibich's Sohn?'
2.2. Aufzug I, Szene II: 'Begrüße Froh, O Held'
2.3. Aufzug I, Szene II: 'Willkommen, Gast, In Gibich's Haus!'
2.4. Aufzug I, Szene II: 'Hast Du, Gunther, Ein Weib?'
2.5. Aufzug I, Szene II: 'Blut-Brüderschaft Schwöre Ein Eid!'
2.6. Aufzug I, Szene II: 'Hier Sitz' Ich Zur Wacht'
2.7. Aufzug I: Zwischenspiel (Entr'acte)
2.8. Aufzug I, Szene III: 'Altgewohntes Geräusch'
2.9. Aufzug I, Szene III: 'Seit Er Von Dir Geschieden'
2.10. Aufzug I, Szene III: 'Da Sann Ich Nach: Von Seiner Seite'
2.11. Aufzug I, Szene III: 'Blitz Und Gewölk, Vom Wind Getragen'
2.12. Aufzug I, Szene III: 'Jetzt Bist Du Mein'

3.1. Aufzug II: Vorspiel
3.2. Aufzug II, Szene I: 'Schläfst Du, Hagen, Mein Sohn?'
3.3. Aufzug II: Zwischenspiel
3.4. Aufzug II, Szene II: 'Hoiho, Hagen! Müder Mann!'
3.5. Aufzug II, Szene III: 'Hoiho! Ihr Gibichs-Mannen, Machet Euch Auf!'
3.6. Aufzug II, Szene IV: 'Heil Dir, Gunther!'
3.7. Aufzug II, Szene IV: 'Brünnhild', Die Hehrste Frau'
3.8. Aufzug II, Szene IV: 'Was Ist Ihr? Ist Sie Entrückt?'
3.9. Aufzug II, Szene IV: 'Achtest Du So Der Eig'nen Ehre?'
3.10. Aufzug II, Szene IV: 'Helle Wehr, Heilige Waffe!'
3.11. Aufzug II, Szene V: 'Welches Unholds List Liegt Hier Verhohlen?'
3.12. Aufzug II, Szene V: 'Dir Hilft Kein Hirn'

4.1. Aufzug III: Vorspiel
4.2. Aufzug III, Szene I: 'Frau Sonne Sendet Lichte Strahlen'
4.3. Aufzug III, Szene I: 'Ich Höre Sein Horn'
4.4. Aufzug III, Szene I: 'Was Leid' Ich Doch Das Karge Lob?'
4.5. Aufzug III, Szene II: 'Hoiho? - Hoihe!'
4.6. Aufzug III, Szene II: 'Mime Hieß Ein Mürrischer Zwerg'
4.7. Aufzug III, Szene II: 'Was Hör' Ich!'
4.8. Aufzug III, Szene II: 'Brünnhilde! Heilige Braut!'
4.9. Aufzug III: Zwischenspiel. Trauermarsch
4.10. Aufzug III, Szene III: 'War Das Sein Horn?'
4.11. Aufzug III, Szene III: 'Schweigt Eures Jammers'
4.12. Aufzug III, Szene III: 'Starke Scheite Schichtet Mir Dort'
4.13. Aufzug III, Szene III: 'Mein Erbe Nun Nehm' Ich Zu Eigen'
4.14. Aufzug III, Szene III: 'Fliegt Heim Ihr Raben!'
4.15. Aufzug III: Schluss

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Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji - The Complete Songs for Soprano

"Sorabji's mother (Madeleine Mathilde Sorabji, 1874?-1959) seems to have been a soprano of Spanish-Sicilian descent who apparently abandoned a singing career for family reasons. Sorabji's unpublished essay 'Concert Going Memories,' devoted mainly to singers and their art, mentions her having sung the role of Marguerite in a French production of Berlioz's 'Le Damnation de Faust' although he was too young at the time to recall specific details. Sorabji testifies to his mother's encouragement of his attending lieder recitals where he heard some of the great singers of that time, including 'the incomparable Louise Kirkby Lunn,' of whose performance he wrote of the 'utterly unique beauty of (her) voice [...] like purple velvet [...] the incomparable technique and sheer singing mastery, the transcendent distinction and beauty of her performance (which) is as vivid in my memory as it was then' (at least half a century later). Sorabji said that his mother also played piano and organ and gave him his first piano lessons when he was aged about six. There can be little doubt that she also instilled in her only child a love of fine singing which remained with him for the rest of his long life; it is reflected in many of his published reviews and essays. 

"Sorabji was no child prodigy in the conventional sense; whilst he seems to have recognised early on that his future lay in some kind of career in music, its precise directions remained unclear until his early twenties. As a boy, he absorbed large amounts of baroque, classical and romantic repertoire but his enquiring mind also led him to team much about the newest trends in music. Assimilating substantial quantities of contemporary European music was no mean feat in the inward-looking unadventurous environment of Edwardian England, a pre-gramophone age where such work was performed very rarely or not at all. Considered a multi-racial outsider (his father was a Parsi from Bombay), Sorabji must have cut an odd figure in those days, investigating with irrepressible excitement the most recent creations of composers such as Debussy, Rachmaninov, Mahler, Ravel, Bartók, Strauss, Medtner and Schönberg. He conveyed with unremitting enthusiasm the results of his discoveries and endeavoured to persuade various powers-that-were of the urgent need for such music to be heard by English audiences. There was even a story that, when barely 14, the intrepid Sorabji made a solo pilgrimage to Essen to hear the world premiere of Mahler's Sixth Symphony conducted by the composer; when I questioned him on this in the 1970s, he broke into a broad grin, obviously enjoyed the tantalising effect of his deliberate refusal to confirm or deny this rumour and gave away nothing beyond the remark 'Good story, isn't it!'. 

"A gifted pianist but pathologically reluctant performer, Sorabji was unsure what to do with this knowledge; for a time he contemplated a career as a critic and indeed managed to pursue one parallel to his life as a composer until his mid-fifties, contributing articles and reviews to 'The New Age' and 'The New English Weekly' and publishing two books of essays. Around 1915, while planning a book on Ravel, he seemed to stumble accidentally on the idea of composing his own music, a fact all the more remarkable when one considers the sheer prolixity of his output over the following seven decades. As a composer, then, Sorabji was a very late starter; although his first music was composed when he was about the same age as was Beethoven when he published his Op. 1 piano trios, whereas Beethoven had already completed many works before his first publication, it seems that Sorabji wrote nothing at all before the age of 22.

"Given his love of the voice, it might seem curious that he wrote few songs and no stage works, preferring instead to direct the majority of his energies to keyboard writing. Performance of his entire song œuvre would, for example, occupy barely one quarter of that required to present just one of his large piano works, the famous 'Opus Clavicembalisticum'. Sorabji devoted his first two years of composition entirely to songs for voice and piano and to piano concertos. With two exceptions, all his songs are for voice and piano and most feature soprano. 

"Sorabji the song composer seemed particularly drawn to the poetry of the French symbolists and their English contemporaries such as Ernest Dowson. His first ten songs were composed during World War I when his harmonic language had yet to develop into the Busoni- and Szymanowski-influenced yet highly individual one of his maturity. His principal examples at this stage seem to have been Cyril Scott, Scriabin, Ravel, Ornstein and even Roslavets. Although it is uncertain whether his youthful contemporary music researches drew the last of these into his circle of acquaintance, his contemporary writings evidence his awareness of Ornstein's more experimental music, he certainly attended Scriabin's London appearances in 1913 and was later to meet Roussel (and possibly also Ravel) in Paris. (Ornstein was, incidentally, a close contemporary of Sorabji and died only in February 2002).

"A consequence of Sorabji's desire for personal privacy and consequent reclusivity was a reluctance to speak or write about his own music; this accounts for the dearth of recorded interview material. Even in the early days, he devoted little energy to securing performances of his music; only three of the songs written during his 20s reached performance by 1921; others not until the late 1970s and 1990s; only those specified below have received public performance at all. Every song on the present CD is a recorded première.

"Of all Sorabji's articles on singing, singers and vocal repertoire, it is arguably 'The Great French Song Writers' ('Mi Contra Fa', 1947) which points most closely to many of the persuasions in his own song-writing and provides the greatest key to his thinking and ideals as a song composer.  

 

"[...] The 1941 songs almost conclude Sorabji's career as songwriter, although he continued to compose for at least another 40 years. On the strength of his finest contributions to the singer's repertoire, it seems a pity that, for so much of Sorabji's creative life, songwriting appears almost to have assumed the role of what the poet Robert Frost called 'the path not taken'." (Alistair Hinton. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Elizabeth Farnum, Margaret Kampmeier

1. Trois Poèmes: Correspondances

2. Trois Poèmes: Crépuscule Du Soir Mystique

3. Trois Poèmes: Pantomime

4. Chrysilla

5. Roses Du Soir

6. The Poplars

7. L'Heure Exquise

8. Vocalise

9. I Was Not Sorrowful

10. L'Étang

11. Hymne À Aphrodite

12. Apparition

13. (Trois Chants): Le Faune

14. (Trois Chants): Les Chats

15. (Trois Chants): La Dernière Fête Galante

16. Trois Fêtes Galantes: L'Allée

17. Trois Fêtes Galantes: À La Promenade

18. Trois Fêtes Galantes: Dans La Grotte

19. L'Irrémédiable

20. Arabesque

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Jan Ladislav Dussek - Sonatas; Fantasia and Fugue

"Dussek settled in two places in turn, both capital cities and major cultural centres: Paris and London. He arrived in Paris in 1786 and remained there till 1789, when he left in the midst of the turmoil produced by the Revolution, his departure motivated by a justified fear that his close contact with Marie Antoinette could have fatal consequences. Like so many fugitives from the political upheaval in France, he headed for London - but returned to Paris again for the last five years of his life. Dussek spent a full ten years in London, making it the longest period he stayed in any one place. And it didn't take him long to become established as one of the city's most prominent musical personalities. It was here that the four piano sonatas on this disc were written. Dussek's op. 31 consisting of a single sonata framed by two piano trios - appeared in 1795 while op. 35 was published in 1797. 

"If Dussek's biography seems to belong more in the 19th century than the 18th, the same is true of his music in many respects. Permeated as they are by heroism and triumphant antitheses, don't the first movements of the C minor and G major sonatas recall the music of Beethoven's middle period? Yet Beethoven had only just published his earliest piano sonatas, op. 2, in 1796, so Dussek can scarcely have been familiar with them. And isn't the first movement of the B-flat sonata reminiscent of Schubert in its rhapsodic approach to sonata form and its fondness for colourful modulations instead of thematic development? Yet 1797 was the year of Schubert's birth! Other features of Dussek's music point even farther into the future: a specific 'salon tone' especially evident in the last movements of op. 31/2, op. 35/1 and op. 34/2 with their hint of Bohemian folk music, takes us into the world of John Field and Chopin, both of whom were to delight Parisian high society with their Polish mazurkas some decades hence. Incidentally, one cannot help but wonder at this stage whether the Paris correspondent of the Leipzig 'Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung,' whose obituary on Dussek is quoted at the beginning of this text, was right to claim Dussek as a German composer without elaborating. For the fact is that the above-mentioned 'salon tone' actually originated in Paris or London rather than in Vienna; and moreover, surprising as it may seem, Vienna was the only major European music centre that the widely traveled virtuoso never visited. We also find a certain casualness about Dussek's compositions which is by no means typically German: consecutive fifths that could easily have been avoided are left as they are, and thematic recapitulations are often robbed of some of their clarity by minor inconsistencies that one can assume to be accidental. I have taken the liberty of doing a little retouching here and there, as I am obviously more pedantic about such matters than the composer... I am also to blame for another alteration to the original: the two movements of the B-flat sonata seem to me to have such a similar rhythm that I have been so bold as to add a brief improvised introduction before the second movement for the sake of variety. Dussek's piano writing is creative in the extreme. In comparison with the clear transparency of pre-1800 Viennese Piano music, Dussek seems altogether modern in the expansive virtuosity and full-voiced character of his writing. We have here a good example of the mutual influence of instrument and perform-er/composer on one another: the pianos of English manufacture that Dussek expressly preferred do indeed allow a much more 'modern' and expansive manner of playing than their Viennese counterparts. Both Dussek's and Clementi's music show clearly the deliberate exploitation of the potential of English pianos. Thus I was particularly fortunate to have the chance to use Jérôme Hantaï's wonderful Broadwood grand for this recording. I should like to offer special thanks to him and also to Christopher Clarke, who restored the instrument and looked after tuning etc. during the recording sessions. I very much hope that the attractive sound of the historic piano will more than compensate the listener for one or two mechanical noises that can be heard in the background. 

"Dussek left London in a hurry in 1800, as much to flee his creditors as to abandon his conjugal obligations. He made a provisional home in Hamburg, from where he undertook several concert tours to enable him to live in the extravagant style to which he was accustomed. But he was no longer a youngster, and longed for a regular, comfortable position. In 1804 he got to know Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, who engaged him both as music teacher and as musical director. The two of them evidently got on famously, with colleague Louis Spohr shaking his head over nightly bacchanalian 'orgies' (sic!)... This indulgent idyll came to an abrupt end, however, when the Prince fell in the Battle of Saalfeld in 1806. Dussek gave him a moving memorial in his 'Élegie Harmonique', the first notes of which quote the 'Consummatum est' from Haydn's 'Seven Last Words.' - Once again compelled to look elsewhere, Dussek eventually made his way to Paris, in the service of Talleyrand. He knew the city well, having spent several years there when younger, although he had moved to London ahead of the Revolution. That explains 'Le Retour À Paris' - though there is another title too. Joseph Woelfl had written a 'Ne Plus Ultra' sonata, which he saw as the last word in technical difficulty. Dussek accepted the challenge and came back with a twinkle in his eye and 'Plus Ultra.' True enough, I had to do quite a bit of practising on the outer movements... But the work has high musical ambitions too: it must be one of the earliest examples of the great romantic sonata. To end at the beginning: recitals began at that time with free prelude playing. Written down after the event, the result is something like the 'Fantasia and Fugue' in F minor, dedicated to his friend J. B. Cramer. The Fugue should be perceived more as an improvisational essay in free-ranging modulation (like most of his contemporaries' piano fugues) rather than polyphonic exaltation. Father Bach would have been amused by it at best..." (Andreas Staier, tr. Clive R. Williams; J. & M. Berridge. From the liner notes.)

Performer: Andreas Staier

1.1. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 35 No. 1: I. Allegro Moderato E Maestoso

1.2. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 35 No. 1: II. Introduzione

1.3. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 35 No. 1: III. Finale. Allegro Non Troppo Con Spirito

1.4. Piano Sonata In G Major, Op. 35 No. 2: I. Allegro

1.5. Piano Sonata In G Major, Op. 35 No. 2: II. Rondo. Molto Allegro Con Espressione

1.6. Piano Sonata In C Minor, Op. 35 No. 3: I. Allegro Agitato Assai

1.7. Piano Sonata In C Minor, Op. 35 No. 3: II. Adagio Patetico Ed Espressivo

1.8. Piano Sonata In C Minor, Op. 35 No. 3: III. Intermezzo. Presto

1.9. Piano Sonata In C Minor, Op. 35 No. 3: IV. Finale. Allegro Molto

1.10. Piano Sonata In D Major, Op. 31 No. 2: I. Allegro Non Tanto

1.11. Piano Sonata In D Major, Op. 31 No. 2: II. Adagio Con Espressione

1.12. Piano Sonata In D Major, Op. 31 No. 2: III. Pastorale. Allegro Non Troppo

2.1. Fantasia & Fugue, Op. 55: Fantasia

2.2. Fantasia & Fugue, Op. 55: Fugue

2.3. Piano Sonata, Op. 64 'Le Retour À Paris': Allegro Non Troppo Ed Espressivo

2.4. Piano Sonata, Op. 64 'Le Retour À Paris': Molto Adagio Con Anima Ed Espressione

2.5. Piano Sonata, Op. 64 'Le Retour À Paris': Tempo Di Minuetto - Scherzo Quasi Allegro - Trio

2.6. Piano Sonata, Op. 64 'Le Retour À Paris': Finale - Scherzo (Allegro Con Spirito)

2.7. Piano Sonata In F-Sharp Minor, Op. 61 'Elégie Harmonique': Lento Patetico - Tempo Agitato

2.8. Piano Sonata In F-Sharp Minor, Op. 61 'Elégie Harmonique': Tempo Vivace E Con Fuoco Quasi Presto

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