Olli Mustonen Recital (piano)

The appearance of The Seasons, Op. 37, twelve characteristic scenes for piano is directly linked with the history of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s relationship with the Bernard family of St Petersburg publishers and the magazine Nouvellist. The reason behind the composition was a commission from Nikolai Bernard, which Tchaikovsky received in November 1875. The composer was offered an extremely “high fee” and incredibly comfortable working conditions. The names of the pieces, the names of the months of the year, were also proposed by Bernard. Later, when they were published, each piece in the cycle was given a poetical epigraph. In 1876 each issue of Nouvellist, except for September, opened with a piece by Tchaikovsky, and at the end of the year the series was published in its entirety. That was when its current title first appeared.
The are no surviving accounts of the first public performance of the entire cycle or its individual parts. But during the composer’s lifetime The Seasons became one of the most popular pieces of Russian piano music.

Shchedrin composed his grandiose series of Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues in two volumes in the 1960s, following in the footsteps of Shostakovich who was the first since Bach to turn to the genre, essentially reviving it. But Shchedrin, in turning to the established form of the polyphonic cycle, instructive in its sources, created an incredibly special type that was fundamentally different to the typical academic standard. The mood of the pieces is untraditional: the first volume, composed during 1963 and 1964, contains only sharp tonalities and the second, written between 1964 and 1970, contains only flat tonalities. Unlike Shostakovich’s cycle, which doesn’t pretend at any great virtuoso qualities, Shchedrin’s Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues are incredibly demanding to perform. The composer aimed to combine strict polyphonic structure with the newest ideas and techniques of contemporary musical language, and so the sound of the cycle may seem incredibly avant-garde to an unprepared audience. Performing all of the  Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, or even just one volume, is a kind of an artistic feat for a pianist, and so the cycle is rarely performed in its entirety.

Scriabin’s post-conservatoire years were notable for his compositions of brief works – impromptus, études and preludes in particular. The composer would write the latter literally everywhere – on a concert tour, while on holiday and during his travels. The series of preludes from this period are often referred to as Scriabin’s musical diary, reflecting his various moods, impressions and artistic endeavours. The pages in this “diary” were written separately and then combined together in various works (Op. 11, Op. 13, Op. 15, Op. 16 and Op.17). Most of Scriabin’s works in this genre – fifty-three out of ninety – were written before 1898. Composing the preludes, Scriabin was working in a genre that essentially had no tradition in Russian music.
Sonata No 10 was the last sonata that Scriabin wrote. According to Leonid Sabaneyev, the first researcher of Scriabin’s music, the composer himself spoke to him of the forest scenes that he managed to record in it. This sonata is not, however, incredibly inventive in terms of sound. The light pantheism that imbues the entire work makes it stand out sharply from Scriabin’s other late opuses, particularly when compared with the Ninth Sonata which is known by the title of the Messe Noire. The emotional mood of the Tenth Sonata emerged not so much from scenes of nature in themselves as from the particular spiritual experience of their contemplation. The inspiration, “flickering” quality and changeableness of the sound palette are the distinguishing features of Scriabin’s final sonata.
The poem Vers la flamme, composed after the Tenth Sonata, shows us the characteristic and powerful will of Scriabin as a composer. The free impulses that define the entire structure of the work are based on transfigured intonations of a fanfare that takes on qualities of a magic incantation. One distinctive feature of this work is the stratification of the piano music into two layers: the upper layer is based on fanfare intonations while the lower consists of three-tone sections. The texture of the work gradually grows and takes on immense proportions. This expressive technique is exceptional, even within the conditions of Scriabin’s stereophonic sound. The audience is stunned by the economy of the use of expressive means and the tremendous effect achieved by them.
Pavel Velikanov