Stephanie's Pillowbook

Well, my last compilation had Baroque keyboard music played “straight”, more or less, on the piano. Now I want to survey some transcriptions – same era, same instrument, but rather more elaborated.

1) Ottorino Respighi “freely” transcribed a number of lute pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries as a set of suites for orchestra and then arranged them for piano in his collection Antiche Danza ed Arie. This is the very attractive, jaunty and modern-sounding Bergamasca by Bernardo Gianoncelli.

2) Leopold Godowsky made a number of transcriptions of Baroque music for his collection entitled Renaissance. As usual with Godowsky inner voices and piquant harmonies have been added. Here is his version of a Courante by Jean-Baptiste Lully.

3) Sergei Prokofiev was more likely to transcribe his own music than those of other composers. He did make this rather serene but austere (and only partial) transcription of Dietrich Buxtehude’s organ Prelude and Fugue in D.

4) Bela Bartok made a number of transcriptions of Italian Baroque keyboard music to play at his own piano recitals. He is sparer with virtuosic flourishes and additions than some of his contemporaries but still converts the music into a modern pianistic style. This is his transcription of Michelangelo Rossi’s Toccata No.2 in a minor.

5) Here is Percy Grainger’s brilliant and lyrical ramble through John Dowland’s song Now, O Now, I Needs Must Part. Utterly anachronistic – but surely marvellous and enchanting?

6) Moritz Moszkowski was another virtuoso pianist of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century who, like so many at the time, enjoyed making transcriptions to play at concerts. Handel’s aria Lascia ch’io pianga from Rinaldo, music of a simple but sublime unadorned beauty, might have seemed an unlikely candidate for such a transcription. It’s lovely, though…

7) Rachmaninov transcribed three movements from Bach’s Violin Partita No.3 in E BWV 1006. They are cheeky little arrangements almost expressly designed to irritate the purist. The alterations are delightful, though, even if the final result is as much Rachmaninov as it is Bach. This is the Prelude.

8) In my Baroque Piano compilation I included a harpsichord piece of Jean-Philippe Rameau played fairly straight by Robert Casadesus although in a pianistic style with many a Romantic nuance. Here is a much more extravagant and impressionistic transcription of Le rappel des oiseaux made by Ignaz Freidman with double notes galore.

9) Enrique Granados transcribed twenty-odd of the Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti making them more pianistic (according to the taste of the early twentieth century) – doubling notes, adapting harmonies, adding phrasing and dynamics. This is his version of the Sonata K102 – slower but more decorative than the original.

10) Well, we can’t have Baroque transcriptions for the piano without something by Ferruccio Busoni. Here is one of my favourites: the magnificent and resounding organ Prelude and Fugue in D BWV532 played here by Emil Gilels. I remember very clearly the first time I heard this piece. It was sometime in the latter half of the 1990s. It was early autumn and my parents were on holiday and I was using their house to study because it was so peaceful. I had spent the day making notes for my thesis. As the afternoon wore on I put on a new CD that had arrived that morning from Amazon – a Busoni recital by Geoffrey Tozer. The final work was this Prelude and Fugue transcription. I got up from the table and stood in the kitchen in the twilight and stared out into the garden. There’s something so ecstatic and profoundly right about the fugue that tears rolled down my cheeks. They were tears of joy at being alive.

It has become something of an article of faith that classical music should be performed on the instruments for which they were intended – for only then, it is argued, can the music be played in the correct manner and style and only then will it sound right. Pianists in particular, however, have long been interested in appropriating music written for the harpsichord or clavichord. It cannot be denied that the effect is very different. One might even talk, in some cases, of re-creation. Yet when the results are beautiful does it matter? I appreciate authenticity – but authenticity does not trump art. Anyway, I find it difficult to believe that any Baroque composer would be opposed to such transcriptions in principle considering how central the practice was to many at that time.

1) So, first, here is Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Toccata No.1 played by Francesco Tristano Schlimé.

2) Next a subtle and profound Pavan (MB15) by Orlando Gibbons played on the piano by Daniel Ben-Pienaar.

3) Glenn Gould made a famous recording of early keyboard music which in the very anachronistic manner of its performance somehow brings the music to life. From that record this is William Byrd’s First Pavan and Gailliard.

4) The Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti have long attracted pianists – they are irresistibly charming, varied, and beautiful. There are innumerable recordings – from them I have chosen the Sonata in b minor K87 in a very late recording made by Vladimir Horowitz. It is a performance which demonstrates perfectly how the piano brings out the melodic line and with it the almost vocal expressivity of this music.

5) Jean-Philippe Rameau’s piece for harpsichord, Le rappel des oiseaux used to be a great favourite with concert pianists. Here it is played with great delicacy by Robert Casadesus.

6) It is often thought that the keyboard music of French composers like Rameau and the Couperins was particularly resistant to being played on the piano. It is true that the music makes great use of the peculiarities of the harpsichord and that it is very difficult to transfer the ornamentation, for instance, to the piano in an effective way. But listen to Angela Hewitt playing Les Ombres Errantes by Francois Couperin. Is it not lovely?

7) Raymond Lewenthal made a fascinating LP once of Toccatas by various composers up to the present (including one by the pianist himself). The first on his programme was this brilliant little Toccata in g minor by Azzolino Bernardino della Ciaja.

8) Antonio Soler may well have been taught by Scarlatti – his many sonatas are as touching and playful as the older composer’s. Here is one in c sharp minor played by Alicia De Larrocha.

9) The Portuguese Carlos Seixas was similarly influenced by Scarlatti in his hundred or so sonatas. This, though, is a short and emotional Menuet in f minor played most movingly by Maria Grinberg.

10) Giovanni Battista Pescetti’s Sonata in c minor in an early recording by Clara Haskil.

11) Does it matter on which keyboard instrument you play Handel’s fabulous Chaconne in G (HWV435)? The harpsichord might be first choice but a version for piano only adds to and illuminates such music – don’t you think? Here it is played by Murray Perahia.

12) Of course it is not surprising that it is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach which pianists have plundered most. However necessary and important it is that we seek out aesthetically-correct and historically-informed performances, however fascinating and beautiful those performances might be, how could we live without Bach on the piano? To my mind it would be a needless form of asceticism to deny oneself such riches. I have been listening to a lot of the wonderful French pianist Marcelle Meyer lately – she recorded a great deal of Rameau, Couperin, Scarlatti and Bach. Here to end with is her heavenly playing of Bach’s Caprice from the Partita No.2.

How did people get to hear the great symphonic works of the past when there were fewer concerts and access to those concerts was much more difficult, when there were no recordings and no radio? They relied, of course, on the piano transcription. There was a roaring trade in the nineteenth-century for music that had been re-written to be performed at home on the piano (by one person or two) by amateurs and professionals alike. Nowadays some are inclined to be rather sniffy about the whole thing as once a necessary evil but now irrelevant. I disagree. Transcription in general was always an important part of musical life. Playing transcribed works on the piano is still an unbeatable form of education. And it is fun. They are essential to the piano literature. Furthermore, the best throw new light on familiar works. Which is undoubtedly why they continue to be written even up to the present. So I make no apology for being interested in piano transcriptions. Here are a few notable examples – all taken from complete versions of symphonic works.

1) Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are such a hackneyed work that it is utterly refreshing to come across them in such a strange form. Here is the first movement, Allegro, of Spring arranged for 2 pianos.

2) Many versions were made of Beethoven’s Symphonies. The most famous were those of Liszt for piano solo. This is his version of the finale, Allegro ma non troppo, of the Fourth Symphony.

3) There is something orchestral about much of Brahms’s piano writing so the transcriptions of his Symphonies sound quite natural. Here is the first movement, Allegro non assai, of his Fourth Symphony for piano four-hands.

4) Walter Niemann made a formidable transcription for solo piano of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. From it, the Scherzo a stirring tour-de-force.

5) Smetana’s tone-poem, Vltava, from the cycle Ma Vlast, is rather more limpid in this transcription for piano four-hands.

6) Fauré’s Requiem would seem a most unlikely candidate for transcription. Yet that made by Emile Naumoff for solo piano is surely beautiful and meditative. From it, the Kyrie.

7) Bruckner’s Third Symphony in the transcription made by fellow composer Mahler is revealed in all its architectural austerity. Here is the long slow movement, Adagio.

8) Here is Dukas’s sprightly and colourful Sorcerer’s Apprentice turned into a virtuoso show-piece for two pianos by Paul Rabinowitch.

9) Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune occupies the same sound-world as his Preludes for piano in this transcription.

10) Nearly all of Scriabin’s compositions were for piano so it is no surprise that transcriptions of his symphonic pieces work. They are different, for sure, but still interesting. Here is the ecstatic finale, entitled Jeu Divin, of his Third Symphony transcribed for two pianos.

Many of the great composers were also great virtuosos of the piano. And even those who weren’t were generally fine pianists. The piano itself has been an essential aid to composition. Well, I thought it would be fun to compile a selection of piano music written by composers not generally associated with the instrument: either they wrote very little for the piano or their piano music is overshadowed by compositions for other forces.

1) Rossini has always been famous for his operas. However, he retired from the stage after the production of William Tell in 1829. He did continue to compose over the next forty years and collected a number of instrumental pieces and songs in a large set entitled Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age). Here, from Volume V, is the lively piano piece Un sauté.

2) Bizet is known now for a handful of works – Carmen, L’Arlésienne and so on. His piano music is much less familiar to most people apart from the duets of Jeux d’enfants. Which is a shame because some of it is very interesting; his Variations chromatiques in particular.

3) Wagner was not a talented pianist although he used the piano extensively in composing his music-dramas. His compositions for piano were occasional pieces, potboilers really. The best is surely the Sonata in A flat that he wrote for the album of Mathilde Wesendonck.

4) Puccini’s scant piano music is virtually unknown. This is a short and slight Foglia d’album.

5) Rimsky-Korsakov’s few piano compositions were not his best, although his Piano Concerto is a fine work. Nevertheless they are typical of the Romantic Russian style. Here is a Romanza in a flat Op.15 No.2.

6) Bruckner spent most of his time on his massive symphonies. And he was, I believe, more interested in the organ than in the piano. There are some early student works and some dances. The only piano piece, though, which is at all notable is the reflective Erinnerung.

7) Verdi was certainly not interested in writing piano music. This little Romanza is the only piece I know of – and it is very slight.

8) Elgar was more of a violinist than a pianist. He did write a number of pieces for the instrument – although they are, perhaps, not as original as the larger-scale choral, orchestral and chamber works. The best-known is probably the atmospheric In Smyrna.

9) Sibelius’s reputation rests on his symphonies and other orchestral works. He did, in fact, write a great deal of music for the piano even though he supposedly disliked the instrument. Many have followed his own dismissive attitude towards these piano pieces as mere hack-work for publishers. That’s rather unfair – there is much to relish and appreciate. Take this lovely, wistful waltz, for instance… Five Piano Pieces Op.75 – The Spruce.

10) Holst write little for the piano – his own career as a pianist being halted by nerve damage as a teenager. Still, his best-loved work, The Planets, was originally scored for piano duet. Despite the colourful originality of the orchestration I must confess to having a soft spot for the piano version which I think really brings out the modernity of the piece and its harmonic innovations – it makes Holst stand out more as a contemporary of Scriabin and Ravel and less as an English pastoralist. Here is Venus: The Bringer of Peace for piano duet.

I’ve long been a regular reader of the Gramophone, self-styled The World’s Unrivalled Authority on Classical Music Since 1923. Here are a couple of posts I once wrote after reading two editions of the magazine.

1) The first article in the January 2006 issue was an introduction to next year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart and very irritating it was, too. Take a look at the words that recur throughout the essay: child, mysterious, genius, inconceivable, perfect, religious, love, purity, devotion, awe, incomparable, wonder, innocence, universal, transcends. When they come tumbling out like that you’d think they were referring to some secular version of Jesus – and, in fact, I think that is exactly what this adoration of Mozart amounts to: a myth for those who reject the Church but can’t break with Christianity. It’s very nineteenth-century.

If you think I exaggerate then read this quotation from Nikolaus Harnoncourt and you’ll see how this wishy-washy attitude leads apparently intelligent people to take leave of their senses:

“The incredible thing for me is that there is no young Mozart or old Mozart. His genius is there from the moment he starts writing. I don’t see ranking in the quality of Mozart’s work. I cannot say this is a better work than that. I don’t make a difference between youth and the end of his life.”

I simply don’t believe that a musician as fine as Harnoncourt cannot tell the difference between Don Giovanni and a country dance or between the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony and a work of Mozart’s youth. The latter, any of the early symphonies say, may be competently composed, may have particular charms and it may be almost incredible to think that it should be written by a mere boy, but it doesn’t have any of the qualities that make the mature works great art – and if it didn’t have Mozart’s name attached to it we wouldn’t even listen to it nowadays. To suggest otherwise, as Harnoncourt does, is, I think, obscurantist posing.

Of course, it is very difficult to speak about music. To hide behind this sort of mystical indifference, though, is simply an abdication of criticism; and there is no art without discrimination and judgement. It was a relief, then, to turn the page and find an article by John Steane on Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. The main thrust of his essay was to counter the accusation often made that her voice is mannered – I confess I’ve said that myself – and to acclaim her as representing the best traditions of the Golden Age of singing. Unlike Harnoncourt, Steane knows how to make distinctions, even when writing about something as intangible as a voice. He makes a good case for Schwarzkopf – but I’m still not convinced. Give me Lisa Della Casa or Sena Jurinac any day!

There were a couple of items reviewed to be put on my Amazon wish-list: in particular a book on Ronald Stevenson. Now, wouldn’t it be better if just some of the money and effort that will be poured next year into the umpteenth rehash of music that we all know well be directed instead to the promotion and celebration of a composer who needs the attention? Stevenson is a brilliant and original musician who has been criminally under-rated and under-performed. His Passacaglia on DSCH is one of the great works of twentieth-century piano music. How many people have even heard of it?

PS. Not long after I moved down to London last year there was a short festival held at St John’s Smith Square to celebrate the 80th birthday of Ronald Stevenson. I went to two of the recitals: in one I heard, among other pieces, Percy Grainger’s fabulous Porgy and Bess Fantasy and Busoni’s Fantasia Contrapuntistica (in the version for two pianos); in the other Joseph Banowetz played works by Stevenson himself. Both were fascinating and both were very poorly attended – as was the festival as a whole. Indeed, I was probably one of the few people there who wasn’t a friend or colleague of the composer. Rather sad, really – especially when you consider how packed the concert halls are for yet another Beethoven symphony or Mozart concerto.

2) I was alarmed to read in the editorial of the June 2006 issue that Mark Ravenhill had some time ago written an article in The Guardian complaining that it was no longer possible for the younger generation to shock older people with the music they like. I have been regaling anyone who will listen, most recently at a dinner party last weekend, with the very same argument. Damn! They must have thought I was simply regurgitating something I had read in the newspaper. Still, my angle was somewhat different. So far as I can gather, Ravenhill’s point was social and technological – to do with the sheer availability of music today – whereas mine was aesthetic. Of course, availability is an important part of it: if you can, with little trouble, hear anything from any part of the world and from almost any period in history then nothing is going to appear too surprising. The extremes have been reached, we have had the complete silence of John Cage’s 4′33” and the total noise of Merzbow. I’m not saying that innovation is dead but no-one is going to produce anything that will make me jump up and and cry, “What the hell was that?” My usual response to new music these days is “I’ve heard that before.” Of course, if I had teenage children I would hope that they did have the spirit to provoke me somehow with their music – they could listen to the sort of music that people who don’t really like music listen to (shudder – I trust you know what I mean). That would really disappoint me!

I’m sure lovely old John Steane would never stoop to such tactics. His article this month is on 78s. He remarks that it is thanks to the demand of club DJs nowadays for varispeed turntables which enables people like him to acquire decent equipment for playing their ancient discs. Now, I am not old enough to recall the 78 era – but when I was about 11 or 12 a colleague of my father’s did give me a box full of records (as I’ve mentioned before). They were very thick and heavy and covered with plain brown cardboard and they became treasures to me. My first record player was like a Dansette: it came in a box with a red lid and you could queue up half a dozen records at a time. It not only played at 33, 45 and 78 rpm but also at 16 – although I’ve never in my life seen a record that needed to be played at that speed. Anyway, these 78s I was given are even now among my favourite music and my favourite interpretations. I’ve managed over the years to trace down all these recordings on CD, but while they don’t crackle as much they’re not quite as satisfying: the piano just doesn’t have the same sound, rich, sonorous, velvety. 78s, as John Steane writes, had a special presence, apparently too difficult to recreate digitally.

On the subject of piano-players the cover asks the curious question: “Stefan Askenase – Why the genius pianist is not as famous as Ashkenazy?” Which provokes the obvious answer: because he’s nowhere near as good. To be fair, even Ashkenazy these days isn’t as good as Ashkenazy. In his youth he combined a thrilling yet sensitive virtuosity with an intellectual and aristocratic command of the music – just listen to the youthfully passionate disc of Chopin Etudes in the Russian Piano School series recorded in the early ’60’s. Had Vladimir Ashkenazy continued in that vein he might well have become one of the pre-eminent pianists of our time. Instead he chose to be, at best, a very average conductor. Why do so many pianists nowadays go down that path? If they need another outlet perhaps they should go back to composing? As for Askenase, Bryce Morrison attempts to make a case but really only succeeds in damning him with faint praise, in my opinion. Diffident is the word that comes to mind with Askenase – an elegant touch here and there hardly suffices to make one search out his old recordings with any haste.

Finally, let me mention the first page, an illustration of the Cat Piano of Athanasius Kircher. In order to rouse some Prince from his melancholy Kircher caught a variety of cats, each of whom cried at a different pitch. He placed them in cages attached to a keyboard. When a key was depressed a spike would be inserted into the cat’s tail causing it to cry. Very amusing, I’m sure!

First posted in December 2005 and May 2006

Beethoven composed his Sonata quasi una fantasia Op.27 No.2 in 1801. It became, almost immediately, one of the most famous piano pieces ever written. Or, at any rate, its first movement became popular. Not long after Beethoven’s death it was christened the Moonlight Sonata by the critic Rellstab. I’m no fan of nicknames for pieces of music – they always seem irrelevant and often absurd. And so here – that first movement, surely, has more, following Berlioz, the character of a lament than a romantic reverie. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to compare a few different versions. People often have the curious notion that because classical music is written-down all that is necessary is to play the notes. Hardly. Here we have a piece that is relatively simple and that sustains a single mood throughout – yet how varied are the ways in which the music is brought to life. Of course, I must mention that this is only the first movement – one cannot truly judge the interpretation without considering its relation to the rest of the sonata.

1) Harold Bauer records in his autobiography how he came across a score in the New York Public Library and recalled taking particular note that the first movement was marked 2/2. Although the first page of the original manuscript has disappeared the earliest editors did indeed mark the movement 2/2. Bülow, I believe, was the first editor to mark it 4/4 which accords to the way the piece is notated. Anyway, Bauer tried out the music at two beats in the bar and found, he says, that he played faster but that the rhythmic effect was slower. Well, his recording, made in the late 1920s, is certainly rather swift-sounding but not at all hurried. He breaks many of the left-hand octaves and doesn’t play all melodic notes on the beat. Nevertheless, Bauer conveys melancholy without lapsing into sentimentality.

Bauer

2) Josef Hofmann plays the movement with great spontaneity. There are many fluctuations of tempo. This rubato is too much for modern tastes, apparently. But this is surely exquisite playing, is it not? There is delicacy and subtlety of tone as always with Hofmann, and an interpretation that is both mysterious and dramatic.

Hofmann

3) Solomon plays very, very slow. It’s magical and dreamy, though. Every single note is given due weight. I love Solomon’s Beethoven recordings – what a shame his tragic stroke forced abandonment of the complete set.

Solomon

4) Emil Gilels gives a most beautiful performance. Everything is “just right” – possessing an ideal clarity and yet poetic at the same time. Perhaps it is the best recorded version of the work and the one I’d recommend anyone buy.

Gilels

5) Glenn Gould’s is undoubtedly the strangest and most controversial recording. Is it a deconstruction, sweeping away the cobwebs and shedding new light on a too-familiar piece? Or is it some kind of joke – taking revenge on an old, over-played warhorse? He plays the first movement very fast and too loud for introspection. The triplets seem to be tossed off in perfunctory fashion, almost impatiently. I want to like it but I can’t help finding it all surface and no depth.

Gould

6) Finally, let us hear the work on a period instrument. I was always curious: Beethoven marked the first movement to be played senza sordini, ie with the pedal down throughout. This is impossible with a modern piano – the effect would be far too clangorous. I have two versions: one is played by Paul Badura-Skoda. It is a rather awkward performance which seems to be hampered by an instrument with a very resonant bass and shaky treble. The other, by Ronald Brautigam on an instrument that is much less of an historical curiosity is more successful in my opinion. It is a well-judged performance that gives a good idea of the sound-world that Beethoven in all likelihood wanted to create.

Brautigam

I collect scores. In the first place because I enjoy playing music on the piano – although I don’t get much chance these days: I had to give up my piano when I moved (in any case it was in urgent need of repair, so much so as to be unplayable); now I have to be content with picking out the notes as best I can on a four-octave MIDI controller. But I do still seek out music to play and even with the MIDI keyboard it is instructive and fun to work through reductions and transcriptions. Secondly, I like to read music – that is, look at the score and hear the music in my head. I can”t read everything equally well: it depends on my familiarity with the music itself or at least with the style (so, I can “imagine” a piece of nineteenth-century piano music that I’ve never heard before much more accurately than, say, a Renaissance madrigal or an avant-garde string quartet). Thirdly, and most importantly at the moment, I often like to follow the score when I listen to music. Doing so makes it easier to concentrate for a start. And then, comparing the written notes with what one hears is always fascinating. Looking at a score one tends to hear more as well, to notice little things, inner details, that the ears alone might not have detected. On top of all that, the score adds a certain physicality to the experience of listening. Any musician will tell you that having a piece “in your fingers” increases one’’s understanding immeasurably. If you look at the music you can at least imagine how it is played and how it would feel under one’’s fingers. I haven’t explained this very well.

Anyway, in the recent past the average score was expensive and fairly difficult to obtain. However, thanks to the invention of the scanner and the internet it is now possible to build up an extensive collection. Here are a few useful links:

The first place to visit is undoubtedly the International Music Score Library Project, a wiki hosting nearly 30,000 public domain scores. This great resource was forced to close not so long ago thanks to bullying lawyers at Universal Editions. The whole sorry saga was summed up in this BBC News article by Michael Geist. Anyway, the site is back up now. IMSLP should certainly be consulted for the major composers – it has, for instance, all the Haydn sonatas, all the Beethoven sonatas and variations, almost complete Chopin, Schumann, Brahms piano works and so on. There is plenty of more obscure music available, too. They have various projects in hand – adding files from the MIT archive, for example, and the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe. There is also a comprehensive list of links to other sites.

One of the first places I discovered offering scores for download was piano.ru. It has been around a long time and has a lot of interesting stuff, especially Russian music, not yet on IMSLP. Parts of the site are in English but most of it is Russian – it’’s not too difficult to navigate, however.

The Sibley Music Library at The Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester is well worth a browse. It is especially strong on the less-well known Romantic repertoire.

An excellent forum is Pianophilia. There is a concentration on piano music, as the name suggests, but not exclusively so. Most of the offerings have been scanned particularly for the forum and are not available elsewhere. The works of living (or recently deceased) composers are not allowed. There is a lot of fascinating and erudite discussion – many of the contributors are practising musicians as well as scholars and teachers and others involved in the music world. Really, it is a quite wonderful site and full of treasures.

Much of the rare music that was originally uploaded to Pianophilia has been preserved at a new site, The Henselt Library of Nineteenth-Century Piano Music.

For the works of Mozart there is just one place to go – the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum containing the entire Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, that is, the complete works in a modern edition. Surely one of the great resources of the internet. Viewing and downloading the pdf files is not the most convenient method ever devised but it is not too irritating.

There are plenty of other places but those I have listed above are the best and should satisfy even the most eager collector. I do want to mention, though, a couple of sites that offer the chance to view composer’’s manuscripts. First of all there are the extremely rich and absorbing Digital Archives at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn site – not just manuscripts and first editions but sketches, copies made by Beethoven of other composers” work, letters, pictures and extracts from recordings. Almost as fascinating is the very large collection of material at the Schubert-Autographs site. Finally, there is the Chopin Collection of first and early editions at the University of Chicago Library.

By the way, if you do download scores a lot you will notice that many come divided into smaller files. I recommend pdftk to merge them back together (there are versions for all platforms) – it’’s just a quick little command-line application but very useful.

Musical scores are not just useful – they can themselves be works of art. This is particularly true of much modern music. The blog, scores/improvisations/texts, has some fascinating graphic scores and there are some more great examples in this gallery. The Block Museum has an interesting exhibition of graphical scores called Pictures of Music with illustrations, discussion and an introduction to interpretation. A Young Person’s Guide to Treatise has pages from Cardew’s score along with quotations and links. You can download the fascinating anthology by John Cage called Notations from Ubuweb. Most wonderful of all, though, is the page on BibliOdyssey entitled The Visual Context of Music.

First posted in August 2007

I thought it might be interesting to compile a few examples of piano works (and one harpsichord piece) written by female composers – of whom there are far more than might be imagined considering the commonplace opinion that women can’t compose classical music.

1) We start off with Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729), a celebrated virtuoso on the harpsichord at the court of Louis IV who wrote many pieces for the instrument as well as violin sonatas, trio sonatas, cantatas and what was apparently the first opera to be written by a woman in France.

Here is her excellent Chaconne in a minor.

2) Marianne von Martinez (1744-1812) benefited from the protection and friendship of Metastasio. He arranged for her musical talents to blossom under the tutelage of Haydn, Porpora and Hasse. She composed oratorios, masses, motets, and cantatas as well as three piano sonatas and a concerto. In 1773 she was elected to the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna. As an adult both Haydn and Mozart were frequent guests at her soirées.

Her music was of the galant style as this minuet finale of her Sonata No.3 in A demonstrates.

3) Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) was a Polish virtuoso pianist praised throughout Europe for her brilliant and lyrical playing. Goethe thought highly of her. She settled in St. Petersburg in 1828 where she was appointed court pianist to the tsarina and held a glittering salon attended by, among others, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Glinka and Field. She wrote much piano music as well as songs. Szymanowska’s music – etudes, nocturnes, mazurkas, polonaises – was in the sentimental and brilliant style of early romanticism which had an obvious influence on the young Chopin.

Her best-known piece is this charming Nocturne in A flat known as La Murmure.

4) Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) was a highly talented musician who enjoyed a successful career as a concert pianist. Both she and her husband were prominent in French musical life: Louise was appointed Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire (the only woman to hold such a rank in the nineteenth century) while her husband ran a major publishing house, Editions Farrenc. Both were pioneers in early-music research. Farrenc’s piano works and chamber music may have fallen into oblivion but are certainly interesting enough to warrant revival.

Here is her Etude Op.26 No.4.

5) Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) was perhaps the most gifted female composer of the nineteenth century. She was the sister of Felix Mendelssohn and, like him, she received an excellent, wide-ranging education and from an early age clearly possessed a great deal of musical talent. While it was true that both her father and brother discouraged her from making a career from music or even publishing her work it is an over-simplification to say that her creativity was confined to the domestic sphere as often claimed. Her music was heard – and was praised. She married the painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829. Her best work is perhaps the Piano Trio in d minor of which there are now several recordings. A large cycle of pieces for the piano, Das Jahr is also notable.

Here, though, is the first movement, Allegro molto agitato, of her passionate Sonata in g minor.

6) Clara Schumann née Wieck (1819-1896) was undoubtedly one of the finest pianists of the nineteenth century. She gave her first recital at the Leipzig Gewandhaus at the age of 11 and was acclaimed thereafter for the brilliance and taste of her playing. She composed from childhood, too, but gave up in her mid-thirties. She married the composer Robert Schumann and bore eight children. Both seemed to have felt that her role as a mother and as primary breadwinner (both as a concert pianist and as a teacher – particularly after Robert’s decline into mental illness and early death) did not allow her the time or the freedom to flourish as a creative artist. I wonder what she would have been capable of? Her instincts were conservative – she always advised her husband to tone down his more extravagant flights and her whole approach to music was, well, bourgeois. Clara Schumann and her circle, I’m afraid, bear quite some responsibility for the stuffy image that classical music was to acquire and even today cannot shake off. Anyway, while her music, unlike Robert’s, is not touched by genius, it is attractive and well worth hearing.

This is my favourite piece of hers – the Romance in g minor Op.21 No.3.

7) It is well-known that the piano was the instrument of choice for many women in the nineteenth century. A certain level of competence was one of the expected accomplishments of a young lady. So, not surprisingly, a great deal of music was written to satisfy that particularly large market. The most popular was written by Polish girl called Tekla Badarzewska (1834?-1861) when she was 17. The piece was called The Maiden’s Prayer. It is surely a shallow and banal work. Still, it has been said that more copies of the sheet music have been sold than of any other piece. So, worth hearing at least once, perhaps?

The Maiden’s Prayer.

8) Agathe Backer-Grøndahl (1847-1907) was a talented and successful Norwegian pianist who was taught by Kjerulf, Kullak (or at least at Kullak’s Academy), Bülow and Liszt. She composed many songs and piano pieces. Her works are in the lyrical Romantic style of the previous generation flavoured with Norwegian folk elements.

Here is her stirring Concert Study Op.11 No.1 in b flat minor.

9) Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) was, in her time, a very successful French musician, the first female composer to receive the Légion d’Honneur. In 1903 she made a few recordings which show her piano-playing to be marked by exceptional grace and style. Her compositions are generally relegated to the realm of salon music and dismissed for their feminine character. While not wishing to claim too much, I find her work extremely attractive, admirably suited to its aim, and a pleasure to play and hear.

Here is the delightful Autrefois.

10) Amy Beach (1867-1944) was an American composer and pianist. After marriage she agreed to give only one concert a year and concentrate on composition. Nevertheless she led a very active life and played quite a prominent part in the American musical scene – she became, for instance, the first president of the Society of American Women Composers. She wrote many songs, piano pieces, chamber works, an opera, a symphony, and a piano concerto – strongly reminiscent of Brahms, especially, and Macdowell but still individual and interesting.

Here is Fire Flies from the Four Sketches Op.15.

First posted in November 2007

This is old news now but it remains an instructive story, I think…I reproduce my original post along with some material I added in response to other people’s comments.

The classical music world is buzzing with gossip this past day or two with certain revelations regarding Joyce Hatto. She was an English pianist who died a year ago from cancer. Apparently she had been ill for many years, too ill ever to have sustained her previously modest career as a concert pianist. Then recordings started to appear, dozens and dozens of them, many supposedly made when she was well into her seventies. They were lavishly praised by critics – some were acclaimed as the greatest recordings ever made of certain pieces. Here was another glorious Richter, it was said. Nevertheless, behind the hype there were murmurings of dissent. How likely was it that one of the greatest pianists who ever lived should have remained hidden from view for so many decades? Was it really believable that a frail old woman battling cancer could cope with such virtuosic warhorses as the Liszt Transcendental Studies and even the 53 phenomenally difficult Chopin Studies of Godowsky? These are works that demand great reserves of both physical and mental strength and stamina. Yet it was claimed she played them better than anyone. Now it seems that the nay-sayers were right. It would appear that recordings of other pianists have been slightly manipulated and released under Hatto’s name. The story was revealed on the Gramophone website yesterday. The audio proofs have been presented on Pristine Classical and today on the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music websites. There doesn’t seem as yet to be any convincing riposte from her supporters. The case is not closed but I can’t see any conclusion other than that a great fraud has been perpetrated. It is very sad that a woman’s reputation is now to be dragged through the mud. At the same time, one can’t help but be amused at the egg left on the faces of certain pompous music critics (I believe the Germans had a word for it!).

PS. The question is, of course, why do so many people want to believe in Hatto’s greatness.

• While it is all very amusing to observe the squirming of self-appointed experts the trouble is that it often causes people to distrust expertise altogether. One should not take from the Hatto affair the idea that it is impossible or useless to attempt to distinguish between the performances of one pianist or another – as though they were all equal and it is simply a matter of opinion which one might prefer. There are standards of judgement – contested though they may be. The problem here has been that this is a field in which there are too many whose authoritative manner is not backed up by any extensive knowledge, whose judgements are affected too much by fashion and reputation, and who put too much effort into grinding axes and riding hobbyhorses.
• What it shows, though, is that classical music, for all its pretensions toward purity, is led by the logic of capitalism just as much as pop music. An insatiable desire for novelty is equally applicable to both. One day it is a brilliant Chinese student straight out of music college who is the greatest thing – the next it is a quaint little old lady from England. One fad followed by another.
• As for wanting to believe – I suppose the Bryce Morrison quotation from a Gramophone review says it all – Hatto seemed to represent to some “an awe-inspiring triumph of mind over matter, of the indomitable nature of the human spirit”.
• It is worth going back just a couple of weeks into the archives to observe the vitriolic abuse poured on those who ever doubted the veracity of the Hatto story. Anyone who questioned the official account was dubbed a mean-spirited conspiracy theorist. While some of the more ridiculous of her supporters are now keeping a very low profile, others simply complain that they were “duped” – it is reported that this will be the Gramophone’s line in the next issue – and that they stand by their original reviews but accept the discs they reviewed were by different pianists. This excuse won’t wash, however. The version of the Godowsky Etudes released under Hatto’s name is that by Carlo Grante. When it was released by Grante himself it was damned with faint praise. When Hamelin’s version came out every reviewer said it was much better than Grante’s. Now some, who were disparaging about Grante, then wrote that Hatto’s recording (which of course was Grante’s) was better even than Hamelin’s! Pfft! (Actually, it turns out they used Hamelin as well! That just makes it even funnier…) My favourite critic, however, is Tom Deacon who claimed that Hatto’s performance of the the Liszt piano transcription of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony was so wonderful that one might as well throw out Bruno Walter’s famous recording with the Vienna Philharmonic! It would appear that some people were that taken by the very idea of the saintly genius of Joyce Hatto they were willing to sacrifice their reason and their common sense.

First posted in February 2007

“… the fate of Chopin’s work is egregious because he has survived not as the astonishing revolutionary he really was in all sorts of musical and cultural ways, but as a pianists’ composer, at once effeminate and trivial.”
[Edward Saïd]

Here are my top ten Chopin recordings (all, interestingly enough, historical recordings made more than fifty years ago…):

1) Dinu Lipatti. I could have chosen the fabulous recording the adorable Lipatti made of the b minor Sonata or indeed any one of the short Chopin pieces because I love them all, but it is the Barcarolle which means most to me. Here is playing of exquisite perfection. Natural, affirmative, rich, lucid – Lipatti plays with exactly the right combination of freedom and restraint. Heavenly.

Barcarolle Op.60. (1948)

2) Solomon. Sovereign playing of such distinction and sensitivity, inspired, effortless. With a disciplined sense of the piece’s architecture, Solomon’s performance is simple and serene at the opening, passionate and powerful at the end.

Ballade No.4 Op.52 . (1946)

3) Benno Moiseiwitsch. This is a performance of romantic grandeur. It is also astonishingly nuanced, paying attention to the voicing like no other pianist, bringing out the inner lines (incredibly, so unfashionable these days). The striking climax, when it comes, arrives with magisterial inevitability.

Ballade No.1 Op.23. (1938/39)

4) Alfred Cortot. Cortot’s playing of this beautiful and melancholy work is unbelievably elegant, infinitely subtle, and superbly lyrical. His use of rubato is wonderful, splendidly judged and idiomatic. Is it too much for modern tastes, perhaps? Ah, but the line! – breathtaking.

Waltz Op.34 No.2. (1934)

5) Ignaz Friedman. Has there ever been a performance of such astounding finesse, with such unparalleled control of counterpoint? Friedman demonstrates that Chopin’s music here looks back to Bach and forward to Fauré. Pianists ever since have marvelled at this magical recording.

Nocturne Op.55 No.2. (1937)

6) Sergei Rachmaninov. This is very much a fellow-composer’s re-creation. It is a totally gripping performance, packed with concentrated power and full of risk-taking excitement. In the famous Funeral March Rachmaninov follows Anton Rubinstein’s interpretation which ignores Chopin’s markings to give the impression of a hearse approaching and then receding into the distance.

Sonata in b flat minor Op.35 – Marche funebre. (1930)

7) Percy Grainger. Before I heard any of this eccentric man’s recordings I wondered how he would play Chopin – I couldn’t have imagined that it would be with such magnificent vitality. This is, unsurprisingly, an idiosyncratic and personal reading, yet totally without mannerism and utterly convincing.

Sonata in b minor Op.58 – Allegro maestoso. (1925)

8) Irene Scharrer. This great friend of Myra Hess gave up playing the piano as a profession to concentrate on being a wife and mother. If that suggests her playing was delicate and ladylike nothing could be further from the truth. This Scherzo is muscular and determined, driven by impulsive rhythms but without sacrificing any of the beauty and brilliance of the work.

Scherzo No.2 Op.31. (1932)

9) Vladimir Sofronitsky. Now this is a performance of controlled fury. The demonic intensity of the playing is rather startling in the outer sections – yet in the middle it sings with gorgeous melodicism – before leading to a shattering climax in the coda.

Scherzo No.1 Op.20. (1950?)

10) Noel Mewton-Wood . A highly individual and spontaneous performance, with great variety of tone and originality of expression. Every phrase, it seems, is newly minted and full of freshness. What a shame he committed suicide at such a young age..

Piano Concerto No.1 Op.11 – Allegro maestoso. (1951)

First posted in August 2006