Schubert/Liszt - Mona Asuka
Mona Asuka, the sister of Alice Sara Ott, has chosen a Schubert/Liszt programme for her debut recording. The young pianist made her orchestral debut at the age of 13, and she has so far worked with such conductors as Ivor Bolton and Edo de Waart. Solo performances have taken the artist to the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Europäische Wochen Passau and the Kissinger Sommer.
Read more…Sometimes one stands in one’s ownway with one’s own things. Schubert was one example of this. If he had not achieved popularity so rapidly with some of his smaller piano pieces, it probably would not have taken so long for him to make a breakthrough with his piano sonatas as well. For all that, it is presumptuous to speak of trifles, or even subsidiary works, when referring to those piano cycles to which he owed his initial fame as a composer for the piano – the ‘Moments musicaux’ and ‘Impromptus’. Robert Schumann drew attention to this in his review of the second collection of the ‘Impromptus’ by referring to them as a large-scale, four movement sonata. If Schubert had intended this, however, he surely would have chosen that designation.
Schubert’s path originated in the Lied. It was from this poetic lyricism that he also developed his symphonic works and piano oeuvre. And seen from this vantage point, smaller piano pieces can be regarded as equivalent to his Lieder. It is not so significant that elements of sonatas shine through here and there. Schubert was moved not by the structure, but by the question of the form in which he could clothe musical contents. It is for this reason that he also found sonata-like solutions. When he calls the second collection of ‘Impromptus’, Op. 142,D. 935, – also in four parts and completed in 1827– ‘Four Impromptus’, he documents two things. Firstly, Schubert expressly establishes the fact that these are four individual, self-contained pieces not conceived as a unity in the sense of a sonata. Secondly, he has adopted a title already chosen by his publisher Tobias Haslinger for the edition of the first pieces of this kind entrusted to him: the ‘Impromptus’, Op. 90, D. 899.
If one follows Schumann’s sonata theory as formulated for the second collection of ‘Impromptus’, then the F-minor Impromptu is orientated on a sonata movement. The E-flat major Impromptu has traits of a scherzo. The G-flat major Impromptu is a slow movement in character, whereas the A-flat major Impromptu takes up the scherzo idea of the E-flat major Impromptu again. The F-minor piece can just as well be characterised as a ballade, and the E-flat major piece as an anticipation of a number of waltzes and etudes of Chopin. The G-flat major Impromptu anticipates the world of the ‘Nocturnes’ and the final A-flat major work links the idea of a brilliant finale with an elegiac, pensive cantabile quality. Already we recognise, from these attempts at characterising Schubert’s works adequately, their multi-layered quality and multiple perspectives, and also how little Haslinger’s title– although later adopted by the composer – does justice to these works. For these ‘Impromptus’ are anything but the quickly sketched occasional works that their title might lead one to believe.
In an age in which the original version is of primary importance and adaptations have little or no prestige, one might well turn up one’s nose at the latter. But it was often these adaptations that initially made works and composers known. It was out of this kind of propagandistic intention that Franz Liszt transcribed Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie fantastique’ for the piano, as he did the Beethoven symphonies and overtures by Rossini and Weber, as well as organ works of Bach. Whereas his operatic paraphrases take melodies from these works to form the basis of bravura pieces with musical content, his Lied transcriptions bring together the singing voice and the accompaniment without forgetting virtuosic ingredients and new interpretations. Thus he interprets the Lied ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’, D. 774 as a kind of barcarolle, and the ‘Ständchen’ to words by Shakespeare as something resembling a capriccio. We would surely also forgive any virtuoso nowadays for taking such liberties. In Liszt’s case, however, this also had the aim of introducing composers and portions of their oeuvres to a broader public on a long-term basis. In this manner, he familiarised them with portions of the three song cycles ‘The Miller’s Beautiful Daughter’, ‘The Winter Journey’ and ‘Swan Song’, thus substantially contributing to the image of “Schubert, the Prince of Song”.
Liszt’s three-part collection ‘Années de pèlerinage’ unites impressions gained from the art world, from landscapes as well as religious reflections. He worked on the second part of this cycle, ‘Deuxième Année: Italie’, between 1837 and 1839. The triptych ‘Venezia e Napoli’ was conceived as a postlude to the collection; initially conceived in 1838, it was finally completed in 1861. The source of inspiration for the opening piece ‘Gondoliera’, characterised by brilliant chains of demisemiquavers, is a canzone by Cavaliere Peruchini entitled ‘La bionda in gondoletta’. Another song, this time ‘Nessùn maggior dolore’, sung by a gondolier referred to in a text by Dante from Rossini’s opera ‘Othello’, motivated Liszt to compose the middle part – entitled ‘Canzone’ – of these Venetian observations. The final ‘Tarantella’ combines two themes by the composer Guillaume Louis Cottrau, also a notable musicologist, with a Neapolitan folksong clothed in virtuosic ornamentation.
Text:Walter Dobner
Translation: David Babcock