On Saturday afternoon, I walked down to Juilliard's Paul Hall to hear a one-hour recital given by violinist Elizabeth Chang, a member of the school's pre-college faculty, and her accompanist on piano, Steven Beck. The short program limited itself to two early twentieth century works by Hungarian composers.
The recital opened with Ernő Dohnányi's Sonata in C-sharp minor, Op. 21 (1912). In the first half of the twentieth century, Dohnányi was a major figure on the European musical scene. He was successively an instructor at the Berlin Hochschule, Director of the Budapest Academy, and Music Director of the Budapest Philharmonic. His musical compositions were highly regarded and regularly performed at major venues. As a virtuoso pianist, Dohnányi toured both Europe and the United States to great acclaim. In spite of all this, he was largely forgotten after his death and his music is not often performed today. Part of the reason may be that as a composer he never really outgrew the influence of Brahms; unlike his fellow countryman Bartók, Dohnányi remained firmly rooted in nineteenth century aesthetics. This sometimes has the unfortunate effect of making his music seem out of date to the modern listener. Certainly, the sonata performed here is deeply indebted to Brahms. The work consists of three movements, all of them fast, with the opening theme of the first movement reappearing as the coda to the final movement. It's an accomplished piece of music filled with the spirit of Classical Romanticism. Listening to it, one can understand why Brahms had championed Dohnányi's earliest endeavor, the 1895 piano quintet in C minor. By 1912, though, Classical Romanticism had finally given way to Modernism and the Dohnányi sonata was already an anachronism at the time of its publication.
The second and final work was Béla Bartók's Violin Sonata No. 1, Sz. 75 (1921). Although one always thinks of Bartók first as a pianist, one only has to look to his amazing six quartets to appreciate how adept he was at composing for strings. The present three-movement work, completed only a few years after The Miraculous Mandarin, was written during a period when Bartók had fully embraced both Modernism and the dissonance that accompanied it. There is a sense of violent unease throughout the work, and the final movement's folk sources are transformed almost beyond recognition. Both the Sonata No. 1 and the No. 2 that followed a year later were dedicated to Jelly d’Arányi, one of the most notable violinists of her day and a great-grand niece of Joseph Joachim. Even though both composer and soloist were Hungarian, d’Arányi was based in London and it was there that the premieres of both sonatas were given with d’Arányi on violin and Bartók playing the piano part.
The Bartók sonata is a technically challenging work that places great demands on both performers. Steven Beck was extremely impressive in his handling of the difficult piano part while Ms. Chang displayed a seemingly effortless virtuosity on violin.
Ms. Chang made a few remarks from the stage, but unfortunately these were largely inaudible even though I was seated in the fourth row. She may very well have been calling attention to the contrasts between the two works on the program. Dohnányi and Bartók were born only four years apart (1877 and 1881 respectively) and yet they represented two entirely different eras. Nothing could so have emphasized the Modernism of the Bartók sonata as its placement beside the Dohnányi. Perhaps it was only my taste in music, but the Bartók seemed almost a century after its composition as alive and vital as any contemporary music - how strange and jarring it must have sounded to its first listeners - while the Dohnányi, written less than ten years before, appeared more a carefully done academic exercise, a calculated tribute to European music's past glories.
No comments:
Post a Comment