Chopin, Scherzo No 4, in E major

As in all the years following the trip to Majorca, the "family group" consisting of Chopin, George Sand, and her two children, spent the summer of 1842 in the vacation house the writer had in Nohant. It was a year in which life smiled on Chopin. In the company of his adopted family, he moved to a more comfortable residence in Paris, in February he gave a concert at the Salle Pleyel, and his creative work at Nohant paid off handsomely.

Scherzo No. 4 in E major

From that fruitful year date the Ballade No. 4, the third impromptu, four mazurkas and the last of the scherzos, No. 4, in E major, opus 54. This is the less frequently performed scherzo because of its very different character compared to Chopin's earlier works in the form, pieces that arouse greater enthusiasm among performers. In this work, the Polish composer offers us a more whimsical work, with greater panache or elegance rather than intimacy or depth.

A "real" scherzo

Indeed, it is the most radiant, joyful, and lively of his four scherzos, in keeping with the meaning of the Italian word scherzo: play or joke.

The piece shows a ternary structure, that is, two themes and a return to the first theme with witty modifications. The middle section (second theme) contains a beautiful and inspired melody with the occasional hint of nostalgia or sadness, typical of the composer's most intimate music, traits that are barely hinted at here. The piece culminates with a brilliant ending.

The work was published in Paris in 1843 and in London in 1845. Both editions are dedicated, one for each, to the Miss Caraman sisters, Chopin's pupils in those years.

The rendition is by the Polish pianist Raphael Blechacz.

Béla Bartók, Violin Concerto No 1

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was a piano professor at the Budapest Academy when in 1908 he solemnly handed over the manuscripts of his first violin concerto to Stefi Geyer. The girl accepted them on the express condition that the work should only be known after death. After her death, we mean, because the girl, seven years younger, assumed that Bartók would be the first to leave this world.

Stefi Geyer

Stefi was a talented violin student, a pupil of the Academy, with whom Bartók had fallen in love, in a crush, when the composer was around twenty-seven. With a marked personality and strong religious convictions, Stefi never reciprocated Bartók's feelings, due to the composer's introverted character, in addition to his deep atheism. But she accepted the offering, with the aforementioned requirement.

(In matters of the heart, Bartók fared better with piano students. Barely a year after his offering to Stefi, the author married a sixteen-year-old pupil, Marta Ziegler).

Béla Bartók, young (1881 - 1945)

Violin Concerto No. 1, posthumous opus
Stefi Geyer died in 1956, faithful to her commitment. The premiere of Béla Bartók's youthful work, his First Violin Concerto, took place in 1958, fifty years after its composition, when no one knew about its existence.

The work, in only two movements, is considered a sort of "portrait" of Geyer, where the author expressed his pain at the failure of love while drawing the beloved in two facets: a first movement for an "idealized, celestial and interior" Stefi, and a second movement for a "cheerful, witty and funny" Stefi.

Movements:

00:00  Andante sostenuto

09:01  Allegro giocoso

The performance is by the Brazilian-born German violinist José Maria Blumenschein, accompanied by the NRW Youth Orchestra (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

Ravel, "Valses nobles et sentimentales"

Although it was already known in Mozart's time, the musical genre of ternary rhythm known as waltz had in Europe its apogee and greater development in the XIX century. But, at the beginning of the 20th century, in a world that had long abandoned romanticism, it did not show signs of losing vigor. During the first decades of the new century, serious composers, and less serious ones too, kept on composing waltzes, danceable or not, thus showing its perennial and powerful presence.

Noble, and also sentimental
Maurice Ravel, who in 1928 would give the world his masterpiece, the famous Bolero, was no stranger to the trend. In 1906 he began to glimpse the sketches of La Valse, a work described as "the apotheosis of the waltz", and whose final version would be published in 1919. In the meantime, the author worked on a set of short pieces for piano that he titled Valses nobles et sentimentales in homage to Franz Schubert, who almost a hundred years ago had written two series of waltzes: the Valses sentimentales, of 1823, and the Valses nobles, in 1826.

Maurice Ravel, in 1925
(1875 - 1937)

The premiere, and the riddle
The work was privately premiered by the pianist Louis Aubert (to whom it is dedicated) on May 8, 1911, in Paris, in one of the recitals sponsored by the Société Musicale Indépendent to promote the most daring composers of the time. To that effect, the authors were not identified during the concert, thus forcing the audience to guess who the works belonged to. On the occasion, it is said that only Debussy, in attending there, was able to recognize in the Waltzes... the pen of the master Ravel.

The seven waltzes
The set is composed of seven waltzes plus an epilogue, marked as follows:

00       Modéré - très franc
01:52  Assez lent - avec une expression intense
04:03  Modéré
05:26  Assez animé
06:32  Presque lent - dans un sentiment intime
07:22  Very vivid
08:05  Moins vif ("the most characteristic of all", according to Ravel, foreshadowing the appearance of La Valse)
10:44  Epilogue: lent

Neither so noble nor less sentimental
Unlike Schubert's waltzes, nothing makes Ravel's waltzes seem "noble", and even less "sentimental". Harmonically complex and full of unresolved dissonances, the waltzes are not easy on the ear, although in Ravel's opinion everything is very simple: "it is always counted in three beats".
The year after its premiere, Ravel published an orchestral version, intended to accompany a ballet. Presented here is the original piano version by the Polish maestro Krystian Zimerman.

Cesar Franck, piano Quintet in F minor

As the renowned French pedagogue and composer Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) once remarked, no piece of music contains a greater profusion of pianissimos and fortissimos than the Piano Quintet in F minor by the Belgian composer César Franck. The work was composed in the winter of 1878-79, when the composer, in his late sixties, was showing a somewhat unseemly interest in one of his female students. This highly expressive work (as demonstrated by the profusion of ppp and fff) has led some biographers to venture that it may have been inspired by that winter passion.

A repeated story
The one who had no doubts was Eugénie Desmousseaux, Franck's wife, who by then had given him four children (survived two). Eugénie openly declared that the piece was not to her liking. But why make it public? Perhaps she noticed unusual behavior in her husband, a state of mind that she could easily identify... Eugénie had also been his pupil. 

Cesar Frank (1822 - 1890)

A masterpiece
In any case, the work marked César Franck's return to chamber music after more than 35 years. And he did so with a masterpiece, which from its premiere in Paris in January 1880 won the applause of audiences and critics, with the notable exception of its performer for the occasion, Camille Saint-Säens. Despite being the dedicatée of the work, Camille left the stage at the completion of the piece annoyed by the incessant modulations that Franck's language demanded. The future French master thus joined Eugénie's disaffection, with as much or less justice.

Movements:
00       Molto moderato quasi lento - begins with a dramatic tone which then develops into a powerful and passionate discourse.
15:00  Lento, con molto sentimento - is presented as a long aria where the piano dialogues with the string quartet.
26:35  Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco - takes up the themes exposed in the preceding movements in a fiery atmosphere, creating a kind of musical drama. 

The rendition is by the French ensemble Quatour Ébéne and the Russian pianist Vyacheslav Gryaznov.

J.L. Dussek, Sonata "Élégie Harmonique"

Dussek, the first pianist to sit at the piano the way we do nowadays
As is common knowledge, in the recitals and concerts of our times, the piano is placed on the stage with its longest axis across the width of the stage so that the raised lid acts as a sounding board sending the sound directly to the audience. Thus arranged the instrument, when the pianist takes a seat in front of it, shows his or her profile to the audience, the right profile, for greater rigour... But it was not always like that.

The new concert hall
Before public concerts began, keyboardists and harpsichords, or clavichords, were arranged in any way in relation to the audience because those were intimate evenings in the small space of a room or salon of a nobility member. But when the public piano recital became popular, it was necessary to decide how the instrument (and the pianist) should be arranged in front of those new listeners. The emerging bourgeoisie, comfortably seated in the chairs of a concert hall, was eager to participate avidly in what nobility, aristocracy and clergy had been enjoying for a long time.

J.L. Dussek (1760 - 1812)

The profile of the beautiful Dussek
How to sit? with your back to the audience? facing the front? or sideways? Although not so obvious, there was a pianist who solved this question once and for all. He has a face and a name. Jan Ladislav Dussek is remembered as the first great virtuoso who sat at the piano showing his right side to the public, for the first time in history.
Born in Cáslav, Bohemia, in 1760, the very graceful Dussek (the Parisian public called him le beau Dussek) exhibited his beautiful profile at the age of twenty before ecstatic audiences in Europe, as he was also the first concert pianist to go on tour.

Dussek, composer
A great virtuoso of the instrument, he was also a fruitful composer. His more notable works include several large-scale solo piano pieces, 34 piano sonatas, many piano concertos, sonatas for violin and piano, and various works of chamber music.
He was a close friend of the prince and amateur pianist Ludwig Ferdinand of Prussia. Upon his death – in a battle against the Napoleonic troops in 1806 – he composed a sonata in his memory, which he entitled "Élégie Harmonique".

After the death of his friend and protector, the life of the beautiful Dussek became somewhat messy. He died obese and alcoholic in St. Germain-en-Laye on March 20, 1812.

Sonata in F sharp minor, opus 61, "Élégie Harmonique."
The piece has only two movements:

00:00   Lento patetico - Tempo agitato
07:58   Tempo vivace e con fuoco quasi presto

It is presented here in a solo audio version by American pianist and teacher Constance Keene.