Playful Imaginations Piano Fantasies from Bach to Schnittke
Har r y Haskell
Spanning the spectrum from Baroque to modern, the eight works on tonight’s program are united by the spirit of fantasy, which the dictionary defines as “the free play of creative imagination.” To be sure, freedom has meant different things to different composers in different eras. Bach and Mozart exercised their creative imaginations within the boundaries of generally accepted stylistic and formal conventions, such as the pairing of a free-form fantasy or prelude with a strictly contrapuntal fugue. Thanks in part to the ever-expanding tonal resources of the 19th-century piano— as illustrated by the period instruments that Alexander Melnikov is playing tonight—Mendelssohn and Chopin enjoyed considerably more latitude in their keyboard music. With the end of what musicologists call the “common practice” period, roughly corresponding to the abandonment of traditional tonality by Arnold Schoenberg and other early–20th century composers, all bets were off. We continue to live in the brave new world ushered in by pathbreaking musicians like Alexander Scriabin and Alfred Schnittke. Classic Fantasies Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his D-minor Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in Cöthen while serving as court kapell meister to the music-loving Prince Leopold from 1717 to 1723. This early masterpiece exemplifies the improvisatory prowess that Bach displayed in his “unpremeditated fantasies,” according to his biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel. True to its name, the work modulates freely, unpredictably, and often daringly. The Fantasy section has a distinctly improvisatory feel as it wends from one tonal center and scalar pattern to another by way of a dazzling variety of 14
