Christoph W. Gluck, Mélodie from Orfeo ed Euridice

Artur Schnabel, a distinguished pedagogue with admittedly bad technique, got it right when he said "the sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists." It's true. Playing all of the notes on the page as written is relatively simple. But convincing performances are rare.

The same general idea is at work here, with the added obstacle that playing all of the notes of this piece accurately is marginally harder than a Mozart sonata. Putting the score on the stand and having three staves staring back at you instead of the usual two was a psychological obstacle, I've got to say. But one comes to realize that it really can't be done any other way. The top staff is the melody, which looks appropriately clean. The bottom staff takes care of the important bass notes. That leaves the delicately churning accompaniment for the middle.

Having three staves is less of a problem, of course, than having two hands with which to attack the notes written on them. The simple solution, one which the music editor explicitly recognized, is that the notes of the middle staff alternate between the right and left hands. How do you know when to play with which hand?

Just look at the direction of the stem on the sixteenth notes. If the stem points up, the right hand takes it. If the stem points down — that is, if it looks upside down — it's played with the left hand. Fascinated? Watch Nelson Freire's video two paragraphs down!

This is a famous transcription by the Italian pianist-composer Giovanni Sgambati, a contemporary of Brahms. History has not been too kind to him, as he's best known for this quick little encore, moving though it is. Actually, I think his original piano music is very effective (problem is, it's been championed by the pianist Pietro Spada, who might be too mechanical for his dead beneficiary). Anyhow, the Mélodie is a beautiful transcription of the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" from Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice. (If you've think you've seen the name before, Mozart mocked his music in the tavern scene in Amadeus as being too boring.) At about four minutes it just begs to be placed at the end of recitals as encores, which it is.

If you're in the market for professional recordings, my strongest recommendation is to pursue a live performance. My first choice is Earl Wild (the disc is out of print, but in my view well worth the $25 an Amazon seller asks for the two-disc set). Maybe not accidentally, his and my recording times are identical (4:24). Another recording I like is the Brazilian artist Nelson Freire, who used just three and a half minutes of tape. It's much, much faster — but it works. Here is a video of that performance; you'll have to skip ahead to 3:50.

If Mozart really said that Gluck's music was boring, the Mélodie wouldn't be my first counterargument. But what it lacks in imaginativeness (which is now a word, by the way — not to be confused with imagination), it makes up in power.


mp3 | score

Robert Schumann, Träumerei, Op. 15 No. 7

Träumerei is widely regarded as belonging to Vladimir Horowitz. The piece is part of the Kinderszenen suite of 13 piano miniatures finished by Robert Schumann in 1839, when the composer was 29. Horowitz adopted the piece as one of his most oft-performed encores — whether that was because it was a favorite of his or whether he pandered to his electric full houses can't be sure, but I am inclined to think the former, since popular favor wasn't necessarily a first concern of his.

Easily the most popular of its suite, strange things are done to Träumerei, which may mean either "Dreaming" or "Reverie," depending on who you ask (and I'm not sure translating titles from the original language was the best use of anyone's time). There is an unfortunate tendency to discard rhythm with the piece, with the pianist tossing in the next notes whenever he or she feels their time has come. Perhaps the title is to blame. But frankly, I don't care. My comment is entirely removed from the discussion of tempo; I'm not saying it's too slow or too fast, though allowing it to drag does make it harder to respect the beat.

At Horowitz's last concert, in Hamburg in 1987, he was at his best, playing Träumerei in a comparatively spritely 2:29. You can hear an informative clip at that Amazon link. Here is a video of the master at his infamous 1986 Moscow recital. Contrast that with Donald Betz's rendition at nearly a minute longer, which offers not much new. And for fun, here's Victor Borge doing it in 2:02, the way only Victor Borge could.

Mine is about 2:34, accounting for silences. But please, take my recording with the figurative sodium. I have never studied the piece formally, and in fact just began to play around with them this week. They are ideal exercises in voicing. To pass them, the composer would agree, requires the now-clichéd "singing tone" of the piano.

The genius of Schumann, in this case, is making conventional key modulations sound groundbreaking. In my version, listen for the modulation to B-flat major (a perfect fourth above the F major tonic (for our purposes, tonic means "home key") — it's a standard key change; please just take my word for it, yes?) at 1:32. Then at 1:48, we're already moving back to F major. But notice how pleasantly surprising each of these is when you hear them for the first time.

This recording will sound different from others I've made. I hope so, at least, since this was made tonight on my prized Steinway Model L! The sonics could be better, but for a $75 microphone that I bought because it's disguised as quaint-looking black box (think law school lectures; I'll say no more), it's stereo — who am I to complain? And man, did I engineer the heck of out of this. I needed a set-up that put the microphone higher up than the piano, so I took two bar stools and placed them at the far (narrow) end of the piano. On one, I placed my laptop. On the other, I stood up Jan Swafford's wonderful biography of Brahms. On that went the microphone. Bam, home recording studio. Frought with symbolism! Don't you just love it when things are frought?


mp3 | score*

* Open the link and scroll down in the PDF to the seventh piece.