Ravinia 2022, Issue 6

phrase structures and truncated cadences, but that are really moments distilled to an es- sence: simplicity that hides complexity. This is how I hear this remarkable set. I tried to capture that in my homage while providing a springboard for the pieces to follow. TAMIR HENDELMAN (b.1971) Bagatelle In my response to Beethoven’s second bag- atelle, I tried to tap into its miniature mu- sical journey of contrasts: a humming, buzzing, whirling energy alternating with lyr- ical phrases. I love how Beethoven alternates short, questioning phrases with extended, searching answers. And so I began a simple, short four-note motif that gains momentum like a spinning top, winding in and out of Beethoven’s harmonic world before taking a short respite. I then let my fingers explore a more freely-improvised and languid turn on the melodies that have been presented along the way. Finally, the song climbs upwards un- til a quick echo of the theme returns and the momentum picks up again for one final spin. RICHARD DANIELPOUR (b.1956) Bagatelle ( Childhood Nightmare ) This Bagatelle belongs to two sets. I com- posed it as a response, for Inna Faliks, to Bee- thoven’s third bagatelle of op. 126, and have decided to include it in my own cycle of Elev- en Bagatelles that are, in a sense, my “Scenes From Childhood.” This Beethoven response is a “childhood nightmare,” which, while ow- ing something to the beginning of the third bagatelle of Beethoven’s op. 126, evolves into something considerably darker. IAN KROUSE (b.1956) Etude No. 2a ( Ad fugam ) My response to Beethoven’s Bagatelle No. 4 in B minor from op. 126 was to compose an etude. The aspects of Beethoven’s piece that struck me immediately were its extreme speed, and its odd form (ABAB), in which the two sections have almost nothing to do with each other except for a shared tonic and a common tempo. Although my piece is not “tonal” in any traditional sense, the non-oc- tave-replicating mode upon which it is based does allow for tonal regions, enabling me to map my piece to the two most important ton- al regions in Beethoven’s bagatelle, notably G major in addition to the home tonality of B. Notwithstanding, the listener who is familiar with the Beethoven may hear several import- ant rhythmic motifs that I lifted, as well as a brusque, at times violent spirit that I, for one, associate with some of his works, and most definitely, this one. MARK CARLSON (b.1952) Sweet Nothings I was so glad that Inna asked me to write a response to the very intimate op. 126, no. 5, as I already responded strongly to its tender- ness. In infusing the original with my own 21st-century sensibilities, and as a bagatelle is a trifle—or as one might say today, “Oh, it was nothing!”—the piece as it evolved evoked for me the sweet nothings new lovers whisper to each other, and thus, its title, Sweet Nothings . DAVID LEFKOWITZ (b.1964) Bagatelle The last movement of the last composition for solo piano that Beethoven saw through to publication is peculiar. The brief, flaming fast sections seemingly unrelated to the larg- er, slower middle section; the frequent three- bar phrases; and the prolonged pause on a low submediant pedal nearly precisely at the geographic middle of the piece all contribute to the surprising sound of this bagatelle. I at- tempted to capture those features, but using an arithmetic mode that, in its “precipitando” potential, helps knit the outer sections with the middle. MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937) Gaspard de la nuit Aloysius Bertrand (1807–41) lived during an era of captivation bymystery, magic, terror, and the supernatural. A native of northern Italy, Bertrand grew up in Belgium and spent most of his adulthood in France. His writings con- jure scenes of everyday life with a painter’s eye toward realism, detail, and simplicity. Beneath the surface, however, a fantasy realm exerts a complex and often dark influence over human- ity. Bertrand often is cited as an early-19th-cen- tury precursor of symbolism and surrealism for this fusion of realism and fantasy. Gaspard de la nuit ( Gaspard of the Night ), his volume of poetic scenes of medieval life, was written in 1830 and published posthumous- ly in 1842. Bertrand subtitled his collection “Fantasies in the manner of Rembrandt and Callot,” two antithetical artistic figures rep- resenting the philosopher and the joker. Maurice Ravel Through multiple reprints, this collection of prose poems influenced many later French writers, among them Charles Baudelaire, Ar- thur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé. Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes introduced Maurice Ravel to Bertrand’s volume. In 1908, the French composer selected three extracts for a virtuosic piano suite whose technical demands, as he explained to Maurice Delage, would surpass Balakirev’s notoriously diffi- cult Islamey . At another time, Ravel revealed to pianist Vlado Perlemuter that Gaspard de la nuit was a caricature of Romanticism. “Perhaps I got carried away,” the composer admitted. Viñes gave the world premiere per- formance of Gaspard de la nuit in Paris’s Salle Erard on January 9, 1909. Ravel brought to life contrasting scenes of a water sprite ( Ondine ), a corpse suspended from the gallows ( Le gibet ), and mischievous dwarf ( Scarbo ) with coloristic keyboard writ- ing. Reviving the “water” effects of Liszt’s Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este and his own Jeux d’eau , Ravel depicts the aquatic realm of the coquettish nymph who longs to marry a hu- man prince in Ondine . Rebuffed, the fickle Ondine “sheds a teardrop or two—but finally bursts out into laughter, to dissolve then like radiant raindrops.” In the macabre gallows scene ( Le gibet ), the poet hears a mysterious noise. Perhaps it is the cold night wind or the cricket singing. No, the sound has a more gruesome origin: “It is the bell slowly tolling from the walls of some distant city beneath the horizon; and a hanged man’s corpse, swinging back and forth, reddened by rays of the setting sun.” The recent death of Ravel’s father, some writers speculate, might have influenced the selection of this poem and the haunting bell effects in the piano. The dwarf Scarbo torments the poet at mid- night beneath the moonlit sky. He laughs, scratches, and dances around the darkened bedroom. “Between me and the moon that dwarf would loom like a Gothic cathedral’s belfry with a golden bell atop his pointed cap.” Just as quickly, old Scarbo disappears. FROM THE RESPONDING COMPOSERS PAOLA PRESTINI (b.1975) Variations on a Spell Variations on a Spell is in two movements, Water Sprite and Bell Tolls , in two distinct sections. The work as a whole is a reimag- ining of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit , and a re- sponse to its first movement, Ondine , more specifically. Ravel based each movement on poems by Aloysius Bertrand from the collec- tion Gaspard de la nuit: fantasies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callos . Variations is a modern reimagining that takes as inspiration both Ravel’s music and Bertrand’s poetry. “Each wave is a water sprite who swims in the stream, each stream is a foot path that winds towards my palace, and my palace is a fluid structure at the bottom of the lake, in a trian- gle of fire, earth and air.” TIMO ANDRES (b.1985) Old Ground Ravel’s Le gibet fascinates and repulses me; it’s a brilliantly succinct textbook of harmonic possibility, but I’m simultaneously uncom- fortable with its extramusical program, which depicts a hanged corpse at sunset. The music luridly romanticizes the already too-pictur- esque prefatory poem by Aloysius Bertrand, reducing the hanged victim to a scenic back- drop against which the poet projects his dis- turbed thoughts. Ravel represents the roles of observed and observer using an asymmetri- cal ostinato around which a palette of murky, ambiguous chords slowly churns. Old Ground reverses these roles. The opening ostinato is given agency and trajectory; the dark chords, which come in only at the end, accompany a silenced singer. BILLY CHILDS (b.1957) Pursuit Pursuit started out as an interpretive parallel to Scarbo , the third movement of Ravel’s Gas- pard de la nuit , but quickly turned into—in my mind—a sadly familiar American sto- ryline, in which a Black man is being pursued by either a slave catcher, a KKK lynch mob, or the modern-day police. There is no overly conscious formal structure, just two parts: a rapidly virtuosic repeated note section jux- taposed with a somberly lyrical passage. The two disparate segments alternate back and forth, creating more of an intuitive sense of a dramatic arc than a fixed musical design. Inna Faliks’s interpretation of this work is extraordinary; her deft, sure-handed, and dy- namic technique captures the edgy pathos of the pursuit, while her sensitivity and delicacy of touch brilliantly conveys the angst of the slower sections. –Beethoven and Ravel program notes © 2022 Todd E. Sullivan RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 29 – SEPTEMBER 18, 2022 38