Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Variations Op 21 No 1 and Op 24
Rhapsodies Op 79 / Intermezzi Op 117
1 Rhapsody, Op 79 No 1 [9.52]
2 Rhapsody, Op 79 No 2 [6.54]
Variations on an Original Theme
3 Thema [1.33]
4 Variation 1 [1.30]
5 Variation 2 [0.56]
6 Variation 3 [1.06]
7 Variation 4 [0.53]
8 Variation 5 [1.45]
David Wilde piano
Variations on an Original Theme by Handel
18 Aria [1.01]
19 Variation 1 [0.49]
20 Variation 2 [0.40]
9 Variation 6 [0.51]
10 Variation 7 [1.20]
11 Variation 8 [0.48]
12 Variation 9 [1.08]
13 Variation 10 [1.12]
14 Variation 11 [4.49]
15 Intermezzo, Op 117 No 1 [7.00]
16 Intermezzo, Op 117 No 2 [6.03]
17 Intermezzo, Op 117 No 3 [6.16]
21 Variation 3 [0.46]
22 Variation 4 [0.51]
23 Variation 5 [1.00]
24 Variation 6 [0.59]
25 Variation 7 [0.37]
26 Variation 8 [0.38]
27 Variation 9 [1.22]
28 Variation 10 [0.32]
29 Variation 11 [0.44]
30 Variation 12 [0.49]
31 Variation 13 [1.40]
32 Variation 14 [0.43]
33 Variation 15 [0.51]
34 Variation 16 [0.33]
35 Variation 17 [0.31]
36 Variation 18 [0.44]
37 Variation 19 [0.50]
38 Variation 20 [1.32]
39 Variation 21 [0.59]
40 Variation 22 [0.50]
41 Variation 23 [0.39]
42 Variation 24 [0.36]
43 Variation 25 [0.41]
44 Fuga [5.11]
Total playing time [81.26]
What are Brahms? This amusing gaffe may be familiar but it ironically suggests a plurality and, in the case of the piano music, a panorama of infinite richness and range. At the age of twenty Brahms introduced himself to Robert and Clara Schumann playing his piano sonatas and leaving them awed and enchanted by the sheer size and grandeur of his talent. For them he was already ‘fully armed’ and for Clara, in particular, a young eagle had spread the wings of his genius. The sonatas are, indeed, heroic utterances, remembering Beethoven yet leaping into new realms of expression and an altogether novel Romantic rhetoric. Such youthful outpouring was, however, short-lived; Brahms turned gratefully to variation form, finding the genre congenial to his ever-growing mastery and imagination.
But whatever your view you will surely see them, in the words of the poet William Ritter, as ‘like the lustre of golden parks in autumn and the austere black and white of winter walks’: a fitting conclusion to an autobiographical journey of exultant and reflective glory.
Recorded on 3-4 September 2008 at the Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh
Producer: Paul Baxter
Engineer: Beth Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Simon Smith
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
With thanks to the University of Edinburgh
Piano: Steinway Model D Grand Piano, 1995, serial no 527910
Piano technician: Norman W. Motion, consultant to Steinway & Sons
Page turner: Hannah Gallagher
Photograph editing: Raymond Parks
Photography © Delphian Records
Cover image: Drew Padrutt
Design: Drew Padrutt
Booklet editor: John Fallas
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK
www.delphianrecords.co.uk
Throughout his life there would be temporary returns to his early boldness, a memory no doubt of his first confidence and bravura both as composer and pianist. Yet the primary mood of ‘late’ Brahms is one of a deep introspection and bittersweet lyricism that form a unique and elusive part of the keyboard repertoire. How significant, for example, that the Fantasy Pieces Op 116 should contain three consecutive slow intermezzi placed beneath more turbulent capriccios. It is customary to consider those final masterpieces, with their startling resurgences of energy (a case of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night, / Old age should burn and rave at close of day; / Rage, rage against the dying of the light’), the truest essence of Brahms.
But enough of generality. David Wilde’s richly comprehensive programme opens with a dramatic curtain-raiser – the two Rhapsodies Op 79, a notable return to Brahms’ Sturm und Drang Romanticism. Here the terse opening of the B minor Rhapsody and its pleading, Schumannesque second subject give us Brahms’ old rhetorical sense of contrast, with an additional surprise in the form of a final dark-hued reworking of the central molto dolce expressivo’s chiming, bell-like counterpoints. The G minor Rhapsody is dominated by a powerful, arching melody and a sombre triplet figure deployed with great ingenuity. Brahms may have dismissed his opus 79 as ‘trash’, but the Rhapsodies’ popularity testifies to his return to his early heady ambition with all of his first ardour and assurance resurrected.
The Variations on an Original Theme is the first of two sets of variations published as Brahms’ Op 21. Surprisingly neglected, and given short critical shrift even by such committed Brahmsians as the late Denis Matthews, they are admittedly uneven. But, like Rachmaninov’s similarly uneven Variations on a theme of Chopin, they contain music of a beauty rare even in Brahms. The theme itself is of a haunting breadth and beauty,
the immediately subsequent variations of polyphonic and canonic interest while Variation 6 shows an increase in momentum before the near-pointillist wide leaping intervals of Variation
7. There is full-blooded Brahmsian virtuoso chording in Variation 8 but it is Variation 11 with its chains of trills (a memory of Beethoven’s Op 111 sonata?) that leads us to a coda glowing with human warmth, a musical sunset that has surely been underestimated down the ages.
Turning from early to late Brahms we come to the three Intermezzi Op 117. The first is prefaced by some lines from a Scottish lullaby, and its principal melody is subtly entwined with a varied bell-like accompaniment and a gently rocking left-hand rhythm, with deeper reflection reserved for the più adagio. The arabesques of the second piece suggest a variation on a melody as yet unheard. And its gentle regret collapses into an altogether bleaker mood in the third which confirms a disconsolate moment in octaves in the first. Later, a gently cascading contrast shifts from major to minor, clouding the music’s graceful momentum with disquiet.
Finally, an undisputed masterpiece: the Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel Composed in 1861 and first performed by Clara Schumann, the Variations take their theme from three ‘lessons’ for the harpsichord which Handel wrote for the children of his Royal patron, the Prince of Wales. Neat and dapper beginnings lead to a profusion of ideas, developing one
from another with masterful ease and cunning. Yet despite such manifest invention the theme’s simple harmonic and periodic structure is scrupulously preserved. Although the eight-bar scheme is held intact throughout the twentyfive variations immense variety is provided, paradoxically, by the theme’s seeming limitations. Few works balance so perfectly a strict adherence to the rules with such luxuriant artistic freedom.
As on his previous Delphian disc of music by Liszt and Busoni, David Wilde’s power and individuality make a separation between composer and performer, between creator and re-creator unrealistic. Generous in a truly Brahmsian spirit, with all repeats he finds ample opportunity to realign voicing and texture, rejecting a more familiar carbon-copy approach. Again, he sees the simple grace and lyricism favoured by many pianists as an evasion of a deeper poetic truth, and if he gives us all of Brahms’ strength in the fugue from the ‘Handel’ Variations (making nonsense of Hugo Wolf’s claim, ‘Brahms cannot exult’), he is no less responsive to darker nights of the soul (Op 117). Always there is an open invitation to re-appraise Brahms’ genius, not by a radical re-interpretation, by the determinedly ‘different’ way of, say, Gould or Pogorelich, but by a probing and enquiring look beneath the music’s surface life. David Wilde may be true to the composer, but he is a pianist to make you think again.
© 2008 Bryce Morrison
Bryce Morrison is an internationally famous teacher, critic, broadcaster and pianist, and is considered among the world’s leading authorities on piano performance.
Pianist and composer David Wilde was born in Manchester in 1935. A busy wartime career as ‘boy pianist’ brought him to the attention of the legendary pianist Solomon, who arranged for Wilde to study with his pupil and assistant Franz Reizenstein. Later, from 1949, Wilde studied composition with Professor Richard Hall at the Royal Manchester College of Music (precursor of the Royal Northern College of Music), of which he was elected a Fellow of the RMCM in 1953, the same year he was awarded the prestigious Walter Dayas Gold Medal.
In 1961 Wilde won a first prize at the LisztBartók competition in Budapest. The legendary Nadia Boulanger was a jury member, and invited him to visit her in Paris at any suitable time, so when in the same year Wilde was awarded a senior scholarship by the Caird Foundation of Dundee he wrote to accept her invitation and ask if he might work with her on a more regular basis. She responded most encouragingly, and Wilde joined her in Paris and at the Conservatoire Americain in Fontainebleau (of which Boulanger was then Musical Director) in 1963, and again in 1964 and 1968, remaining in close touch with ‘Mademoiselle’ for the rest of her long life.
Wilde is a passionate teacher, and his pupils include Jack Gibbons, Christopher Oakden, Thomas Hell and Irina Georgieva. Wilde taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover from 1981 to 2000, and was made a Professor Emeritus of the State of Lower Saxony in 1983. He has given many lectures in both English and German, including his paper on psychology and the meaning of music, ‘Listening to the Shadows’. His analysis of Liszt’s B minor Sonata, which he read and illustrated at London’s Analytical Psychology Club (of which he is an elected life member), was originally written as a contribution to the book Analectia Lisztiana, ed. Michael Saffle (publ. Virginia Tech).
During the 1990s, having travelled to besieged Sarajevo to support his heroic colleagues there, Wilde composed several works protesting against human rights abuses in our time, notably The Cellist of Sarajevo (1992), the Suite for Violin and Piano, Cry ‘Bosnia Herzegovina’, the String Quartet (of which the last movement is a ‘Threnody for the Unknown Victim of War and Oppression’), and the opera London Under Siege, after an idea by Bosnian poet Goran Simic. The Cellist of Sarajevo, dedicated to Vedran Smailovic, is played the world over and was recorded by Yo-Yo Ma for Sony Classical, and the opera London under Siege was produced by the State Theatre of Lower Saxony in 1998. The then Governor of Sarajevo travelled
‘Superb performer, magnificent musician’
– Nadia BoulangerDavid Wilde
to Germany to attend the first performance.
Wilde was twice honoured by the Bosnians: in 2003 he was awarded a diploma by the International Peace Committee of Sarajevo ‘for services to human rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina and throughout Europe’, and in 2005 he was presented with the ‘Symbol of the Open Door’, representing honorary Bosnian Citizenship.
Wilde has given many concert tours of the UK and played frequently with all the major London orchestras, all the BBC orchestras, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Scottish National and Hallé Orchestras. He appeared regularly at the Henry Wood Proms with conductors such as Horenstein, Boulez and Downes. He has toured New Zealand and played and taught in India, Australia, Bulgaria, Russia, Canada, the USA, most countries of Western Europe and, of course, Hungary. His recordings include all of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano and the sonata by Reizenstein with Erich Gruenberg, Alan Bush’s Variations, Nocturne and Finale on an English Sea Song (in a version for piano and orchestra which Wilde had premiered at the Cheltenham Festival), and concertos by Thomas Wilson (especially composed for Wilde) and by Sir Lennox Berkeley. In his recently published diaries Berkeley, who was present at the recording of his concerto, wrote simply: ‘David Wilde was first class.’
More recently, Wilde has commissioned a sonata from Gabriel Jackson with funds from the Scottish Arts Council, the Britten-Pears Trust and the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, and premiered it at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh in 2007. He gave the European premiere of this work during a recital in Braunschweig, Germany in October 2008.
In 2007 EMI reissued Wilde’s 1968 HMV Liszt recital, coupled with Liszt recordings by Earl Wild. Wilde now records exclusively for Delphian Records: a Chopin recital (DCD34010), the complete piano works of Luigi Dallapiccola together with his Songs of Machado with soprano Susan Hamilton (DCD34020), and the seven Elegies of Busoni coupled with the Liszt Sonata (DCD34030) are already available, and a Schumann recital is in preparation, scheduled for release in July 2009.
Wilde has two children by his first marriage, and since retirement from his position in Hannover in 2000 lives with his second wife, writer and historian Jane Mary Wilde, in Bathgate, near Edinburgh.
Liszt: Sonata in B minor / Busoni: Elegies David Wilde piano (DCD34030)
Bryce Morrison writes: ‘I first heard David play the Busoni Elegies at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. I also heard his earlier recording of the Liszt Sonata. These performances, as cogent as they were lucid and powerful, have long stayed in my memory, yet they are far excelled by Delphian’s present offering. Here, surely, is blazing confirmation of what Sir Michael Tippett once called “the immense effort of interpretation”, by means of a rare communicative vividness and force. In a time of increasing musical homogeneity David Wilde’s Liszt and Busoni stand out for their very special drama and integrity.’
‘Wilde lives up to his name in Liszt’s B minor Sonata … a performance heaving with free-flowing passion, power and zeal’
– The Scotsman, August 2007
Luigi Dallapiccola: a portrait
David Wilde piano, Susan Hamilton soprano, Nicola Stonehouse mezzosoprano, Robert Irvine cello (DCD34020)
Luigi Dallapiccola is one of the most celebrated Italian composers of the twentieth century. This disc features chamber music and songs alongside his complete works for solo piano. Whether drawing on the music of the past to nourish the contrapuntal organisation of his own, or concentrating on the opportunities for gentle lyricism afforded by bell-like vocal and instrumental sonorities, Dallapiccola’s commitment to traditional expressive nuance has been seen by critics as a powerful aspect of his Italian insistence upon cantabilità – songfulness.
‘a marriage of discipline and imagination of which Wilde is fully aware … [Nicola Stonehouse] is eloquence itself in the Goethe-Lieder’
– Gramophone, April 2007
David Wilde on Delphian