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Piano Sonatas Nos. 1–6 Twelve Preludes for piano
IVAN SOKOLOV
2-CD
NOVELETTEN OP. 21 FANTASIESTÜCKE OP. 111 GESÄNGE DER FRÜHE OP. 133 ALLEGRO OP. 8
Chopin 4 Ballades, 4 Impromptus 24 Preludes, Op. 28 20 Nocturnes 3-CD
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Yuan Sheng Pleyel 1845
www.piano-classics.com
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SCHUMANN
Ronald Brautigam, piano 1. ALLEGRO, Op. 8 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
8’26
NOVELETTEN Op. 21 Markiert und kräftig Äusserst rasch und mit Bravour Leicht und mit Humor Ballmässig, sehr munter Rauschend und festlich Sehr lebhaft, mit vielem Humor Äusserst rasch Sehr lebhaft
5’20 5’49 4’27 3’17 8’47 4’07 3’12 11’03
FANTASIESTÜCKE Op. 111 10. Sehr rasch, mit leidenschaftlichem Vortrag 11. Ziemlich langsam 12. Kräftig und sehr markiert 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
2’14 5’26 3’15
GESÄNGE DER FRÜHE Op. 133 Im ruhigen Tempo Belebt, nicht zu rasch Lebhaft Bewegt Im Anfange ruhiges, im Verlauf bewegtes tempo Total time:
2’38 1’56 2’23 2’13 3’15 79’05
Recording: 18-20 November 1993, English Church Begijnhof, Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Producer: Theo Muller - Engineer: Peter Nicholls - Graphic: Manuel Mocellin - Licensed from Olympia Compact Discs, Ltd, UK
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Grand Manan Island, Bay of Fundy, 1852 Frederic Edwin Church
ROBERT SCHUMANN “First Act: Necromancy Second Act: Love Attempts Third Act: Triumph of the Will” These are the titles of a three-part description of the life of Robert Schumann. Surprise may be registered at the discovery that the third title seems to come from the Thousand Year Reich, but the pattern is familiar. The author, Rudolf Thiel, is by no means the only person to fall prey to the temptation to bathe Schumann in a pink, Romantic light. Musical literature is brim-full of depictions of this composer which come dangerously close to being risible. Even without Romantic exaggeration, however, he was a fascinating personality. Schumann’s whole life was a succession of extremes. He was a precocious child who suffered from an inherited mental frailty. He studied the piano in his home town of Zwickau and later, alongside studies of law, in Leipzig and Heidelberg; his teacher, Friedrich Wieck, foresaw a brilliant future for him and he seemed destined to become an outstanding piano virtuoso. In 1832, however, a home-made piano training contraption destroyed
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one of his hands and with it his hopes of a career as a virtuoso. Psychologically he had already suffered greatly. In quick succession his sister and his father had died; the latter was mentally ill and committed suicide. He was mostly self-taught as a composer, although he also studied half-heartedly with Heinrich Dorn. After the beginning of his composing career, in 1834, he founded the famous Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which was to become his literary outlet. He wrote most of the magazine’s articles himself under a variety of pseudonyms. It should also be noted that he suffered at times from a split personality to such a degree that he apparently held quite serious conversations with himself. In 1837 he became engaged to Clara Wieck, the young daughter of his teacher, but because of her father’s violent opposition they could not marry until 1840. She became the most important interpreter of his piano music; at the period of their wedding and thereafter he composed much of the remainder of his output, including symphonic music and many songs. When he moved to Düsseldorf in 1850 as Director of Music, his mental illness had already started to become serious. In 1854 he tried to drown himself in the Rhine, after which he was admitted to the asylum in Endenich where he died two years later.
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Romantic authors do not merely describe Schumann’s life as above; they add a greater or lesser degree of sugary colouration. At the beginning of her biography of Clara Schumann which appeared at the beginning of the 1990s, however, the musicologist Eva Weißweiler demonstrates that the historical facts permit a quite different image of Schumann. In this book, sensationally, she agrees with Friedrich Wieck. Schumann’s father-in-law feared that Schumann was a weak, homosexual alcoholic, and Eva Weißweiler shares this opinion. She wishes to discover whether or not Johannes Brahms was the real father of Felix Schumann, who was born in 1853. She completely erases the previously accepted image of the Romantic love of two artists and in doing so spares neither partner: she points out that Clara only visited Robert once during the seventeen months she spent at Endenich and that she dining with Brahms while Robert was on his deathbed. It is outside the scope of this commentary to pass judgement on this very one-sided depiction, but Eva Weißweiler does show that the traditional, rosy image of Robert and Clara Schumann is not the only possible one. Whatever the truth of the matter, there is documentary evidence that the development of
his relationship with Clare was of the greatest significance fo Schumann’s creative activity: in short, she was a major source of inspiration. When the first of the pieces recorded here was written she was only a twelve-year-old child and could hardly have affected his work. Later her influence was all the more powerful, both as a person and as an artist. One might think that calling a piano piece simply Allegro would indicate a lack of imagination. In the case of Robert Schumann, a kindred spirit of E.T.A. Hoffmann, the title seems even more offputting: he really ought to have thought up something better! This piece, however, is the first movement of a piano sonata which was never completed, and as the title of such movement Allegro is quite normal. The piece was written in Leipzig in 1831 and was published in 1833 bearing a dedication to Schumann’s great early love, Ernestine von Fricken. In the meantime the composer had come to regard the formal structure as too rhapsodic for a sonata, although we may consider him too critical when he described ‘good intention’ as the only positive quality of Prestissimo, at the beginning of which there is a section without bar-lines – a rare feature in Romantic music. On
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the Swedish label BIS. His discography of over 50 recordings so far includes the complete works of Mozart and Haydn on fortepiano and Mendelssohn Piano Concertos with Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam. In 2004 he released the rst of his 17-CD Beethoven cycle on fortepiano. After the rst six volumes the series had already become rmly established as the benchmark cycle on fortepiano. According to US magazine Fanfare ‘this could be a Beethoven piano-sonata cycle that challenges the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift.’ Besides his work for BIS, Ronald Brautigam has recorded piano concertos by Shostakovich, Hindemith and Frank Martin with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly for Decca, and has made several recordings with his long-standing duopartner, violinist Isabelle van Keulen.
Brautigam’s recordings have earned a number of awards including two Edison Awards, a Diapason d’Or de l’ann8e, a ‘MIDEM Classical Award’ for best solo piano recording (2004) and in 2010 he won the prestigious MIDEM Classical Award for best concerto recording. Ronald Brautigam is Professor at the Musik-Hochschule in Basel.
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RONALD BRAUTIGAM Ronald Brautigam has deservedly earned a reputation as one of Holland’s most respected musicians, remarkable not only for his virtuosity and musicality but also for the eclectic nature of his musical interests. He has received numerous awards including the Dutch Music Prize and a 2010 MIDEM Classical Award for best concerto recording for his CD of Beethoven Piano Concertos with the NorrkDping Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Parrott. A student of the legendary Rudolf Serkin, Ronald Brautigam performs regularly with leading orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw, London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the
Rundfunk- Sinfonieorchester Berlin. He has performed alongside a number of distinguished conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink, Frans BrIggen, Christopher Hogwood, Marek Janowski, Sir Roger Norrington, Marin Alsop, Ivor Bolton, Andrew Parrott, Ton Koopman, Ivan Fisher and Sir Mark Elder. Besides his performances on modern instruments Ronald Brautigam has established himself as a leading exponent of the fortepiano, working with orchestras such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Tafelmusik, 18th-Century Orchestra, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Hanover band, Concerto Copenhagen and l’Orchestre des Champs-Elys8es. In 1995 Ronald Brautigam began what has proved a highly successful association with
two occasions long-held octaves (of B – C sharp – F sharp and then of C sharp – D – F sharp) bring the B minor activity to a standstill. The daringly chromatic harmony disguises the sonata form structure to such an extent that it is hard to follow, but this is of little matter because the entire purpose of the Allegro is the struggle from B minor towards B major, a key which appears radiantly shortly before the end. ‘I have written such an awful amount of music for you in the last three weeks – humorous pieces, Egmont stories, family scenes with fathers, a wedding, in short extremely lovable things – and I have called the whole thing Noveletten, because your name is Clara and “Wiecketten” doesn’t sound so good. – These lines come from a letter which Schumann sent to Clara Wieck in Vienna on 6th February 1838 and refer to the Novelletten, Op. 21. That Schumann composed ‘an awful amount’ is a remark which applies to the entire year, and the musical harvest was rich even by his standards, including the Sonatas Op. 14 and Op. 22, the Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana – piano works which alone would have sufficed to establish the composer’s worldwide fame. The title Novelletten should not be read as the
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diminutive form of a word meaning ‘novelties’; indeed any diminutive would be entirely out of place in the in the context of this powerful piano work. The title refers instead to the pianist Clara Novello, whom Schumann admired greatly (the work is, however, dedicated to Adolf Henselt). This explains the reference to ‘Wiecketten’ in the quotation above. The reference to ‘Egmont stories’ is also a play on words: Egmont’s beloved was called Klärchen, a familiar form of ‘Clara’. The work is not programme music, however, even though Schumann wrote to Clara that she was present in each of the eight pieces. We might at best assume that the last Novellette represents the wedding which Schumann mentions. The pieces are constructed as rondos, in which a nocturne composed by Clara is quoted on several occasions: this melody, descending stepwise, is most apparent in the second trio of the last Novellette, where it is marked (and also resembles) ‘a voice from afar’. After a march-like first piece full of dynamic and harmonic contrasts comes the highly virtuoso second piece, which was highly regarded by Liszt. The third Novellette is humourous, almost comical, and in the original manuscript Schumann here placed a rather gloomy quotation from the
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opening witches’ scène from Macbeth. No. 4 is marked Ballmäßig (in the manner of a Ball) and is a waltz; the same description might also be applied to No. 5, a polonaise marked Rauschend und festlich (euphoric and festive), a little too fast for dancing and with striking harmonic variety. No. 6 takes us from key to key at a sparkling tempo: this magnificent scherzo presents eight themes in a very short period. Octaves dominate the equally rapid seventh Novellette, and then comes the finale – for the last piece is so extensive and carefully constructed that it is perceived as such. In fact it almost consists of two pieces, separated (or united) by the above-mentioned quotation from Clara’s nocturne. The rondo form is thereby extended and broken up, and Schumann brings the work to an elegant conclusion in a sort of free fantasy. Restless creative frenzy characterised the last summer of Vincent van Gogh, and among his most impressive paintings from this period is Wheatfield with Crows. The vehemence of the brushstrokes in the field, the threatening clouds and the black crows create the same frightening feeling that can be noticed when listening to extremely chromatic music. In his last years Vincent van Gogh often worked in the state which is termed ‘hypergraphy’.
Schumann showed the same symptom, a chronic creative frenzy, and it is illuminating to compare the two artists. Both were manic-depressives; Schumann marked this by introducing two alter ego figures into his musical works – the lively Florestan and the dreamy Eusebius. The restless element was especially marked towards the end of Schumann’s life, for instance in the last two works recorded here. Schumann wrote two piano collections (and two chamber music works) entitled Phantasiestücke. The earlier one, Op. 12, was composed in 1837 and consists of eight pieces with descriptive titles (perhaps the most famous of which is Aufschwung). The Phantasiestücke (Three Fantastic Pieces) Op. 111 were written in 1851, after he had moved to Düsseldorf, and are quite different: three untitled pieces with the indication (rare for Schumann) to be played attacca, i.e. without a pause. It is as though the composer were urging us to regard this as absolute music. The passion of the first piece can be compared with Chopin’s Revolutionary Study, but because the melodies are if anything more rudimentary and the harmonies even more daring, one thinks
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instead of a much later and equally highly-charged master of the piano: Alexander Scriabin. The second piece also calls two other composers to mind: Franz Schubert in the introverted beginning and Johannes Brahms later on in the bass line and associated harmony. At this time Schumann and Brahms had yet to meet, but we know that the younger man was very impressed by Schumann and, although they were only granted a short time together, they were to develop a warm friendship. By contrast the third piece is much simpler, at least as the beginning which recalls a wayfarer’s song, an impression which is only briefly erased in the middle section. The Gesänge der Frühe (Morning Songs) are Schumann’s last completed piano works and were written in 1853, just a few months before his attempted suicide. The poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who died ten years earlier, can be regarded as the spiritual father of these pieces although they are dedicated to Bettina Brentano, a poetess and associate of Goethe and Beethoven. A glance at the score does not reveal any restless passion, but the title should not lead us to expect a pastoral morning mood; this is introverted music which Schumann himself described as the expression of a feeling rather than as a painting. It is strange that the
dynamic and harmonic developments here go in different directions: although the dynamics form a great arch (quiet-loud-quiet) through the set of five pieces, the harmony is continually intensified until, in the last piece, it achieves a boldness reminiscent of Reger of Strauss. The work begins softly and cautiously, like a chorale into which chromatic elements only slowly appear; the second piece, in the same key (D major) could be seen as a variation, but the harmony develops ever further and engulfs the melody. The third piece adds a rhythmic nervosity in the form of a 9/8 time signature which is at times distorted by syncopations. In the fourth piece we encounter a minor key for the first time (F sharp minor), and harmonically distant notes occur with increasing frequency in the demisemiquavers of the accompaniment. The final piece is superficially peaceful but inwardly uneasy – a quaking which is underscored by awkward intervals – augmented octaves, seconds, and thirds. A question seems to be forcing its way towards us, a question which Schumann had already once asked in his music: Why?
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© Per Skans 1994