Schubert, Liszt, Mendelssohn : Piano Pieces (Daniel Barenboim)

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Schubert, Liszt, Mendelssohn : Piano Pieces (Daniel Barenboim)

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The major post-Beethoven keyboard romantics never rejected traditional classical forms like sonata, variation and fugue. Nevertheless, the 19th century's increasingly subjective creative trend resulted in a spate of more intimate personal miniatures often carrying titles not previously encountered in the piano literature.
Whereas so much of what Schubert wrote remained unpublished in his lifetime, he had the satisfaction of seeing the six pieces of op. 94 (D 780) in print during his last year under the collective title of Moments Musicaux. Whether this name was of his own or his publisher's giving remains a moot point: until then it had only been used by lesser men for trivialities. But nothing could be more apt for musics so spontaneously encapsulating the mood of the moment. Though the six were separately composed at various times between 1923 and 1828, the key sequence permits, indeed encourages, continuous performance, just as if they had been conceived as a complete cycle.
No. 1 in C grows from a brief unaccompanied motif like the call of a magic horn. In no. 2 in A flat the idyllic main theme is twice disturbed by episodes in F sharp minor reached and left by characteristically daring enharmonic modulation. No. 3 in F minor first emerged in print, on its own, under the editor's title of "Air Russe", in a miscellaneous Viennese Album Musical of 1823. The restless semiquarvers (16th-notes) of no. 4 in C sharp minor are relieved by a lilting trio in the tonic major enharmonically translated into D flat. In no. 5 Schubert returns to F minor, but this time in a mood of impetuous disquiet. No. 6 in A flat had also appeared earlier on its own, in Vienna's 1824 Album Musical, under the title "Les Plaintes d'un Troubador" - again only an editor's whim, yet testimony to the music's intimate eloquence.
Mendelssohn's special contribution in the sphere of the character piece was the "song without words", so-called because of its predominately melodic inspiration. Thirty-six such miniatures were published (in six volumes) during his lifetime, twelve more posthumously as volumes seven and eight. Daniel Barenboim's selection starts with the first, the liquid, ternary shaped op. 19 no. 1 in E major, exemplifying the genre at its simplest and ends with the benignly chordal op. 102 no. 6 in C. Thanks to the advocacy of their distinguished dedicatee, the pianist, Clara Schumann, none achieved faster or wider popularity than the six of op. 62, particularly no. 6 in A, subsequently nicknamed "Spring Song". Whereas op. 62 no. 1 in G echoes a lyricism more typical of Robert Schumann, in no. 5 in A minor, subtitled "Venetian Gondola Song", Mendelssohn returns to the lilting Italianate world of the barcarolle already explored, albeit less seductively, in op. 30 no. 6 in F sharp minor. Op. 38 no. 6 in A flat, headed "Duetto", is a clearcut song for two. As for op. 67, while the plaintive no. 5 in B minor of 1844 is thought to have grown from Goethe's poem "Shepherd's Lament", the springhtly no. 4 in C, dating from slightly later, comes as a potent reminder that this was not long after Mendelssohn had followed up his early Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream with incidental music for a Potsdam production of Shakespeare's play.
No 19th-century keyboard composer opened up more startling new vistas in the field of the descriptive miniature tha Listz, also one of the most phenomenal virtuosos of his day. Subtitled "Three Notturnos", his three Liebesträume of 1850 were directly inspired by romantic verse, and in fact began their life as songs. The earliest, a setting of Feiligrath's "O lieb', so lang du kannst" (c. 1845), eventually emerged as no. 3 in A flat of the keyboard trilogy. Its nostalgic charm and fervour understandably carried Liszt's name round the world, though unjustly eclipsed the two Unland settings of 1849, "Hohe Liebe" and "Seliger Tod", in their equally delicate keyboard trasmogrifications as no.1 in A flat and no. 2 in E major.

Joan Chissel