St John’s Smith Square
Julian Jacobson - piano
25th August 2020
Arts of Fugue
Programme Notes
PREMIERE at 8pm on Tuesday 25th August: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX_9ijXcoVY
Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) – Piano Sonata in B minor, S. 178
“Everybody appears to think that he is entitled to hold an opinion about it.”
So begins Alan Walker’s 2005 article on Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor (1854), echoing (consciously or not) this review of the piece’s 1880 London première: “Regarding this Sonata opinions are not at all likely to be unanimous.” This is a work that resists categorisation and definition, and that has, quite apart from its performance tradition, generated many a minor feud in the pages of music scholarship.
To begin with, its form: titled simply ‘Sonata’ and eschewing the programmatic descriptions that characterise most of Liszt’s output, its structure might be expected to be more explicit as a result. But this is not the case: this is half an hour of unbroken music, with no division between movements (if they exist). It is dedicated to Schumann, a reciprocal gesture for the dedication of Schumann’s 1839 Fantasie in C major. Schumann, ever the structuralist, divided his fantasy into three movements; Liszt, ever the rhapsodist, glued his sonata into one.
A formal structure, or two, is present for those with keen ears. This is music that can operate both as a multi-movement sonata and as a single movement in sonata form. An extended opening Allegro gives way to a beatific F# major Andante sostenuto, before an Allegro energico fugato leads into a finale. So far, so conventional; but these also operate as a movement in sonata form, with an exposition and recapitulation (bb. 32 and 533, for those with the score) bookending a development section, and finishing with a final, peaceful coda. This has been called ‘double function’ sonata form, and it might have been a musical first. (Others see a three-movement form, with an apotheosis at bar 397.) Liszt originally wrote a bombastic, prestissimo ending; the one instance where critics are unanimous is in agreeing that the revised coda, recapitulating the middle Andante sostenuto, was the right choice. The manuscript can be found online, with the discarded ending crossed out in red pencil.
The Sonata owes as much to Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasie as it does to Schumann: a piece of which Liszt had made two arrangements, and later published his own edition. Schubert’s Fantasie quotes his own ‘Der Wanderer’ in each of its four movements, and Liszt’s Sonatademonstrates the same economy of motif. The first page gives the listener almost all of the material that they need: an opening, grave, descending scale as an (a) theme; an angular, energetic (b) theme that later becomes the fugue subject; and a repetitive, staccato (c) theme, which recalls the witches of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (a piece that Liszt arranged for piano and popularised for Berlioz). There is a fourth theme, also: the chorale-like, grandioso theme in D major, which has recalled the crux fidelis plainchant for many commentators, a theme which Liszt would use more explicitly in Saint Elisabeth and Via crucis, later in his life.
These themes form the basis for almost everything that follows: for example, the “hammer blows” (Liszt’s phrase) of the third theme are rescored as a soaring cantando espressivo ‘love’ theme. This technique of thematic metamorphosis would become the Wagnerian leitmotif, and with such richness of material available, it is of no surprise that ‘hidden’ programmes have been ascribed to the work, no less complex or folkloric than Wagner’s.
It is impossible to recount each of these programmes in detail here: Paul Merrick sees the Sonata as an explicitly religious work, with the crux fidelis triumphing over the Satanic (c) theme, which first appears (of course) in bar 13, unlucky for some. Others, including Alfred Brendel and Alfred Cortot, see it as explicitly Faustian: it is easy to see Faust descending to Hell in the opening scale, and Mephistopheles appearing in that thirteenth bar. Others go further still, in seeing a heroic or spiritual autobiography of Liszt himself, quasi-retired from performing (and from numerous aristocratic love affairs) in his early 40s, and leading a settled life in Weimar with Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein. His interest in the Catholic Church was lifelong, but it was only in the years following the Sonata that he would join a Franciscan order and receive minor orders of the Church. Some see this music as Liszt’s redemption – not unlike Faust’s own.
Alan Walker would disagree, and sees the Sonata’s plain title as silent acknowledgement that no such programme is necessary. It is perhaps the greatest tribute to the piece’s quality that it has borne such complex and multiple interpretations successfully, and remains enduringly popular for this programmatic retconning by successive generations. Mark Tanner found over 300 recorded performances of the piece (and that count is now twenty years old), and a rich performing mythology has arisen around it, not least because of its difficulty.
It was not always so popular: the 26-year gap between its publication and its London première attests to the fact that it was “born neglected” (Walker). The critic Eduard Hanslick opined that “whoever has heard this, and finds it beautiful, is beyond help”. Brahms fell asleep during one of Liszt’s private performances of the piece – he had just arrived from a long carriage ride. Clara Schumann (the wife of its dedicatee) wrote in her diary that:
“Liszt sent Robert today a sonata dedicated to him and several other things There is nothing but sheer racket – not a single healthy idea, everything confused, no longer a clear harmonic sequence to be detected! And now I have to thank him for it – it’s awful.”
The exception was, as ever, Wagner, writing to Liszt after a private performance in London: “the sonata is beautiful beyond compare; great, sweet, deep and noble, sublime as you are yourself. It moved me most deeply, and the London misery was forgotten at once.”
Recent performance study has questioned the need to “disambiguate ambiguous meanings” in the Sonata (Janet Levy). The best analyses (and performances) are a process of self-discovery, rather than a search for any objective truth. “Those who have kept alive the quest for an unequivocal definition of the work, whether in structuralist, programmatic or semiotic terms, have missed Liszt's point: structural ambiguity, far from being a regrettable by-product of the work's narrative qualities, is its most imperative property. Without it, the richly contrasted performances that can be heard today might never have materialized.” (Tanner)
One can revel equally in the pure pianism of the work: the fiery passages in octaves of the final section, or the ‘three hands’ texture, where the hands cross to play three musical lines at once. In the stabbing, pesante low chords of the middle section, or in the dancing soprano ornaments, this is music that enjoys the sound of the piano for its own sake; and that sound need not be contextualised by any written description.
We cannot arrive from long carriage rides, or experience that “London misery” as was possible eight months ago; but 2020 has given us an opportunity to realise a new, digital exchange in this work’s performance history. So let the Sonata come to you, and greet whatever meaning – formal, programmatic, or otherwise – that arrives. You’re entitled to hold an opinion about it, after all.
Copyright - Jack Butterworth
JULIAN JACOBSON
One of Britain’s most creative and distinctive pianists, Julian Jacobson is acclaimed for the vitality, colour and insight he brings to his enormous repertoire ranging across all styles and periods..
Julian Jacobson was born in Peebles, Scotland. His father Maurice Jacobson had had some piano lessons with Busoni while his mother, pianist and composer Margaret Lyell, had studied in Berlin with Else Krause, daughter of Liszt’s pupil Martin Krause. Julian studied in London from the age of seven with Lamar Crowson (piano) and Arthur Benjamin (composition), and had published four songs by the age of nine. From 1959 to 1968 he studied at the Royal College of Music where his principal teachers were John Barstow and Humphrey Searle. On graduating with the Sarah Mundlak Piano Prize in 1968 he took up a scholarship to read Music at Queen’s College, Oxford. At this time he was also a founder member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra.
After further studies with Louis Kentner he made his London debut at the Purcell Room in 1974. This was followed immediately by the first of five appearances in the Park Lane Group’s annual Young Artists series and his Wigmore Hall debut as both solo recitalist and chamber musician. During the 1980s he established himself as a fine duo and ensemble pianist, partnering artists such as Zara Nelsova, Sandor Vegh, David Geringas, Christian Lindberg and Manuela Wiesler as well as many leading UK instrumentalists including Nigel Kennedy, Steven Isserlis, Moray Welsh, Colin Carr, Alexander Baillie and Philippa Davies. His appointment in 1992 as Head of Keyboard Studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama led to an increasing concentration on solo work.
In 1994 he embarked on his first cycle of the complete 32 Beethoven sonatas; he has now presented the cycle eight times, the last two in a single day (apparently being only the second pianist to attempt this). His 2003 marathon at St James’s Church Piccadilly attracted worldwide media coverage and raised over £6000 for WaterAid.
Julian Jacobson has performed as soloist with orchestras including the London Symphony, BBC Symphony and City of Birmingham Symphony, the English Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, London Sinfonietta, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Bucharest Philharmonic, Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and Royal Omani Symphony Orchestra, with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Tamas Vasary and Jane Glover.
His many festival appearances as soloist and chamber musician include Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Bath, Brighton, Cheltenham, Dartington, Glasgow, Huddersfield, Norwich and Prussia Cove on tour. He has appeared in more than forty countries on five continents, with tours of the USA, South America, the Middle and Far East (where he gave what appears to have been the Chinese premiere of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata in 1994), South Africa and Australia as well as throughout Western and Eastern Europe.
An ongoing commitment to contemporary music has led to many commissions and premieres. In 1987 he gave the critically acclaimed UK premiere of Ligeti’s now famous Etudes Book One; a subsequent recording for BBC Radio 3 was highly praised by the composer. A longlist of composers who have written for him includes Robert Saxton, Simon Bainbridge, Benedict Mason, Philip Cashian, Daryl Runswick, Keith Tippett, Charles Camilleri and Robert Keeley; Michael Nyman wrote the piano trio “Time Will Pronounce” for his ensemble the Trio of London.
A large and varied discography for labels including Meridian, Chandos, Hyperion, Decca Argo, BIS, Continuum and Metier includes albums of Schumann, Dvorak and Balakirev, the complete sonatas of Weber, the Carnival of the Animals with the London Symphony Orchestra, Martinu’s “Sinfonietta Giocosa” with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta under Tamas Vasary, and violin and piano music by Enescu, Dvorak, Vaughan Williams, Fricker and Rawsthorne with Susanne Stanzeleit. His album “Classical Flute à la Jazz” with Judith Hall contains his own jazz waltz, “Waltz for Judy”, published by Bardic Edition together with several other waltzes. Other compositions include five film scores, including ‘To the Lighthouse’, ‘Hard Travelling’ and ‘We Think the World of You’. In ‘The Fourth Protocol’ he made a screen appearance conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In February 2007 he conducted the premiere of his “Vers la Valse” for flute and orchestra with Ileana Ruhemann and the Syred Sinfonia.
Julian Jacobson is currently a professor of piano and chamber music at the Royal College of Music. He was Artistic Director of the Paxos International Festival, Greece, from 1988 to 2004, is Artistic Director of “Rencontres Musicales à Eygalières”, and teaches regularly at Cadenza Summer School at the Purcell School, North London. He has given masterclasses in Germany, Paris, Budapest (Franz Liszt Academy), Spain, Sweden, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the Middle East, and on many occasions in Dartington. He has recently added the Sprechstimme recitation role of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” to his repertoire, giving his fourth performance of it in October 2009 in Jacqueline du Pré Hall, Oxford.
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If you have enjoyed this programme you might like to explore the following links
Julian Jacobson - http://julianjacobson.com
Decoding the Music Masterpieces, Liszt’s ‘Piano Sonata in B minor’ - Zoltán Szabó writes about Liszt’s Sonata : https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-liszts-piano...
Kevin LaVine’s biography of Liszt for the Library of Congress : https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200187503/
Gramophone Magazine’s guide to the ‘Top Ten’ piano sonatas : https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/top-10-piano-sonatas-updated-2019