Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 10/09/2007, uploaded on 01/20/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Any Hungarian will tell you their homeland has two things of which they can be very proud:  the finest dessert white wines in the world and more Nobel Prize recipients per capita than any other country.  Any musician will be able to augment this already impressive list with Hungarian composers of genius such as Franz Liszt, Bela Bartok, and Gyorgy Ligeti not to mention a whole host of world-famous instrumentalists and conductors.  With this program, I hope to present a cultural sampler to commemorate the great music from Hungary, plus two foreign composers who sought to imitate its distinctive national style.

My association with Hungary first began with my childhood babysitters who were a family of Hungarians forced to flee their country during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and it continued in my piano lessons with my study of Bartok, Liszt, Dohnanyi, and others.  In the fall of 2000, I competed in the Artlivre International Piano Competition in Sao Paulo, Brazil where, for three weeks, I was sequestered in a monastery with the other contestants.  Among the contestants was a brilliantly talented young man named Adam Gyorgy and we became close friends.  Through Adam, I got to know much about Hungarian culture and was honored to share a solo debut in Budapest with him at the Great Hall of the Liszt Academy.  That concert led to a repeat performance, this time at Carnegie Recital Hall in October 2006 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.

Today's program offers several pieces I performed on this New York debut and begins the same way with the very contrasted pairing of Schubert's Ungarische Melodieand Bartok's First Burlesque.  The Schubert is a tune the composer evidently borrowed after hearing it sung by a servant of Count Esterhazy in 1824 and while lyrical, it features the conspicuous Hungarian-flavored accented syncopation.   The Bartok is a violent early work subtitled, "Quarrel".  I always enjoy pointing out it was dedicated to his first wife. 

The Esterhazy family were also the employers of Haydn who worked at their somewhat remote palaces and flourished in both obscurity and originality.  This two-movement Sonata is a fascinating work of stylistic contrast and brevity.  The first movement is largely influenced by C.P.E. Bach's discursive style, full of sudden stops and surprises, while the last movement is cast rather in the brilliant style evoking the last movement of Haydn's Great C Major Piano Trio.

The final two pieces are transcriptions by Hungary's most famous son, Franz Liszt.  The Serenade (Ständchen) from Schubert's Schwanengesang is one of the most recognizable tunes and is brilliantly set by Liszt as a high and low-voice song that culminates with a third verse in duet.  The Valse Infernale from Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable is perhaps Liszt's most raucous opera transcription; it caused a rather well-documented furor at his mature Parisian Debut in 1841.  The piece displays all the hallmark virtuosity of the paraphrases, and often presents two thematic motives simultaneously--a clear imitation of Meyerbeer's superimposed ensemble writing.     Steven Spooner

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.