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marches for the countess) instead of the
Con
delicatezza
of the final version. Furthermore,
Schubert struggled with the work’s closing sec-
tion. The composer and Franz Lachner gave the
first performance on May 9, 1828.
The Fantasy in F minor, D. 940, represents
Schubert’s most grandiose creation for four-
hands piano. Its music essentially outlines a tra-
ditional four-movement cycle, though without
breaks between movements. The opening sec-
tion amounts to a sonata-like movement com-
posed around a fanfare figure and a more lyrical
melody in F minor/major. After a grandiose
gesture, the
Largo
settles into an Italianate mel-
ody. The
Allegro vivace
and the
Con delicatezza
form a
scherzo
–
trio
–
scherzo
grouping. Schubert
concludes the Fantasy with contrapuntal elabo-
rations on his opening themes.
AARON COPLAND (1900–90)
El Salón México
(arranged for two pianos by Leonard Bernstein)
“Mexico offers something fresh and pure and
wholesome—a quality which is deeply uncon-
ventionalized. The source of it is the Indian
blood, which is so prevalent. I sensed the influ-
ence of the Indian background everywhere—
even in the landscape. And I must be something
of an Indian myself, or how else explain the sym-
pathetic chord it awakens in me,” wrote Copland
following his first trip south of the US border.
The congeniality of Mexico completely absorbed
Copland during his five-month visit in 1932/33.
The conductor Carlos Chávez introduced him
to many local attractions in and around Mexi-
co City. While strolling through the streets one
evening, they entered a nightclub called El Salón
México, where Copland first experienced the
bewitching charm of native Mexican music.
These haunting melodies and spirited rhythms
fascinated Copland, who soon began an orches-
tral work, entitled
El Salón México
, which incor-
porates actual folk melodies in a type of “modi-
fied potpourri.” Chávez conducted the Orquésta
Sinfónica de México in the world premiere on
August 27, 1937. Ironically, this “Mexican” com-
position became one of the most popular pieces
by Copland, the “dean of American composers.”
Boosey & Hawkes, hoping to capitalize on the
success of
El Salón México
, commissioned ar-
rangements for solo piano and for two pianos.
Copland recommended a promising young mu-
sician who “was also badly in need of money
and would therefore do the job for a really mis-
erable fee”—Leonard Bernstein.
MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937)
La valse
Ravel first contemplated a tribute to Johann
Strauss Jr. in 1906, as he explained to music
critic Jean Marnold: “It is not subtle—what I
am undertaking at the moment. It is a
grande
valse
, a sort of
hommage
to the memory of the
Great Strauss, not Richard, the other—Johann.
You know my intense sympathy for this admi-
rable rhythm and that I hold
la joie de vivre
as
expressed by the dance in far higher esteem than
as expressed by the Franckist puritanism.” The
anticipated composition assumed the working
title
Wien
(Vienna).
Many events distracted him from this project,
but none more tragic than the political and
personal developments of the 1910s—wartime
rationing, his mother’s death, and compulsory
military service. Far removed from Paris after
the war, Ravel recuperated in the rural sur-
roundings of Lapras. Perhaps nostalgia drove
him finally to produce his Strauss waltz in two
versions, for solo and duo pianos (1919). Ravel
and Alfredo Casella introduced this piece at Vi-
enna’s Kleiner Konzerthaussaal on October 23,
1920. Two months later, the orchestral version
received its world premiere in Paris.
La valse
(subtitled
Poème choréographique
), like
the Strauss family waltzes, actually consists of
several waltz themes. Ravel outlined his music
in a preface to the orchestral score: “Through
openings in the whirling clouds, couples of
waltzers may be seen. Little by little the clouds
disperse, and one is able to distinguish an im-
mense room peopled with a crowd turning
round and round. Gradually the scene brightens
and the light of the chandeliers blazes out. An
imperial court around 1855.”
ALEXANDER SCRIABIN (1872–1915)
Two Études
Many who knew Alexander Scriabin considered
him an insufferable egomaniac and an eccentric
who espoused the mystical theosophy of Ma-
dame Blavatsky and who associated pitches with
specific colors. Before earning that questionable
reputation, Scriabin made a more positive mark
on Russian musical life as a talented young pia-
nist. He joined the studio of Nikolai Zverev, a re-
nowned pedagogue whose other pupils includ-
ed Serge Rachmaninoff and Alexander Siloti, at
age 12. Four years of advanced keyboard train-
ing prepared him for admission to the Moscow
Conservatory, where his musical studies also
included theory, fugue, and composition. Scri-
abin graduated with the “little” gold prize for pi-
ano—finishing behind Rachmaninoff—in 1892
and embarked on a performing career.
The piano remained the principal medium for
his constantly evolving musical expression.
In general terms, Scriabin’s style blended lush
Chopinesque harmonies and counterpoint with
Lisztian virtuosity and experimentation with
keyboard sonority. His choice of composition-
al types (nocturnes, mazurkas, impromptus,
preludes, polonaises, nocturnes, and études)
demonstrates a particularly close affinity for
Chopin. Three of Scriabin’s études—op. 2, no. 1
(1887), op. 49, no. 1 (1905), and op. 56, no. 4
(1907)—are isolated within potpourri keyboard
collections. The majority of his studies belong
to three sets completed at nine-year intervals:
op. 8 (1894) contains a dozen pieces arranged
into two groups of six, eight more appeared in
op. 42 (1903), and the remaining three form
op. 65 (1912).
Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland
Maurice Ravel
Alexander Scriabin
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