It may surprise Series subscribers to see an arrangement for piano of one of Bach’s great organ works in which the arranger’s name is that of neither Franz Liszt nor Ferruccio Busoni. But since the arranger was Theodor Szántó, one could say that this arrangement is associated with both of those well-known figures. Szántó (1877-1934) was inspired to elaborate and make more difficult the transcription of this particular Bach work by his fellow Hungarian Liszt, and he was, as well, one of Busoni’s favorite students. Bach is believed to have written the Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor in 1712 when he was organist at the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar. As the title makes clear, it combines two completely different kinds of music—a fantasia, which implies a free, formless, improvisational music, and a fugue, one of the most disciplined forms in music. This is huge, sonorous music, and it sounds spectacular when performed either on a good organ in a resonant church or by a great pianist on a decent instrument. It is no accident that this work is known as “the Great”: the Fantasia is ornate and full-throated music that extends over a long span; the Fugue is based on an athletic subject and Bach works it out carefully, finally driving it to a close as grand and sonorous as that of the Fantasia.

  Notes by Stephen Wigler copyright 2012

In the program notes for the premiere of his own Sonatina seconda of 1912, Busoni calls the work senza tonalità, without tonality. Dedicated to Mark Hambourg, one of Busoni’s greatest pianistic contemporaries, it was one of his most radical works up to this time. Not only is there no tonal center, but also the work is pervaded by Busoni’s pessimism and sense of desolation. Busoni regarded World War I, which was only two years in the future, as the greatest tragedy ever to befall mankind. And this music’s march-like fragments seem almost to anticipate the horrors to come. In the Art of the Piano, David Dubal writes, “In its two sections in nine minutes we find a sense of powerful focus, surrealist nightmares and a pianism fraught with danger.”

Notes by Stephen Wigler copyright 2012

After composing the first book of Images, Debussy wrote, “I think I may say, without undue pride, that I believe that these three pieces will live and will take their place in piano literature, either to the left of Schumann or the right of Chopin.” This self-confidence is justified by Reflets dans l’eau, one of the miracles of musical impressionism; by Hommage a Rameau, a sarabande that celebrates the great French clavecinistes of the 18th century with contemporary harmonies; and by Mouvement, with its bustling movement driven by shouts of descending joy. Exultant joy is also the subject of  L’isle joyeuse, where the pianistic brilliance suggests the kaleidoscopic coloring of the composer’s contemporaneous orchestral works. This Bachanalian masterpiece was inspired by Watteau’s most famous painting, The Embarkment for Cythera. When played by the right pianist—someone who not only possesses the requisite virtuosity but also is sensitive to the work's eroticism—it can resemble the end of Wagner's Gotterdammerung. The bravura riotousness of the L'isle joyeuse made it a particular favorite of the composer, who remarked that it “seems to assemble all the ways to attack a piano.”

Notes by Stephen Wigler copyright 2012

“The nature of my Paganini Variations is such that writing anything about them would inevitably spoil the fun and give many things away. I will only say, quite confidently, that if one looks at the many works that have used Paganini’s twenty-fourth Caprice over the years, this one definitely, for better or worse, breaks the mold! I had great pleasure in writing this piece, especially since—within a span of only about ten minutes—it constantly tries to push the envelope as far as what may be aesthetically possible.”

-Notes by Stephen Wigler, 2012

The twenty-three Preludes Rachmaninoff wrote between 1903-1904 (Op. 23, Nos. 1-10) and 1910 (Opus 32, Nos. 1-23) rank among the composer’s finest work. The most obvious debt is to Chopin in terms of craftsmanship, but there are also debts to Schumann (lyricism) and Liszt (massive chordal and octave writing). But the breadth of his thought and his sweeping melancholy grandeur are typically Russian, a quality that was never to leave his music even though he spent the last twenty-five years of his life in the United States. The G-Major Prelude is among the most serene things he ever wrote: over a supple accompaniment in the left hand rises an elegantly rapturous melody in the right. The G-sharp Minor Prelude is more ambiguous in mood—a series of broken chords and a melody tinted with grief.

Notes by Stephen Wigler copyright 2012

Rachmaninoff composed his Second Sonata during the same months of 1913 as his choral symphony “The Bells.” The two works have a good deal in common. The same baleful influence that inspired the last two movements of the “The Bells”–the alarm bells of terror and iron tolling a funeral knell–is found in the death-haunted colors of the Sonata.

The composer performed the piece regularly until he departed Russia for the West in 1917. Thereafter, he dropped it from his repertory. He seems to have come to dislike the work. “I look at my early works and see how much there is that is superfluous,” he told his biographer, Alfred Swan. “In the Sonata No. 2 too many voices are moving simultaneously and it is too long. Chopin’s [“Funeral March”] Sonata lasts nineteen minutes, and it says everything.”

In 1931, he radically revised and shortened the work, cutting 120 measures, and republished it. Rachmaninoff maintained that what he was doing was removing pointless digressions. But other factors may have been at work, particularly the arthritis that had forced him to shorten his concert programs. The second version has tighter transitions, a more focused emotional destination, and fewer repetitions of the musical material. Its leaner textures and greater lucidity are the reasons–along with being easier to play than the first version–that most pianists prefer it.

But there are reasons for preferring the first version. The darker, denser textures in the original’s first movement make its magnificent carillon outbursts wilder and more dramatic; the ravishingly beautiful harmonies and rich polyphony of the 1913 version’s slow movement make it musically more profound than the revised version’s; and the 1913 version’s Allegro molto finale, with its greater length, creates the greater musical mass that, in turn, makes for a more excitingly explosive finale.

Vladimir Horowitz and several other pianists—among living pianists, notably, Hélène Grimaud—have created their own fusions of the two versions, using the 1931 version as the basis for their performances, restoring what they believe are some of the most convincing passages from 1913. Marc-André Hamelin today plays entirely the 1931 revised version. I have heard a privately made, audio-only version of one of his performances of the Second Sonata on YouTube, and while I thought what I was hearing was the 1931 edition, he played the piece so brilliantly and with such conviction that no matter which version he was using he seemed to have made it possible to express the richness Rachmaninoff created in 1913 with the lucidity he achieved eighteen years later.

Notes by Stephen Wigler copyright 2012