A

Piano RECITAL

by

JOHANES TIMOTHY

CHOPIN DEBUSSY LISZT

Nocturnes Estampes Mazeppa
op. 48 no. 1 L. 100 Transcendental
op. 62 no. 1 Etude no. 4

Ballade Ballade
no. 2 no. 2

Camerata, Musiikkitalo
12 December 2022
12.30
free entrance
 PROGRAMME

Frédéric Chopin (1810 – 1849)

Ballade No. 2 op. 38 (1840)

Nocturnes op. 62 no. 1 (1846)

op. 48 no. 1 (1842)

******

Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)

Estampes L. 100 (1903)

• Pagodes
• La soirée dans Grenade (Evening in Granada)
• Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain)

******

Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886)

‘Mazeppa’ Transcendental Etude S. 139, No. 4 (1852)

Ballade No. 2 S. 171 (1853)

 ‘TALES AND IMPRESSIONS’

Welcome to a recital of musical narratives and imaginations. We will

shortly listen to the depictions of stories, chronicles, and images through
the musical poetry of three giants of the 19th century piano music:
Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, and Franz Liszt.

Chopin’s Second Ballade will open the recital. A ballade that is often
regarded to be smaller or simpler than the others, but should not be
thought to be less significant 1. It is dedicated to Robert Schumann as a
reply for Schumann’s dedication of his Kreisleriana (op. 16) to Chopin.
Through Chopin’s ballades one can find the influence of poetry in music:
his inspiration came from the poetries of Adam Mickiewicz, a great poet
of his native Poland. Especially within this Second Ballade, Mickiewicz’s
Świtezianka brings resemblances: the noble princess and the silent,
beautiful blue lake under the moonlight lingered as Chopin wrote his
mesmerizing opening, before the convulsions of wails, howls and clatters
of the dramatic sections of as the princess used all kinds of tools to seek
retribution upon her fatherland’s despoiler2.

Next, we will peek inside Chopin’s genius mind, as he imagined the calm
beauty of the night in his Nocturnes. From the inspiration of John Field’s
Nocturnes, Chopin brought the genre to a new level. The much more
intricate, innovative, and mesmerizing musical poetries strike every
listener with awe and admiration. Through his Nocturnes, Chopin
invented a new caliber of musical romanticism: ‘the erotic and the heroic’ 3

1
Schumann, R. (1946). On music and musicians. (ed: K. Wolff, trans: P. Rosenfeld)
New York: Pantheon, p. 143
2
Keefer, L. (1946). The Influence of Adam Mickiewicz on the Ballades of Chopin.
American Slavic and East European Review, 5(1/2), p. 38–50. Retrieved from
[Link]
3
Szulc, T. (1998). Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer. New
York: Scribner, p. 114
stretched to the outmost intensity. These two words best describe the
ensuing Nocturnes. The erotic B Major (op. 62 no. 1), a sensitive and
impressionistic nocturne full of long melodies, ornamentations, and
intricacies, and the heroic C Minor (op. 48 no. 1), an operatic ‘mini ballade’
within which the Italian bel canto-singing expresses passionately.

Still reckoning the qualities of the B

Major Nocturne, we can now draw a
line towards Debussy: Debussy as
Chopin’s successor in his exploitation
of the soft, subtle sides of the piano 4.
Debussy was after all a great admirer
of Chopin 5 . This, coupled with the
sonorities of the Javanese Gamelan
which he heard at the 1889 Paris
Universal Exposition (L'Exposition
universelle de Paris), became a perfect
recipe for the Pagodes. The low
rumbling of the gongs, the pentatonic
melodies, and the atmospheric
sonorities perfectly creates the first
image within our print (estampe). It is
Japanese print (estampe)
as if Debussy was trying to express the
orientals, seen in the most popular and
influential estampes at that time as woodblock prints of the Japanese 6.

4
Lee, J. (2015). The Breadth of Chopin’s Influence on French and Russian Piano music
of the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries. (Doctoral dissertation, University of
Maryland, College Park), p. 13. Retrieved from [Link]
5
Debussy’s famous comment: "Chopin is the greatest of all for with the piano alone,
he discovered everything.” Long M. (1972). At the Piano with Claude Debussy.
(trans: Olive Senior-Ellis) London: Dent (org. published 1960), p. 4
6
Roberts, P. (1996). Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy. Portland, Or.:
Amadeus Press, p. 46
Next, the La soirée dans Grenade took it roots from Granada, Spain, with
its habenara rhythm, guitar strummings, and the flamenco all native to
Spain. The Arabic scales resembles the Arabic architecture of Alhambra
in Granada, as relics of the Arabic rule over Spain. The last, Jardins sous la
pluie, brings us back to France, as Debussy depicts the rain, wind, storm,
and crackles from trees and thunder in this energetic piece, as well as the
sleeping children lulled by their nursery rhymes 7. Through these three
pieces, Debussy sought to create scenic impressions within his audiences,
as if looking at three different estampes.

After our dive to the world of impressions, we will now return to the
expressive realm, this time through the spirit of Liszt. Drawing yet
another line from Chopin, Liszt was a figure who pushed piano
romanticism and musical expressionisms to its very limit, not only
technically, but also emotionally. Just like Chopin’s, Liszt’s etudes contain
various technical innovations, but his is denser, more dramatic, more
passionate, and overall more virtuosic. He called them the
‘Transcendental Etudes’ (Études d'exécution transcendante), as if the
pianist would have to transcend the technical challenges as well as the
emotional demand of the pieces to bring justice to the pieces. He titled
the no. 4 of his set as ‘Mazeppa’, referring of the Ukrainian leader and hero
Ivan Mazepa, who due to an a affair with a Polish nobleman’s wife,
received a harsh sentence of being tied naked to a wild horse, before being
saved by the Cossacks and led the Ukrainians for a rebellion against the
Russians and the Swedes. We can hear the painful gallop of the horse
manifested in Liszt’s ascending thirds. At the end of the piece, Liszt
himself quoted the poet Victor Hugo who wrote epic poems about
Mazepa: “He fell at last! … and rises yet a King!” 8.

7
Schmitz, E. R. (1966). The Piano Works of Claude Debussy. New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., p. 89–90
8
Banowetz, J. (1971). Liszt: Études d’exécution transcendante. American Music
Teacher, 20(3), p. 18–38. Retrieved from [Link]
The final piece would be the Liszt’s Second Ballade, a masterpiece which
is known for its connection towards the Greek legend of Hero and
Leander 9. The myth was about two lovers kept apart by circumstances.
Hero was a priestess of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. She was in
love with a young man named Leander, but they were separated by a strait
of water which kept them apart. Hero was in Sestos, the European side of
the Hellespont, while Leander was in Abydos, the Asian side of the
Hellespont. However, such was Leander’s love for Hero, that he would
nightly swim the Hellespont so he could visit her. As a priestess of
Aphrodite, Hero lived in a tower, which meant that she could light a lamp
in the tower which would act as a lighthouse for her lover so he could see
his way across to her. Liszt depicted his nightly perseverance with the left
hand chromatic scales going up and down, as the waves opposed
Leander’s pains. Suddenly, on one stormy night, the flame in the lamp was
blown out, leaving Leander without a beacon to guide the way. He lost
sight of the shore, and, unable to see where he was swimming and with
the storm making the waves higher and higher, he drowned. The next
morning, when Hero looked down and discovered his body washed up on
the rocks below, she threw herself to death, to join him in the afterlife.

9
Armstrong, S.S. (2014). Liszt, His Scholars, and the B-Minor Ballade: A Study of
Textural Transformation. (Master’s thesis, Michigan State University), p. 33–34.
Retrieved from [Link]