OOPS! I'm late with this! Turns out I had to travel last week, and as a result, I'm behind with a few things -- including my review and rating for this piece. Fret not, dear reader! I shall get caught up with things by the end of the week! ; ) ONE WEEK LATER:
Well, as you can see from that brief statement above, I’ve been quite busy lately. My wife and i traveled to New York City; our daughter from Chicago visited us for a short while; I accepted a job as a long-term substitute Language Arts teacher for a middle school where a teacher quit; and as the King of Siam in the “King and I” would say, “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” As a result, I'm behind in various activities – including critical ones like housework, grocery shopping, and laundry and frivolous ones like blog posts about classical music – but surely though slowly, I’m getting to a point where I’ll be somewhat “caught up.” (Is one ever truly “caught up”?) My recent posts on this site have centered on pieces written by underrated – and in my case, unfamiliar – composers. However, I have heard of Jan Paderewski, for as a piano student in my youth, I played his very-well-known Minuet. That’s the only work I know of his, though. To me, he could certainly be classified as a “one-hit wonder.” However, he has a catalog of more than three dozen pieces online, HERE, and I selected his Nocturne in B Flat. A nocturne is basically a short, gentle piece for piano that is evocative of the night. Chopin wrote close to two dozen nocturnes, and his Nocturne No. 2 in E Flat is perhaps his most memorable. I’m sure you’ve heard it (HERE). That’s probably not the case with the piece by Paderewski. My guess is that it’s more than likely you have not heard it. It’s a serene, lovely piece – though it’s just not as memorable as Chopin’s work in E Flat. I was researching the piece to find out when it was written, and I discovered that his Opus 16 is a series of seven piano pieces referred to as “Miscellanea” composed between 1886 and 1896 (info HERE). I also found this apt description of the piece from the USC Polish Music Center: “(Paderewski’s nocturne) rests upon a rhythmical figure consisting of two sixteenth notes and an eighth, which is repeated twice in every measure in the composition save when, as an accompaniment of the second subject (which appears in the tenor voice) it is modified temporarily into a sixteenth rest, sixteenth note and eighth. A tender song rises, like incense, from this figure at the outset and twice is answered with two notes from above, which, like the strain with which Duke Orsino fed his love, have a ‘dying fall.’ This fall is characteristic too of the sustained melody which anon soars up above the accompaniment figure with its persistent, yet tender beat.” It is a lovely piece – though just not as memorable as the No. 2 by Chopin nor his own enduring Minuet.
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For this week, of course, I listened to the sole piano concerto by von Henselt (or does one just say "Henselt?) -- and I gotta say right up front, the work is full of sound and fury. I don't mean to imply that the concerto "signifies nothing," for it is quite a work with a great deal of virtuosic fireworks for the pianist, but it is no overstatement to say that this work is full of sound and fury. The full orchestra opens the first movement with three decisive and dramatic chords, as if you're entering at the climax of some film noir drama -- like coming into "Double Indemnity" just when Walter Neff is confronting Phyllis Dietrichson at her home near the end of the movie. Almost two and a half minutes into the piece, the piano enters with the same overly-dramatic chords, and the piece takes off. The piece was written in the mid-1840s and was premiered by Clara Schumann herself in 1844, but not published until 1847. The work is in three movements: 1. Allegro patetico – Religioso – Reprise 2. Larghetto 3. Allegro agitato When researching this piece, I found an interesting site with the clever name "Fugue for Thought." That blogger's comments on the concerto are HERE. The blogger notes that the piece is "hard, and uncomfortable, and challenging, and even to the ear, sounds incredibly virtuosic, to say nothing of the …. ergonomics or execution." True, one cannot accuse Henselt of being austere or spartan when it comes to composition. No minimalist, he. If there are four beats to a measure, put in not four notes or eight, but sixteen or thirty-two. Then spice it up with grace notes and trills, mordents, turns and other embellishments. If there's space in the measure, then blacken it with notes and more notes. The blog I cited above mentions that the "first movement is really everything… everything you could want in a piano concerto. There is roar and fire from the piano, but also breathtaking Romantic melodiousness and expression" -- but oddly enough, in the final six bars (and ten seconds) of the first movement, Henselt returns to the opening chords but shifts from F Minor to F Major. It's an abrupt but resounding deep breath of optimism in a final "TA DAH!" It's a bit bewildering.
The second movement is lush and somewhat reminiscent of works by Rachmaninoff -- just not as enduring (hence his place on the list of "underrated composers"?). The pyrotechnics return in the third movement as the pianist races the orchestra to the end. It's all very dramatic, but perhaps a bit "too." I'm sure it's a fun piece to play, though. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed Henselt's work. I just wouldn't include the piece were I to compile a list of favorite piano concertos.
I haven't heard of six of the other names shown in the pic. I have heard of Paderewski because I play the piano, and in my years as a piano student I played his famous minuet many times -- HERE -- but that's the only piece I know by him. I've now listened to Arensky's String Quartet a few times; however, before I get to my comments on the work, let me pass on two bits of information. First, in more proof that the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (aka the "Recency Illusion") is alive and well, I tuned into WQXR on my computer at one point this week, and lo and behold, the station was playing Anton Arensky's Symphony No. 2. I wasn't all that surprised -- since I'm a firm believer in the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon -- but it made me wonder how many times I've heard his works in the past, and I just wasn't aware of it.
The first movement is a somber piece – it was, afterall, written in response to the death of Tchaikovsky – and it effectively combines both mournful passages and sections characterized by energy in response to the loss & memories of such a giant.
The second movement is based on the theme of the Legend (No.5) of Tchaikovsky's 16 Songs for Children, Op.54, and it was later arranged by Arensky for string orchestra as Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky, Op.35a. It is all very Tchaikovsky-esque; at some point, I even heard hints of Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile. Concerning the finale, I found this information on the LA Philharmonic’s site: the movement “opens with further references to Russian psalmody and then quotes the famous folk melody that appears as the Russian theme in the Trio of Beethoven’s Second ‘Razumovsky’ String Quartet (Op. 59, No. 2) and in the Coronation Scene of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov. That generates a lively fugato section, which dashes to a quick, brilliant close. It has been suggested that Arensky invoked Mussorgsky’s Coronation Scene to imply crowning Tchaikovsky as the emperor of all music.” I enjoyed the Quartet very much, though I’d say it hovered more often in my “like” zone than my “love” zone. Emily Dickinson once wrote, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” For me, here’s the test: I play the work I’ve selected several times throughout the week, and I usually listen while I’m completing various tasks for work or home. At any time, if the music literally makes me stop what I’m doing to focus entirely on what I am hearing – as did the final movement of Glass’ Violin Concerto, for example, or the third movement of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto – then there’s a great probability that I’m going to rate the piece at the top of my scale. In cases like the works I mentioned by Glass and Beethoven, it’s as if - like Dickinson said – “the top of my head were taken off.” That did not happen with the Arensky work. My head was intact throughout. I did enjoy it, though – very much. |
A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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