program)
CBS Masterworks recording , Printed in the U.S.A. // Franz Schubert (1797-1828) // Impromptus: D.899, OP.90 Pianist: Murray Perahia.
Impromptus:
No.1 in C Minor - Allegro molto moderato
No.2 in E-flat major - Allegro
No.3 in G-flat major - Andante
No.4 in A-flat major - Allegretto
Be gentle with yourself as you uncover
Your best kept secrets yet to be discovered
In stillness, boys, clear water to the bottom
You will do better in the morning
I will do better in the morning
‘Better in the Morning’ — Birdtalker
Song is at the heart of his music, sometimes in the form of seemingly endless melody, sometimes giving the impression that a song is struggling to surface from a tangle of conflicting ideas. His ability to switch in an instant between one mood and another, and to create ambiguity so that the listener does not know quite what the mood is, is essential to his command of long structures, in which our intense involvement is kept engaged by this precisely calibrated command of mood and tension. “” robert philip, The Classical Music Lover’s Guide
the Impromptus (long songs for piano) that comprise schubert’s Op.90 provided much needed bliss this week. they have the same studious and stuffy atmosphere of an etude, but with all the windows open. they are free-flowing locomotives beholden more to the spirit of an idea than the stringencies of technical organization.
the Impromptus (long songs for piano) that comprise schubert’s Op.90 provided much needed bliss this week. they have the same studious and stuffy atmosphere of an etude, but with all the windows open. they are free-flowing locomotives beholden more to the spirit of an idea than the stringencies of technical organization.
a tale of three performers — first, the murray perahia vinyl recording featured here. the first perahia recording i ever heard was that of mozart’s complete piano concertos, his handling of the slow movement of the Piano Concerto No.11 revealed the charms of that concerto (which i will be listening to in Week42 of this journal). he handles the similarly paced Impromptu No.3 in the same way. had i heard his interpretation first, i’d think elisabeth leonskaja’s recording—my gold standard interpretation of these piano works—took the Impromptu No.4 a little too fast. instead it’s perahia’s version that i feel lacks the horsepower and alacrity necessary for the breathless drive of the Impromptu No.4, my favourite of the four.
the best parts of both perahia and leonskaja’s recordings are combined in the eric lu recital in the video above. he too doesn’t quite deliver on the fourth Impromptu’s thrilling velocity, but his performance of No.2 is the most satisfying of the three performers (though it seems the former governor-general adrienne clarkson preferred his performance of No.3 in her COC interview).
i had a bit more time on my hands this week, and so my inexplicable need to find sylvia plath poems (from The Colossus) that match the contrasting moods of each of the four Impromptus, resulted in:
No.1 in C Minor (time: 0:00) — the terse austerity of ‘The Times are Tidy’ makes it one of the most atypical of plath’s poems. as the title suggests, its meant to be read at an ironic distance, with the subject of criticism being the austere aesthetic of modernism, of cleanliness as godliness:
Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
Round of its own accord.
[…]
The cow milks cream an inch thick
these Impromptus could be described as the gradual removal of a conceptual partition between the treble and bass hands of the pianist. this partition is strongest in the No.1 as the tidy and neutered theme animates one hand while the other scrambles in support—adding a slightly ironic undertone.
No.2 in E-flat major [time: 10:35] — the musicality of plath’s poems is the source of their hypnotic power. in that respect is ‘Snakecharmer’ is the most hypnotic of her poems.
As the gods began one world, and man another,
So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere
With moon-eye, mouth-pipe, He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water.
Pipes water green until green waters waver
With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings.
And as his notes twine green, the green river
Shapes its images around his sons.
He pipes a place to stand on, but no rocks,
No floor: a wave of flickering grass tongues
Supports his foot.
like the notes in this Impromptu, the words flow as loosely as the wind instrument the title character is playing (i have a piccolo in mind), winding and unwinding till the snakecharmer ‘Puts up his pipe, and lids his moony eye’.
No.3 in G-flat major [time: 15:28] — like ‘The Times are Tidy’, ‘The Bull of Bendylaw’ paints a stationary scenery that is animated by a metaphorical background. there’s still a hint of that tidiness, but slurred by a regal liquidity befitting of the andante pace of this Impromptu.
‘The Keynoye’ — William Chase (1915)
The black bull bellowed before the sea.
The sea, till that day orderly,
Hove up against Bendylaw.
The queen in the mulberry arbor stared
Stiff as a queen on a playing card.
The king fingered his beard.
A blue sea, four horny bull-feet,
A bull-snouted sea that wouldn't stay put,
Bucked at the garden gate.
[…]
O the king's tidy acre is under the sea,
And the royal rose in the bull's belly,
And the bull on the king's highway.
whereas there was a game of cat and mouse between treble and bass hands in No.2, the two parts move more in cooperation in No.3, with the occasional insurgent uproar. it’s that traipse of order and chaos that reminds me of plath’s Bendylaw.
No.4 in A-flat major [time: 21:44] — ‘Hardcastle Crags’ is plath’s visual imagination at optimal virility:
Flintlike, her feet struck
Such a racket of echoes from the steely street,
Tacking in moon-blued crooks from the black
Stone-built town, that she heard the quick air ignite
Its tinder and shake
A firework of echoes from wall
To wall of the dark, dwarfed cottages.
the poem follows a female figure’s staggering procession across a rural landscape. her pace can be imagined as akin to the staccato pour of notes that open this Impromptu, like wooden clogs scattering across cobblestone. the pianist and poem both push forward in a breathless dart into the vast edge of an unidentified structure. as the music occasionally softens its pace ahead of another plunge, so too does the figure in this poem pause occasionally to ponder scenes like ‘the dairy herds / knelt in the meadow mute as boulders…’. the similarity between the two works seems to diverge in the end: unlike the allegretto character in the Impromptu, the figure in the poem decides, at the latest moment, to turn back from the edge of annihilation:
All the night gave her, in return
For the paltry gift of her bulk and the beat
Of her heart was the humped indifferent iron
Of its hills, and its pastures bordered by black stone set
On black stone.
The whole landscape
Loomed absolute as the antique world was
Once in its earliest sway of lymph and sap,
Unaltered by eyes,
Enough to snuff the quick
Of her small heat out, but before the weight
Of stones and hills of stones could break
Her down to mere quartz grit in that stony light
She turned back.
(song of the week: ‘Better in the Morning’ — Birdtalker)
Birdtalker's hope is simply that the more music they write and share, the more true and vulnerable interactions may be born from it. “” www.birdtalker.com
I learned shame when I was young
I will do better in the morning
Choked libido fucked me up
I will do better in the morning
Suck me dry you uptight fakers
You stole from me lovemaking
I'm always left with the taste in my mouth
I will do better in the morning
i admit it’s a cliché, but there really are some songs that have the capacity to stop you in your tracks—this is one. not since Bon Iver’s ‘Heavenly Father’ have i heard a song do so much with a simple drone under words that persist like a chant. like a hymn to clutch unto to. it’s for me a hymnostic—that is, a secular hymn—not sacred but nevertheless cathartic. the light that the last stanza steps into is an about face of mood that floods me with endorphins every time.
Throwback to: Year 2, Week38
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