The years 1782–1785, which produced the Fantasy in D minor, K. 397, were a happy period in the life of Mozart. Thanks to his lucrative lessons, his material worries all but disappeared, interest in his music among the Viennese might even be termed a fashion, and new compositions gushed forth with impressive facility. Although relations between Wolfgang’s wife Constanze, on one hand, and his sister Nannerl and their father Leopold, on the other, could have been better, towards the end of this period, Leopold, left alone following Nannerl’s marriage, spent almost three months visiting his son in Vienna and witnessed the latter’s remarkable success. That certainly helped improve family relations.
Meanwhile, the inspired Wolfgang was composing a fantastic series of piano works, including nine concertos – one-third of his entire output in the genre. It was probably the Fantasy in D minor that triggered this eruption of pianistic inventiveness. It was only published after the composer’s death, and minus its ending. It is possible that the last ten bars were added by August Eberhard Müller, but they could have come from Mozart himself. This work was probably written in connection with a funeral service and was intended for the masonic lodge to which the composer belonged. The sixfold change of tempo delineates the form of the work, beginning with a dreamy Andante, which paves the way for a buoyant Adagio with the principal motif transformed through variation and a recurring chorale moment. The Presto episode, which occurs twice, is a one-bar run across the whole keyboard, whereas the closing Allegretto brightens the mood of the work. Today, this is one of Mozart’s most popular compositions. Its unpretentious expression conceals within the fantasy form an incredible wealth of compositional ideas, ahead of their time, leading directly to romanticism à la Schubert and Chopin.
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Ignacy Jan Paderewski composed piano miniatures mainly at the start of his career. The works chosen for today’s recital were written between 1882 (Mazurkas, Op. 9) and 1888 (Variations, Op. 16 No. 3). At first it seemed that Paderewski would devote himself rather to composition than to pianism. The change of plans was triggered by the most famous piano virtuoso of those times, Anton Rubinstein, who heard the young Pole’s playing and works in Berlin and foresaw a glittering future for him. That opinion motivated Paderewski… to resume his studies in composition, but he subsequently returned to the piano. In Vienna, he became a pupil to Theodor Leschetizky, who trained a whole generation of the most brilliant pianists around the turn of the twentieth century. Things were rather discouraging at first: according to the professor, the 24-year-old Paderewski, for all his splendid attributes, had come to him too late. Years later, that famous teacher would say about his pupil: ‘A great heart, a great head and limitless willpower… He’ll be a brilliant artist to the end of his days’. A true breakthrough in Paderewski’s career came after his Paris debut in March 1888, when he was hailed as ‘most astonishing’, regarded as the ‘new Rubinstein’, and even ‘Chopin reborn’.
The Variations in A major, Op. 16 No. 3, dedicated ‘à Madame Aline Weber-Schlumberger’, were successfully performed in Leipzig and Berlin by Prof. Leschetizky’s wife, Anna Yesipova. The simple song theme is treated to ingenious modifications, drawing on highly ambitious virtuosic devices. The Mazurkas from the set of Polish Dances, Op. 9, were written in Berlin in 1882. Dedicated ‘à Monsieur Henri Toeplitz’, they mark a promising start to Paderewski’s essays in composition. Both the works from the cycle of Humoresques de Concert, Op. 14, dedicated to Yesipova – the Sarabande in B minor and the still popular Cracovienne fantastique in B major – belong to the current of stylisation favoured by the composer. Many of his miniatures of this kind gained considerable renown and splendidly complemented the programmes of the maestro’s performances.
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Chopin composed the Impromptu in F sharp major, Op. 36 at Nohant in 1839, following his return from the ill-fated sojourn on Majorca. Shortly afterwards, in 1840, he set about writing the Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op. 44. Comparison of these two compositions may lead to the conclusion that Chopin was undergoing some inner change. The Impromptu, by dint of its generic features, is a light and generally cheerful work – charming, we might say. And such were Chopin’s two earlier compositions in this genre (the Impromptu which is now known as his fourth was actually written earlier). In the Impromptu in F sharp major, a prelude-like opening is followed by a focussed, balladic melody that passes into a chorale moment which takes on dramatic features. It is understandable that the differentiation of characters and emotions from another musical world inclined the critics to seek a programmatic subtext in this work.
Chopin himself was rather nonplussed at this work, writing to Julian Fontana: ‘The second Impromptu, possibly wretched – I don’t know myself as yet, as it’s too fresh’. This composition was long appraised in various ways. For Gottfried Wilhelm Fink (1840), ‘The Impromptu, Op. 36 is nothing other than improvisation, the sketch of a short fantasy, with no greater aspirations, but the idea must have been considered worthy of publication’. The famous Viennese critic and aesthetician Hugo Leichtentritt, meanwhile, fascinated by the strangeness of the harmonies and the form, regarded this work as the most outstanding of its kind. Chopin himself clearly took a shine to it, as he included it on the programme of his recital in Glasgow in 1848.
The following summer, in 1841, when setting about work on the Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op. 44, Chopin was clearly in a state of turmoil. Mieczysław Tomaszewski found much evidence of this in the music itself, borne out by the account of George Sand, who related: ‘Chopin’s up to his usual tricks, fuming at his piano. When his mount fails to respond to his intentions, he deals it great blows with his fist, such that the poor piano simply groans. […] he considers himself idle because he’s not crushed by work”.
This work was succinctly and most aptly described by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger: ‘With its magnanimous breath, its chivalrous pride, its lyricism, and also its pain, the Polonaise, Op. 44 (1841) appears as the most sumptuous of all in its bearing. This time, Chopin overturns the customary formal canons to paint an epic-lyrical fresco in four parts […] In a sizeable innovation, the traditional trio is replaced by a barcarolled Tempo di Mazourka, of an ideal beauty, with its supply turned thirds and sixths’.
The power of this polonaise fantasy aroused wonderment from the outset. Ferenc Liszt speaks about this, and it was most forcibly characterised by Marceli Antoni Szulc (1842): ‘All description is vain; one must play and hear this astonishing contrast of feelings, the almost imperceptible passing into the introduction, at first sounding tentatively in the bass, before ultimately shooting upwards in wild passagework and bringing in the polonaise melody, but in almost terrifying progressions and harmonies. – Only at the end does the gloominess fade, swoon and, in elegiac tones, perish.’
Grzegorz Michalski
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December 1837 brought the French edition of the Mazurkas, Op. 30, a set of stylised miniatures on which Chopin had begun work around a year earlier. Four works make up this set, which in its internal arrangement is characteristic of the mazurkas written during the 1830s. The first, in the key of C minor, is melancholy and wistful, proceeding in the rhythm of a sedate kujawiak. The second, in B minor, succinct and condensed, plays with contrasts. The third (D flat major), seemingly carefree, at times strikes a tone of reflection, but it is merely a preface to the most important miniature poem, in the key of C sharp minor, that sums up this opus. The quintessence of Polish spirit and despondency is perfectly encapsulated, observed from afar and relished in emotional memory.
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The Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60, one of Chopin’s greatest masterpieces, is accurately characterised by John Rink as one of ‘the most powerful and compelling compositions of the nineteenth century’. Written in 1845, it received its final design in the summer of 1846 in Nohant. Against the background of Chopin’s late work, it stands as a monumental peak of artistry. It is difficult to find a generic context for the Barcarolle; in terms of size, it is close to a ballade, in terms of narrative, it resembles a lyrical nocturne, though significantly departing from it. Without a doubt, from the first introductory notes – before the rhythmic scheme is established, before the main theme is intoned – Chopin leads the listener into a realm of beauty and subtlety where romantic intimacy reigns. The narrative of the Barcarolle unfolds slowly but purposefully: the themes return in waves of trills, in chordal augmentations, in new harmonic contexts. The most interesting (dolce sfogato in C sharp major) comes just before the final ecstatic culmination, ‘staved off’ until the very end. An image of love fulfilled? No doubt, but every attempt at description misses the point, with the exception perhaps of Hugo Leichtentritt’s assessment that the Barcarolle is simply ‘breathtaking’.
Marcin Majchrowski
transl. John Comber
