Sonata in A D664                                                  Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)

Schubert’s piano sonatas were slow to find secure positions in the professional repertoire. As late as 1946 it could be seriously asserted in a leading musical journal that they were unknown “outside the musicologist’s study”. This was surely an overstatement even then and is certainly no longer the case. The three great sonatas written during the last weeks of the composer’s life are now rightly recognised as major works and many of the earlier sonatas are heard with tolerable frequency. One reason for their slow acceptance was the inevitability of them being compared with similar works by Beethoven, for whom the younger man had the deepest admiration (a set of variations of 1822 is dedicated to Beethoven “by his worshipper and admirer Franz Schubert”). But sincere as this admiration was, we should not think of the younger man trying and failing to escape his hero’s influence; he was far too individual a composer to be simply submerged under the great man’s dominance. Rather he pursues his own very personal approach to the piano sonata, producing works that are perfectly capable of standing on their own terms, and must certainly not be in any way considered as ‘inferior’ to Beethoven’s.

The A major sonata belongs to 1819, the year which also saw the appearance of the ‘Trout’ Quintet. This was a relatively untroubled period of Schubert’s life. He had fairly recently moved from his family home in the suburbs to an apartment in the centre of Vienna where his works were gradually making some headway in the city’s crowded musical environment. The summer of 1819 was spent in a prolonged holiday outside the city during which he encountered Josephine von Koller whom he described as both “a good pianist” and “very pretty” and she was the lucky dedicatee of this delightful, predominantly lyrical work. The moods explored in the three compact movements are predominantly lyrical and untroubled; it is surely not being soppy to describe this as the music of a young man in a relaxed environment and congenial company.  

Kinderszenen Opus 15                                     Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856)

In 1838 Schumann composed thirty miniatures which he described as “small, droll things”. Dissuaded from publishing them all in one go, he extracted thirteen, giving the group the title ‘Scenes of Childhood’; the others he kept back, issuing them later as ‘Bunte Blätter’ and ‘Albumblätter’. Originally untitled, he later gave the pieces typically ‘romantic’ titles, explaining these as “nothing more than delicate hints for execution and interpretation”.  

I N T E R V A L

Works by Frédéric Chopin (1810 – 1849)

2 Nocturnes Opus 27 No.1 in C# minor   No.2 in Db major.

Waltzes from Opus 34: No.2 in A minor.

Waltzes from Opus 64 No.1 in Db major    No.2 in C# minor

Polonaise Fantaisie Opus 61.

When it first appeared, Chopin’s music was startlingly original and evinced strong opinions. He had some very powerful advocates amongst his European contemporaries – when drawing up the piano syllabus for the newly founded Leipzig Conservatoire in 1847, Mendelssohn and Schumann had no hesitation in including his work alongside that of the most eminent keyboard composers of previous generations. But there were also those who took a very different view; an article in a leading English musical journal at much the same time spoke of “sickly melodies, clumsy harmonies, utter ignorance of design  and ranting hyperbole” and forty years later, if the critical tone was less condemnatory, there was still a feeling that Chopin’s music was ‘not quite nice’ and certainly not suitable for young females to learn, surely a tacit acknowledgment of its power. Once it had been accepted into the regular repertoires of pianists (both male and female!), a new problem arose; in the hands of far less gifted composers, the externals of his style became the common currency of ‘romanticism’ in its shallowest manifestation. His is a style fatally easy to imitate at a mediocre level; we need look (or listen) no further than ‘The Dream of Olwen’ and a vast amount of similar stuff to hear a once strong and original language reduced to stale posturing.

So where did this startlingly original style come from? Hardly from the very haphazard and patchy musical education Chopin received. There are some discernible external influences: the sweeping melodies of the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, the pianistic figuration of Field and Dussek, the sturdy rhythms and melancholy melodies of the folk music of his native Poland. But to weld these together into a coherent and expressive style, capable of arousing such strong reactions both for and against in its early hearers, this surely earns Chopin a leading position in the procession of 19^thcentury composers.

The pieces that we shall hear tonight offer differing facets of Chopin’s art. He took the idea of the nocturne with its flowing melody and richly arpeggiated accompaniment largely from the work of the Irishman John Field but elevated it to a higher technical and emotional level. Waltzes designed for the concert room rather than the ballroom were a comparatively recent phenomenon, allowing composers to use something of the rhythmic verve and sequential construction of the Viennese originals but employed in a much less constrained environment. And the Polonaise Fantasie shows us something of Chopin the nationalist. Although he spent much of his adult life in Paris, he maintained strong links with family and friends back home in Poland and took to heart the political and social hardships which were, as so often before and since, besetting his beloved homeland.  

Ignas Maknickas was born in California, raised in Lithuania and is now based in London. Trained in Vilnius and at the Royal Academy of Music, he has been the recipient of an impressive array of scholarships and awards and has appeared on concerts platforms both as a soloist and in concerto performances not only in the UK and throughout mainland Europe but as far afield as Indiana and Melbourne. 

If you have enjoyed this concert, you may well like to support our near neighbours Chamber Music Weymouth whose concerts are held in St Mary’s Church, St Mary’s Street, Weymouth on Wednesdays starting at 1.00pm and lasting for an hour. Their next event is on 5^th March and will be given by harpist Rosanna Rolton (who played a most enjoyable recital for us in 2019). Further details will be found on their website Chamber Music Weymouth.