PROGRAM NOTES SONATA IN D MAJOR, K. D284 “DÜRNITZ”, WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1775) The composition and premiere of an early opera left the 19-year-old Mozart in Munich for three months in 1775, where he also composed six piano sonatas. The last of these six was the so-called “Dürnitz” sonata, named for amateur bassoonist and regular patron Baron Thaddäus von Dürnitz, and the only one of the six that was published in Mozart’s lifetime. Although the ‘Munich sonatas’ all survive in any case, numbered as the first six sonatas in Mozart’s corpus, the Dürnitz sonata remains unique within all of his sonatas as an epitome of the breadth of tones and textures within the aesthetics of his early style, and of the youthful energy and cheerful sarcasm so frequently associated with it. The first movement, in typical sonata-allegro form, emulates in essence a grand orchestral work, starting with strong octave doublings and maintaining primarily tremolos or repeated notes in the accompaniment, rather than only Alberti bass or other figurations of broken chords—pianistic concessions for a smoothness often unnecessary in the bright and driven energy present throughout the movement. The efficient accompaniment also easily supports the moments of orchestral dialogue or simple counterpoint decorating the movement without disrupting its brilliant clarity. The second movement, though given the more typical tempo marking Andante, is titled “Rondeau en polonaise” (Rondo in the style of a polonaise), and is, functionally, a rondo. At each new introduction of the main section, the theme becomes gradually more elaborate and decorated, changing its melodic rhythm, articulation, and dynamics between various repetitions. The gradual variation of the melody, coupled with sudden accents and dynamic changes, lead somewhat thematically into the last movement: The third movement is a theme and twelve variations. With an elegantly simple theme, Mozart skilfully unites—and juxtaposes—the comprehensive variety of characters and textures available to him. In an almost theatre-like manner, each variation has its own, unique personality: one might be inquisitive, and another despairing; one bold, another lazy; yet each variation has in itself great contrasts of character and color. The textural changes highlighting these contrasts showcase a young Mozart’s broad compositional style and his effective application of it into one solo work, with pianistic broken chords, orchestral octave doublings, dialogue and canon, and operatic melodicism and coloratura all featuring within the set of variations.
PIANO SONATA, OP. 1, ALBAN BERG (1907-1908) Alongside his teacher Arnold Schoenberg and fellow pupil Anton Webern, Berg belonged to the Second Viennese School (in reference to the first Viennese School of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven), with which atonality, and later, serialism, is often associated. However, whereas Schoenberg and Webern would eagerly reject the cultural inheritance of Romanticism to develop serialism’s systematic, structural integration of parameters in music, Berg refused to entirely abandon Romanticism, instead developing the connection between the lyricism of Romanticism and the systematization of serialism. As a result, Berg had a much lesser impact than Schoenberg or Webern had on the trajectory of Western classical music for the following half-century; however, his music generally remains more accessible due to its ties to Romanticism. In the old tradition of composers of waiting to write a meritable piece to publish it with the designation of Opus 1, Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1 was indeed the culmination of his studies with Schoenberg, by which point he had drafted the beginnings of several other sonatas and written many other small works, having started initially with Romantic art songs. This first publication was a one-movement sonata of deliberate, agitated expression, striking the careful balance between the dissonance inherent to the structural and motivic use of tonally unclear scales and harmonies (such as augmented triads, consecutive/stacked fourths rather than thirds, and whole tone scales) with the respite of tonally recognisable harmonies—often outside of their typically recognised functions—and making clear its other aspects, such as rhythmic flow, melodic phrasing, and thematic development, to deliver a piece both intuitive and unsettling.