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1. A Complete work of J.S. Bach
2. Two (2) contrasting works by Chopin
3. One (1) complete sonata by W.A. Mozart (excluding K 545) OR one (1) complete sonata by L. von Beethoven (excluding Op. 49)
4. A Major Solo work of the Applicant's choosing.
The program I'm considering right now is:
1. Prelude and Fugue No. 2 in c minor WTC Book I
2. Etude Op. 10 No. 10 "Revolutionary" WITH Nocturne Op. Posth. 72 in e minor
3. L. von Beethoven- Piano Sonata No. 13 in Ab Major, Op. 27 No. 1
OR
W.A. Mozart- Piano Sonata K576
4. Franck- Prelude, Choral et Fugue
So, we'll see what my teacher thinks of it at my next lesson... If anyone has any comments, then please email them to me! The sound file you are listening too right now is the Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1!
Great news! My teacher has approved my repertoire... Now, down to work...
On the recitals second half, I played Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata Somehow, during intermission I had managed to ease myself back into the frame of mind necessary to make convincing music. The audience was utterly silent throughout; they seemed gripped by the piece. Part of me likes to believe it was my performance. But upon reflection, I think it had more to do with the piece itself.
Absolute instrumental music can be representational, but only in mystifying ways. The Appassionata, composed in 1804-05, is one of Beethoven's most visceral and unflinchingly pessimistic statements. It speaks, among other things, of the torment of individual life in the modern world. At the core of the first movement, for instance, is a unifying motive, evocative of the familiar motive from the opening of his Fifth Symphony. This motive (at times baldly stated without accompaniment, while elsewhere submerged under a violent flood of minor-key arpeggiations) represents fate. The first movement, in F Minor, poses the narrative problem: What does fate have in store for me? For us?
The second movement, in the falsely redemptive key of Db Major, is a representation of transcendence. A wordless hymn, in four-part harmony, is treated to a series of variations. Its note values, quarter notes to begin with, incrementally speed up to thirty-second notes. At first solemn, the hymn transforms before us. In the second variation, it caresses; in the third, it bubbles ecstatically. The variations climb the keyboard, the texture finally bursting at its seams at the top, spilling over in a torrent of optimism.
In Beethoven, however, such moments are often only fleeting. And sure enough, the third movement, the denouement, follows without pause. Filled with turbulent swells, this final movement provides an abstract representation of inexorability: perpetual motion with only one interruption, a moment that produces one of the most unabashed musical "question marks" in the literature. And, in the end, two pages of rapid-fire chords and hair-raising figurations, which a musician friend of mine once described as sounding like a frenzied dance on a grave.
Beethoven's mastery of musical rhetoric makes his dramatic point hard to miss. Never content to let the listener slip into complacency, and never satisfied unless he had thoroughly explored the possibilities of a musical subject, Beethoven created music full of abrupt, often rude changes of mood, texture, and dynamics. They are, in a way, schizophrenic moments, quintessentially modern moments, moments that might speak directly to the heart of someone who has lived through the kinds of horrors experienced by the people of Sarajevo.
For me, as a performer, the real interest in the Appassionata's representation of relentlessness lies in the fact that each listener must shape his or her own impressions of what, exactly, is inexorable. Is it the progress of civilization? A certain violence inherent in human nature? The individual life cycle? Human suffering? I wondered what my late-20th-century Bosnian audience found in it