Throughout his life, Beethoven amused himself—and supplemented his income—by composing variations on popular tunes of the day, from patriotic tub-thumpers like “Rule Britannia” to operatic arias by Mozart and Salieri and an unpretentious waltz by Anton Diabelli. In 1796 the ambitious 26-year-old composer embarked on a concert tour to Prague and Berlin, where he presented his first two cello sonatas as a calling card to the cello-playing Prussian monarch, Friedrich Wilhelm II. It was in the German capital that he met the eminent French cellist Jean Louis Duport, for whom he composed the two Op. 5 Sonatas as well as a charming set of variations on Handel’s “See the conqu’ring hero comes” from Judas Maccabeus. The latter’s commercial success inspired Beethoven (or his publisher) to follow up with two more works based on popular operatic themes, this time from Mozart’s Magic Flute.

Beethoven freely acknowledged the debt he owed to his predecessor—his first teacher in Bonn famously predicted that he would grow up to be “a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart”—and the two composers may even have crossed paths when Beethoven visited Vienna in 1787. “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” (Men who feel the call of love), the paean to marriage that Pamina and Papageno sing in Act 1 of Mozart’s popular Singspiel, is disarmingly melodious and straightforward in its phrase structure, both qualities that lend themselves to variation making. In first stating the genial E-flat-major theme, Beethoven subtly mimics the singers’ voices by contrasting the cello’s baritonal and treble registers. The ensuing seven variations range in mood from sassily spirited to warmly sentimental. A poignant excursion to the minor mode in the central variation is echoed in the dramatic introduction to the Coda, where Beethoven literally turns Mozart’s unpretentious tune on its head.

© 2021 Harry Haskell

“I have never been busier or happier with my work,” Schumann declared in September 1849. As he reviewed his accomplishments of the past few months, the composer had much to be satisfied with. Already that year he had written some 40 pieces and was bringing in more income than ever before. Schumann’s sustained burst of creativity left him feeling euphoric. “I fail to see the nonrecognition from which I am supposed to suffer,” he wrote to the editor of Germany’s leading music magazine. “Appreciation often falls to my lot in full measure; your journal provides many instances. Another practical but very convincing proof is offered by the publishers, who show a certain desire for my compositions, and pay high prices for them.” Then, perhaps wary of tempting fate, Schumann added: “Where is the composer whose fame is universal? Where is the work—were it even of divine origin—universally acknowledged as sacred?”

The year had started off promisingly with the publication of Schumann’s bestselling collection of easy piano pieces titled Album for the Young. Hungry for worldly success, he proceeded to write a string of works tailored for the amateur Hausmusik market, along with more challenging fare. Conceived in February 1849, the Adagio and Allegro followed hard on the heels of the Album for the Young but had a very different target audience: the music’s technical demands place it beyond the reach of all but professional-caliber players. Originally scored for the modern valved horn—which had been in existence for some 30 years, although the older natural horn still held sway in most European orchestras—the Adagio and Allegro anticipates Schumann’s brilliant Concertstück for four horns and orchestra. With an eye on sheet-music sales, however, the composer and his publisher authorized alternate versions for both cello and violin. The Adagio, marked 'Langsam, mit innigen Ausdruck' (slowly, with tender feeling) serves as a broadly lyrical introduction that never strays far from the home key of A-flat major. A quiet cadence leads, with only a brief pause, to an Allegro of a markedly different character—'Rasch und feurig' (fast and fiery)—and tonal range. The Allegro is cast in rondo form, the vigorously athletic main theme alternating with episodes based on the gently arching melody of the Adagio.

© 2021 Harry Haskell

Franck wasn’t precisely a late bloomer—by his early 20s he had several widely acclaimed works under his belt—but he was slow to win recognition as a central figure of the French Romantic school. Groomed by his overbearing father for a career as a concert pianist, he spent much of his early life in pursuit of a prize that stubbornly eluded him, despite his acknowledged brilliance as an improviser on the keyboard. Not until his 50th year did he achieve the equivalent of a tenured position as professor of organ at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire, where he would count Debussy, Bizet, and Vierne among his pupils. Virtually all the music on which Franck’s reputation rests dates from the last dozen or so years of his life, including the ebullient Variations symphoniques for piano and orchestra, the Lisztian symphonic poem Le chasseur maudit, the majestic Symphony in D Minor, and the abundantly melodious Violin Sonata in A major.

Among the handful of chamber works that Franck composed at the beginning and end of his career are some of his greatest and most characteristic creations. By the time he penned the A-major Sonata in 1886, he was firmly under the spell of Wagner and Liszt. In addition to absorbing their harmonic innovations, he adopted Liszt’s technique of generating large-scale works from a small number of germinal motifs. Franck not only dedicated his sonata to the great Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe, one of his most stalwart champions, but presented the manuscript to the violinist as a wedding present. (Ysaÿe was also a close friend of Debussy and the dedicatee of his 1893 String Quartet.) Franck’s Sonata proved so popular with performers and public alike that it was soon transcribed for cello, viola, and flute, becoming one of the most frequently heard works in the recital repertoire. The sonata figures memorably in literature as well: in John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga, it is Irene’s playing of Franck’s “divine third movement” that triggers Young Jolyon’s fateful decision to tell his son about the tragedy that has loomed over their family since before his birth.

The A-major Sonata is deeply indebted to Ysaÿe’s purity of tone, liquid phrasing, and tasteful reticence. Indeed, after hearing the violinist read through the first movement, Franck adjusted the tempo marking to a livelier Allegretto ben moderato, imparting a fresh undercurrent of urgency to the gently undulating principal theme. For all its lush chromaticism and quasi-symphonic textures, the Sonata has a chaste, limpid quality that permeates even the restless, driving intensity of the second-movement Allegro. The work lacks a true slow movement. In its place, Franck injected an oasis of repose in the form of a spacious minor-mode meditation that revisits earlier thematic material in the manner of Liszt. Freely declamatory in style, the Recitativo—Fantasia mediates between the muscular lyricism of the first two movements and the disciplined canonic writing of the final Allegretto poco mosso. In its blend of vehemence and restraint, intense emotion and scintillating showmanship, Franck’s Sonata epitomizes the spirit of French Romanticism.

© 2021 Harry Haskell

Although neither Eduard Bagdasaryan nor Alexander Arutyunian boasts an international reputation to match that of their senior compatriot Aram Khatchaturian, each occupies a distinguished niche in the annals of 20-century Armenian music. As befits citizens of a nation with a rich musical tradition situated at the cultural crossroads of Asia and Europe, their compositions are at once cosmopolitan and parochial, blending elements of indigenous Armenian music with post-Romantic and modernist styles. The two men’s careers followed parallel trajectories. Both were born in Yerevan at the dawn of the Soviet era, studied at the excellent state-run conservatory there, and relocated to Moscow after World War II. Both composed their obligatory quotas of patriotic cantatas and other ideologically acceptable works, while exploring a wider range of expression in their concert music, film scores, and dramatic works, much of which bears the influence of the folkloric idioms they had imbibed and studied in their formative years.

As evidenced by the pair of instrumental miniatures that close today’s program, Bagdasaryan and Arutyunian were no less at home in the intimacy of the small-scale character piece than in the more monumental genres of the symphony and concerto. A distinguished pianist, Bagdasaryan wrote with special sensitivity for the keyboard. The Nocturne sets a wistfully lyrical cello melody (it was originally written for violin) against a steady patter of luminous, quietly pulsing piano chords. The duo’s even-handed colloquy intensifies in the middle section, but the “nocturnal” atmosphere is restored at the end. A more virtuoso impulse is front and center in Arutyunian’s Impromptu, which betrays Khachaturian’s influence in its colorful tunes and vivacious rhythms. As in the Bagdasaryan, a contrasting centerpiece—in this case, an introspective lament—offsets the extraverted verve of the outer sections. Arutyunian wrote the Impromptu around the time he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1948. The next year his grandiose Cantata for the Homeland won a coveted Stalin Prize, marking his ascendancy to the ranks of the Soviet Union’s musical elite.

© 2021 Harry Haskell

Although neither Eduard Bagdasaryan nor Alexander Arutyunian boasts an international reputation to match that of their senior compatriot Aram Khatchaturian, each occupies a distinguished niche in the annals of 20-century Armenian music. As befits citizens of a nation with a rich musical tradition situated at the cultural crossroads of Asia and Europe, their compositions are at once cosmopolitan and parochial, blending elements of indigenous Armenian music with post-Romantic and modernist styles. The two men’s careers followed parallel trajectories. Both were born in Yerevan at the dawn of the Soviet era, studied at the excellent state-run conservatory there, and relocated to Moscow after World War II. Both composed their obligatory quotas of patriotic cantatas and other ideologically acceptable works, while exploring a wider range of expression in their concert music, film scores, and dramatic works, much of which bears the influence of the folkloric idioms they had imbibed and studied in their formative years.

As evidenced by the pair of instrumental miniatures that close today’s program, Bagdasaryan and Arutyunian were no less at home in the intimacy of the small-scale character piece than in the more monumental genres of the symphony and concerto. A distinguished pianist, Bagdasaryan wrote with special sensitivity for the keyboard. The Nocturne sets a wistfully lyrical cello melody (it was originally written for violin) against a steady patter of luminous, quietly pulsing piano chords. The duo’s even-handed colloquy intensifies in the middle section, but the “nocturnal” atmosphere is restored at the end. A more virtuoso impulse is front and center in Arutyunian’s Impromptu, which betrays Khachaturian’s influence in its colorful tunes and vivacious rhythms. As in the Bagdasaryan, a contrasting centerpiece—in this case, an introspective lament—offsets the extraverted verve of the outer sections. Arutyunian wrote the Impromptu around the time he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1948. The next year his grandiose Cantata for the Homeland won a coveted Stalin Prize, marking his ascendancy to the ranks of the Soviet Union’s musical elite.

© 2021 Harry Haskell