ALEXANDRE KANTOROW

Composed in 1879, the first of Brahms’s 2 Rhapsodies opens as a powerful, turbulently swirling B minor triplet storm, momentarily punctuated by a gentler, albeit still troubled, pianissimo interlude which later both forms the basis of the tender major-keyed central trio, and plays the work out in peace. In 1852, Liszt’s densely-textured final Transcendental Étude, ‘Chasse neige’, had used tremolo and swirling chromatic figures to evoke a snow blizzard, its own bleak B flat minor tonality similarly juxtaposed with major-keyed optimism, but with icy darkness ultimately triumphing. ‘Vallée d’Obermann’ is equally chromatic and pictorial; inspired by a French novel about a recluse who retreats to the Swiss Alps for nature-inspired existential musings, its initial descending left-hand idea provides the material for the ensuing restless music. Liszt then hovers audibly around the richly textured chromaticism of Bartók’s Op. 1 Rhapsody of 1904. And equally – specifically his Faust-themed works – around Rachmaninoff’s grand-scale First Piano sonata of 1907. Initially titled ‘Faust,’ the Rachmaninoff’s three movements represent Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, the latter complete with Dies irae motif. Not that a programmatic element is essential to poetic drama, as Brahms constantly proved; and it’s to Brahms’s transcription of Bach’s D minor Chaconne, a technical study for the left-hand, that Kantorow gives the closing word.