In this piece, Cage tries to soften the distinctions inherent between the two instruments used. Overall, the piece has an atmospheric character, like many other compositions from this period. It should be played with sustained resonances, and ‘sempre rubato’, giving the work a quirkily Romantic feel. The piano part employs mostly chordal arpeggios and tone clusters, the violin part mostly sustained tones.

From JohnCage.org

Ewan Campbell

Ewan grew up in Kent playing cello and double bass. He moved to London in 2002 to study music at King’s College, where he returned in 2008 for his PhD, supervised by George Benjamin and Silvina Milstein. Between those spells in London Ewan achieved distinction in his MPhil at Cambridge University, and was subsequently appointed as Composer-in-Residence with the CU Music Society in 2012. Ewan held an Associate Lecturer position at KCL until 2015, and is now Director of Music at Churchill and Murray Edwards Colleges in Cambridge, where he directs the Inter Alios Choir and seeks to broaden the programming and participation of University music making.

Ewan’s music has been awarded several international composition prizes including the New York based Counterpoint Competition, the Forme uniche Competition in Adelaide and the Italian Mare Nostrum Competition. His works have been performed by ensembles and soloists including: London Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Fretwork, Küss Quartet, Fukio Ensemble, Lontano, Ensemble Matisse, Consortium 5, The Hermes Experiment, Mercury Quartet, Dr K Sextet, Anton Lukoszevieze, Gaby Bultmann, Thomas Gould and Clare Hammond. Ewan enjoys collaborations with other artforms, and has worked with theatre maker Andrew Dawson, choreographer Katie Green, and Physical theatre company Bottlefed, filmaker Sebastian Barner-Rasmussen, and artists Issam Kourbaj and Tim A Shaw.

Ewan directs the Wilderness Orchestra and choir, which perform his orchestral arrangements of artists such as Radiohead, David Bowie, Queen, Aphex Twin and Nina Simone. They have performed with a number of collaborators including Charlotte Church, Kate Nash, London Contemporary Voices, La Fura del Baus, Camille O’Sullivan, Jessie Ware, Francesca Lombardo, beatboxers Shlomo and Reeps One, and actors Olivia Williams, Rashan Stone and Jack Whitehall.

Ewan is an enthusiastic teacher and enjoys working with young people. He mentors students of the Aldeburgh Young Musician scheme; supervises at Cambridge University; delivers workshops for Cambridge Music Outreach and judges the East Anglian Young Composer of the Year Competition.

London, He Felt Fairly Certain, Had Always Been London (2016)

This is a mixed notated / graphic score in which instructions are provided for how to follow a route through the music. Below is a copy of the part for the double bass.

The Catalan Christmas carol El cant dels ocells tells of birds singing with joy on hearing the news of the birth of Jesus. Pablo Casals made his cello arrangement after leaving Spain in protest at Franco’s dictatorship in 1939. He played it in almost all his concerts thereafter, including a memorable performance for President John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1961. The song became a musical emblem of Casals’s Catalan homeland, and his self-imposed exile. The great cellist himself made it clear that his reasons for making this arrangement were both musical and political, expressing the hope that ‘these sounds may be like a gentle echo of the nostalgia we feel for Catalonia. These sentiments must make us all work together, with the hope of a peaceful future, when Catalonia will once again be Catalonia.’  

Notes by Nigel Simeone, 2022 

When penning a memoir in her later years, Avril Coleridge-Taylor advised her readers to ‘never be discouraged by criticism even if it means waiting years to gain real recognition.’ She had her fair share of both criticism and waiting, and is only now moving into the limelight, three decades after her death. In her lifetime she was overshadowed by the better-known composers whose music is on this programme — her father, Samuel, and her contemporaries and inspirations Smyth, Elgar, and Vaughan Williams.

The Idylle for flute and piano is the earliest of Coleridge-Taylor’s works on today’s programme. She wrote it in 1920 for herself and the flautist Joseph Slater, to whom she was engaged. It is an unabashedly romantic work, written by a woman in love. By the time she composed Can Sorrow Find Me? in 1938, she was quite a different composer and woman, in the midst of a divorce from the man she eventually married, Harold Dashwood. This piece was originally a song. It has a melancholic, wistful tone, and a decidedly ambiguous conclusion. After appearing to end triumphantly on the text ‘Today I will be young and glad again’, Coleridge-Taylor brings back an altered version of the introduction and opening lines so the piece stops but does not end, closing with a question. The 1945 Romance is dedicated to a Dr. F. Bachner — perhaps the doctor who at the time was successfully treating her for an infected wound, almost certainly saving her life.

Avril adored her father, who was one of the most famous composers in Britain at the time of his death, when Avril was just nine. She remained forever devoted to his memory. ‘I write down…my own thoughts, and those which I believe are sent me by father’, she admitted in an early interview. His lyrical style, so apparent in this Quintet, is a clear influence behind Avril’s work. Besides Samuel, Elgar was the most significant musical figure in Avril’s life. She dedicated the second movement of her Piano Concerto to him. The Chanson de Matin is one of Elgar’s early works, in the tradition of “light music” that was hugely popular in England, and that Avril particularly enjoyed. Vaughan Williams, too, was a prominent presence — Coleridge-Taylor’s more romantic moments are in dialogue with his muted textures and constantly shifting harmonic language.

As for Smyth, Coleridge-Taylor felt that she was not just a musical inspiration, but an important personal role model, as a pioneering woman composer and conductor. ‘I felt as a woman composer I had a definite mission to accomplish in this world’, Coleridge-Taylor wrote, ‘so that her name, the first among our famous women musicians, should not be forgotten nor her work have been in vain.’ This energetic Piano Trio is an early work, dating from 1880. The ‘Scherzo’ contains Smyth’s characteristic quicksilver changes of mood, moving quickly between passages fraught with tension and joyful, expansive exclamations.

Leah Broad

The second of her 6 Études de concert Op.35, Cécile Chaminade’s (1857-1944) ‘Automne’ was composed in 1886 in Périgord (the regional name of the Dordogne), where the composer holidayed with her family each year during September and October. Beginning tenderly with a stepwise melody in the middle of the piano’s rocking, accompaniment-texture, the music grows to a contrasting middle section marked ‘con fuoco’ (‘with passion’). This is poignant and characterful music that reflects the beauty of Autumn, evoking images of falling leaves, fading light, and a sense of nostalgia. A quintessential example of Chaminade’s ability to blend technical virtuosity with rich expressiveness, ‘Automne’ encapsulates the romantic spirit of the late 19th century in a voice that is distinctively the composer’s own. The piece is dedicated to Polish-French pianist and composer, the Countess ‘Mademoiselle Hélène Kryzanowska’.

Benjamin Tassie, 2024

Cécile Chaminade’s (1857-1944) ‘Autrefois’ is the fourth piece in the composer’s collection, 6 Pièces humoristiques Op.87 (Six humorous pieces). Translated as ‘in the past’ or ‘formerly’, ‘Autrefois’ is nostalgic and bittersweet in character. Composed in 1897, the compisition begins with a gentle, ornamented theme, marked by subtle shifts in harmony. This music is then contrasted with a middle section comprised of cascading figures and rich chromatic textures, before the piece then returns to the tranquillity of its opening musical idea. Appoggiaturas (short notes that ‘decorate’ the melody), dynamic contrasts, and chromatic voice-leading – within the work’s formal structure – make this a piece rich with expressive and interpretive potential, typifying Chaminade’s talents with deeply characterful and pianistic writing.

Benjamin Tassie, 2024

Composed in 1892, Cécile Chaminade’s (1857-1944) Les Sylvains (commonly translated as ‘The Fauns’) is a characterful miniature built around two contrasting musical ideas – the first, a gravely lyrical melody with gently pulsating accompaniment; the second, a playful and capricious texture in the piano’s higher register, perhaps reminiscent of the mythical faun’s exuberant flute music. ‘Sylvains’ means ‘of the forest’ and this is music that richly evokes an enchanted woodland: arpeggios and glissandi cascade playfully and brightly, alternating in contrast with the darker colours of the piano’s lower register before, finally, the music gradually disappears ‘al niente’ (to nothing) into the forest’s depths.

Benjamin Tassie, 2024

The expressive heart of the three Mazurkas, Op. 63, (1846) is the second, dominated by a sighing theme which uses subtle dissonances to extraordinary expressive effect. This is framed by two more vigorous dances, but all three demonstrate Chopin’s startling imaginative reinvention of the form. As his friend Wilhelm von Lenz put it, ‘the mazurkas are the mirror of Chopin’s soul.’ 

Nigel Simeone

The Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante began as the polonaise alone, composed in 1831. Chopin added the Andante spianato in 1834 and the combined work was published in 1836, in versions for piano solo or with orchestral accompaniment. The two sections complement each other: the Andante rippling gently and the Polonaise bursting into exuberant life. 

© Nigel Simeone

The Ballade in F minor (1842) is a complex structure which combines elements of sonata form with that of variations, a magnificent contrapuntally complex work which English pianist John Ogdon described as ‘the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions.’ 

© Nigel Simeone 

The Barcarolle in F sharp, Op.60 was written in the summer of 1845. Chopin never went to Venice to hear an authentic barcarolle, but inspiration may have come from Mendelssohn’s Venetian Gondola Song which Chopin used to give his pupils to play. Described by the German musicologist Hugo Leichtentritt as ‘a work of bewildering beauty’, it was taken up by Chopin’s near-contemporaries such as Clara Schumann and Hans von Bülow. Carl Tausig – a Liszt pupil – even invented a fanciful programme for it in which two lovers met secretly in a gondola. Chopin’s wonderful exploration of piano colours and sonorities in the Barcarolle had a powerful appeal for later composers: Ravel described it as ‘magical’ while Olivier Messiaen declared that its rich and resonant piano writing influenced his own music – a century after Chopin. 

© Nigel Simeone

Frédéric Chopin’s late Berceuse (1844) was originally called ‘Variantes’ and its theme (echoing a Polish folksong) is followed by 16 short variations, presented over a ground bass which establishes and sustains the mood of a cradle song.

(C) Nigel Simeone

Chopin completed his Fantasy in F minor, Op.49, in October 1841 and he wrote about it in touching terms to his friend Julian Fontana: ‘Today I finished the Fantasy – and the sky is beautiful, there’s a sadness in my heart – but that’s alright. If it were otherwise, perhaps my existence would be worth nothing to anyone.’ In spite of the composer’s self-doubt, the Fantasy is one of his greatest single-movement works, hailed by Chopin’s biographer Frederick Niecks as ‘a masterpiece’ and among the late pieces described by the English Gerald Abraham as ‘the crown of Chopin’s work.’ Vigorous and passionate, it includes allusions to the Polish revolutionary song ‘Litwinka’, sung by patriots at the November Uprising in 1830. The form evolves with apparent freedom recalling the design of Mozart’s C minor Fantasy. The start is a solemn march which gives way to an explosive Agitato section. A plethora of themes follows, and a notable moment comes with the arrival of a chorale-like section (marked Lento sostenuto) in the extremely remote key of B major before a return of material heard earlier and a triumphant conclusion in A flat major.  

Nigel Simeone

Chopin’s Scherzos were composed between the mid-1830s and 1843. Scherzo means ‘jest’ or ‘joke’ and earlier composers such as Haydn and Beethoven often invested scherzo movements with playful elements. But Chopin took the form in a quite different direction prompting Robert Schumann to ask about the B minor Scherzo, Op.20: ‘How is “gravity” to clothe itself when “jest” goes about in such dark veils?’ Certainly, the mood of the B minor Scherzo (published in 1835) is sombre and sinister, the outer sections full of suspense and wildness. Only in the central section (in B major) is there any sense of repose.  

The B flat minor Scherzo, Op.31 (1837), was likened by Schumann to Byron’s poetry, ‘overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt.’ Chopin himself is said to have compared the hushed opening to a question, the explosive second phrase providing the answer, but the piece as a whole is remarkably intense and unified, its ideas seeming to grow from one to the next to create a remarkable inner coherence.  

His approach in the C sharp minor Scherzo, Op.39 (1838–9) is rather different, depending for its effectiveness on the sharp contrasts and surprising juxtapositions between the rapid octaves at the opening and the hymn-like second theme and the exquisite tumbling cascades with which it is decorated. The mood at the close is dazzling and defiant. 

The E major Scherzo, Op.54 (1843), is the one which perhaps most clearly matches the expectations of its title: there is a certain playfulness and elegance in a work that was composed tandem with the Fourth Ballade and the Polonaise in A flat, Op.53. But in spite of its apparent conformity with the title, this is late Chopin and the music is full of innovation, whether in the exploration of piano textures or Chopin’s increasingly rich harmonic palate. More introspective than its predecessors, it is also a work which seems tinged with sadness as well as mercurial brilliance.  

© Nigel Simeone 

Like the earlier Barcarolle, the Impromptu Op.36 is in the key of F sharp major. Written in 1839, it combines elements of favourite Chopin forms such as the nocturne and ballade to create a freer and more improvisatory work where wonderment and heroism sit side-by-side. 

© Nigel Simeone

The Two Nocturnes published as Op. 62 were composed in 1845–6. The song-like main theme of the B major Nocturne frames a central section (marked sostenuto) and when it is reprised Chopin adds decorations in the manner of an operatic aria – reflecting his admiration for Bellini’s operas.  The E major Nocturne was Chopin’s farewell to the form and while it has moments of agitation, the main feeling is of quiet nobility. 

© Nigel Simeone

Marked Lento sostenuto, this Nocturne (composed in 1846) is in E major and opens with a long-breathed melody – lyrical but never sentimental – and this is contrasted with a much more turbulent middle section. By this late stage in his career, Chopin had complete mastery of his preferred forms, and this Nocturne – the last to be published during his lifetime – is a beautifully balanced structure which perfectly suits the changing moods of the music, and Chopin’s careful control of emotion: this is music that never wears its heart on its sleeve, but which seems, instead, to be a noble contemplation.

Nigel Simeone

Chopin’s fourth nocturne is in simple ternary form (A–B–A). The first section, in F major, features a very simple melody over a descending triplet pattern in the left hand. The middle section in F minor, in great contrast to the outer themes, is fast and dramatic (Con fuoco) using a challenging double note texture in the right hand. After a return to the serene A theme, the ending does not contain a coda, but rather two simple arpeggios. Some critics have remarked that this nocturne has little to do with night, as if sunlight is “leaking” from the piece’s seams. Chopin’s fifth nocturne is marked Larghetto, featuring an intricate, elaborately ornamental melody over an even quaver bass. The second section, labelled doppio movimento (double speed), resembles a scherzo with dotted quaver-semi quaver melody, semiquavers in a lower voice in the right hand, and large jumps in the bass. The final section is a shortened version of the first (14 bars rather than 24) with characteristic cadenzas and elaboration, finishing with an arpeggio on F♯ major, falling at first, then dying away. Many consider this nocturne to be the best of the opus, stating that its musical maturity matches some of his later nocturnes.

Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor is among the finest of all his explorations of this form. More overtly dramatic than most of his other nocturnes, it begins with a solemn, halting melody in the right hand, supported by chords that have some of the characteristics of a funeral march. The result, though, is more lyrical and more plangent (reminding us of Chopin’s fondness for bel canto opera) than the austere tread of his most famous funeral march (in the B flat minor Sonata). The central section is a richly harmonized chorale in C major, that is – in due course –infiltrated and disturbed by a quicker, more chromatic figure in a triplet rhythm that eventually provokes an explosive climax – complete with Lisztian octaves – before the music turns back to the minor key, and the material from the opening. Here Chopin does something unexpected. The uneasy triplet rhythms that had disrupted the chorale are now transformed into a restless, agitated accompaniment for the melody, and it is only in the last two bars that the nervousness finally subsides.

This Nocturne was the first of a pair dedicated to a favourite Chopin pupil – Laure Duperré, the beautiful daughter of an admiral – and was first published in 1841 by Schlesinger in Paris. The following year, it was reviewed in the Revue et Gazette musicale by Maurice Bourges. Writing in the form of a letter to an unnamed Baroness, Bourges offers a description of the work’s design that was quite novel for the time outside the pages of composition treatises (Schumann was one of the few who had attempted something similar in the general musical press): ‘Here in a few words is an outline of the thirteenth nocturne. A first period, in C minor, is distinguished by the character of the melody that dominates it; the second, in C major, begins pianissimo; it belongs to the complex form that has been very aptly called melodic harmony; then it ends with a restatement of the first theme, accompanied this time by pulsating chords that give the general rhythm a new warmth.’

Nigel Simeone 2010

The second nocturne in E flat major features a 12/8 time signature, triplet quavers in the bass, and a lento sostenuto tempo marking. The left hand features sweeping legato arpeggios from the bass to the tenor, while the right hand often plays a contrapuntal duet and a soaring single melody. There is a considerable amount of ornamentation in the right hand. The characteristic chromatic ornaments often subdivide the beats in a syncopated fashion in contrast with the steady triplets in the left hand. It differs in form from the other nocturnes in that it has no contrasting second section, the melody flowing onward from beginning to end in a uniform manner. The monotony of the unrelieved sentimentality does not fail to make itself felt. One is seized by an ever-increasing longing to get out of this oppressive atmosphere, to feel the fresh breezes and warm sunshine.

Chopin wrote three piano sonatas. The first, in C minor, is a very early work (written in 1828), while the second is the famous ‘Funeral March’ Sonata Op. 35 (it was one of the few works by Chopin about which Schumann was less than enthusiastic – he found aspects of the Funeral March ‘repellant’ and called the finale ‘more like a joke than a piece of music). Chopin’s Third Sonata, Op. 58, was written in 1844. It’s diverting to find some of his early biographers at odds over the structural coherence of this work: Niecks writes that ‘unity is as little discernible in this sonata as in its predecessor’ while Huneker says it has ‘more of that indefinable organic unity’. Bizarrely, both of them struggle to find power and pathos in the piece and are rather dismissive of Chopin’s attempt to come to terms with the solo piano sonata at the height of his artistic maturity. Even Franz Liszt found Chopin’s sonatas (and concertos) betrayed ‘more effort than inspiration’.  

This great work surely needs no defence, and happily some more recent Chopin scholars have come to appreciate what a remarkable achievement it is. Jim Samson, for instance, says that ‘Thematic links abound in the B minor Sonata Op. 58 … Having come to terms with the four-movement sonata in Op. 35 [the ‘Funeral March’ Sonata], approaching it by way of his unique achievements in the study, nocturne and dance piece, Chopin now felt able to tack the genre on its own terms, so to speak’. Writing about the first movement, Samson writes: ‘Thematic links are not only a means of unifying contrasts as in Op. 35. They also contribute to a process of continuous development and transformation within the bar-by-bar progression of the movement, an unbroken thread spun of related ideas. The process is supported, moreover, by a much closer integration of melody and accompaniment than in the earlier work.’ The second movement is a short Scherzo, a kind of playful intermezzo before the Largo – starting with loud and startling dotted rhythms, before giving way to a noble reverie. Murray Perahia has commented that this movement ‘tries forcefully to dispel any trace of anxiety’ and it does so with great restraint and simplicity. This isn’t simply a nocturne-like movement airlifted into a sonata (as some commentators have suggested), but a rather original structure – the dreamlike-central section much more extended than the outer sections with the main theme (based largely around the notes of the major triad). The final Presto con fuoco is an unremittingly energetic sonata rondo (to oversimplify, this is a rondo that combines elements of exposition, development and recapitulation from sonata form). The rhythmic drive of this movement leads to an exultant coda in which the key of B major blazes in triumph.  

Nigel Simeone © 2010 

The Polonaise in C minor, Op. 40 No. 2 was completed in 1839 and is another work in this form which explores the darker side of Chopin’s musical character. Its mood was well summarised over a century ago by the Chopin scholar Ferdinand Hoesick who described it as ‘gloomy’ with a ‘tragic loftiness’. Chopin dedicated it to his friend Julian Fontana.  

© Nigel Simeone

Chopin’s ability to reimagine traditional dance forms in the most startling ways is nowhere more apparent than in the Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op.44. Beginning with a mysterious and sinister opening phrase, the main polonaise theme emerges with music that is marked by a kind of restless rage. At the centre of the piece there is relief in the form of a tender mazurka, but the polonaise returns as fierce as ever until it seems to collapse, exhausted, rousing itself for the brutal final bare octaves. After finishing the work in 1841, Chopin wrote to his publisher to announce that ‘I have a manuscript for your disposal. It is a kind of fantasy in polonaise form. But I call it a Polonaise.’ 

© Nigel Simeone 

The Polonaise-Fantasy Op. 61 is a magnificent example of Chopin’s late style. In the mid-1840s he was searching for new forms and the Polonaise-Fantasy was only given a title after the work was finished. By combining heroic elements of the polonaise with the freer, more melancholy mood of the fantasia, the result is a glorious poetic vision summarised by the British Chopin scholar Arthur Hedley, as ‘pride in the past, lamentation for the present, hope for the future.’  

Nigel Simeone

Composed in 1841, the Prelude Op. 45 is quite different from the short pieces that make up the famous collection of Preludes Op. 28. It’s a more extended rather dream-like piece with an unusual and very chromatic cadenza just before the end. According to the Chopin scholar Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, this is an example of Chopin exploiting ‘colouristic effects unrelated to the thematic material’. Chopin was not known as a great lover of paintings, but he was a close friend of the artist Eugène Delacroix, who was himself passionately interested in music. According to Chopin, Delacroix ‘adores Mozart and knows all his operas by heart; he also spent many hours discussing music with Chopin, a subject about which the composer was famously reticent. Delacroix confided to his journal that Chopin ‘talked music with me … I asked him what establishes logic in music. He made me feel what counterpoint and harmony are; how fugue is like the pure logic in music.’ Eigeldinger has proposed in a fascinating article that the Prelude Op. 45 is a kind of reciprocal gesture: an attempt by Chopin to apply Delacroix’s theories of colour to music. The warm respect these two great creative artists had for each other is demonstrated by an extraordinary account by George Sand of Chopin improvising for Delacroix – the piece that, perhaps, became the Prelude Op. 45:

Chopin is at the piano … He improvises as if haphazardly … ‘Nothing’s coming to me, nothing but reflections, shadows, reliefs that won’t settle. I’m looking for the colour, but I can’t even find the outline.’ ‘You won’t find one without the other’, responds Delacroix, ‘and you’re going to find them both.’ ‘But if I find only the moonlight?’ … Little by little our eyes become filled with those soft colours corresponding to the suave modulations taken in by our auditory senses. And then the note bleue resonates and there we are, in the azure of the transparent night … We dream of a summer night: we await the nightingale. A sublime melody arises.

Nigel Simeone 2010

Chopin developed many new forms of piano music, from the kind of audacious miniatures found among the mazurkas to extended single-movement works such as the ballades and scherzos. But he also wrote three piano sonatas, drawing on structures inherited from Mozart and Beethoven. The Piano Sonata No.3, Op. 58, was completed in 1844 and its first movement is in sonata form. Even so, the music seems closer to the world of Chopin’s ballades than to any classical models, particularly in the rhapsodic development section. The outer sections of the Scherzo are filled with rapid movement, the ideas delicate and airy, while the slow Trio is richly harmonised but never loses its hints of unease. After a declamatory opening, the slow movement – a Chopin nocturne in all but name – is dominated by the song-like melody heard near the start, the mood changing for a dream-like central section before returning to the opening idea. The finale has a seemingly unstoppable momentum and energy, and for Marceli Antoni Szulc, Chopin’s first Polish biographer, this movement evoked images of the Cossack Mazeppa on a galloping horse.

© Nigel Simeone

The mazurka was the Polish dance form Chopin chose for some of his most experimental pieces, combining nostalgia with innovation. The set of Three Mazurkas Op.56 was published in 1844. The B major mazurka begins with a restless theme in the left hand, answered with more confidence by the right hand. There are two contrasting sections (in different keys, E flat and G) before the last return of the opening idea brings resolution. The C major mazurka is boisterous and rustic, with bare open fifths in the bass and a theme full of Polish inflections. The third mazurka has been described as a kind of ‘dance poem’: the musical elements of the mazurka are pared down to produce something which one commentator described as ‘the music of memories rather than of reality’ while another saw its audacious harmonies as providing ‘the foundations for the music of the future.’ 

Chopin’s mazurkas, inspired by the folk dances of his homeland, are often where he was at his most experimental, particularly with harmonies. The three Mazurkas Op.59 were composed in 1845. The first, in A minor, contains daring modulations, the second (dedicated to Mendelssohn’s wife, Cécile) is richly melodic (the main theme subtly varied and decorated as the piece progresses), while the third presents a rather brittle angular melody, often supported by chromatic harmonies.

© Nigel Simeone

No. 1 in B major
No. 2 in F minor
No. 3 in C sharp minor

This group of three Mazurkas was the last set to be published during Chopin’s lifetime, appearing in 1847 with a dedication to the Countess Laure Czosnowska – a Polish friend of Chopin’s who was reputedly very beautiful and certainly much disliked by George Sand. After a visit to Chopin and Sand at Nohant (in company with the artist Delacroix, the singer Pauline Viardot and Chopin’s old friend Wojciech Grzymala), Sand told Chopin that Laure’s conversation induced migraine, and even that her dog had bad breath. By contrast, Chopin was always delighted by her company, and enjoyed the chance to talk to her in Polish.

Composed the previous year, they form a contrasted group: in terms of speed the three are marked Vivace, Lento and Allegretto. The key contrasts are more extreme: from B major to F minor and C sharp minor. In a long letter to his family dated 11 October 1846 and sent from Nohant, Chopin revealed something of his fastidious and self-critical nature in connection with the composition of these Mazurkas: ‘I have three new mazurkas, I do not think that they are too similar to the old ones … but it takes time to judge properly. When I composed them, it seemed that were good – if it were otherwise I would never write anything. But later comes reflection, and one rejects or accepts it. Time is the best judge, and patience the best master.’ Chopin’s biographer Frederick Niecks marvelled at the originality of these pieces, and he is quoted admiringly by his James Huneker, who add some further praise of his own.

Niecks believes there is a return of the early freshness and poetry in the last three Mazurkas, op. 63. ‘They are, indeed, teeming with interesting matter’, he writes. ‘Looked at from the musician’s point of view, how much do we not see novel and strange, beautiful and fascinating withal? Sharp dissonances, chromatic passing notes, suspensions and anticipations, displacement of accent, progressions of perfect fifths – the horror of schoolmen – sudden turns and unexpected digressions that are so unaccountable, so out of the line of logical sequence, that one’s following the composer is beset with difficulties. But all this is a means to an end, the expression of an individuality with its intimate experiences. The emotional content of many of these trifles – trifles if considered only by their size – is really stupendous.’ Spoken like a brave man and not a pedant! Full of vitality is the first number of op. 63. In B major, it is sufficiently various in figuration and rhythmical life to single it from its fellows. The next, in F minor, has a more elegiac ring … The third, of winning beauty, is in C sharp minor … I defy anyone to withstand the pleading, eloquent voice of this Mazurka.

It was also the mazurkas that produced one of Schumann’s most memorable descriptions of Chopin’s music, presenting them not as experiments in a traditional dance form, but as acts of resistance against the Russian Empire that had suppressed Poland in 1830 (precipitating Chopin’s move to Paris): ‘Fate rendered Chopin still more individual and interesting in endowing him with an original, pronounced nationality: Polish. And because this nationality wanders in mourning robes in the thoughtful artist it deeply attracts us … If the powerful Autocrat of the North knew what a dangerous enemy threatens him in Chopin’s works, in the simple melodies of his mazurkas, he would forbid music. Chopin’s works are cannons buried in flowers.’

Nigel Simeone 2010

Chopin’s Three Waltzes, Op.64 were composed in 1846–7. The first of them, the so-called ‘Minute’ Waltz’, looks back to Chopin’s earlier ‘brilliant’ style and was said by one contemporary to be a musical portrait of its dedicatee, Chopin’s friend and pupil Delfina Potocka. The second, in C sharp minor, is an exquisite miniature combining intimacy and melancholy in the most concise, unsentimental way. The last of the Op.64 waltzes is more enigmatic: its moods shifting uneasily at times, but finding repose in the central Trio. 

© Nigel Simeone

Chopin completed the pair of Nocturnes Op.27 in 1836 and they were dedicated to Countess Thérèse d’Apponyi, wife of the Austrian ambassador in Paris. In the rather desolate first nocturne, in C sharp minor, the Chopin scholar Arthur Hedley detected hesitation and anxiety, and a mood of night-time and mystery. Its companion piece, in D flat major, serves as a complete contrast, bringing light where there had been darkness. The opening melody – described by Hugo Leichentritt as ‘achingly beautiful’ – unfolds over a gently undulating accompaniment. Listening to this magnificent pair of pieces, it is no surprise that Schumann welcomed Chopin’s nocturnes as heralds of a new age in piano composition.

© Nigel Simeone

Chopin had been fascinated the polonaise, a Polish national dance, since childhood. Both of his Polonaises, Op.26, were published in 1836 and are in minor keys. The first uses polonaise rhythms to fiercely dramatic effect in its outer sections, with a conciliatory and lyrical central Trio. The second is filled with dark passions, whether in the explosive main idea (preceded by fragments of polonaise rhythms) or in the hushed central section in B major.  

Nigel Simeone

The Waltz in A flat, Op.42, was written in 1840. Wilhelm von Lenz recalled Chopin playing it: ‘The waltz, springing from the eight-bar trill, should evoke a musical clock, according to Chopin himself. In his own performances … he would play it as a continuous stretto prestissimo with the bass maintaining a steady beat – a garland of flowers winding amidst the dancing couples!’ 

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Chopin’s three Grandes valses brillantes Op. 34 were published in 1838. The second waltz in the set suggests that the collective title was a misnomer. Chronologically, it was the first to be composed, probably in 1831, and rather than ‘brilliant’, the mood is lacrymose and melancholic. Marked ‘Lento’, it opens with a melody in the left hand that seems to wander disconsolately, before giving way to an idea in the right hand, at first halting but eventually taking wing. Two brief episodes in A major hint at something more hopeful, but at the end, Chopin returns to the left-hand melody from the opening, and the piece fizzles out in a state of despair.  

 Nigel Simeone, 2021 

After studies at the Royal College of Music (where her teachers included Stanford for composition and Lionel Tertis for the viola), Rebecca Clarke began her career as a viola player in Sir Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra, one of London’s first female professional orchestral players. After moving to the United States, Clarke completed her best-known work, the Sonata for Viola and Piano, in 1919. It tied for first place (with a piece by Ernest Bloch) in a composition prize offered by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Clarke followed this with a Piano Trio in 1921. Coolidge commissioned Clarke’s Rhapsody for Cello and Piano in 1923. After returning to London in 1924, Clarke became a busy chamber music performer with less time to devote to composition. When war broke out in 1939, Clarke was in the United States visiting her brothers, one of whom was Hans Clarke, a distinguished biochemist. With the war at its height, she could not return to Britain and in the end she settled in New York. There, by chance, she met James Friskin, a pianist and composer she had known in their student days. They married in 1944 and Clarke stopped composing.

The Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale is one of her last works, written in 1941. It was dedicated to Clarke’s brother Hans and his wife Fietzchen. In an interview in 1978, Rebecca Clarke described the Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale as ‘very simple’ and admitted that she didn’t offer it to any publishers: it ‘came at a time when I was just not bothering about showing things to publishers.’ This was partly due to modesty, but it also reveals something of the obstacles Clarke had to overcome in order to achieve the recognition she deserved (it was eventually published in 2000). Writing for clarinet and viola without piano accompaniment was clearly a challenge Clarke relished and the ingenuity of the dialogue between the two instruments is testimony to her inventiveness and skill. The work is in three sections: the quiet sobriety of Prelude (marked Andante semplice) leads to an angular Allegro vigoroso followed by a rather melancholy Pastorale, marked Poco lento. The quality of the musical ideas here reveals a composer of real character whose career had been blighted by discouragement and depressive illness.

© Nigel Simone 2018

Impetuoso 
Vivace 
Adagio–Allegro 

After studying at the Royal College of Music (composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and the viola with Lionel Tertis), Rebecca Clarke became one of the first women to work as a professional orchestral musician in London, playing in Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra. In 1916, she moved to America to develop her solo career and it was in the years immediately following her move that she was at her most prolific as a composer. In 1919, newspapers carried an announcement offering ‘$1,000 for Best Piano and Viola Work’ organised by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, America’s greatest patron of modern chamber music. Clarke entered her Viola Sonata and after the deliberations of the judges over a weekend in August 1919, Clarke’s work tied for first place with a Suite by Ernest Bloch. Eventually Coolidge herself broke the tie, giving the prize to Bloch. This may have been to avoid any conflict of interest: she was already a friend of Clarke’s. Still, the committee wanted to know the identity of both composers, and as Coolidge later told Clarke, ‘You should have seen their faces when they saw it was by a woman!’ Coolidge included Clarke’s Sonata in her chamber music festival in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and it was first performed there on 25 September 1919, played by Louis Bailly (viola) and Harold Bauer (piano). It was an immediate success, and Clarke noted in her diary that she ‘had a very warm reception and had to bow from platform. Overwhelmed with congratulations.’ Though Clarke had success with her Piano Trio in 1921 (another Coolidge commission), her music later lapsed into neglect. It was thanks to the revival of interest in her Viola Sonata that Clarke’s music started to enjoy a richly-deserved renaissance towards the end of the twentieth century 

It is in three movements, the first and third are both imposing, while the central Scherzo is a brilliant exploration of the technical possibilities of the viola. The musical language is somewhat influenced by Debussy and Ravel as well as British music, but the sweeping character of the ideas is very much Clarke’s own, from the opening fanfare-like idea to the imposing finale. This begins with a richly expressive Adagio but leads to a faster section in which Clarke recalls material from the first movement to magnificent effect before bringing the work to a virtuoso conclusion. 

© Nigel Simeone 

Red Clay is short work that combines the traditional idea of musical scherzo with living in the South. It references the background of my mother’s side of the family that hails from the Mississippi delta region. From the juke joints and casino boats that line the Mississippi river, to the skin tone of kinfolk in the area: a dark skin that looks like it came directly from the red clay. The solo lines are instilled with personality, meant to capture the listener’s attention as they wail with “bluesy” riffs that are accompanied (‘comped’) by the rest of the ensemble. The result is a virtuosic chamber work that merges classical technique and orchestration with the blues dialect and charm of the south.

© Valerie Coleman

Allegro energico
Larghetto affettuoso
Scherzo. Allegro leggiero
Finale. Allegro agitato – Poco più moderato – Vivace

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London and entered to Royal College of Music in 1890 to study the violin. His ability as a composer soon became apparent, and he studied composition with Stanford, becoming one of his favourite pupils. His Piano Quintet Op.1 (1893) heralded the arrival of a remarkable talent, but the Clarinet Quintet, composed in 1895, demonstrates Coleridge-Taylor at the height of his creative powers. Stanford had given his students a challenge, declaring that after Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, written in 1891, nobody would be able to escape its influence. Coleridge-Taylor couldn’t resist trying, and when Stanford saw the result he is said to have exclaimed ‘you’ve done it!’ Coleridge-Taylor took his influences not from Brahms but from another great contemporary composer: in places this work sounds like the clarinet quintet that Dvořák never wrote. That’s a mark of Coleridge-Taylor’s wonderfully fluent and assured writing. The sonata form first movement is both confident and complex, with the clarinet forming part of an intricately-woven ensemble texture. The Larghetto has a free, rhapsodic character, dominated by a haunting main theme. The Scherzo delights in rhythmic tricks while the central Trio section is more lyrical. The opening theme of the finale governs much of what follows until a recollection of the slow movement gives way to an animated coda. The first performance took place at the Royal College of Music on 10 July 1895, with George Anderson playing the clarinet. Afterwards, Stanford wrote to the great violinist Joseph Joachim describing the piece as ‘the most remarkable thing in the younger generation that I have seen.’

Allegro energico 

Andante con moto 

Scherzo. Allegro 

Finale. Allegro vivace 

Coleridge-Taylor composed his Nonet in 1893–4, while he was a student at the Royal College of Music, and it was first performed there in July 1894. Still in his teens, Coleridge-Taylor has modestly headed the score ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ (Steps to Parnassus), suggesting he realised that he still had plenty to learn. His teacher at the RCM was Charles Villiers Stanford, and the work reveals the clear influence of Brahms – a composer Stanford himself admired enormously. 

The Nonet is conceived on quite a grand scale. The first movement immediately reveals Coleridge-Taylor’s skill in writing for nine instruments: at times the textures are almost orchestral while at others he reduces the forces to evoke the more private world of chamber music. There’s a similar kind of contrast in the main themes: the first of these, broad and expansive, is initially heard on the clarinet before being taken up by the whole ensemble. The second theme is livelier, with dotted rhythms, and it is introduced by the piano. The Andante reveals Coleridge-Taylor’s gift for song-like melodies (with some phrases suggesting the influence of Dvořák on the young composer), while the Scherzo (in duple rather than triple time) is highly animated, with a warm Trio section led by the horn. Again, the benign shadow of Dvořák seems to hover over this movement. The instrumental writing in the ebullient finale is particularly colourful, with some magical effects. 

A review appeared in the August 1894 issue of Musical Times where the un-named critic commented that ‘the whole Nonet is most interesting, its themes are fresh and vigorous, and their treatment proves that the writer has learnt to compose with skill. The scherzo is unquestionably the most striking movement, and few would guess it to be the work of one still a student.’ 

© Nigel Simeone, 2021 

Dynamique 
Nocturne 
Festif 
 

Connesson composed this Sextet for a New Year concert given on 4 January 1998 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and dedicated it to the pianist Eric Le Sage. It is scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, double bass and piano. In a note on the work, Connesson has written that ‘the Sextet is marked by a spirit of entertainment and good humour. The first movement, ‘Dynamique’, is a set of variations which uses processes derived from American minimalist music. The central ‘Nocturne’ expresses thoughts that are both sweet and painful, played by the clarinet over the harmonic carpet of strings and piano. Finally, ‘Festif’ unleashes feverish joy around its motifs, among which we find a nod to Schubert’s Trout Quintet.’ 

© Nigel Simeone

Connesson composed Techno Parade, a trio for flute, clarinet and piano, in 2002 and it was first performed at the Château de l’Empéri in Salon-de-Provence on 3 August 2002 by its three dedicatees: Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Paul Meyer (clarinet) and Eric Le Sage (piano). Connesson has described the work as ‘a single movement, with a continuous pulse from start to finish. Two motifs swirl and collide, giving the piece a festive and restless character. The howls of the clarinet and the obsessive repetitions of the piano seek to rediscover the brutal energy of techno music.’ The central part of the piece requires the pianist to use a brush and sheets of paper to produce unusual percussive effects, and after this section the instruments are, as Connesson himself puts it, ‘drawn into a rhythmic trance which ends the piece at the frenetic tempo.’ 

© Nigel Simeone

It was the patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge who commissioned Aaron Copland to compose a new ballet for Martha Graham’s dance company in 1943, for performance in the Coolidge Auditorium (named after her) at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.. Copland was delighted with the idea, particularly after Graham sent him the first version of her scenario concerning a young married couple in rural Pennsylvania. The ballet went through various titles during the composition process, and Copland’s manuscript was simply headed ‘Ballet for Martha’, but Graham settled on ‘Appalachian Spring’ just before the premiere, taking the title from a poem by Hart Crane. One of the attractions for Copland was the challenge of writing for an ensemble of 12 instruments (the largest group that could fit into the very small pit in the Coolidge Auditorium), and the result was described in a review of the first performance by the ballet critic John Martin as ‘a score of fresh and singing beauty. It is, on its surface, a piece of early Americana, but in reality, it is a celebration of the human spirit.’ Copland himself was typically self-effacing, admitting that ‘people seemed to like it, so I guess it was all right.’ In 1945 he made a very successful arrangement for large orchestra, but the sound of the original has a beauty and intimacy all its own. Copland decided quite early on to use the Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’ (written in 1848), and this melody is woven through much of the score, notably in the set of variations. But while the score perfectly matches the ‘local’ elements of the story, it also transcends them to become a piece of universal appeal: Copland’s great achievement in Appalachian Spring is to have created a quiet and heartfelt vision of hope in troubled times.

Nigel Simeone 2024

Duo was commissioned by seventy pupils and friends of the celebrated flutist William Kincaid after his death in 1967. Copland described it as lyrical and in a pastoral style. “Lyricism seems to be built into the flute,” he wrote. Duo is in three movements. “The whole is a work of comparatively simple harmonic and melodic outline, direct in expression. Being aware that many of the flutists who were responsible for commissioning the piece would want to play it, I tried to make it grateful for the performer…it requires a good player.” The piece has become a standard in the repertoire of flutists worldwide and is also available in a version for violin and piano.