Avery Gagliano, piano

Program Notes

Schumann – Selections from Noveletten, op. 21

Robert Schumann
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Germany
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich, Bonn, Germany

The title of Schumann’s Noveletten—composed in March 1838, two years before his marriage to Clara Wieck—is explained in various ways. Schumann suggested that each of them is a short romantic tale (thus the title “little novel”), while others have thought of them as “novelties” for the piano. Schumann himself suggested a further possibility. English soprano Clara Novello had a great success singing in Leipzig when Schumann wrote this music, and Schumann had one Clara in mind when he wrote for another. To his future wife he playfully explained.

“I have composed a frightful amount for you in the past three weeks, jests, Egmont stories, family scenes with fathers, a wedding—in short, most endearing subjects. The whole thing I have called ‘Novelettes,’ because your name is Clara, and ‘Wieckettes’ does not sound attractive enough.”

Schumann made the inspiration even clearer when he wrote to his future wife, “You appear in the Noveletten in every possible circumstance, in every irresistible form… they could only be written by one who knows such eyes as yours and has touched such lips as yours.”

No. 1 in F major opens with a propulsive march that Schumann describes as “marked and powerful.” Its trio section, with gentle melody over quietly rolling triplets, is heard almost immediately, and these two sections alternate before the piece ends with the march tune.

By contrast, No. 2 in D major explodes to life in a hail of flying sixteenths. Schumann marks this section “extremely quick and with bravura,” and far below the swirling right hand the theme is stamped out in octaves in the left. The center section is titled Intermezzo, and in a separate publication of this section Schumann prefaced it with lines from the witches in Macbeth:

When shall we three meet again,
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

He omitted these lines when the music was published in 1839, and it is left to the listener to determine whether this quiet interlude is meant to depict Shakespeare’s weird sisters. The powerful opening music returns to drive the piece to its close.

The last of the sequence, No. 8 in F-sharp minor, is by far the longest. Most of the Noveletten last only a few minutes, but No. 8 stretches out to about 12. The piece has an unusual structure, and here one strongly senses a “story” behind the music. The firm chordal beginning gives way to two sections that Schumann calls Trios, both of which dance gracefully along dotted rhythms. At the end of the second comes a passage that Schumann marks Stimme aus der Ferne (“voice from afar”), a subdued melody in the right hand above a busy dotted accompaniment. This complete, he plunges back into his lively opening material and drives the Novelette to its climax. But now a surprise: that “voice from afar” returns at full strength, shouted out heroically before the piece is rounded off with a return of its firm opening theme.

Does the Novelette in F-sharp minor tell a story? If it does, Schumann kept that story a secret.

Barber – Nocturne, op. 33

Samuel Barber
Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, PA
Died January 23, 1981, New York City

The year 1959 found Samuel Barber at the height of his career. The year before, his opera Vanessa had won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Three years later, his Piano Concerto would win Barber his second Pulitzer Prize. Between these masterworks, Barber composed something quite different: a four-minute piece for piano that he titled Nocturne and which he subtitled “Homage to John Field.” Field (1782-1837) was an Irish composer and pianist who is credited with “inventing” the nocturne. As its title suggests, a nocturne is music that evokes the spirit of the night—it is usually (but not always!) subdued and introspective music inspired by the many characters of the night. Field may have invented the nocturne, but it was Chopin who brought the form to its finest expression in his twenty-one nocturnes. Now, Barber set out to write a similar piece.

Both Field and Chopin would have recognized familiar characteristics in Barber’s Nocturne: a subdued manner, a flowing and steady accompaniment in the left hand, and the three-part form. What would have surprised those earlier masters is Barber’s harmonic language. Over a reassuringly steady accompaniment in 12/8, Barber gives the right hand a melodic line full of unexpected dissonance—in fact, several passages in his Nocturne are built on twelve-tone themes that stretch and sometimes annihilate any sense of a home key. But this music is not abrasive. Despite its dissonances, it remains expressive throughout, and its harmonic uncertainty is part of its effectiveness: Barber’s Nocturne reminds us that even at a quiet dynamic, music of the night can be unsettling and beautiful at the same time.

Coleman – Music in Timelapse

Alistair Coleman
Born 1998 in Washington, D.C.

Music in Timelapse is a new work for solo piano written for Avery Gagliano and commissioned for her graduation recital at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Read composer Alistair Coleman’s inspiration for the piece below.

As I began writing the piece, I kept returning to a simple “shuttering” figure on the piano where notes are repeated in rapid succession. The rhythmic cadence of this shuttering quality, coupled with swiftly-paced musical elements, evoked the imagery of time-lapse photography. This photographic technique involves capturing a sequence of frames and presenting them rapidly in succession, creating the illusion that a gradual process unfolds rapidly.

This metaphor not only describes the piece but also reflects on Avery’s many years in Philadelphia. Being a Curtis student myself, I understand that a single piece can’t capture everything about this place. However, I hope it gives a glimpse of an exhilarating time that can come and go all-too-quickly.

Written by Alistair Coleman

Chopin – Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, op. 61

Frédéric Chopin
Born Feburary 22, 1810, Zelazowa Wola, Poland
Died October 17, 1849, Paris

Written in 1845-46, the Polonaise-Fantaisie is one of Chopin’s final works— and one of his most brilliant. A polonaise is a national Polish dance in triple time, characterized by unusual rhythmic stresses; the fact that it is usually at a moderate rather than a fast tempo gives the polonaise a more stately character than most dance forms. Many composers have written polonaises, but the fourteen of Chopin remain the most famous, and some feel that this distinctly Polish form allowed Chopin an ideal channel for his own strong nationalist feelings during his exile in Paris.

The polonaise is usually in three parts: a first subject, a contrasting middle section, and a return of the opening material. The Polonaise-Fantaisie keeps this general pattern but with some differences: Chopin writes with unusual harmonic freedom and incorporates both themes into the brilliant conclusion–doubtless he felt that he had reshaped the basic form so far that it was necessary to append the “fantaisie” to the title.

The Allegro maestoso introduction is long and rather free, while the first theme group—in A-flat major—is remarkable for the drama and virtuosity of the writing. This makes the quiet middle section, in the unexpected key of B major and marked Poco più lento, all the more effective: a chordal melody of disarming simplicity is developed at length before the gradual return of the opening material. The final pages are dazzling—Chopin combines both themes and at one point even makes one of the accompanying figures function thematically as the Polonaise-Fantaisie winds down to its powerful final chord.

Rachmaninoff – Selection of Preludes from op. 23 and op. 32

Serge Rachmaninoff
Born April 1, 1873, Semyonovo, Russia
Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California

When Bach composed The Well-Tempered Clavier, 24 preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale, he could have had no idea how that concept would haunt subsequent composers. One of those haunted was Bach himself—two decades later he wrote another cycle of 24 preludes and fugues in all the keys. A century later, when Chopin set out to write preludes, he composed precisely 24 of them in all the major and minor keys. Over the following two decades Alkan wrote 24 etudes in all the keys, and in 1885 the young Scriabin did the same in his 24 Preludes. At mid-20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich—just as haunted as his distinguished predecessors—wrote a set of 24 preludes and fugues in all the keys. (Though Debussy also wrote exactly 24 piano preludes, he made no attempt to employ all the keys.)

Serge Rachmaninoff wrote a cycle of 24 piano preludes in all the major and minor keys, but—rather than writing them all at once—he spread their composition out over nearly twenty years, and he appears to have come to that idea only gradually. In 1892, at age 19, Rachmaninoff achieved sudden fame with his Prelude in C-sharp minor. He waited eleven years before composing the ten preludes of his opus 23 in 1903. Rachmaninoff then waited another seven before writing the final thirteen as his opus 32 during the summer of 1910, carefully completing the cycle of keys in the process.

Rachmaninoff’s preludes are generally brief and unified around a melodic or rhythmic cell; many are in ternary form, with a modified return of the opening material. They encompass a wide span of expression and difficulty. Some lie within the abilities of good amateur pianists, but most are extremely difficult technically, with the music ranging from the brilliant and exuberant to the dark and introspective. Rachmaninoff did not intend that these preludes should be performed as a set, and he would play only a brief selection of the preludes on his recitals; he recorded eight of them. This recital concludes with seven of Rachmaninoff’s preludes.

The Prelude in G major (32/5) is all delicacy–here a limpid melody floats above rippling accompaniment, grows capricious, and finally comes to a subdued conclusion. Though Rachmaninoff is reported to have disliked Debussy’s music, there are moments here that evoke the music of that composer. Rachmaninoff gave the Prelude in D minor (23/3) the marking Tempo di minuetto, though this hardly feels like a minuet. Instead, its subdued opening is somber and precise, yet full of rhythmic energy, much of it coiled within the triplet in the left hand. The Prelude in E-flat major (23/6) is rhapsodic and yearning throughout, though this gentle music grows more complicated rhythmically as it proceeds.

The Prelude in C minor (23/7) rides along a whirling perpetual motion as wisps of melody gradually emerge before the prelude arrives at its firm close. The very difficult Prelude in B-flat major (23/2) unleashes an explosion of sound. Marked Maestoso (“majestic”), it offers a chordal melody in the right hand above turbulent sextuplets in the left, and along the way Rachmaninoff writes chords that are rolled across a span of almost three octaves. The Prelude in G-flat major (23/10) is a slow movement, marked Largo; the melody here is in the left hand, and while textures grow more complex as the music proceeds, the left-hand melody returns to close out the prelude. The concluding Prelude in D-flat major (32/13), marked Grave, begins with a simple but noble rising melody; this grows more animated, and that simple opening soars up to a titanic restatement at the climax.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger