“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent”  Victor Hugo

W.A. MOZART 1756-1791                         Sonata in A minor K 310

Allegro maestoso /  Andante cantabile con espressione  /  Presto

The sonata in A minor K 310 was probably written in Paris in 1778 when Mozart was  22. His mother had accompanied him, but she fell ill, and died on 3 July. It is usually futile trying to connect biographical details with the inspiration for works of art. However, the relentless pulsating figures throughout the work, the poignancy of both primary and secondary themes in the first movement, the restrained yet deeply felt Andante theme, and the relentless moto perpetuo of the finale mark a new emotional complexity and dramatic intensity in Mozart. This sonata is a world away from its eight predecessors, in its melodic treatment, the unusual phrase lengths and insistence on dissonances, which creates heightened tension and a sense of emotional turmoil. This is one of only two sonatas Mozart wrote for piano in the minor mode and one of a small handful in his oeuvre as a whole.

FRANZ SCHUBERT 1797-1828                   Four Impromptus Op 90

1/C minor  /  2/E flat major  /  3/G flat major /  4/A flat major

The epitaph by Schubert’s friend, the poet Grillparzer, “Music has here entombed a rich treasure, but much fairer hopes” tells us how little his contemporaries understood the true significance of the extraordinary output Schubert produced in his short life. All of Schubert’s great piano works were written in the last year of his life, but, apart from two out of eight Impromptus and the Moments Musicaux, none was published until ten or even twenty years after his death. The two sets of Impromptus combine lyricism and passion in an intense symbiosis. The four pieces in Op 90 are quite different in character, but all have an obligato element interrupted in Nos. 2 & 4 by a trio section. The obligato is most insistent in No. 1, where repeated triplets accompany the musical discourse from the end of the opening phrases onwards. No. 2 takes up the triplets in a scalar formula weaving its elegant way up and down the keyboard. In No. 3 triplets provide a lilting accompaniment below a lullaby, where disturbing elements attempt to break through before being eloquently but gently put back in their place. No. 4 has shimmering arabesques tumbling down the keyboard, and a trio section that takes up the figure of insistent repeated notes. 

LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN  1770-1827    Sonata No. 30 in E major Op 109

Vivace ma non troppo  /  Prestissimo  /Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo

To quote the musicologist Paul-Henry Lang,  the mature works of Bach and Beethoven inhabit a “fantastic world, ranging far and wide in the metaphysical beyond… unfathomable and mysterious”. Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas represent a summing up of everything this instrument had inspired in him. Both the romantic and the modern world have tried to claim Beethoven for themselves, but every note of his music, emphatically including the late sonatas, displays an absolute determination to keep within the confines of classical forms. Beethoven took his thematic and harmonic elements and wove them into all the movements of a work in perfect formal unity. The juxtaposition in the first movement of Op 109 of a serene diatonic first group and a parenthetical, chromatic second group, adagio, that brusquely interrupts its placid flow produces a tightly compressed dramatic urgency.  The sense of compressed energy continues in the hard-driving Prestissimo.  The third movement is a set of variations where the theme manages to return to the tonic four times in eight bars in so subtle a manner we hardly know that is what is happening. These variations explore the very essence of the theme and penetrate it so deeply that, when it returns at the close of the sonata, we feel we have indeed travelled “far and wide”.

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN  1810-1849             Polonaise Fantaisie Op 61

It is not far from the truth to say that, even if his mastery of contrapuntal textures grew out of his lifelong devotion to Bach, Chopin was sui generis in the musical forms he fashioned, the originality of his ideas, his melodic and harmonic idioms. The echo of his creative ideas endured in most of the romantic and post-romantic composers who followed him in the 19th and early 20th centuries; even the famous ‘Tristan’ motif can be found in a late Mazurka in a passage of similar tonal ambiguity. The Polonaise Fantaisie (1846) is of course far removed from any dance origins and, in fact, Chopin added the ‘Polonaise’ part of the title at a fairly late stage. The introduction was also a late addition but it is vital in asserting the polonaise/fantaisie duality. At first glance it would seem that the episodic nature of the piece is detrimental to its formal unity, and for this reason it is one of Chopin’s most difficult works to perform, but in fact the ear perceives very well the motivic affinities that bind the various sections together and the way in which they work their magic by a gradual unfolding of the thematic discourse.