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Performances of his music are very rare, especially by major pianists; we hope you enjoy this special soirée, this interlude in St. Petersburg, Paris, and Weimar.
FEDERICO MOMPOU
Variations on a Theme by Chopin
With these twelve variations, we return to Federico Mompou, who is so rarely programmed even once on a program, let alone twice. The piece takes its theme from
the Prelude in A Major, Op. 28, No. 7 by Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849), and puts it through the filters of modernity and Mompou’s own, original harmonic sensibility. Some variations verge on Impressionism and even near-Jazz, while others, like the Tempo di Mazurka and Valse, double down on Chopin’s style. A few other Chopin pieces are paraphrased, including the Fantaisie-Impromptu and Prelude No. 4 in E Minor.
Mompou began to write the Chopin Variations in 1938 as a cello and piano piece, but stopped after completing just three variations. He returned to the project in 1957, this time to fulfill a ballet commission, but it never reached the stage—leaving us with just the piano version we hear today.
— Benjamin Pesetsky
MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937) Sonatine and Miroirs
Ravel wrote this charming early Sonatine under the pseud- onym “Verla,” an anagram of Ravel. He was 28. The first movement was written for a competition specifying that it couldn’t be longer than 75 bars. (But Ravel puts in a repeat, so the pianist gets to develop the initial lyrical theme by playing it differently. Or maybe we just get to know it better by hearing it again.) This short melody features the uniquely
modern modulations which imitated Monet’s Impressionist brush strokes. It also contains a phrase which is a wave hello to Debussy’s Sarabande of 1902, which Ravel later orches- trated. For both Debussy and Ravel this was a phrase which, in its three-note resignation to life, is the essence of child- hood. Ravel used it also in “Vallée des cloches.” Ravel was 13 years younger than Debussy and was obviously emulating him, but Ravel’s compositions began to influence Debussy as well. The first movement has a chord structure similar to his Pavane for a Dead Princess of four years before, which was also influenced by Debussy’s Sarabande.
However, these strange modulations come from the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier. Mahler called Chabrier’s pieces the beginnings of modern music. Ravel said that Chabrier changed the course of harmony in France. His friendship with both Monet and Manet led Chabrier into imitating the “neighbor note” changes in keys, as Monet’s brush strokes juxtaposed contradictory colors next to one another. Soon Ravel, in Miroirs, began using abrupt juxtapositions of different tempi, and of major and minor modes. In the same way, John Luther Adams has used
the painter Mark Rothko’s translucent fields of white as a template for blurring the harmonies of his music, until “there are no lines left—only slowly changing light on a timeless white field,” like the sun on the snow. Great artists use other disciplines as metaphors to spark their own creativity, which is why musicians should learn about painting, and vice versa.
Critics have noted the similarities of Ravel’s Sonatine to his Miroirs, which he wrote just afterwards. This was a period known as “l’affaire Ravel,” when he tried and failed four times to win the Prix de Rome, being thoroughly rejected by the musical establishment of the Paris Conservatory.
Ravel wrote, “a sentence by Shakespeare helped me to formulate a completely opposite position [to mere descrip- tion]: ‘the eye sees not itself / but by reflection, by some other things’ (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2).” Or, as Oscar Wilde said, a mask tells us more than a face. Or, again, Freud:
90 The Music at Tippet Rise