Recorded on July 8 and 25, 1977, this live recital captures the first audio/video performance on www.cyberrecital.com. Biegel chose works honoring his pedagogy, from Adele Marcus and Morton Estrin, back to Artur Schnabel and Josef Lhevinne, purveyors of the Romantic Tradition.
Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata (No. 8 in C Minor) was written in 1798-99. In the three movements, the work is quite dramatic, and the opening movement contains elements that return in the last movement. The power of the first movement lies in the use of dissonances that rise to monumental power. The second movement, Adagio cantabile, has a life of its own as a famous melody. The last movement is a rondo that alternates between C Minor and E-flat Major. J.W.N. Sullivan credited this work for Beethoven’s capacity for “recoverable contexts.”
Franz Liszt wrote piano pieces alternately romantic and seductive, and works of demonic, bravura display. The Petrarch Sonnet 104 (1858) comes from Liszt’s second “Year of Pilgrimage,” this in Italy. The Sonnet recounts the conflicting joys and agonies of romantic love, and the music conveys poetic ardor throughout. Liszt wrote 19 published Hungarian Rhapsodies, and the two recorded here are among the most spirited and volcanic. They are in gypsy style, a slow (lassu) section that erupts into a fast (friss) section that is quite demanding technically.
Brahms turned to solo piano music late his career (1892), after having stopped such composition around 1856. His Intermezzo in E is from a. set of seven Fantasies, Op. 116, and it expresses a mood of lonely
introspection, as the melodic line tugs forward and retreats.
Frederic Chopin made the piano a singing instrument, capable of denying its otherwise percussive character. His Third Scherzo in C# Minor (1838) was composed on the island of Majorca. Extremely aggressive in its outer sections, the piece denies the idea that “scherzo” means “joke.” Its central section sounds like a chorale, austere and noble. The demands on the performer include fierce wrist action and the ability to sustain the contour of the piece without excessive pounding. The Polonaise in A-flat Major (1842) represents, along with Chopin’s 51 mazurkas, his most patriotic expression of his native Poland. The piece is subtitled “Heroic” for its grand chordal progressions and the nobility of its signing line.
Andrei Schulz-Evler (1852-1905) was a Polish composer and pianist who arranged the popular waltz by Johann Strauss, Jr., By the Beautiful Blue Danube. The arrangement preserves the composer’s original ideas while, in order to make the effect more “symphonic,” adding many flourishes and embellishments of which the piano is capable.
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed 24 Preludes, one for each of the major and minor keys in the chromatic scale. His Prelude in G Major from the 1910 set of preludes, flows with a liquid grace in arpeggios that invoke a calm nocturne.