Hommage à Soproni, György Kurtág

from Játékok, volume IV (2:10)

György and Márta Kurtág, piano

I sometimes forget how influenced my own music is by Kurtág.  This wonderful short piece for four hands is type of thing I wish I’d written, but Kurtág beat me to it.  Damn.

( Mostly not about Kurtág )

(1:13)

Felicity Lott, Soprano; Pascal Rogé, Piano

One of Poulenc’s set Quatre Chansons pour enfants.  A delightful song about a boy who does nothing but pick his nose, much to the embarrassment of his parents.  The music is totally light-weight and unremarkable, but it’s cute, and I can imagine it being hilarious in a vivid performance.  Can easily be sung by anyone, child or adult.

Sonnet XIV: Batter my heart (1:16)

Philip Langridge, Tenor; Steuart Bedford, Piano

I think I was once asked to sight-read this song for a singer’s audition; though I am normally an intrepid sight-reader, I declined.  It’s a crazy, swirling piano part, and the song is a flurry of activity.  To me, it’s incredible that Britten fits all fourteen rich, dense lines of the sonnet into a 75-second piece:

( Complete Poem )

A beautiful poem: an entreaty to the divine to violently transform. “Batter” (as in battery ram); “o’erthrow”; “break, blow, burn”; “imprison”; “ravish.”  This is strong, bold imagery, almost disturbingly visceral.

I love Britten, and I revere his intelligence and technique in song-writing.  But this is the sort of text that I’m not sure fits him quite right.  There is something too poised and predictable about the setting.  The poem has a tortured, craggy, desperate quality.  Britten makes it sound as though it’s describing a horse-chase between the soul and God.  Is it unfair to say that it seems facile?  For Britten had as much natural facility and skill as any composer had in the last hundred years.  In his own time, his work was sometimes dismissed by critics as being “merely clever.”  I rarely agree with that jibe; but, in this case, I see their point.

Variation VII (0:51)

Jean-Philippe Collard, Piano

I posted on another piece from this album already (the Ballade, Op. 19), but my iTunes random shuffle has brought me back around to Fauré – and I can’t complain about that!

This track popping up caused me to go back and give another listen to the entire opus.  And I have one huge question: why is this piece not better known?  Ladies and gentlemen, this is a masterpiece, a large-scale, virtuosic piece as strong and fine as any written in the late 19th century.  If you are a pianist, you must hear it.  If you are unfamiliar with Fauré, look it up and be impressed by the craft of one of the most unjustly neglected composers in history.

In key, in mood, in technical demands, the piece is more than a little reminiscent of Schumann’s famous and gorgeous Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13.  But the harmonic language of the music and the special elegance and clarity of the writing is quintessential Fauré.  This is Fauré at the height of his powers, when the influence of Chopin (so evident, for instance in the Ballade) has been fully absorbed and assimilated – but without the “weirdness” and difficulty of his late style.  The most characteristic variation of all is the very last one, a gentle nocturne-in-minature that closes the set quietly and peacefully.  Perhaps its reflective ending is one of the reasons pianists shy away from it.

(11:38)

Nicolas Hodges, Piano

A lot of this piece sounds about the same as music by any number of other European avant-garde composers – some of the de-tuned piano notes and sine-wave-like electronic sounds are hypnotizing, but the clustery, repetitious structure of the material sounds familiar.  These are things I’ve heard before, I think.

The best moment of the piece is almost exactly half way through, right before the six minute mark.  Suddenly, far in the background, this distant, foreign music drifts in.  The effect is uncanny, and it’s doubly effective because it doesn’t reoccur, in any form, in the rest of the piece.  These few seconds are the heart of the piece, its short-lived reason for being.

Cello Suite #3 in C major, BWV 1009, J.S. Bach (c. 1720)

III. Courante (3:20)

Anner Bylsma, Cello

What is it about the Netherlands that creates such amazing cellists?  I love Bylsma’s Bach Suites better than any other recording I’ve heard; and a friend recently introduced me to the playing of Pieter Wispelwey, who’s got to be one of the most technically fluent and musically brilliant cellists around.

It’s always a pleasure to hear these pieces, and I have a special affection for the sunny, elegant C major suite.  The Courante seems as though it would be more accurately identified as a Corrente in the Italian manner, as it moves in running eighth notes in 3/4 time.  Bach occasional specifies an articulation or two, and a few of his slurs create a momentary ambiguity about the meter: is it really 3/4, or is it, in fact, 6/8?  This is an old – and obvious – trick, but Bach brings his customary finesse to it.  Bylsma finds just the right way to bring out these slurs without disturbing the overall dance, and his sense of timing and inflection is uncannily dead-on.  If you like these suites, please find this recording!