In his lifetime, Mahler was known both as a composer of vast, visionary symphonies and as a microscopically exacting conductor, including brief stints at the helms of the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic at the end of his life. He had an innate feeling for the human voice, which figures prominently in four of his 10 symphonies, as well as in his many songs and song cycles. Mahler’s innovative and highly personalized musical language exerted a powerful influence on composers as diverse as Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and Britten.
The Adagietto—arguably Mahler’s most famous composition—is the fourth of five movements that comprise his more-than-an-hour–long Fifth Symphony. It stands out both for its tenderly elegiac mood and for the radiant simplicity of its reduced orchestration for strings and harp. Mahler blamed the work’s initial lackluster reception on other conductors, grumbling, “Anyone can read a book, but a musical score is a book with seven seals. Even the conductors who can decipher it present it to the public soaked in their own interpretations.” Perhaps for that reason he made a point of including his straightforward keyboard rendition of the symphony’s first movement, “Funeral March,” among the four piano rolls he recorded in 1905.
Although modern conductors tend to perform the Adagietto at a languid—if not downright funereal—pace, Mahler reportedly intended it as a love letter to his wife, Alma, and took his own tempo marking “Sehr langsam” (“very slowly”) with a grain of salt. Swiss pianist Beatrice Berrut follows his up-tempo lead in her recent transcription of the Adagietto, which is scrupulously faithful to the original. Alexandre Tharaud’s significantly slower and more elaborate version is more in the tradition of a Lisztian paraphrase, enmeshing Mahler’s limpid melody in a quasi-orchestral web of virtuosic arpeggios, figurations, and chords.
Although Schubert complained of debilitating headaches in 1827—most likely related to the syphilis that he had contracted several years earlier—he continued to maintain an active social and musical life. Nothing, it seemed, could stem the flow of his inspiration. Late that year he returned to the genre of the piano trio after a hiatus of some 15 years, producing the B-flat Major and E-flat Major trios in quick succession. The buoyant mood of these twin masterworks contrasts with the somber introspection of the song cycle Winterreise, which also occupied Schubert for much of that year.
Schubert’s two sets of four impromptus date from the closing months of 1827. That fall, he made an extended excursion to Graz, Austria, where he wrote, “I spent the happiest days I have for a long time.” The composer may have treated his friends there to a preview of his work in progress at one of their informal house concerts, or Schubertiads. It seems likely that both sets of impromptus were conceived as integral units; indeed, Robert Schumann (one of Schubert’s posthumous champions) claimed that the sequel to D. 899 was a sonata in disguise. “Titles and headings are of little importance,” he declared. “On the other hand, a sonata is such a mark of honor in a composer’s work that I would like to credit him one more, in fact with 20 more such works.”
In many ways, the D. 899 Impromptus fit together like a four-movement sonata, with a bright, expository introduction, a scherzo-like second movement, a serenely lyrical Andante, and a richly elaborated finale. But the element of spontaneity implicit in the impromptu genre was never far from Schubert’s mind. In the first-movement Allegro molto moderato, we can almost hear him improvising with various harmonic and rhythmic settings of the noble theme set forth in the opening bars. The impetuous energy of the Allegro in E-flat major, with its gaily cascading triplets, is interrupted by the martial swagger of the middle section. In the bewitching Andante in G-flat major, a swirling undercurrent of triplets holds the long-breathed melody afloat, while the final Allegretto frames an emotionally intense trio section between displays of delicate, sparkling passagework.
A contemporary of J. S. Bach and Vivaldi, Rameau was the greatest figure in early 18th-century French music. In his lifetime he was equally renowned as a composer and music theorist, but his claim to immortality rests chiefly on the operas he wrote in his last three decades. The first, Hippolyte et Aricie, was composed at age 50, and the last, Les Boréades, when he was nearly 80. In the intervening years, Rameau virtually defined the genres of the tragédie lyrique and opéra-ballet with such masterpieces as Castor et Pollux, Platée, and Les Indes galantes.
Rameau’s late-life focus on dramatic music set him apart from his senior contemporary François Couperin, who wrote no fewer than 27 suites for solo harpsichord. After publishing his Premier livre de pieces de clavecin in 1706, Rameau waited almost two decades to bring out a sequel. By the time his third and final collection—Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin—appeared at the end of the 1720s, he was preparing to make a career pivot to the opera house.
The seven-movement Suite in A Minor is a mixture of traditional dances and genre pieces of the sort then coming into vogue. It opens with a majestic, intricately contrapuntal Allemande, whose somber tonality and ruminative intensity contrast with the uncomplicated, major-key radiance of the Sarabande and Fanfarinette. (The latter title apparently alludes to the French word for braggart, but wears its swagger lightly.) The stately A-minor Gavotte is followed by six increasingly virtuosic doubles, or variations. The supple lyricism and refinement of Rameau’s suite are hallmarks of the French Baroque style, as is the delicate ornamentation that subtly enhances the music’s expressive power.
Thirteen years younger than Debussy, Ravel made his mark in Paris at the turn of the 20th century with a group of brilliantly crafted piano pieces, including the Pavane pour une infante défunte and Jeux d’eau. Over the ensuing decades he refined his art, ruthlessly pruning away superfluous notes and gestures in search of the “definitive clarity” that was his professed ideal. His repeated failure to win the Prix de Rome, a rite of passage for French composers seeking establishment approval, only stiffened his determination to forge his own path. From an early age, Ravel was marked to succeed Debussy as the poet laureate of French music. The two men shared a poetic sensibility, an allegiance to French traditions, and a fondness for sensuous, impressionistic timbres and textures. But Debussy’s revolutionary approach to harmony and form was foreign to Ravel, who remained a classicist at heart. Even as they incorporate ultramodern harmonies and compositional styles, many of his works evoke composers and styles of the past.
As a member of the Parisian artists’ circle known as “Les Apaches,” the young Ravel aligned himself with the gadflies who stood apart from France’s hidebound cultural establishment. The five pieces that comprise Miroirs are variously dedicated to a poet, a pianist, a painter, a music critic, and a composer, all known for their progressive stances in matters of taste. According to Ravel, Miroirs marked “a considerable change in my harmonic evolution, one that disconcerted even those musicians who had been most familiar with my compositional style up to then.” Written in 1904 and 1905, the pieces were premiered in Paris with Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes on January 6, 1906.
Ravel cut loose from traditional harmonic and structural moorings in Miroirs. The shimmering figurations of “Noctuelles” (“Moths”) flit restlessly up and down the keyboard, never sitting still for more than a moment until they reach the “somber and expressive” repose of the contrasting chordal section. In “Oiseaux tristes” (“Sad Birds”), a recurring motif of softly cooing repeated notes is interspersed with flighty arabesques. Ravel described the piece as “birds lost in the torpor of a very dark forest during the hottest hours of summer.” “Une barque sur l’océan” (“A Ship at Sea”) is a virtuosic exercise in billowing arpeggios, while in “Alborada del gracioso” (“Morning Song of the Court Jester”), Ravel treats the listener to a high-stepping, Spanish-flavored dance, complete with rapidly repeated notes that evoke the strumming of a guitar. In the final piece, “La vallée des cloches” (“The Valley of the Bells”), bright, bell-like peals are silhouetted against a subtly shifting tonal haze.
—Harry Haskell