http://dianewalsh.com/news.html Diane Walsh, pianist: Journal Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Sat, 04 Sep 2010 01:44:46 -0700 http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#11
On a recent trip to Vienna I visited both the apartment where Schubert was born and the one in which he died. The two tiny rooms and open hearth near the front door for cooking and heating are mute testimony to the grim poverty of his origins. A mere thirty-one years later, the composer died in his older brother Ferdinand’s somewhat larger apartment, where a narrow, closet-like space served as bedroom and studio during Schubert’s last months. A small display case contains his signature glasses, the oval metal-rimmed spectacles so familiar from most of his portraits, one of which hangs nearby. I found the scene painful to contemplate, especially the document listing his estate: ". . . 4 shirts, 9 cravats and pocket handkerchiefs, 13 pairs of socks, 1 towel, 1 sheet, 1 mattress . . . a quantity of old music . . . ." These homely details make Schubert more immediate, in the same way that seeing the dry scratch marks on the paper of one of his manuscripts brought him to life in my imagination. He made corrections by using a dry pen nib to scrape away the ink and some of the underlying paper, and I saw these marks at the Morgan Library in New York when I held his score in my hands.

This sad history often summons dark metaphors when I play Schubert’s music. The stark opening of Schubert’s A minor Sonata, for example—an un-harmonized melody in half notes—seems to create a barren landscape, a terrain also delineated in many of his most despairing songs. The mood throughout the work is mostly tragic, but there are a few moments of consolation, in particular in the last movement, where the closing theme is a lullaby-like melody accompanied by a rocking motion in the bass.

My fascination with Schubert and his music began with a recording of his Unfinished Symphony, conducted by Toscanini, which I listened to again and again when I was about seven. By the time I was a teenager I had played a few of the Ländler and other simple pieces, but the first major Schubert piece I tackled, at summer music camp, was not a solo piece but the Trio in E-flat major. The next summer I played the other one, in B-flat major, and struggling with these works served as a valuable introduction to Schubert’s mature style. The B-flat Sonata bears some resemblances to the Trio that shares its tonality. At turns expansive, lyrical, noble and playful, both are masterpieces. The Sonata's Rondo finale also has the same sunny élan as the final movement of Schubert’s much-loved “Trout” Quintet for piano and strings, and seems to recall happier times, when he roamed the countryside with his friends. The sonata was completed sometime between March and September, 1828. Schubert died two months later, from typhoid fever and complications of syphilis. He did not leave "a quantity of old music," but a miraculous outpouring of notes so transcendent that they banish with their beauty the cruel deprivations of his short life.]]> http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#11 Mon, 03 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#10 http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#10 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#9
Now the new season is upon us. For me it holds: recitals at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and Mannes College in New York; Walsh-Drucker-Cooper Trio performances at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Friends of Music in New Orleans, and a tour of Denmark; and other chamber music engagements in Chicago and New York City. This means I have another long list of repertoire sitting on my piano, with dates of when they must be ready. One piece I'm particularly glad to get back to is Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, which I've loved ever since I first began learning it when I was 14... especially the "Forlane," whose astringent harmonies are still thrilling to me. Even before I knew that Ravel had orchestrated it, I found in it a treasury of orchestral sounds on the piano.]]> http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#9 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#8
I began thinking about my years at Juilliard and I remember a somewhat competitive "piano-lineage" game we pianists used to play. The game was won if, when we went back enough generations, we could link ourselves to Beethoven, like so:

Irwin Freundlich studied with James Friskin, who studied with Eduard Dannreuther, who studied with Ignaz Moscheles, who studied with Beethoven.

His wife, Lillian Freundlich, was also a fine pianist and teacher, and here is her lineage:

Alexander Siloti-Franz Liszt-Carl Czerny-
Beethoven.

Both these heritage chains are a bit unusual, because many pianists who trace their musical heritage back to Beethoven do it by way of Theodor Leschetizky, a student of Czerny's. For example, here is Richard Goode's line through just one of his teachers:

Mieczysław Horszowski-Theodor Leschetizky-Carl Czerny-Beethoven.]]> http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#8 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#7 http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#7 Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#6 http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#6 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#5
Since then, there have been four preview performances, and as I write this, the fifth is about to go on. Audiences have been very responsive and friends who have seen it are overwhelmed by the theatrical blending of music, drama, humor and passion.]]> http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#5 Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#2
My own fascination with the Diabelli, dating from my student years, has only deepened as I worked with Moises and talented actors as the play emerged from improvisation, overnight rewrites and many impassioned discussions exploring the music's enriched meaning in a theatrical context.
The Diabelli has always intrigued me more than any other set of variations; even the august "Goldberg" has not drawn me as much as this "gigantic cycle of bagatelles," as the Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon called them. These pieces, many of them only a minute or less in length, show the full range of Beethoven's difficult and complex character: his rough humor, his impatience, his rages and abrupt mood changes, his delight in parody and practical jokes, his gift for the simple, the pastoral, and the sublime.

The variations show the evolution of Beethoven's thoughts about Anton Diabelli's simple two-part waltz, which he at first found almost ludicrously simple-minded and then, as the implications of its potential for variation grew on him, became an obsession. The genius outpouring that resulted wrings every bit of utility and meaning out of this scrap of theme; even the opening grace note earns several of its own variations.

The theme is not so much a waltz as it is a ländler-like dance. The melody, a tuba-like, oom-pah tune, is presented in the bass, and is accompanied by unpromising repeated chords in the right hand. These repetitions re-emerge later, transposed to the bass (Nos. 2, 14, 21) or kept in the treble (Nos. 10, 25) and eventually, in No. 32, they form one of the themes of the climatic triple fugue. After the theme's midpoint, the structure of the first 16 bars is repeated almost verbatim, in the dominant key, and ends with a resounding V-I cadence-- in all, a symmetrical, conventional structure, which Beethoven explodes immediately.
The sketchbooks show that the first variation to be written was No. 3, a little miracle of questioning lyricism, with an odd breaking-off in the second part, as if the composer were lost in thought; meanwhile, the left hand meanders on the first three notes of the theme. But before No. 3, we are given No. 1, which changes the theme's ¾ waltz meter to a martial 4/4, and No. 2, which gently vamps with alternating hands as Beethoven begins to explore other harmonic universes to use in the second part. There are corresponding places in almost all the variations where Beethoven confounds our expectations of a conventional modulation, and the keys he later hints at momentarily are as far from C major as can be: D minor, E minor, D-flat major, F minor, F-sharp minor and B-flat minor. My favorite destabilizing harmonic shock occurs in No. 17, where in the second half the harmony veers wildly into B minor, as if the earth had suddenly left its axis, and then as suddenly resumes its proper rotation around the dominant and tonic of C major.

The variations give us humor: the "knock-knock, who's there?" joke of No. 13; grotesquerie and parody: Nos. 21, 23, 27, 28; virtuosity: Nos. 16, 17, 21; solemnity: Nos. 20, 24; innocence and playfulness : Nos. 18, 19, 25. There is tragedy, too, in Nos. 29, 30 and 31, C-minor variations that sink from melancholy to florid despair. But the gloom is quickly banished by the energy and optimism of the No. 32 , a lengthy and powerful triple fugue in the new key of E-flat. Beethoven transforms the repeated-note accompaniment figure from the waltz into his first theme and creates a simple stepping-down-by-thirds motive for his second theme. The third theme, which runs along in rapid 16th notes, is only introduced in the last third of the variation.

The final variation, No. 33, has the feeling of a coda, and is also one of the longest variations. The tension and drama of the three minor-key variations and the following fugue need time to wind down, and the decision to end the work, not with bombast, but with a graceful dance, leaves a final impression of Beethoven deep in thought. The spinning out of right-hand figuration is like the finale, also in C major, of Beethoven's last piano sonata, Op. 111, completed the same year. Diabelli's waltz has been transformed, after a demanding but exhilarating journey of 55 minutes, into an ethereal minuet.]]> http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#2 Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#3
Schubert had a gift for friendship. Since he was often penniless, he was fortunate to have generous friends who came through for him, with money to pay café bills, offers to share apartments or invitations to the countryside. In May of 1825 he had the use of Wilhelm August Rieder's piano a few streets away in Vienna. By pre-arranged signal, if the curtains of the piano room were open, Schubert was welcome to come in to compose. During this month he began work on the Sonata in A minor.

The opening bars are strangely tentative, almost mysterious, the music rising in the treble like a question, then answered sternly in the bass. The question is stated again, a step higher, and the answer is now extended to become a yearning question of its own. After this halting introduction, the motor rhythm which will form the motivic spine of the movement is finally introduced in forte, a martial rat-a-tat-tat. The character of this severe rhythmic figure is quickly transformed into something lighter, almost dance-like, when it is presented in C major a few moments later. Schubert's development technique is often simply to repeat themes in different keys so that we may enjoy how they sound transformed by different tone colors. With a simple modulation from minor to major or with an unexpected harmonic shift, Schubert creates lovely gradations of light and dark, creating a stab of gloom in sunlight, or a flash of joy in sadness. The sonata has a tight scheme that owes much to Beethoven with its short rhythmic figures. The development is economical and includes a section in which the main theme is stated in the left hand as the right hand creates a shimmer of harmony above it. There are also several dramatic pauses during this movement which give some surcease from the relentlessly driving rhythms.

The second movement, in 3/8 meter, is a lyrical set of five variations on a theme in C major. The first two variations gradually pick up speed, as eighth notes become 16ths and the 16ths become 32nds, but the third variation is a Minore in C minor which returns to a slower motion with the addition of dotted rhythms. Schubert then introduces a variation in A-flat major, which explores 32nd sextuplets. After modulating back to C major, the sextuplets become triplets that create a gently pulsating variant of the theme and leads us to a short coda in the same rhythm.

A nervously darting scherzo is next, with syncopated accents and sudden dynamic changes from soft to loud: more Beethoven-like touches. The brief trio introduces a lovely, rocking motion and some surprising modulations, before the opening section is reprised.

The Rondo finale has as its recurring theme an obsessive perpetual motion figure in the right hand, which only suggests a melody within its contours rather than stating one. The contrasting sections are similarly austere, with the exception of the brief foray into A major, when the mood softens and the right hand plays a singing melody in octaves. The sonata ends with a coda in which a breathless accelerando rushes to an uncompromising conclusion—and no last-minute major chord comes as a reprieve from A Minor's grim resolve.

Schubert D major, Op. 53, D. 850 (1825)

The D major Sonata is often known as the "Gasteiner" since it was composed during a stay in the spa town of Bad Gastein in the summer of 1825. This time was an uncommonly happy and productive one for Schubert, since he was also enjoying a reprieve from the bad health that plagued him throughout most of his adulthood. Since May, Schubert had been traveling in the countryside with his friend, the baritone Johann Michael Vogl (who probably paid most of the expenses), and they arrived in Gastein on August 10. During this visit Schubert also began work on the C major "Great" Symphony, D. 944.

Joyous and rambunctious, the first movement seems to exult in its own virtuosity. The sonata was written for Schubert's friend Karl Maria Bocklet, an excellent pianist. The ringing chords of the opening lead to brilliant scale passages that chase each other up and down the keyboard, in parallel and contrary motion. The second theme slows to a graceful two-note repeated figure, creating a more hesitant step, but it has scarcely established itself before it is interrupted with fortissimo broken chords. Schubert is profligate with his themes throughout, and the overall impression is of impatience, energy and enthusiasm.

The second movement begins as an oasis of serenity. Essentially a song without words in five parts, the phrases are long and lyrical, the themes are worked out in a leisurely way, and there are frequent fermatas where the motion simply comes to a halt. There are outbursts in fortissimo here as well, but gentleness triumphs when bluster is spent. At over thirteen minutes, it is the longest movement of the sonata, but Schubert's spacious, lengthy phrases and shifting harmonies create a timeless, dream-like world in which there is no hurry to reach the end.

The scherzo returns to the vigor of the first movement, starting with fortissimo chords and sharp accents. The hemiola, a rhythmic displacement of the apparent downbeat which makes ¾ time sound temporarily like 2/4, is liberally used throughout. The contrasting middle section offers a relief from dotted rhythms and returns to a more placid motion—quarter notes gliding through different keys and moods in dynamics ranging from piano to fortissimo.

The final movement, a rondo, begins with a simple, child-like song, with a skipping melody line in dotted rhythms and an ostinato accompaniment like the ticking of a clock. The contrasting sections between the returns of the rondo theme delight in virtuosity. A songful interlude in G major is interrupted by a brusque Turkish march in G minor, where every other beat is accented. The extensive coda begins a little slower and the ticking clock seems to slowly wind down before it comes to a stop. After so much bravura, the sonata ends with a gentle sigh.

Copyright Diane Walsh 2008]]> http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#3 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#1
The play is unusual in its use of Beethoven's glorious music as the glue to hold the drama together. Of course the play is ABOUT the music, but it is also about the characters, in both the 19th and 21st centuries, and I somehow felt as if the music itself was functioning as another character in the play. I found myself tearing up at the same places almost every night, and watching the performances on stage nightly was compelling to me, as a witnessing, but also participating, member of the ensemble. I certainly never got bored or tired of the show, despite the schedule of eight shows a week for a month.

Even though I'm a veteran performer, in this production I had the feeling of entering a whole new world which has its own rituals, lore and superstitions. On opening night I got lovely handwritten notes from the actors, the director and the stage manager, plus thoughtful little gifts left in my dressing room. It's very different from the music world, where usually I'm given a five-minute call and a stage crew member ushers me unceremoniously into the wings--and flowers arrive after the show, not before. At Arena Stage my dresser peeked in to my dressing room every night to wish me a good show. From the dressers' point of view, I was a fairly low-maintenance member of the cast, (since I only had one costume and no wig) but for me it was an unaccustomed luxury to have my costume maintained (i.e. buttons sewn back on) and dry cleaned once a week, eliminating the dreaded garment bag schlepping to and from the theater.

Now that I'm back home to my normal musical life, I miss the camaraderie with the actors, the dim blue light in the wings, the choreographed curtain calls, and our late nights at Tunnicliff's Tavern on SE 7th street for pizza washed down with drafts of beer. Fortunately, some of the actors --Graeme and his wife, plus Mary Beth Peil, who played the present-day musicologist, Erik Steele, who played Beethoven's secretary, Greg Keller, who played the nurse, and Susan Kellerman, who played the music librarian-- are all coming to my recital this weekend. It should be a great reunion.]]> http://dianewalsh.com/news.html#1 Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700 - Diane Walsh, pianist - Journal