Yulianna Avdeeva, piano

at Longy's Pickman Hall (Cambridge, MA)

Debut Series

La lugubre gondola II, S. 200/2
Bagatelle sans tonalité, S. 216a
Csárdás macabre, S. 224
Unstern! Sinistre, disastro, S. 208
Legend No. 2, S. 175/2 “St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots”

La lugubre gondola II, S. 200/2
Liszt’s forty-year relationship with Richard Wagner remains one of the most fascinating in classical music history. They met in Paris, where the impoverished Wagner had fled to avoid creditors. Liszt later sheltered Wagner after the latter’s involvement in the failed May Uprising in Dresden; Liszt arranged a false passport and lent money to allow him to escape to Switzerland. The two promoted and influenced one another’s works and even became kin when Wagner wed Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. After Wagner’s death, Cosima took command of his opera festival at Bayreuth; Liszt drew his last breath there just three years after his friend.  

Liszt arrived in Venice at the end of 1882, where he stayed with the Wagners in a hotel overlooking the Grand Canal. During his stay, Liszt had ghastly premonitions of Wagner’s death, including visions of his body floating across the lagoons. These haunting visions inspired two works titled La lugubre gondola, both of which Liszt composed in Venice. Given their close quarters, it is possible that Wagner overheard these premonitions of his demise. A few weeks after Liszt’s departure, Wagner had died. Upon hearing this news Liszt is said to have whispered to himself, “He today, I tomorrow!”   

The piece opens with a dissonant tune played in octaves. This skeletal texture offers no comfort, and numerous tritones (the most dissonant interval in Western music, long nicknamed the “devil in music”) deepen the sense of unease. A rocking gesture in the left hand mimics rowing oars while the main theme plays above. The music turns sweet as the right hand intones soft, arpeggiated chords. Following an impassioned return of the main theme, the piece concludes with an unaccompanied, meandering melody, its movements as listless as a corpse swirling in the eddies of the Venetian lagoon. 
  

Bagatelle sans tonalité, S. 216a
Wagner gets much credit for anticipating the rise of atonality in the twentieth century (one conductor called the famous first chord of his opera Tristan und Isolde the “cipher for all modern music”). Without Liszt, however, Wagner’s innovations might never have seen the light of day. While Liszt’s financial support and promotion of Wagner’s music certainly paved the way for the latter’s success, Liszt’s compositional style also played a crucial if understated role. In a letter written around the time he completed Tristan, Wagner confessed to conductor Hans von Bülow, “...since I became acquainted with Liszt’s compositions I have become quite a different fellow as regards harmony.”  

Liszt continued experimenting until the end, even as his failing eyesight left him unable to compose. In a letter to a student, he foresaw “Musicians of the Future” who would use all twelve tones of the enharmonic scale equally. Knowing audiences would reject his moody, dissonant creations, Liszt kept them from performance and publication. “I calmly persist in staying stubbornly in my corner,” he wrote, “and just work at becoming more and more misunderstood.”  

In one of these final works, the Bagatelle sans tonalité, Liszt uses extreme chromaticism to obliterate a sense of harmonic stability. The original manuscript of the Bagatelle bears the title “Fourth Mephisto Waltz”; today, however, it is known by its subtitle, Bagatelle sans tonalité. Faust, the tragic tale of a dissatisfied scholar who sold his soul to the devil, held a deep fascination for Liszt. Though much of Liszt’s late music is mournful and gloomy, the Bagatelle features the diabolical energy and virtuoso playing of his earlier style. Like La lugubre gondola II it opens with a jarring tritone; here the “devil in music” evokes the demon Mephistopheles. Winding, chromatic melodies seduce and disorient. A brief appassionato section filled with dissonance concludes with a flurrying cadenza. The opening material returns in a series of brilliant, high-flying variations before the piece concludes with rising chromatic chords, their multi-octave ascension like a nocturnal creature soaring away upon tenebrous wings.   

 
Csárdás macabre, S. 224
Over almost five decades, Hungarian-born Liszt composed more than 80 works incorporating Hungarian material (most notable are the Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano). After the Danube flooded the Hungarian capital in 1838, Liszt performed a benefit concert for the victims; in a letter from that time, Liszt laments, “Oh my vast family, your cry of pain has called me back to you.” Liszt ceased writing music in the Hungarian style for many years, but his interest resumed after a pilgrimage to his birthplace. The Csárdás macabre followed this homecoming. 

Liszt’s visit to Hungary explains the csárdás, but what of the macabre? Here Liszt took inspiration from his longtime friend Camille Saint-Saëns. Soon after Saint-Saëns premiered his symphonic poem, Danse macabre, Liszt transcribed it for piano. He initially planned to dedicate the Csárdás to Saint-Säens, but that honor went to Count László Teleki, an exiled Hungarian statesman (one could say Liszt ranked the “csárdás” over the "macabre”). In addition to the title, Liszt borrowed musical elements from the Danse macabre. The rustic parallel fifths in the Csárdás appear in the Saint-Saëns, as does a distorted quotation of the "Dies irae" from the Latin mass.  

The csárdás, from the Hungarian for “tavern,” emerged as a raucous folk dance in the mid-nineteenth century. Though the csárdás traditionally starts with a slow section and increases the tempo, here Liszt commences with a ceaseless, rollicking allegro. One of Liszt’s more extroverted late works, the Csárdás reflects the harmonic experimentation and preoccupation with the macabre that plagued the composer in his final decade. 
  

Unstern! Sinistre, disastro, S. 208
In his final decade, as his body failed and loved ones perished, Liszt grew increasingly despondent and preoccupied with death. In 1881, the year he composed Unstern! Sinistre, disastro (Unlucky Star! Sinister, disaster), he fell down a flight of stairs; this accident precipitated the final decline in his health. Liszt’s fall led to an increase in his drinking; one student noted that he drank as much as two bottles of cognac and two bottles of wine per day. He confessed, “I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.” Several of his works from this period reflect this dark state of mind: their translated titles include Sleepless!—Question and Answer, Dry Bones, and Farewell.  

Unstern! opens with a heavy and monotonous introduction; the destabilizing tritone Liszt employs in other late works appears several times. The music transforms into an anguished march to the gallows. An early Liszt biographer described these dissonant chords like a prisoner hammering the walls of his cell in vain. An organ-like closing section offers relief, though the mood is far from triumphant. The piece concludes with a slow, hollow descent into the sepulchral depths of the piano. 
  

Legend No. 2, “St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots,” S. 175/2
Raised by a Catholic father who spent two years in a Franciscan order, Liszt considered entering the seminary as a young man. Though he ultimately decided against joining the priesthood, Liszt’s faith continued to shape him. In his middle age, Liszt was made an honorary member of a Hungarian Franciscan order and later became an abbot (ironically, despite rumors that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for fame and talent, this title qualified Liszt to perform exorcisms). 

Liszt devoted much of his output to sacred and religious-themed works, including twin piano pieces from 1863 titled Two Legends. Shortly after completing the pair, Liszt retreated into the isolation of a monastery outside Rome, where he continued to compose. Each piece honors a famed Catholic saint; the first depicts St. Francis of Assisi’s sermon to the birds, while the second depicts one of the miracles of Liszt’s patron saint, Francis of Paola. Liszt writes in the preface, “Among the numerous miracles of St. Francis of Paola, the legend celebrates that which he performed in crossing the Straits of Messina. The boatmen refused to burden their barque with such an insignificant-looking person, but he, paying no attention to this, walked across the sea with a firm tread.” 

© Andrew McIntyre, 2024

The death of Beethoven’s brother from tuberculosis in 1815 ignited a long and bitter custody battle for Beethoven’s nephew Karl. Despite an eleventh-hour amendment to the will granting joint custody to Beethoven and Karl’s mother, the pair refused to reconcile (Beethoven nicknamed his sister-in-law “Queen of the Night” after the villainess of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte). Under these stressful circumstances, Beethoven composed twenty of his thirty-three “Diabelli” variations, fragments of the Ninth Symphony, and the Twenty-Ninth Piano Sonata, the Hammerklavier. Nearly a decade after Beethoven’s death, Liszt gave one of the first public performances of the work. Hector Berlioz, who attended the concert, raved “A new Oedipus, Liszt, has solved it, solved it in such a way that had the composer himself returned from the grave, a paroxysm of joy and pride would have swept over him.” 

The sonata opens with a bold upward leap and confident fanfare followed by lyrical calm. This dichotomy between tension and relaxation, confidence and reticence, sound and prolonged silence, sets the tone for the movement. 

The Scherzo begins with a parody of the first movement’s main theme; the motif of ascending and descending third figures prominently, almost obsessively. A subtle turn to a minor key in the trio section echoes the opening melody of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. This brief movement delights in the unexpected: abrupt shifts in texture, dynamic, and tempo punctuate the music; wry pauses interrupt the narrative. A six-octave upward flourish brings back the opening scherzo material, which repeats before a sudden pianissimo finish. 

The lengthy third movement forms the emotional core of the Hammerklavier. It has been described as “the apotheosis of pain,” and, according to an early Beethoven biographer, a “mausoleum of collective sorrow.” Beethoven makes ample use of the una corda pedal, which dampens the piano’s volume and dulls its tone. Here, the effect is one of constrained, ethereal sadness. 

Inchoate musical thought struggles to coalesce in the introduction of the final movement. Fragmented material advances in fits and starts until high trills signal the beginning of an extended three-voiced fugue. The fugue contains three distinct themes, all of which Beethoven develops using a wealth of traditional devices including augmentation (slowing down the original note values), inversion (turning the theme upside down), and stretto (introducing a second statement before the first has finished). At a grand pause halfway through the movement, Beethoven introduces a sweet, songlike third theme, first played una corda. After extensive exploration of these themes, the fugue concludes with a trilling, triumphant fanfare.  

© Andrew McIntyre, 2024