PROGRAM NOTES JANUARY 26, 2020

BY BILL CRANE

ROBERT SCHUMANN
GEISTERVARIATIONEN, WOO 24
COMPOSER: born June 8, 1810 in Zwickau (province of Saxony, Germany) ; died July 29, 1856 in Bonn,
quarter of Endenich

WORK COMPOSED: 1854, but not published until 1939

ESTIMATED DURATION: 11 minutes

“The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according
to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler.”
“Can that which has cost the artist days, weeks, months and even years of reflection be
understood in a flash by a dilettante?” – Robert Schumann

The tragedy of Robert Schumann’s profound mental illness in the last years of his life is quite
well-known to music lovers and it is easy to get wound up in the morose tale. But, all that took
place in a very different time – one without modern medicine – and details of the story matter
a great deal less than the profundity of Schumann’s composing and the surprising success and
coherence of his radical experimentation.

The “Ghost Variations” were to be Schumann’s last work and are noteworthy in this sad part of
his biography. Ten days before he tried to drown himself in the Rhine River in February,
suffering from severe aural hallucinations, Schumann claimed that he heard angels dictating a
theme to him. Rescued from his suicide attempt by bargemen dragging him ashore, he
continued work on a set of variations on the fascinating theme and on completion sent them to
his beloved wife, Clara. Only a few days later he had himself committed to an asylum and
would die there two years later.

The lovely theme, a chorale/hymn tune, actually may not have come from the angels, as
Schumann had used it several times before, in the second movements of his Violin Concerto in
D minor and the second string quartet, and the Song Album for the Young. Clara forbad
publication of the work, for unknown reasons, and it was not published until 1939, although
Brahms wrote piano duet variations on the theme in 1861.

It is very intimate music. The variations stick closely to the theme, with the original melody
always present. They do not disassemble the theme, but only comment on it, using usual
techniques of counterpoint, canon, triplet figurations above the theme, etc., and finally filigree
at moments so chromatic that the melody gets a bit lost in a lovely dissonant haze. Somehow,
that seems overly poignant as the work also marks the end of Schumann’s composing life. The
listener may wonder, indeed, if the Geistervariationen are complete; might he have written
more had his illness not become quite so profound? What are we to make of this
extraordinarily candid portrait from a man struggling with insurmountable challenge?
NIKOLAI MEDTNER
CHETYRE SKAZKI, OPUS 26, NOS. 1 & 2; DVE SKAZKI, OPUS 20, NO. 1
COMPOSER: born December 24, 1879 or January 5, 1880 (according to the Julian or Gregorian calendar),
in Moscow; died November 13, 1951 in London

WORK COMPOSED: 1904-1905

ESTIMATED DURATION: 7 minutes

“Of all the existing entertainments, musical art is the most unfortunate, inactive,
uninteresting. The true function of music is not to entertain or distract, but to attract,
collect, and hypnotically concentrate the feelings and thoughts of the listener. This
does not mean that our muse invariably has a stern brow. It means only that neither its
joys nor its sorrows, nor even its brow itself, may be beheld by those who look for
entertainment. She turns away from those who by their nature are not attracted to her.
She punishes with severe boredom those who seek in her only the excitement of idle
thought, and in their idle thought wander past her brow, past her themes.”
– Nikolai Medtner
"No one tells such tales as Kolya.” – Sergei Rachmaninov, after hearing Medtner play
at a private party

"I think one of the reasons Nikolai Medtner hasn’t had a chance is that his music needs
very, very committed performances. If you play his works passively, the juice of his
music is really not going to be extracted – it’s simply not going to come out.”
– Marc-André Hamelin
In every musical era, there have been composers not well recognized in their own times and
neglected in the years following. Some, including Medtner, clung to earlier styles or
techniques of composition and eschewed the world of self-promotion that can win one renown
in the accepted circles of “taste.” For Medtner, this was a matter of not choosing the “modern”
way of doing things, rather choosing to stay with his very Romantic and very Russian
traditions. One must not forget the political upheavals of the first half of the 20th century,
when so many composers faced formidable challenges from Russian cultural authorities.
Arguably, a little statue of him belongs on that shelf where they keep the little statues of the
Great Russian Composers, even if his music can be called an “acquired taste.” In all of his
composing, it seems, Medtner strove to make grand statements, to tell very great tales, even if
some, like me, will find it hard to perceive those things completely on just one hearing of any
of his compositions. He is worthy, I believe, of further examination and enjoyment. Thank
goodness for You-Tube!

Happily, we for whom this composer may be a new acquaintance today will get a fine serving
of some of his most original and enchanting music, his Skazki, most often translated as “Fairy
Tales” in English. From Op. 20 and Op. 28, Dasol has chosen three of the 38 Skazki and they
feature many of the composing tricks for which he is known: great inventiveness in the texture
of the music, deep harmonies, boundless enigma, lots of variation in the rhythms. They are
miniature tone poems, even if quite fleeting in duration (only one and a half to three minutes
each.) Lovers of very “narrative” music (here think of Pictures at an Exhibition, for instance) will
delight in these witty, tart tales.

Happily, too, Medtner, the man, and his music are becoming better known. A Medtner Society
was founded in London in 1949 by His Highness Jayachamarajendra Wadiya Bahadur, the
Maharajah of Mysore. (Wouldn’t you like to know the background of that story!) In 2018, the
Society organized the first International Nikolai Medtner Music Festival in Berlin. We may well
get to know his music much more in the years to come.

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN
PIANO SONATA NO. 3, OP. 23
COMPOSER: born December 25, 1871 or January 6, 1872 (according to the Julian or Gregorian calendar), in
Moscow; died April 14 or 27, 1915, in Moscow

WORK COMPOSED: 1897-1898

ESTIMATED DURATION: 19 minutes

“No composer has had more scorn heaped on him or greater love bestowed.”
– The Great Soviet Encylopedia
Those who are fond of the history of composers will know that Scriabin had inordinately grand
ambitions about what music, most of all his compositions, could do. Indeed, Scriabin, with his
arcane spiritual practices and unique compositional innovations, very much hoped to change
utterly the course of humanity’s future, although just how remains unclear to most who study
him, even in a scholarly way. Affected by synesthesia (the mixed perception of specific colors
and tones), and greatly involved in mysticism and theosophy, Scriabin would prove to be a
great influence on myriad composers (including Stravinsky and Prokofiev), and, like so many,
would be less admired after his death until receiving a deserved resurgence of interest in
more recent time. Some consider his ten published piano sonatas to be the most consistent
contribution to the genre since the time of Beethoven’s sonatas. (For me, that’s stretching it a
bit.)
The Third Sonata comes from the time in Scriabin’s life in which he was newly married and had
just returned to Russia after European triumphs. He promptly set to work on this new sonata
and originally called the finished work “Gothic.” Some years later, he proposed a different
program for the sonata (although some think it may have been his verbose and dramatic
second companion [he never divorced his wife] who wrote the description), calling it “States of
the Soul.” A lengthy musicological discourse on this large-scale, four-movement work could be
put here, with complexities possibly unwound, etc., but it may be more useful to today’s
listener, rather, to cite the further details of that program:
First movement, Drammàtico: The soul, free and wild, thrown into the whirlpool of suffering
and strife.
Second movement, Allegretto: Apparent momentary and illusory respite; tired from suffering
the soul wants to forget, wants to sing and flourish, in spite of everything. But the light rhythm,
the fragrant harmonies are just a cover through which gleams the restless and languishing
soul.
Third movement, Andante: A sea of feelings, tender and sorrowful: love, sorrow, vague
desires, inexplicable thoughts, illusions of a delicate dream.
Finale, Presto con fuoco: From the depth of being rises the fearsome voice of creative man
whose victorious song resounds triumphantly. But too weak yet to reach the acme he plunges,
temporarily defeated, into the abyss of non-being.
After such drama, the listener may be startled by the abrupt ending of the final movement,
denying, as it does, the triumphant, major ending that it will have seemed to have been
building. Oh, my – the “abyss of non-being.”

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
SCHERZO NO. 1, OP. 20; SCHERZO NO. 2, OP. 31; SCHERZO NO. 3, OP.
39; SCHERZO NO. 4, OP. 54
COMPOSER: born March 1, 1810, in Warsaw; died October 17, 1849 in Paris

WORK COMPOSED: 1) 1831-32; 2) 1837; 3) 1839; 4) 1842

ESTIMATED DURATION: 39 minutes

“Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the
universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.”
– Frédéric Chopin
“How will gravity array itself, if wit is already cloaked so darkly?”
– Robert Schumann’s reaction to
Chopin’s first scherzo.
Scherzo, as most all music lovers know, is Italian for “joke” and prior to these extended works
by Chopin was intended to mean the light, humorous, easy-going stuff between more
substantial movements, or sometimes even standing alone as charming pieces, just for delight.
Beethoven had taken the form a bit in darker, or at least more dramatic, directions, but it was
Chopin who departed radically from what had come before. These are vividly emotional, often
violent, often anxious, and sometimes voluptuously lyrical pieces, always bearing some of his
most inspired melodies. These are works, unlike their predecessors, that shun levity and
felicity, and quite grab large-scale expressiveness. They have dramatic surges of power, each
cunningly introduced by small gestures of great suggestiveness, that nearly defy description.
Scherzo No. 1 in B minor (Op. 20) was written in 1831, just after Chopin had left his native
Poland. Brilliant in its virtuoso storm of notes and harmonically adventuresome, it bears a
slower middle section that quotes an old Polish Christmas song and allows the return of the
opening themes for a remarkable flourish of an ending.

In No. 2, B-flat minor (Op. 31) from 1837, Chopin took off in decidedly original directions. Highly
contrasting themes develop in alternation of equally contrasting episodes of pianissimos and
fortissimos and bear out one of his most thrilling, soaring melodies. All the compositional
devices he employed (including ending in the “wrong” key) could keep a musicology graduate
student happily studying for days, but, more important, I think, is the profound exhilaration it
(seemingly) effortlessly renders.

Begun in Majorca in 1838-39, where Chopin and his mistress, the writer George Sand, were
spending several months, No. 3 in C-sharp minor (Op. 39) was finished in Marseille, to which
they had moved at the onset of a bad flare-up of the composer’s tuberculosis. The opening of
No. 3 is tonally and rhythmically ambiguous, but leads to a quite stormy theme played in
octaves, it becomes more and more agitated as it goes on. A beguiling middle section, sort of
a combination of a hymn and a shimmering figuration around it, contrast with all the drama, but
lead back to it. A final coda thunders with astonishing power.

The final scherzo, No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54, of 1842, begins and ends in a major key, the only
one to do so. Some ears will hear it as “lighter” than its three predecessors, but that in no way
indicates that it has any less range of expression. Of it, the writer Herbert Weinstock said that
it is “. . . happiness made manifest.” The middle section bears an achingly beautiful cantilena,
meaning a melody strongly influenced by the tradition of operatic singing, and is given plenty
of time to reveal its charms. The return of the first themes leads to a conclusion of great
panache and thrills.

It seems good to note that this Scherzo was one of Camille Saint-Saens’s favorite pieces and
we can easily hear, I think, that he loved all those arpeggios, all that sparkle enough to write
quite similarly in his G-minor piano concerto, as did fellow French composer Gabriel Pierne in
his C-minor concerto. NOTE: If, after all that beauty you find yourself spontaneously leaping up
in reaction to the astonishing ascending scales about four seconds before the final chords of
this tremendously affirmative piece, I don’t think anyone should think it inappropriate.