L. van Beethoven, Sonata in A, Op. 2, No. 2

No matter what other pieces I’m wondering about, planning, or working on, I always seem to have a Beethoven sonata in the works. When I finally started taking lessons again after a hiatus of more than 15 years, I had only played two: the Moonlight sonata and the Pathétique. But it wasn’t long before I discovered what I had been missing! Now I think I just might try to work my way—gradually!—through all 30!

Beethoven sonatas are wonderfully satisfying to learn and to play. Bridging the Classical and Romantic periods, they have all the structural, harmonic straightforwardness and melodic accessibility of more Classical sonatas (such as Mozart’s), but with far greater emotional range and dramatic scope. Certainly there are always technical challenges to learn from and master—the ascending triplet scales in this sonata’s first movement were such a trial, and those long, long runs in the final rondo!—but even in the most wandering sub-themes and development passages, these sonatas always make sense, you always know where you are, and you know there will be a gratifying return to the home key and a satisfying cadence at the end, with moments of great humor, profound melancholy, or sheer showstopping pyrotechnics along the way.

Admittedly, this sonata of Beethoven’s is not necessarily his best—they can’t all be perfect! The second movement is quite challenging because of it’s plodding tempo, emphasized by the articulation of the bass throughout, which is hard to keep from dragging. The somewhat out-of-place second theme of the final rondo (all those chromatic scales over and over and over again!) can also be difficult to interpret; one person I know described this passage as “pedantic,” and I can see exactly what she meant! Nevertheless, the themes of the first movement and the third (in the usual minuet-trio form), and the light, amiable quality of the rondo’s main theme still make this a fun piece to work on and to play. Like many of Beethoven’s earlier sonatas, this work is rather light-hearted and full of good humor.

Jean Sibelius, Five Romantic Pieces, Op. 101

At one point this year I went on a mission to discover either piano works by little-known composers, or else little-known works by well-known composers. I recalled that I had once played a pretty Romance by Jean Sibelius; it appears in an old Schirmer anthology I inherited from my mother’s collection entitled 59 Piano Solos You Like to Play. Curious to see if Sibelius had composed any other works for the piano, I was very surprised to learn (through iTunes, Wikipedia, and the IMSLP online database) that, in fact, he wrote TONS! Apart from a sonata and the three-part suite Kylikki, most of Sibelius’s piano works are short, character pieces (comparable to the lyric pieces of Grieg), often produced as suites of 4 or 5, with titles like esquisses (‘sketches’), or morceaux (‘snippets’). Many individual pieces bear rather programmatic titles, like “The Oarsman” or “The Old Church.” There’s a suite of pieces each bearing the name of a particular tree, and another devoted to different kinds of flowers.

The set I chose for my recital appealed to me because of its beautiful melodies, the variety of mood, the wonderful harmonies. All of them are the work of a very talented composer who was able to take a very simple musical idea—a melodic line or a rhythm—and develop it into an engaging and at times quite inventive and even moving, though brief, composition. The first and last pieces of the set (the Romance and Scène romantique) are both melodic and harmonically lush, especially as they develop from their respective gentle, haunting themes toward their more dramatic and impassioned final climaxes. The Chant du soir (‘Evensong’) begins with a very mysterious, almost blurry theme, evocative of a dark forest or misty riverbank, then transforms quite abruptly into a very simple but beautiful hymn or chant. The Scène lyrique begins with a slow, almost morose introduction, but then suddenly breaks into a lively a rustic dance, alternating between the descending trill-like figures and a bouncy, up-down hopping rhythm. The Humoresque is just as the name implies—a humorous character piece, in which a sinuous and somehow jocular waltz is interwoven with a more gentle, flowing romantic melody. I always imagined this piece as a pas de deux between two marionettes, one an acrobatic harlequin, and the other a graceful ballerina.

Edward MacDowell, Sonata in G Minor (“Tragic”), op. 45

The same kind of search that led to my discovery of Sibelius’s piano works also led me to the third and final piece on my recital program, the “Tragic” sonata of Edward MacDowell. I never expected to find a piece with which I would become so deeply engrossed! I was immediately drawn to its depth and power, its drama and violence, its orchestral scale, and its epic narrative scope—qualities shared by so many works (musical and others) that I love to listen to or to play. (Yes it’s true, I am a drama queen!)

MacDowell is atypical in several respects from the classical composers most people are familiar with, even people who have an above-average knowledge of classical music. For one thing, he’s an American Romantic composer; indeed “the” American Romantic composer, and is frequently cited as the “father of American classical music.” Furthermore, even those who may have heard of MacDowell as a composer are most likely familiar only with his brief lyric pieces (like Sibelius’s), of which “To a Wild Rose” is the most famous. But after hearing a recording of this sonata for the first time, I was not at all surprised to learn that he was also a virtuoso performer, and upon touring and studying in Europe, he was praised and championed by Franz Liszt, among others. His piano concertos are also critically acclaimed, though, like most of his works, little known or heard. In the latter part of his life, he and his wife founded the MacDowell artist’s colony, which continues to be a place of retreat and a creative haven for artists of all mediums.

This sonata, his first, is perhaps the most challenging piece I’ve ever performed for an audience. I learned so much from studying this piece, from its quite daunting technical demands to the many subtle nuances of its emotional expression. The first movement is pure drama, beginning with a solemn, quite ominous introduction, followed by the two main themes; the first is a stormy and violent passage that seems to teeter on the edge of chaos, while the second is a gentle, lyrical waltz, ascending gradually before falling gently down in cascading ripples.

The second movement, a scherzo, is a piece of extreme contrasts. While the mood seems at first to be rather sprightly, even jocular, the texture is rather ponderous, and the main theme is constantly interrupted by dramatic, even violent outbursts. Even the quiet, mysterious middle section, danced by a left-hand staccato bass line, quickly explodes into raucous fury.

The third movement, the slow movement, is quite simply exquisite. This piece made me think of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, with its ominous, forbidding introduction, evocative of a descent into the underworld, followed by a fiercely dramatic and intense crescendo (reminding me very much of Liszt’s Funerailles or Rachmaninoff’s famous Prélude in C-sharp Minor), and its exquisite middle section, in which a slow-moving melody is set off by a contrapuntal rising and falling of chromatic notes that eventually swell into one of the most gorgeous musical climaxes I’ve ever heard or played (when I play them just right, it always gives me a brief adrenalin rush!), before finally returning, after a long, winding descent back into the shadows of the bass, to the grim, forbidding theme of the introduction, except this time it fades slowly away into darkness.

The final movement, which always struck me as very “American” in style, is pure fanfare, a martial theme that contains scenes of both frantic desperation and glorious victory. There are battles and victories depicted in this movement, with its martial rhythm and blaring chord cadences; desperate races that give one a feeling of being on an exciting adventure; moments of quiet (though brief) repose, and a finale of incredible, orchestral scale, written on 4 staves and, incidentally, a bitch to play!

One reason I enjoyed this sonata so much is the strong narrative element in MacDowell’s writing, so that several themes from earlier movements recur in the later ones, which is very unusual for the sonata form, in which each movement is usually quite distinct, except for the relationship between their respective key signatures. Thus, the second movement contains echoes of the first, and the first movement foreshadows the third. It all comes together on the final page of the fourth movement, in which the introduction from the first movement is brought back, first transposed into the major key, but then reverting back to its insistent, “tragic” conclusion.

Acknowledgements

I must thank my friend Melissa Davenport, unfortunately unable to attend the recital itself, who graciously offered up her time not only to come to my house and record my playing, but to spend many hours splitting up the tracks, inserting titles, and exporting them into various formats until I had exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much!

Also, thanks to my wonderful teacher and friend, Deborah Nemko. She’s the best kind of piano teacher, who not only teaches how to play and how to practice, but also provides the encouragement and enthusiasm that inspires me to play. I don’t think I would have had the courage to really commit to the MacDowell sonata if, back in April, when I played the fourth movement for her for the first time, she hadn’t convinced me that I could do it. I had expected her to say I had chosen a piece that was too ambitious, or that there wasn’t enough time to get it performance-ready by June. But when she said she thought I could do it, I knew I could. I practiced harder than I had ever practiced before—I pretty much played every spare moment I could find—and it was so worth it! Thank you, Deb!!!