Joachim Raff - Paul Juon - Anton Arensky: Works for Two Pianos

JOACHIM RAFF-PAUL JUON-ANTON ARENSKI
Works for two pianos

Symphony for four hands

Anyone who deals with the music of the German Romantic period may have already come across the Swiss composer Joachim Raff (1822–1882) encountered. Although the works of the composer, who was born in Lachen in the canton of Schwyz, have been played again and again in recent years, Raff's posthumous fame bears no relation to his popularity during his lifetime. In the second half of the 19th century, he was one of the most played tone poets in the German-speaking world and was an influential and admired figure in the musical life of his era.

The son of a music-loving German emigrant, he learned most of his musical skills autodidactically and lived - not least because of his stubborn character - an eventful to difficult youth, which culminated in his being expelled from his home canton. The encounter with the great piano virtuoso and composer Franz Liszt in 1845 was formative. Raff had made the pilgrimage on foot from Zurich to Basel to see his idol in concert. From then on, Liszt encouraged the young man and found him a job in a music store in Cologne. Felix Mendelssohn, in turn, made it possible for Raff to publish his first compositions with the traditional publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel. Soon the unsociable Raff - throughout his life he repeatedly fell out with friends and employers - could also count the important conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow among his sponsors.

In 1849 he moved to Weimar to work for Liszt as his secretary and musical assistant. In this function he probably played a not inconsiderable part in the orchestration of Liszt's orchestral works. Gradually, his own compositional career also picked up speed. In 1861 he won first prize in the composition competition of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna with his first symphony. From 1 he helped establish the Dr. Hoch's Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, of which he was the first director until his sudden departure in 1878.

The Fantasy for two pianos Op. 207a - Raff also created a version of the work for piano quintet - comes from his last creative phase and was premiered in 1877 by the important pianist and conductor Max Erdmannsdörfer and his wife, the Liszt pupil Pauline Fichtner. With a playing time of almost 20 minutes, the work describes an almost symphonic structure. A passionate G minor motif over Schumann-style urgent arpeggios is followed by a songful, chorale-like Larghetto, with constantly varying accompanying figures and teasingly cadenced, melodic garlands. The introductory theme returns abruptly, only to ring in a cheerful, folkloric tune in a playful transition in the extreme positions of the piano. The dance turns into a virtuoso round dance, the Larghetto chorale appears as an enraptured memory, before the theme from the beginning returns in a triumphant major variant and the work leads to the furious finale.

Rugged soundscapes

Also the vita of the composer Paul Juon (1878–1940) combines a family history of migration with Swiss roots with a career in Germany. Juon's grandfather was one of the many Graubünden confectioners who made a fortune abroad - as early as 1766, for example, 38 of 42 confectioneries in Venice were operated by Graubünden locals - and migrated to Russia at a young age. Paul Juon studied composition in his hometown of Moscow and in Berlin, then taught for a year at the Baku Conservatory before being appointed professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin in 1906. His rich oeuvre, which includes orchestral works, solo concertos, stage works as well as chamber music, describes a highly individual musical language between the Russian school, impressionistic echoes and modernistic idioms, although he never completely left the framework of late romantic tonality. Juon's works span an attractive arc from highly demanding compositional compression to salon music gallantry.

Seine Tone poem for two pianos Op. 71 from 1924 with the nickname Jotunheimen evokes that mystical Nordic mountain landscape in which the mythological frost giants live. Here, too, a reference to the orchestral genre of symphonic poetry and models such as the creations of Jean Sibelius and other Nordic late romantics is inevitable. The beginning lets the rough massif stand out vividly. Juon describes this beginning as »abrupt, excited«. In a letter he also described his musical-poetic landscape in the following words: »Suddenly rising peaks, gloomy mist-flooded valleys: a chaos of huge boulders, riddled with gorges, clawed by ice. unspeakably desolate! Unspeakably harsh! ... Only here and there a little bit of consolation on dull green glowing lakes ..."

Juon depicts this rugged nature with an almost percussive treatment of the piano with relentless repeated notes (“hammering very hard”) and dynamic extremes and contrasts from pianissimo to fortissimo-forte. The »matt green glowing lakes« appear in a dazzling impressionistic passage. This enchanting music gradually fades away and makes way for a folkloric, rhapsodic song, which is then processed in contrapuntal terms. The music tilts into the dance-like, interrupted by a ghostly chorale, before it condenses again to the jangling hardness of the beginning with its pounding attacks. A playful minuet brings some reassurance before the harsh musical soundscape of the beginning returns, this time underscored by the mystical chorale motif. The end describes a funeral march. Although Juon does not provide a narrative for his programmatically speaking music, it is easy to guess an epic story that ends with the death of the protagonist in the barren landscape of the eternal ice.

Sly salon music

The Russian tone poet was one of Juon's composition teachers Anton Stepanovich Arensky (1861-1906). Born into a wealthy family, Arensky studied in St. Petersburg with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and was soon appointed professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory, where he taught Juon, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin. He suffered from mental illnesses throughout his life and developed a pronounced addiction to gambling and alcoholism. Despite these adversities, Arenski left behind a wide-ranging compositional oeuvre, in which his chamber music work particularly stands out. He had a highly effective, virtuosic treatment of the piano, which is impressively evident in his five suites for two pianos.

The Suite No. 1 in G major Op. 15 is at the very beginning of his compositional career and yet already opens up a great wealth of musical and pianistic means of expression. All three movements of this upscale salon music - from the romance using the Walzer to Polonaise – at first glance they clearly fit into the respective genre tradition and come up with highly catchy melodic-rhythmic designs. In the course of these gems, however, Arenski inserts witty breaks in the musical structure, which give the movements a sly charm and also allow the performers to show off their virtuosity - a celebration of four-handed piano literature.

Moritz Acherman