This evening’s programme could be seen as a brief history of the development of the genre, the Piano Sonata.  Take a look at the dates of the composers and you will see they are linked.  Liszt was born in Beethoven’s lifetime and, similarly, Scriabin was born 14 years before the death of Liszt.  All 3 were notable pianists.  In terms of their piano compositions, there is a line of development.   Beethoven’s Opus 2 Sonatas are early in his career and the beginning of the long journey to his famous final 3, opus 109, 110 and 111.  Liszt’s famous B minor takes the form of the piano sonata into new realms both technically and musically.  Scriabin, like Liszt, was a piano virtuoso as well as a composer.  His 5th Sonata is, similarly, in one movement in many sections and linked to extra musical stimuli. 

Beethoven’s 3 Opus 2 Piano Sonatas, published in 1796 when the composer was 26, are dedicated to the composer Haydn.  Haydn (and Mozart) were the pre-eminent composers on keyboard compositions in the latter half of the 18th century.   The young Beethoven arriving in Vienna applied to Mozart for composition lessons.   Mozart was too busy and recommended Haydn.  Haydn said “yes”, but the relationship was a difficult one.  Beethoven’s first sonatas show an adventurous and enquiring mind.  He develops further the form and musical content of the sonata form.  The sonatas also make greater technical demands of the performer.  In particular, this evening’s C major Sonata features fast passages, wide-spanning chords and rapid dynamic changes, showing the influence of the pianism required of Mozart’s piano concertos.

Liszt’s Transcendental Études, published in 1852, were the final development of earlier versions of 1826 and 1837.  Famous for their difficulty, they were dedicated to Carl Czerny, at one time Liszt’s teacher and himself a composer of hundreds of études (studies).  In their final published version, Liszt added titles to 10 of the 12 pieces.  This evening’s Harmonies du Soir (Evening Harmonies) is number 11 of the set.  It has been described thus: this étude is one of the most poetical of the collection.  It is a study in harmonies, broken chords played in quick succession, full octave jumps, chromatic harmonies, chord variations, interlocking hands, bravura, massive chords and pedalling.  

Alexander Scriabin might be described as one of music’s eccentrics.  He was a pianist of virtuosic ability and as a composer an innovator.  Early he was influenced by Chopin, but later, independent of the German composer Schoenberg, he experimented with dissonance and atonality.  The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy described Scriabin’s music as “a sincere expression of genius.”  His 5th Piano Sonata is in one movement, and the composer wrote of it to his friend Morozova, “Today I have almost finished my 5th Sonata.  It is a big poem for piano, and I deem it the best composition I have ever written.  I do not know by what miracle I accomplished it.”  At the head of the Sonata, he placed in Russian this text: 

I call you to life, O mysterious forces!

Drowned in the obscure depths

Of the creative spirit, timid

Shadows of life, to you I bring audacity

Few musical works have had so much written about then as Liszt’s one movement Sonata in B minor.  It was completed in 1853 while the composer was living in Weimar.  Published the following year, it was premiered in Berlin in 1857 by the composer’s son-in-law, Hans von Bülow, and caused a scandal.  It is dedicated to Robert Schumann.  Clara Schumann, one of the finest pianists of the age, disliked the work, describing it as “a blind noise …. it is really too awful.”  The point is that the music and its one movement form were too far ahead of time to be appreciated.  The first audience could not understand what was going on.  Liszt was one of the originators of “programme music”, that is, music based on extra musical ideas.  The most popular theory about the B minor sonata is that it was based on the Faustian legend of Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles.  Pianist Claudio Arrau was a student of one of Liszt’s own students and said that the Faust story was the one they all believed in.  The composer, however, never admitted to any particular programme for this wonderful work.   As you will hear, the music is full of themes and motifs – they might tell a story, or they might just make up a masterful and glorious one movement Sonata.  As audience, you can make up your own minds – and enjoy!
 

Programme Notes Copyright Alistair Jones, 2026