Pianist Sergey Schepkin opened the 8th year of his series, Glissando, with a dazzling concert (Friday night) at First Church Boston. We have come to expect excellent pianists, interesting chamber track repertoire, and Schepkin’s always-thoroughly illuminating program notes.
For those of us who heard Schepkin’s compelling Beethoven Sonata odyssey a few years ago, it was no surprise to hear him so masterfully play three Haydn sonatas: the A Major, Hob XVI:26 (1773); the Sonata in C Minor Hob. XVI:20 (1771); and E-flat Major Hob. XVI 28 (1774-76). (This listener had gone to Schepkin’s concerts for over two decades and doesn’t recall hearing him play Haydn before). The results were sparkling, perfectly crafted and executed. (As a personal aside, I foolishly lived for many decades with no Haydn whatsoever, in retrospect, an insane mistake. immediately, when I hear this composer, I am embarrassed to realize how much I missed). Haydn’s strikingly original sonatas provide to a world of riches, ingenuity and originality, surprises, wit, drama and endless cleverness. Plus, the many I’ve heard since I discovered Haydn’s piano sonatas are each a wonder.
How, you might wonder, does one trace a link between Haydn and Ravel? It turns out there is a little-played two-page piece Ravel wrote in 1909, Minuet sur le nom d’Haydn which cleverly deploys a five-note motif based on HAYDN as its musical theme. This was the idea of to promote contemporary track in the centenary of Haydn’s death. Only 54 bars long, and lasting a minute and a half, it came about as a result of a commission to several composers by the Revue musicale mensuelle de la Société International de Musique. (Saint-Saëns and Fauré declined the commission, but the others were no slouches: Vincent d’Indy, Paul Lukas, Reynaldo Hahn, and Charles-Marie Widor). I first came across this charming piece when I was compiling a list of Ravel’s minuets to transcribe for harp (with very speedy pedaling), which included his Minuet from Tombeau de Couperin, the second movement of his Sonatina, the one-page Minuet en ut dies meneur, and this Haydn minuet.
Venkatesh Sivaraman, Schepkin’s immensely gifted PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, had the Ravel half to himself, and he impressed this lifetime listener of pianists as world-class. Clearly Sivaraman has other intellectual passions as well. A MIT graduate, he “enjoys” arranging track for ensembles and designing interactive track technologies. He will soon get his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction developing human-centered AI for health care.
After the short minuet, Sivaraman gave a utterly dazzling account of Ravel’s virtuosic Miroirs (1904), five pieces which the composer said ”marked a rather considerable change in my harmonic evolution.” Around 1900, Maurice Ravel joined a group of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians referred to as Les Apaches or “hooligans,”a term coined by Ricardo Viñes to refer to his band of “artistic outcasts”. Ravel began composing Miroirs, a tribute to his fellow artists/friends, in 1904 and finished it the following year. Its immediate predecessor was his equally virtuosic piano work Sonatine. The five movements are Noctuelles (Night Moths), Oiseaux tristes (Sad Birds), Une barque sur l’océan (A Boat on the Ocean), the famous Alborada del gracioso (The Jester’s Aubade), and La Vallée des cloches (The valley of the Bells).
Ravel himself orchestrated Une barque sur l’océan and Alborada del gracioso; in 2003 the British composer Simon Clarke made an orchestration of the three other movements. Composers seem to find Ravel irresistible and many have made arrangements for all sorts of instrumental ensembles of Miroir’s five beguiling movements. Over time Ravel would orchestrate Une barque sur l’océan and the mesmerizing Alborada del gracioso, an instant success played twice at its premiere. Oddly, although I have long known and adored Miroirs I can’t recall ever having heard it live except in its well-known orchestral guises. This made Sivaraman’s masterful performance extra wonderful to hear. Should his other enterprises not work out, Sivaraman could be a perfect Ravel ambassador. This was an extraordinary Glissando appearance.
As an encore, the two pianists sat at one keyboard for the last movement of Ravel’s mesmerizing Ma me`re l’oye (Mother Goose Suite, Le garden feerique, a suite we transcribed years ago for harp trio (and, yes, gong). It was heartbreaking and infinitely beautiful. This critic wept, as she has numerous times, at more concerts this year than in the rest of her charmed lifetime).
Susan Miron is a book critic, essayist, and harpist. She writes about classical track and books for The Arts Fuse. Her last two CDs featured her transcriptions of keyboard track of Domenico Scarlatti.
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