February's Artist of the Month
Denis Matsuev recital

Denis Matsuev (the biography) >>

"I have learnt that nothing inspires fantasy so much as tension and longing for something; that has been the case with me in the last few days, when I have been waiting for a letter from you and composing whole volumes - strange, mad, great fun - your eyes will pop when you play it; in fact, I am now sometimes capable of breaking into pieces over the music I hear [inside me] - As long as I do not forget everything I have written. It was like an echo of something you once wrote to me: 'Sometimes I may seem like a child to you' - in short, I was truly inspired and wrote thirty amusing little pieces, from which I have chosen about twelve and called them Kinderszenen. You will be pleased with them, but, of course, you will have to forget about being a virtuoso. There are titles like Something Frightening, By the Fireside, Blind Man's Buff, Pleading Child, Ride a Cock-Horse, Of Foreign Lands, Funny Story, and so on - all sorts of things! In general, it is all very clear, and all the pieces are easy to hum". That was what Robert Schumann wrote to his future wife, Clara Wieck, in 1838. Kinderszener stands out among Schumann's complex piano works by its apparent lightness and naivete. However, this cycle became one of Schumann's own favourite compositions. When giving the pieces titles, he placed the accent mainly on the emotions linked with the particular image: "The titles, of course, were added later, and are essentially nothing more than gentle hints for performance and interpretation".
It is interesting that it was in Kinderszener that the composer saw to the greatest degree the poetic essence of his outlook on the world. "Romance lies not in external features or forms; it will manifest itself without them, if the composer is a poet by nature. I can prove this better to you at the piano, using some of the Kinderszener as examples", he wrote to Clara.
Kinderszener is music for adults trying not to forget their childhood. If we were to make an analogy with Russian music, it would be more likely to be Mussorgsky's The Nursery than Tchaikovsky's Children's Album. According to the composer, Kinderszener is "a reflection of the past through the eyes of an older person and for older people". The cycle contains 13 pieces: 1. Von fremden landern und menschen (Of Foreign Lands and Peoples). 2. Kuriose geschichte (Funny Story). 3. Hasche-mann (Blind Man's Buff). 4. Bittendes kind (Pleading Child). 5. Gluckes genug (Happy Enough). 6. Wichtige begebenheit (Important Event). 7. Traumerei (Reveries). 8. Am kamin (By the Fireside). 9. Ritter von Steckenpferd (Ride a Cock-Horse). 10. Fast zu ernst (Almost too Serious). 11. Furchtenmachten (Something Frightening). 12. Kind im einschlummen (Slumbering Child). 13. Der dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks).

Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques is a work of an entirely different kind. There is even a certain paradox in the title of this piano cycle: in the early 19^th century an etude was literally a study - a piece for developing a particular aspect of performance. The definition "symphonic", meanwhile, meant both music for a symphony orchestra and an extensive, large-scale composition. In the 19^th century the symphony developed from a genre term into a more philosophical phenomenon, entailing special significance, breadth and versatility, inner integrity, unity of development and depth of content. By calling his etudes "symphonic", Schumann was therefore emphasising that in their profound inner content they were close to serious symphonic music, and that the sound of the piano was like that of an orchestra in its power and fullness. The Etudes Symphoniques are a cycle of variations where each new image is characterised by a new virtuoso device. The principal theme is a funeral march which, in the process of its development, is transformed now into an energetic toccata, now a fantastic scherzo, now a lyrical nocturne, and in the end turns into a ceremonial victory procession.

In December 1831 Robert Schumann anonymously published a short article in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung newspaper. The article is notable as being the first appearance of the characters Florestan and Eusebius, who became Schumann's alter ego. However, its historical significance is not confined to that: it was this publication that featured the sacred phrase "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius is before you!", dedicated to the then little-known 20 year-old composer Frederic Chopin. For Chopin himself 1831 was the year that he moved to Paris, where he would gain world renown, and also the year of his tragic realisation of his isolation from his native Poland, where an uprising in October 1831 was brutally put down by Russian troops. In that same year Chopin wrote his first Scherzo in B minor for piano. The scherzo, which for the classical composers, particularly Beethoven, was part of a sonata, became for Chopin a genre in its own right, a kind of extensive musical poem, full of sombre, sinister images. Chopin's first scherzo is in three movements: the first and third are full of confusion and a whirlwind of motion, while the middle movement is a tranquil nocturne-lullaby in a major key, full of calm and serenity, an ideal image that is displaced by inexorable fate.

Sergey Prokofiev finished his Seventh Piano Sonata in 1942, at the very height of the war, and it was first performed on 18 January 1943 by Sviatoslav Richter in the Columned Hall of the House of Soviets in Moscow. In the same year the sonata was awarded the Stalin Prize. Richter later wrote of the forces of chaos and profound mortal evil in the sonata, how it poses the question about the meaning of human life to which an answer has to be given against the background of these forces, and that this answer implies a courageous affirmation of life and love for all living things. The sonata really does abound in sinister infernal images, but they are presented by Prokofiev with a certain measure of aloofness. Prokofiev had the tremendous ability of perceiving the world around him as a theatre in which a continual struggle of light and darkness is played out. The three movements of the Seventh Sonata are like the three acts of a play: the destructive, aggressive pressure of the Allegro inquieto first movement, the lyrical tranquillity of the Andante caloroso second, and the rapid, toccata, rhythmically asymmetric speed of third movement, designated Precipitato (hasty, hurried), in the unusual 7/8 time.
Yegor Kovalevsky