Ian
Hobsonʼs ʻParnassusʼ Bi-Centenary
Recital Programme Devised by Ateş Orga
He knew how
to divine the greatest mysteries of art with astonishing
ease - he could gather the flowers of the field without
disturbing the dew or lightest pollen. And he knew
how to fashion them into stars, meteors, as it were
comets, lighting up the sky of Europe, through the
ideal of art. In the crystal of his own harmony he
gathered the tears of the Polish people strewn over
the fields, and placed them as the diamond of beauty
in the diadem of humanity.ʼ
~Cyprian Kamil Norwid
, 25 October 1849 ~
Barcarolle
in F sharp major, Op 60 (1845-46)
116 bars of ravishing invention and
pianism, illumined by a middle section in A major,
one of the most tenderly wondrous returns home in
all Romantic music, and an astonishing final pedal-point
above which the chromatic and the diatonic, the decorous
and the essential, are suspended in juxtapositions
of the richest imaginative fancy. ʻThe finest nocturne
of all,ʼ exclaims Arthur Hedley. ʻThe climax of Chopinʼs
lyricism, his final outpouring of melody, a synthesis
of his piano style and a summary of his achievement
as a harmonist. […] independent of any naïve Venetian
canzone, [its] “impressionistic” effects […] transport
the listener away from Italy to the poetʼs nameless
dream-world.ʼ
Three
Mazurkas, Op 56 (1843-44)
No 1 in B majorʻAn
alternation of kujawiak and waltz-like oberek, with
a mazur bringing up the rearʼ (Adrian Thomas). No
2 in C major ʻAs though the composer had sought for the
moment to divert himself with narcotic intoxication
only to fall back the more deeply into his original
gloomʼ (Maurycy Karasowski). No
3 in C minor A work
to 19th century minds ʻcomposed with the head, not
the heart, nor yet the heelsʼ (Huneker); to 20th century
sensibilities ʻrich in “prophetic” harmonyʼ (Hedley).
Moderato
in E major [Album Leaf], B 151, KK IVb/12, CT 107
(1843)
Typically
a prelude; alternatively a nocturne in the making.
Two Nocturnes, Op 62 (1846)
A modern view of Chopin's
nocturnes – Jim Samson’s - places emphasis on their qualities
of ‘expressive, reflective lyricism. [They] are above
all character pieces, exploring many nuances within a
deliberately restricted affective range, most often nostalgic,
languid, consolatory, the music of a sad smile’. Pre-Second
World War opinion - John F Porte’s – invokes the idea
of Chopin par excellence and in excelsis: ‘we see him
quiet, alone, musing, brooding, melancholy, lighting
up here and there with a kind of morbid or feverish fire,
sometimes allowing his thoughts to dwell on those funereal
processions of chords, and always there is a suggestion
of a gloomy apartment, with old furniture, darkish paintings,
and heavy velvet or plush curtains or hangings’. To James
Huneker in 1900 they were ‘tropical’, ‘Asiatic’: ‘the
exotic savour of the heated conservatory’. Arias without
words. Synthesizing earlier elements within and around
the genre, the harmonically advanced exemplars comprising
Op 62 date from the high-ground of Chopin’s maturity.
No 1 in B major [Tuberose] ‘A warm moonlit, tree-shaded
night in an Italian garden, with the heavy scent of daturas
on the air, and the nightingale singing in “full-throated
ease”’ (Jonson, summoning Keats). Remarkable for the
trembling chain-trills blossoming the reprise. No
2 in E major A tripartite variation-nocturne, agitated in
the middle (contrasting the corresponding paragraph of
its companion, sostenuto). ‘The authentic Bardic ring’
(Huneker).
Berceuse
in D flat major, Op 57 (1844)
With the Barcarolle the pinnacle of
Chopinʼs lyric art, the Berceuse is ʻone of those
happy inspirations which can never be repeatedʼ (Hedley).
Akin to the nocturnes, its structure is a one-off,
a set of sixteen variants cradled by rocking tonic/dominant
harmonies resting above a comfortingly repetitive
D flat pedal-point. Tracing, like Baroque ʻdoublesʼ,
arcs of climax and repose, of quickening and slowing
note values, its heart enshrines a poetry suspending
analysis: ʻWho will cut open the nightingaleʼs throat
to discover where the song comes from?ʼ
Three
Mazurkas, Op 59 (1845)
No 1 in A minor ʻA subtle turn takes
us off the familiar road to some strange glade wherein
the flowers are rare in scent and odour. This mazurka,
like the one that follows, has a dim resemblance
to others, yet there is always a novel point of departure,
a fresh harmony, a sudden melody, or an unexpected
endingʼ (Huneker). No 2 in A
flat major Noble, beautiful,
the art of the unexpected. No
3 in F sharp minor/major ʻTime and tune, that wait for no man, are now his
bond slavesʼ (Huneker).
Sonata
No 3 in B minor, Op 58 (1844)
The first great B minor sonata of the High
Romantic era – an expansive canvas boldly forward-looking.
In its course Chopin surpassed himself: he was never
again to write a work of such stature, thematic integration
or creative completeness. Liszt copied it out, varying
the finale. Brahms edited it. And Franz Brendel (not
known for being a Chopin worshipper) hailed it unequivocally
as ʻone of the most significant publications of the
presentʼ (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik). Its four movements
– spanning worlds of experience vast in depth, eloquent
in breadth, bejewelled in song – embrace the proud,
the mercurial, the hallowed, the volcanic. Their
passage, from declamation to affirmation, Romantic
enchantment to that last ʻride of an imaginary horseman,
of a dream Mazeppa, galloping towards the horizonʼ
described by Cortot, is one to seize our imagination
for all time. In resonance itʼs a sonata essentially
Germanic in tradition, but with familiar Parisian/bel
canto/Chopinesque turns. The second subject of the
first movement for example (Hunekerʼs ʻaubade, a
nocturne of the mornʼ); the feathered delicacy of
the E flat scherzo, in the interludial waltz style
of the ballades (Cortotʼs ʻflight of a bird in the
morning sky […] a flutter of beating wingsʼ); the
mimosa moonshine of the largo … Links and cross-references
make for potent chemistry throughout: ʻthe essence
of the workʼs unity, and hence of its diversityʼ
originates directly out of the very first five-note
descent (Alan Walker).
© ATEŞ
ORGA 2010
Ateş Orga
devised and programmed Ian Hobsonʼs 16-CD bicentenary
collection of Chopinʼs Complete Works, recorded in
Warsaw and released on the Zephyr label, Fort Worth,
Texas. His English biography of Chopin was translated
into Polish in 1999.
Program Notları
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