St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Alexei Volodin recital (piano)


Alexei Volodin (biography)


PROGRAMME:
Ludwig van Beethoven
Sonata Quasi una fantasia No 14 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No 2 (Moonlight Sonata)

Alexander Scriabin
Fantasia in B Minor, Op. 28

Frédéric Chopin
Fantasia in F Minor, Op. 49

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Fantasia in D Minor, KV 397

Robert Schumann
Fantasia in C Major, Op. 17


As a musical genre the fantasia has been around since the 16th century. It developed separately from vocal and dance genres and afforded composers the possibility, when performing their own music, to display their skills at improvisation and their virtuoso command of their instruments.
Since the 18th century the genre of the fantasia has generally been linked with keyboard music. With Johann Sebastian Bach the fantasia is generally linked in a cycle with a fugue, while his son Carl Philipp Emanuel’s fantasias are independent works that may be freely interpreted.

In the early 1780s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came across the keyboard works by the Bach family and these had a tremendous effect on his own compositions. The opening of his Fantasia in D Minor reminds us of the Bachs’ improvisation tradition; two other episodes in it – melodramatically arioso-like and lively – hint at the intonations of Mozart’s own piano sonatas. Seemingly, the composer conceived this fantasia as an introduction to a sonata that was never written. In order for the fantasia to be performed as a stand-alone work, August Eberhard Müller added several bars to the finale.

In addition to fantasias for piano solo and for piano and orchestra, the legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven includes two sonatas with the sub-heading quasi una fantasia (in the spirit of a fantasia) – No 13 and No 14. In these sonatas the principle of the fantasia was first fully realised within the framework of a sonata cycle. In his Thirteenth Sonata, Beethoven – flying in the face of established tradition – rejected pauses between the movements, and the Fourteenth begins with a lento movement rather than the typical allegro. Following Beethoven’s death, the poet Ludwig Rellstab compared the music of the sonata to a scene of moonlit Lake Lucerne at night, and the work became known as the “Moonlight Sonata”. The lack of a clear dramatic conflict and the mournful character of the music merely serves to increase the tension. As in the preceding sonata, the second movement – a scherzo – follows the first immediately, without interruption. The contrast of the carefree scherzo with the first movement and the impetuous and spontaneous power of the finale gave Liszt the basis to call his scherzo “a flower between two chasms”.

Composers of the Romantic era significantly expanded the possibilities of the genre. Frédéric Chopin’s Fantaisie is comparable in terms of scale with his major one-movement works – scherzos and ballades. The circle of moods and the thematic material of the fantasia is varied; here there is an enigmatic march, a serene nocturne and a triumphant chorale. The romantically spontaneous pages are interspersed with melancholic passages, while the fantasia concludes in triumphant rejoicing.

In terms of its scale, Robert Schumann’s grandiose Fantaisie resembles a full-scale sonata and, like that genre, has three movements. The genre of the fantasia gives the composer the possibility to interpret the cycle freely: the bravura first movement is interrupted by an episode in minor key denoted as Im Legenden-Ton, and there are frequent lento recitative fragments.
The second movement – an expansive march-like rondo – cedes to the lento finale.

Chopin’s music served as a model for the early opuses of Alexander Scriabin, who – like the Polish maestro – composed mazurkas, preludes, waltzes and nocturnes. In terms of the incredible variety of moods, Scriabin’s Fantaisie is somewhat reminiscent of Chopin’s, though it is composed in traditional three-movement sonata form. Apropos, it was with Scriabin that the borders between the sonata, fantasia and poème finally disappeared.
© Mariinsky Theatre, 2015/Vladimir Khavrov

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