Solo Keyboard

Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Minor, BWV 853: Tragedy and Catharsis

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The Prelude and Fugue No. 8 in E-flat minor, BWV 853 comes from Book 1 of J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. Beginning with the purity of C major, the two-volume collection is made up of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. The key of E-flat (or enharmonic D-sharp) was rarely used during the Baroque period. For BWV 853, Bach transposed a previously written D minor fugue into D-sharp minor. …

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Liszt’s “Au Lac de Wallenstadt” from “Années de Pèlerinage”: Sighing Waves

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…Thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring. These lines from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage form the poetic caption for Franz Liszt’s Au lac de Wallenstadt (“At Lake Wallenstadt”). Following the exalted La chapelle de Guillaume Tell, with its distant Alpine horn calls, Au lac de Wallenstadt is the second movement of Liszt’s …

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Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons”: March, Song of the Lark

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In the 19th century, writers such as Charles Dickens commonly published books in monthly installments which appeared in popular periodicals. Published on the first day of each month in 1876 in the St. Petersburg music journal, Nuvellist, Tchaikovsky’s piano cycle, The Seasons, Op. 37a reached listeners in a similar way. Subtitled “12 characteristic scenes,” the atmospheric works are miniature tone paintings. Tchaikovsky composed them concurrently with the ballet, Swan Lake. In this era before recordings, …

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Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Paganini: Musical Athleticism

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Niccolò Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin has provided an irresistible blueprint for numerous composers. Most famously, its jaunty, infectious melody inspired the 24 variations of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43. Nearly seventy years before Rachmaninov, in 1863, Johannes Brahms composed his own Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35. The work is organized in two books, each made up of fourteen blazingly athletic variations, and …

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The Artistry of Ferruccio Busoni: Historic Recordings from 1922

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Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), who died 100 years ago last July, was a musical renaissance man. The Italian composer, pianist, conductor, teacher, writer, and editor has been called “the first truly modern composer.” He is also remembered for numerous enduring transcriptions of the music of J.S. Bach. Busoni associated with such a disparate group of contemporaries as Schoenberg, Sibelius, and Edgard Varèse. His small circle of students included Kurt Weill. The pianist Alfred …

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Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major: Impressions and Reveries

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Composed during the summer of 1816, the Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101 is the first of Beethoven’s five “late period” piano sonatas. It is music filled with mystery and divine revelation. Isolated from the world as a result of nearly total hearing loss, Beethoven, in his final years, conceived of music unlike anything which came before. Gone is the classical charm, and ferocious revolutionary struggle of the earlier periods. …

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Clayton Stephenson Plays “Tea for Two”

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Last weekend at the Richmond Symphony we welcomed American pianist Clayton Stephenson. The 25 year old New York native performed Ravel’s glittering and bluesy Piano Concerto in G Major. Two other 20th century masterworks rounded out the program; one depicting the majesty and mystery of the sea (Debussy’s La Mer), and the other rooted firmly in the earth (Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring). A finalist at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano …

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