NEWS

Lucas Debargue

3 months ago

👉Let’s hear again Lucas’ rendition of the Szymanowski Sonata no 2 in A Major. Op 21
His closer analysis of the work from the conversation for Philharmonie de Paris
"👉This work amazes by its power to create visual images. It is like a gigantic monument, a grand architecture similar to Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier“ or to Liszt sonata, to all those great opuses reminiscent of big cathedrals. There is something vertical, upward aspiring; it is like a pillar that rests on the ground. Here is something very telluric with these harmonies based on basses. Between these are the pictures or frescoes, something stormy and noisy, frightening imagery. One person told me once after the concert that this work reminds him of Michelangelo. There is like very heavy bodies falling from heaven, heavy but not heavy at the same time.
👉Szymanowski puts here all the time to question the rules of harmony and melody. They slip from one to the other, seemingly impulsively, although the control is constantly present. This work is full of contradictions and in my opinion, it takes shape and justifies itself just as a live performance in the concert. It's like a gigantic move forward, a grand crescendo.
👉The first part is very mystical, very passionate, there is a lot of triols. It has an odd rhythm, the music tries to avoid accented beats. On the contrary, the 2nd part is more metric, a graceful allegretto. It’s the theme with variations, gavotte, menuet or sarabande and Szymanowski kind of amuses himself here or pays tribute to this ancient music forms. All of the work has classical style elements but is always “infected“ by modernism. It culminates to an immense finale of a four-part fugue written also absolutely in the modernistic style, the theme consists of all 12 tones but it is not strictly dodecaphonic, because tones are repeated. Polyphonically the theme produces all the possible transformations that are known from Bach or Beethoven, such as retrograde, mirror, augmentation. At the end, there is a stretto but the finale always takes its proper way, keeps its strict fugue form and is really strong in form and imagery.
👉Szymanowski wrote this sonata at the same time as his 2nd symphony which has too a huge fugue in the end. All of his three piano sonatas end with fugues. Szymanowski likes fugues and you can see why - his style is intertwined by counterpunctual thinking. The melody starts, looks where to go and then descends into a fugue. It’s quite impressive.
👉The sonata ends with an extremely virtuosic coda reminiscent of vertigo. On these last four pages, he constantly uses the whole keyboard, it makes something shockingly great and very strong. By the end this work it is very hard for me to give an encore because there have been so many repetitions and chords. Everything feels set aflame, all the senses are at the highest level and it’s already painful to touch the keys.
👉This work is really a challenge to learn and to perform and for me, it is a challenge to interpret because to interpret is what really interests me."

👉I part Allegro assai
www.youtube.com/watch?v=amnmttbMAHA&list=OLAK5uy_k8EocTuQIW0B1KpHX7l_5RiWyL85ZQ8mw&index=8&t=0s
👉II part Allegretto tranquillo
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sfOql9qWZU&list=OLAK5uy_k8EocTuQIW0B1KpHX7l_5RiWyL85ZQ8mw&index=9&t=0s
👉 III part Fuga - Allegro moderato
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuW1-fOz0gc&list=OLAK5uy_k8EocTuQIW0B1KpHX7l_5RiWyL85ZQ8mw&index=10&t=0 ... See MoreSee Less