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We suggest works to explore after Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2
Though dominated by the solemn tread of the funeral march, the third movement of Chopin’s Second Sonata features a second subject that is serenity itself. A similar sense of calm also graces the Largo third movement of Chopin’s Third Piano Sonata, whose capricious Presto non tanto finale scowls and chuckles in turn, only to break into a broad smile in the closing bars. (Maurizio Pollini (piano); DG 483 6475)
Chopin was not the first composer Franck’s to include a funeral march in a piano sonata. Nearly 40 years earlier, Beethoven did likewise in the third movement of his Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat. The German’s mournful steps move at a slightly brisker pace than Chopin’s, but similarities between the two works – not least the rumbling left-hand trills – are not hard to spot. (Jonathan Biss (piano); Onyx ONYX4082)
While Beethoven and Chopin both mourn the already deceased, Alkan (see also Composer of the Month, p76) looks grimly towards the grave in his Grande sonate ‘Les quatre âges’ (‘The Four Ages’) of 1847. The work begins in sprightly fashion, as its 20-year-old subject hares around at presto pace.
But then, the following movements get progressively slower as we head through the ages of 30 and 40. By the time we reach 50, the music moves at little more than a world-weary plod – the sobering message is that, once you’ve notched up five decades, death is unlikely to be that far away. (Vincenzo Maltempo (piano); Piano Classics PCL0038) In his 1885 Trauervorspiel und
Trauermarsch, Liszt presents us with a funeral march like no other. A staccato pattern of four notes – F sharp,
G, B flat and C sharp – is repeated obsessively in the left hand as the music gathers pace and gets increasingly fraught. The overall result is devilishly disturbing. (Leslie Howard (piano); Hyperion CDA66445)
With motifs based on the ‘Crucifixus’ from Bach’s B Minor Mass and the
‘bell motif’ from Wagner’s Parsifal, the Choral of Franck’s Prélude, Choral and Fugue for solo piano is infused with a sense of solemn religious devotion. Tolling bells ring out at both the beginning and, more forcefully, the end of the movement before making a brief reappearance as the Fugue reaches its thrillingly virtuosic conclusion. (Benjamin Grosvenor (piano); Decca 483 0256)
Prélude, Choral
and Fugue is infused with a sense of solemn devotion