Listening to Piano Music by Classical Composers

Western Classical Music

The concert chosen for this paper was a piano recital that consisted of various students that took place this April 2016. The reason I chose this recital to attend was that I knew one of the performers in the show and I wanted to both support her performance by my attendance in the audience and I wanted to expose myself to a diversity of performances for the purpose of this paper. The pieces ranged in period from modern (Bartok -- "Suite, Op. 14: Allegretto-Scherzo-Allegro molto-Sostenuto") to classical (Mozart -- "Adagio in b minor, K. 540"). The students were young adults of a variety of ethnicities, from Asian to European. It was overall a very eclectic mix of musical pieces performed by a diverse number of students. Unfortunately, there were not many people in the audience -- barely a dozen -- so it was difficult for the performers to really generate a buzz in the auditorium. Nonetheless, the experience was enjoyable.

A complete list of the program included the following pieces: Bartok's Suite, Op. 14, Grieg's Lyric Piece, Op. 54, No. 4; Chopin's Etude in c sharp minor, Op. 10, No. 4; Mozart's Adagio in b minor, K. 540; Prokofiev's Sonata No. 2 in d minor, Op. 14; Perle's Pantomime, Interlude, and Fugue (1937); Chopin's Ballade in f minor, Op. 52; Gottschalk's The Banjo; Liszt's Wilde Jagt; Bach's Partita in C minor, BMV 826 Sinfonia-Rondeau-Capriccio; Beethoven's Sonata in c minor, Op13 II Adagio cantabile; and Chopin's Ballade in F major, Op. 38. The performances were held on Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at 8 pm at LeFrak Concert Hall.

Most of the performances were of the Romantic to modern genre. The Chopin and Liszt for example had romantic feels to theme. The Bartok was more modern, with its somewhat discordant and disconnected style of play. The Mozart was of the classical genre, like the Bach, which used counterpoint a great deal. The Beethoven piece was my favorite overall -- it was perfectly played and very melodic in a melancholic sort of way. The piece was played with obvious deep feeling and was very expressive of the romantic genre that it represented as well. Yawen Wang played this piece and I was greatly moved by the performance. I felt that those in the crowd were also moved by it because, in spite of their small number, they applauded most loudly for this performance when it was concluded. It tempo was perfectly paced and its texture was smooth and soft -- unlike the Liszt which was hammering and dense (like the Bartok). Its meter was very well balanced and seemed like a slower, more thoughtful example of something by Bach.

The Bach Partita was performed by Nayoung Im and this piece was also well played. Bach sounds very complex in its performance but there is such delight in the way the composition unfolds up and down a scale and it is so metrically poised and elegant that it makes one feel refined just to listen to it. Nayoung's performance of the Partita was also well-received and she carried herself very well at the piano. The piece began slowly with a dramatic introduction that then gave way to a more rapid passage into the movement. Her left hand worked deftly giving counterpoise to the right hand which plucked at the higher keys with terrific dexterity. There was a melodic and harmonic balance between lower, darker notes and the higher, happier tones. The piece overall was complex but rewarding to hear and in its own right it had a tremendous impact on future composers in Germany (Spitta 156).

Chopin's Ballade No. 2 played by Nicolas Giacalone was a very soft piece with a texture that was very delicate. The piano keys seemed to be like pieces of glass that would break if played too hard. The piece's tone was somewhat melancholic too and representative of the romantic genre, which is about displaying feeling and emotion -- and here the emotion being displayed in the music seems to be one that is sweetly soft, somewhat heavy in heart but not too heavy -- not in the Beethoven sense. This piece was a kind of light romantic piece that was loving yet also somewhat sad; its moderate tempo was neither upbeat nor slow and brooding but somewhere in the middle. As Jeremy Nicholas notes, however, the piece changes keys and does not end in the same key in which it begins (Nicholas 268).

The Beethoven piece combined all these elements, however. Its tempo was almost one that could be danced to, but it would be an almost sad dance where everyone spun with heavy hearts, because the tone of the piece was so wistful and full of a kind of nostalgia for things passed: it would brim with hope in passages and then seem to remember that all it was hopeful for had already passed. Towards the end of the movement, it picked up a dramatic tone and the passages began rapidly increasing in tempo and there was an urgency in the music that could not be missed. This was my favorite part of the piece and of the evening. Throughout Beethoven uses one motif, which was a break from the method employed by his predecessors ("Beethoven Pathetique Sonata").