Mariel Ilusorio is very much a part of our musical life in Grahamstown. She is the teacher of our children and a frequent performer. She reminded us that her last solo performance was five years ago. So it goes with teaching: you get busy and the time flies. Welcome back, Mariel! It’s lovely to hear the music from you again.
Mariel Ilusorio is very much a part of our musical life in Grahamstown. She is the teacher of our children and a frequent performer. She reminded us that her last solo performance was five years ago. So it goes with teaching: you get busy and the time flies. Welcome back, Mariel! It’s lovely to hear the music from you again.
The recital opened with J S Bach’s Partita in B flat, BWV 825, a suite of six dances, preceded by a praeludium, a fancy alternative for prelude.
Musicians in Bach’s time were serious people. They did everything and that included composition. The Partitas were intended to provide diversion as well as instruction in how to compose. Each of them begins with a prelude in a different style. Each includes different galanteries, the dances which may be played amongst the usual allemandes, courantes, sarabandes and gigues. Bach published his collection of six (they’d first appeared singly) in 1731. He felt that by that time the market could bear the pressure.
I enjoyed the performance. We seldom hear music by Bach in recitals. I would have preferred more flexibility, a wider dynamic and expressive range, even some naked passion; just a little more acknowledgement that it was the piano that was playing this music. But I know that is not the general taste.
Then came the nocturnes. Three of them. Two were by Chopin (his Opus 27) who was devoted to Bach’s music. At a young age he studied The Well-Tempered Clavier, the results of which were his own 24 Preludes, fine contrapuntal skill and superior craftsmanship. An early 20th century critic warned that listening to a Chopin nocturne would bewitch and unman a listener foolish enough to stick around “too long in its treacherous atmosphere”.
Like others in the audience I risked it and I didn’t mind at all what Opus 27 did to me. It was probably the quality of the pianist’s performance which saved me.
The third nocturne by the Filipino composer, Nicanor Abelardo, sounded more modern and was only slightly less lethal than those by Chopin. An energetic Filipino village dance ended the rather sombre first half of the recital with some pianistic fire.
Franz Schubert’s earliest compositions date from 1810. He died in 1828 so his composing career lasted only 18 years. It is astonishing to discover that in this short time he amassed a works list of 998 items in the Deutsch catalogue. And some of those pieces are so long! Like the G major piano sonata (D. 894) of 1826, the final piece on the evening’s programme.
How did he do it? I suppose he just kept at it. His friend, Moritz von Schwind, said that when he went around to visit, all he would say was “Hullo, how are you?” and go on working.
Little of Schubert’s music was published during his lifetime, so that it was still being discovered, along with its compositional implications, long after his death. When it was first published, the G major piano sonata was titled “Fantasia or Sonata”.
As Mariel Ilusorio pointed out, Schubert’s sonatas are not like Beethoven’s. They move off into new regions with new tunes; they drift around in new tonal areas; they are indeed like dreams. So “Fantasia” is a good word. Fantasia is freer, less structured, more improvisatory than Sonata.
Mariel Ilusorio played through this beautiful long work with great concentration and finesse. I was sorry when it all came to an end. We were generously given an encore: entirely appropriately, one of Franz Schubert’s Moments musicaux.
