The connection between the piano and composition is one of the deepest and closest in music history. Most composers either wrote music directly while sitting at the piano, or at least derived many of their musical ideas from improvisations played on the keyboard. Some great symphonic or choral works were first conceived as piano “reductions”, and then orchestrated at a later time. Thus, the piano occupies a privileged place among virtually all other instruments, since it is the generating instrument on which countless works were created.
In addition to this, the piano shares with other instruments the idea of a repertory of works specifically conceived for that particular instrument, frequently created by a virtuoso of that instrument for players of that instrument. Indeed, precisely because playing the piano is so necessary to composers, and because many composers started their musical activity as pianists, the repertoire “for piano by pianists to pianists” is probably the largest of all instruments.
This Da Vinci Classics album, showcasing the talent and skill of a very young concert pianist and allowing listeners to experience the thrilling atmosphere of a live performance, is built on works by three composers, all of whom were (or still are) great virtuosi of the piano.
Their approach to the keyboard, however, was and is pronouncedly different. Both Chopin and Liszt have their names inextricably bound to the piano, but, interestingly, in inhomogeneous ways. The first element one should take into account is the length of their lives. Chopin died before his fortieth birthday, whilst Liszt reached a ripe old age. Both of them were great piano virtuosi at a very young age, and so – as it unavoidably happened – most of their early works are either for solo piano or for piano and other instruments. But this is observed also with Schumann, for instance. However, whilst both Schumann and Liszt later ventured into other fields, including symphonic or choral works, or Lieder, Chopin would devote the best of his creative energies to the piano also in the subsequent years.
On the other hand, the kind of virtuosity exhibited by Chopin and by Liszt was rather different, and the two pianists – who were contemporaries – were quite aware of this. Liszt would later author a book on Chopin, commemorating his esteemed colleague, and the difference in their respective approaches would by no means diminish his appreciation for Chopin.
Liszt’s virtuosity was flashy, spectacular; he was made for the large concert halls which were starting to appear in the nineteenth century and to establish themselves as the secular counterparts to the churches: secular temples in which the religion of music (the Romantics’ first spiritual concern) was celebrated and worshipped. Even though Liszt’s piano was not as powerful and resonant as today’s instruments, his technique was such that listeners could feel its impact and be slightly overwhelmed by it. Indeed, the changes in piano building in the second half of the nineteenth century were probably due also to Liszt’s approach, which demanded more powerful and more resistant instruments.
Chopin’s style was more subdued, and he privileged the lighter nuances of the piano sound. His pianism was better suited to the salon, where he was listened to properly and knowledgeably appreciated; he preferred to play for connoisseurs who could feel and admire the countless shadings he could impart to his playing. He was first and foremost a poet of the keyboard, although this meant by no means that his pianism was timid or languid. Indeed, there would be no Lisztean piano technique without its Chopinesque groundbreakings.
The Transcendental Etudes by Liszt are the direct evolution and consequence of the two sets of twelve Studies each composed by a very young Frédéric Chopin. He wrote them primarily for himself, in order to conquer the technical difficulties with which he had disseminated his Piano Concertos. But – significantly – he dedicated his op. 10 “to his friend, Franz Liszt”, thus bearing witness of how their competing careers were built on a sincere form of friendship and mutual esteem.
In all likelihood, Chopin had not envisaged the possibility of performing a whole opus of his Etudes publicly and without intermissions, even though some indications (such as the “attacca” between no. 3 and no. 4) clearly allude to public performances. Still, neither were some of the Etudes conceived for the concert hall, nor was their sequence seemingly building a unified whole. However, I purposefully used the adverb “seemingly”, inasmuch as performing op. 10 integrally does have musical meaning. Indeed, even from their tonal layout, there is a clear global organization of the musical material. Some keys are found more than once, and even though Chopin is evidently following the material provided by Bach in his Well-Tempered Clavier, his Bachian inspiration is looser and more superficial in comparison with how Chopin would shape his Preludes op. 28 on Bach’s. Still, playing the op. 10 Etudes in sequence reveals how fittingly are the keys organized – mainly through the circle of fifths and relations of major/minor mode.
The cycle opens with majestic no. 1, whose powerful chorale-like sound hides its open reliance on the model of Bach’s first prelude from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. It is an etude on stretching and extensions of the right hand, which plays large arpeggios ascending and descending over four octaves.
Playing no. 2 after no. 1 adds difficulty to difficulty, since its technique is diametrically opposed. Here the protagonist is once more the right hand, but it plays chromatic scales with its weakest fingers, while the others accompany with a kind of pizzicato. The effect is rustling, otherworldly, reminiscent of that “wind on the graves” which many listeners would perceive in the finale of the B-flat minor Sonata by Chopin.
No. 3, one of the most celebrated, is a kind of Lied in E major, built on a thick polyphonic texture. Its main difficulty is thus a musical one, i.e. that of sustaining and managing multiple musical layers.
As said before, no. 4, in C-sharp minor, should be played immediately after no. 3, and its impact is heightened by this “attacca”. It is one of the quickest Etudes, a fiery Presto con fuoco, where both hands are involved in a breathtaking sequence of scales and arpeggios, with lopsided accents and brisk articulations.
The following Etude, no. 5, is in marked contrast with the preceding. It is as light and humorous as no. 4 was stormy and dark. Its idiosyncrasy consists in the fact that the right hand plays only on the black keys of the piano, thus employing the pentatonic scale (even though the key is clearly G-flat major). It ends with a spectacular sequence of descending octaves played in unison by both hands.
No. 6 is the most intimate and whispered of all, characterized by a rather depressive mood which coalesces around a few notes. Here too the difficulty is in the shading of polyphony and in the refined handling of its texture.
No. 7, in C major like no. 1, is an etude on broken chords, played as dyads by the right hand. Polyphony is primary here too, but its fractured shape invites the listener to “reconstruct” it in his or her mind.
Its crispy sonority gives way to the broad and generous arpeggios of no. 8, which embraces the whole keyboard in a passionate whirlwind of sound. The left hand is in charge of its humorous element, which provides the right hand’s melodies with a tinge of irony.
Anguish, instead of irony, is what characterizes no. 9, a sombre piece in F minor, where the left hand’s arpeggiated accompaniment supports the right hand’s panting melody. Its dark atmosphere is dispelled by no. 10, once more played with stretched hands, and where a major protagonist is the role of accents and polyrhythmic structures. It is a grandiose piece which paves the way for the cycle’s conclusion.
Before that, no. 11 intervenes with its unpretending appearance; its arpeggiated chords reveal hidden harmonies and polyphonies, sustaining the upper voice’s singing part. Finally, no. 12 (commemorating the fall of Warsaw) is one of the most famous and beautiful of Chopin’s Etudes. The thunderstorm played by the left hand, with its virtually uninterrupted patterns of semiquavers, is counterpointed by the broken, but still heroic melodies, of the right hand.
Liszt’s “Fantasia quasi una Sonata” (the explicit reference is to Beethoven’s Sonata quasi una Fantasia) inspired by Dante’s Commedia, is a powerful and extremely difficult work, whereby the intertwining of the main thematic ideas is taken to represent some episodes of Dante’s poem (also following the inspiration of a text by Hugo). The work as it appears today is the result of Liszt’s reworking of a “fragment” he had composed in 1837; nearly twenty years later, he published it in the “Italian” book of Années de pèlerinage. Among the episodes referred to by Liszt are the menacing gate of the Inferno, the cries of the damned souls, but also the passionate love among Paolo and Francesca – one of the lyrical highpoints of the Inferno.
The pieces by living composer and virtuoso pianist Marco Sollini provide us with still another perspective on how pianism and composition may intertwine. They belong in a series of pieces written between 2001 and 2007, and constituting – in his own words – a kind of secret journal of his personal itinerary as an artist and a man.
In his Studio op. 18, like in some of Chopin’s etudes, the piano writing encompasses the whole range of the keyboard. In Incantesimo op. 23, the connection between chanting and enchanting appears clearly, and in Cantilena the alternation of an amiable tune with a majestic march provides the piece with variety and contrast.
Virtuosity is also required by Impromptu, whose evocation of waterfalls is highly suggestive and musically interesting. Another piece by Sollini closes this recital as a charming encore: Carillon, a miniature piece playing on chromaticism, and suggesting an idea of purity and innocence.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024