Alice Tully: Adam Golka Performs Beethoven, Lutoslawski, Bartók, Chopin and Brahms

On Sunday afternoon I went to Alice Tully to hear a recital by pianist Adam Golka for the benefit of the Musicians Emergency Fund.  Although I was not familiar with the musician himself, I was sufficiently intrigued by the program - which included selections by Beethoven, Lutoslawski, Bartók, Chopin and Brahms - to attend the event.  With the exception of the Lutoslawski, these were all well known works.

The matinee began with a performance of Lutoslawski's Butoliki ("Bucolics") (1952).  The composer had a difficult life.  While still a child, he was taken by the Bolsheviks to Moscow where his parents were held prisoner and eventually executed by a firing squad; in the 1940's, he was persecuted by the Nazis; and in the 1950's, his work was subjected to strict censorship by the Soviets.  Lutoslawski certainly didn't give much of himself away in this piece whose five movements were identified only by tempo markings.  It was the last movement, marked allegro marziale, that was the strongest even though there was nothing particularly martial about it.  (For that matter, none of the movements were even remotely bucolic.)  It had a bright modern sound that captivated the listener and dated from the period when Lutoslawski, in order to earn a living, was composing popular music under the name "Derwid" while at the same time working on his more serious compositions.  That was before the 1956 "Polish October," when Soviet interference lessened and Lutoslawski first began to receive recognition as a major composer.

The next work was Bartók's Szabadban ("Out of Doors"), Sz, 81, BB 89 (1926).  It was written, along with many of the composer's most famous piano pieces, at a time when he was first becoming aware of the piano's ability to function as a percussive instrument.  (It was this same insight into the properties of the instrument that would underlie the composition of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion more than ten years later.)  The present work consisted of five movements each of which, unusually for Bartók, was provided with a programmatic title - "With Drums and Pipes"; "Barcarolla"; "Musettes"; "The Night's Music"; and "The Chase."  Of all these, it was the fourth movement, Az éjszaka zenéje, that was to prove the most popular and was often played by the composer in his recitals during that period.  This may have been at least partly due to the fact that it was an excellent example of Bartók's "night music" style characterized, according to one source, by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies."

The final work before intermission was Brahms's Four Ballades, Op. 10 (1854).  The work was written shortly after Robert Schumann's suicide attempt and consequent commitment to a sanatorium.  Brahms, along with Joseph Joachim and Julius Otto Grimm (to whom the Op. 10 was dedicated), temporarily moved into the Schumann household in Düsseldorf in order to help care for the children; and it was at this time that he began to develop his personal attachment to Clara.  Though the ballade form had been invented by Chopin only little more than a decade before, Brahms's approach to the genre was quite different from that of his predecessor.  This may have been because the style was too recent to have been formalized.  Notably, Brahms took the term "ballade" much more literally than had Chopin and actually based the first of the series, the D minor, on a grisly Scottish ballad entitled Edward.   The music was therefore necessarily much more programmatic in nature as it closely followed its source material.  It was no accident that Brahms should have turned to Scottish poetry for his inspiration as he had been deeply influenced, as had many other Romantics, by the work of Ossian.

For some reason, the pianist chose to combine the Bartók with the Brahms works without leaving any break between them.  This did not serve either piece well and was confusing to the audience.

The second half of the program began with Beethoven's Sonata No. 6 in F major, Op. 10, No. 2 (1796-1798).  This was something of a disappointment as the program had originally called for a performance of the Sonata in A Major, Op. 2, No. 2 (1795).  Even though the A major is an earlier work, it is - to my mind at least - a far more interesting and ambitious piece than the F major which is rather undistinguished in its half hearted attempts at humor.  The pianist, however, had already performed the F major last month at a Beethoven Sonata Marathon at BAM and no doubt found it less trouble to reprise the more familiar material at this recital.

The afternoon ended with two pieces by Chopin, the Nocturne in G major, Op. 37, No. 2 (1840) followed by the Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Op. 47 (1841).  Both these works were written about the same time, and some critics have seen in each reminiscences of the summer the composer spent in Majorca in the company of George Sand.  The nocturne, unfortunately not so popular today as it once was, is one of Chopin's best and has a haunting melody that reminds the listener of a Venetian barcarolle.  The ballade, the only one of the four to conclude on a major chord, was dedicated to Pauline de Noailles and is often thought to have been inspired by the poem Undine by Adam Mickiewicz, but a more explicit program has been ascribed to it that relates to the time Chopin and Sand spent at the Valldemosa monastery where conditions during their stay were far from ideal.  Be that as it may, I recently came across a fascinating comment on this piece by pianist Paul Cantrell:

"The melody that opens the piece is the stepping-off point for all that follows in the next two and a half minutes, but then it disappears, and the music goes somewhere else entirely. Listen for it. The experience of wanting that melody to return, and it not returning and not returning and then — that’s the force that shapes the piece."

Another Chopin piece that had not originally been scheduled was also included on the program.  That was the Polonaise in F-sharp minor, Op. 44 (1841).  As the piece was quite different in spirit from both the nocturne and ballade - its central movement is a mazurka introduced in an awkward fashion - there appeared little reason for its presence other than to take up time.  Chopin himself seemed of two minds regarding the piece; while working on it, he wrote to Julian Fontana: "The weather here [in Nohant] has been exceedingly lovely for several days, but as for my music, it is ugly."