MOONLIGHT

i. Adagio sostenuto 
ii. Allegretto 
iii. Presto agitato 
 

In 1801 Beethoven was preoccupied for two reasons. The first was the increasing problem he was having with his hearing. The second was altogether happier: “a dear, magical girl who loves me and whom I love”, as he told an old friend in a letter. In the same letter he even spoke of marriage: “this it is the first time that I have felt that marriage might make one happy.” The “magical girl” was Giulietta Guicciardi who had met Beethoven in 1800 when he started to give her piano lesson. Alas, the magic was not to last as Giulietta married a Count in 1803 – but the musical result is one of Beethoven’s most famous piano sonatas. 

The second of his Op.27 sonatas subtitled “quasi una fantasia”, has become universally known as the “Moonlight” – a nickname that derived from a description in 1832 by the critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab who likened the first movement to moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne. The form is unusually free: after the dreamy, slow opening movement, the second is a moment of repose before the angry outburst of the finale – clearly it’s not a portrait of Giulietta, even if Beethoven’s “magical girl” had been the inspiration for this highly original masterpiece. 

Nigel Simeone © 2012 

i. Ondine 
ii. Le Gibet 
iii. Scarbo 
 

Written in 1908, the three movements of Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit (‘Treasurer of the Night’) are each based on a poem or fantaisie from the collection Gaspard de la Nuit – Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot (‘Gaspard of the night – Fantasies in the manner of Rembrandt and Callot’) by the French Romantic poet, playwright and journalist, Aloysius Bertrand. Indeed, Ravel subtitles the work: ‘Trois poèmes pour piano d’après Aloysius Bertrand’. 

Premiered in Paris on 9th January 1909 by Ricardo Viñes, the work is famous for its difficulty. The critic Charles Rosen wrote, for example, that “The third and last piece, ‘Scarbo’, is the most sensational work for piano of the early twentieth century. ‘Scarbo’ is a demon dwarf goblin that suddenly swells to gigantic size, and Ravel achieves an unprecedented effect of terror. It has the reputation of being technically one of the most difficult pieces ever written.” 

The first piece in the suite, ‘Ondine’, is based on the poem of the same name. Telling of the water nymph Undine, who sings to seduce the observer into visiting her kingdom deep at the bottom of a lake, Ravel conjures the sounds of water falling and flowing in woven cascades.  

The second movement, ‘Le Gibet’ (‘The gallows’), evokes a mournful, morbid scene. Bertrand’s poem begins, “Ah! ce que j’entends, serait-ce la bise nocturne qui glapit, ou le pendu qui pousse un soupir sur la fourche patibulaire?” (“Ah! that which I hear, was it the north wind that screeches in the night, or the hanged one who utters a sigh on the forked gallows?”). A repeated, ostinato B-flat in octaves is played in the middle of the keyboard throughout, around which a plaintive melody grows and subsides. This imitates the tolling of a bell; “C’est la cloche qui tinte aux murs d’une ville sous l’horizon” (“It is the bell that tolls from the walls of a city, under the horizon”). 

Of the final piece in the set, Ravel remarked, “I wanted to make a caricature of romanticism. Perhaps it got the better of me”. ‘Scarbo’ depicts the nighttime mischief of a small goblin flitting in and out of the darkness, disappearing and suddenly reappearing. With its repeated notes and two terrifying climaxes, this is the high point in technical difficulty of all the three movements.  

Written in 1999 and premiered by the composer on 9th January 2000 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer, Dobrinka Tabakova says of her solo piano piece Halo, “The inspiration for this suite came from a beautiful halo which had formed around the moon one summer’s night. Exploring a range of techniques for achieving harmonics on the piano, the piece describes a hypothetical life of a halo. The first movement sees its birth from darkness, in the second the full strength of light is evoked through rapid repetitive figures, and the extreme registers of the piano; and the final movement portrays a mature and settled halo”.

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Introduzione: Adagio molto (attacca)
iii. Rondo. Allegretto moderato – Prestissimo
Count Ferdinand Ernst von Waldstein was a leading figure in Bonn’s political life at the end of the eighteenth century, and it was Waldstein who arranged for the young Beethoven to be given a scholarship to study with Haydn. In 1792, he wrote to Beethoven: “You go to realise a long-desired wish : the genius of Mozart is still in mourning and weeps for the death of its disciple … Receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” Waldstein was a talented amateur musician and a generous patron, and he also encouraged an old friend from Military Academy to support Beethoven: Prince Lichnowsky soon became Beethoven’s most important Viennese patron. In short, Beethoven had ample reason to be grateful to Waldstein, and dedicated one of the greatest works of his middle period to him. The Waldstein” Sonata was composed in 1803–4, and first published in 1805. Originally Beethoven wrote a conventional slow movement, but substituted it with “Introduzion” that leads to the finale. He quickly published the original movement as a stand-alone piece that we now know as the Andante favori. It was an inspired revision: among the many moments of heart-stopping beauty in this masterpiece, none is more magical than the pianissimo emergence of the Rondo theme.

Nigel Simeone © 2013