Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 10/30/2007, uploaded on 01/20/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The étude, or study piece, was already a common element in piano instruction by the beginning of the 19^th century. Its early champions were Clementi and Czerny, today practically household names for any student of the piano. Yet, it was not until Frédéric Chopin that the étude was elevated from its original mere didactic purpose to also being an outlet for the composer’s creativity. In a sense, it became as much a “study piece” for the composer as the pianist, with a virtually blank canvas for him to exercise, grapple with, and expand his knowledge of his craft and its means of execution in performance. Chopin’s example was followed by many, and within the passing of a century, the étude seemed to expand once again to take on the additional task of programmatic music with the composition of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s two sets of Etudes-Tableaux, opp. 33 and 39, composed in 1911 and 1916-17, respectively. Unlike other composers of programmatic music, Rachmaninoff did not reveal the images he had in mind when composing these sets, believing that the composer should not divulge too much of his method of creativity, but instead preferred for the listener to paint his own picture from what he hears.

Rachmaninoff composed the latter set of études, opus 39, concurrent with an intense study of the music of Alexander Scriabin as part of his preparation for a recital in the deceased composer’s honor. Though his performance of Scriabin’s music was critically panned, it sparked a new direction of creativity, making opus 39 markedly different from its predecessor. Apart from this shift towards an angular melodic style and harmonic dissonance, opus 39 is also more technically challenging than opus 33. Indeed, it possible to look on its nine constituent pieces as more études than tableaux. Each piece is extremely virtuosic and requires of the pianist a near Herculean strength to perform effectively. Incidentally, opus 39 was also the last piece Rachmaninoff composed before leaving his native Russia. In 1929, four pieces from opus 39 (nos. 2, 6, 7, and 9) and one from opus 33 (no. 7) were, with the composer’s blessing, orchestrated by Ottorino Respighi. Respighi reordered the five études but provided each with descriptive titles he devised from what Rachmaninoff told him of the images he had in mind during their composition.       Joseph DuBose

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In this recital program, we see how early 20^th Century Russian composers influenced the music of American composers of the mid-late 20^th Century.

Etude-Tableaux, Op. 39 

No. 5 in e-flat minor (http://www.classicalconnect.com/Rachmaninov/Etude_Tableaux_Op_39/881); 

No. 6 in a minor (http://www.classicalconnect.com/Rachmaninov/Etude_Tableaux_Op_39/882);

No. 8 in d minor (http://www.classicalconnect.com/Rachmaninov/Etude_Tableaux_Op_39/883)   

Sergei Rachmaninoff                          

Lullaby from Before Sleep and Dreams                       Aaron Jay Kernis

The Rachmaninoff Etudes (1917) represent the Post-Romanticism of the early Twentieth Century.  This is Rachmaninoff stubbornly holding onto the lyricism and rich tonality of the 19^th century Romantic tradition in the face of the atonal revolution.  The Kernis Lullaby (1987) is composed at the other end of the atonality craze, looking toward a new future that embraces sensuous harmonic color within a Post-Modern sensibility.    Gideon Rubin

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.