Piano Concerto No. 23, Adagio

I was listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, when I came to the Adagio and started feeling increasingly nostalgic. Then I remembered something Milan Kundera, Czech writer best known for his work The Unbearable Lightness of Being, said about nostalgia. Paraphrasing Kundera, he said: "The Greek word for return is nostos. Algos means suffering. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return."

I have been trying to understand what Kundera meant with these words. He might have been trying to say nostalgia is the pain inflicted by wanting to return to a certain place. He might also have been trying to say nostalgia is the pain caused by the reminiscing of the past. After all, the past is the only place, no matter how hard we try, to which we can never go back.

For those of you who may not know, the word "adagio" comes from the Italian "at ease". It implies one should play in a slow tempo. The movement is quite sentimental, sharing more similarities to an opera or a symphonic poem than to a piano concerto. The piano begins alone, solitude being a central theme to the overall mood of the piece, and is followed by unusually large symphonic gaps. Dynamics are soft, never greater than a mezzoforte. The theme seems to get more joyous near the middle only to fall back to its melancholic état d'esprit. Isn't this what happens when one reminisces of the past? It is a curious thing the human mind, letting you remember so fondly something you have forever lost.

Specifications

The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, was written by Mozart. It has three movements.

1. Allegro (Fast)
2. Adagio (Slow)
3. Allegro assai: Allegro alla breve (Very fast / Fast in cut-time)

Read more at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._23_(Mozart)

Elvira Madigan

Elvira Madigan is the informal moniker of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467. Mozart never actually named this concerto. The title comes from the 1967 Swedish film by the same name, based on the tragedy of the Danish tightrope dancer Hedvig Jensen. It appears as though this is not a unique occurrence, as many other of Mozart's works had their names coined by someone else. For instance, the Jupiter Symphony or Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 was dubbed by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon.


The serenity of Mozart's symphony parallels the stoic mood of the film. Listening to the Andante, one can imagine rolling waves gently rocking a boat in a lake. This is, as a matter of fact, a scene in the movie. Considering the movie ends with a double suicide, the use of Mozart's work seems at times improper. Nevertheless, the themes of nature and tragedy suit Mozart better than other classical composers. After all, Mozart's life, as well as Elvira's, ended in tragedy.

One can only wonder if Mozart ever imagined his piano concerto would be forever associated to a circus performance. The genius was known for being a satirist, so who knows.

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Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2

A young Chopin composed a set of three nocturnes between 1830 and 1832, dedicated to Madame Camille Pleyel, the wife of a rich piano manufacturer. Their marriage broke down because of her disorderly behavior and persistent infidelity, which begs the question: "Why ever did Chopin dedicate three nocturnes to a married woman?" The dedication isn't really meant to Madame Pleyel as much a to Monsieur Playel, a close friend of Chopin and supporter of his work.

Marie-Félicité-Denise Moke known as Madame Camille Pleyel

Variations on a Theme from Carmen

Les tringles des sistres tintainent is the name of the gypsy dance from Carmen's Act II. It revisits the exotic nature of gypsy zingaras and zingarellas, dancing under the rhythm of strange and exotic music. Surely, Bizet is not the only classical composer who finds inspiration under gypsy music. As we know, Liszt wrote the Hungarian Rhapsodies playing homage to his own cultural origins and Brahms did too when writing his Hungarian Dances. Nevertheless, rest assured that Bizet's gypsy dance is so feverish and intoxicating that not even the great Horowitz could resist honoring his work. Furthermore, what makes these variations so special is the fact that Horowitz kept playing these and adding more exquisite measures throughout his entire repertoire.

Variations on a Theme from Carmen: first four bars

The piece demands extraordinary technical prowess from the executioner. It's full of intriguing chords, alternating chromatic scales, and mind-blowing cadenzas, which would be a challenge for any wunderpianisten, let alone Horowitz himself. You could argue that the same as there are no two equal versions of the Carmen Variations, there will never again be another Vladimir Horowitz. The genius eventually got tired of playing this theme, as audiences would often forget the rest of the program after the encore.

Horowitz clearly reminds us that you can only enjoy so much of a good thing. As time went by, the variations became clearly more sophisticated. This went on for over 50 years. Personally, I believe it wasn't the variations that were changing; it was the genius himself.

Specifications

Sonata Pathétique

Grave introduction: first four bars

The sweats you get from playing the entire piece must be comparable to the night sweats of a patient with a Hodgkin lymphoma. The fever, the aggressive sweats... Playing Beethoven heals your mind but in the process of doing so your heart is beating faster than it can, your fingers tremble of excitement, you can't hold your own breath, your whole body feels warm, and that's when you start sweating. People ask me what's it like to play Beethoven. In a way, it's like being a cancer patient.

Undoubtedly, we're missing the final crucial symptom for our diagnosis: the weight loss. With Beethoven, your soul will never be hungry. Your body might be sick, but your mind is just starting to heal.

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