Nikolai Medtner: Sonata Minacciosa, Op. 53 No. 2 - Synthesia Tutorial скачать в хорошем качестве

Nikolai Medtner: Sonata Minacciosa, Op. 53 No. 2 - Synthesia Tutorial

As the title suggests, the threatening mood underlying much of the Sonata Romantica is given explicit and extended expression in this powerful companion piece, dedicated to Alfred LaLiberté. The composer described it as ' my most contemporary composition, for it reflects the threatening atmosphere of contemporary events'. It is cast in one long movement, with a single tempo throughout. If the earlier work appeals to both heart and head, the present Sonata, with its exhaustive treatment of only a small amount of material, arguably shows Medtner at his most rigorously intellectual. The Sonata opens with a cry of alarm and iambic figure that is to be conspicuous throughout the whole piece. It prefaces a theme of brooding menace. After this has been set out at some length, a mighty arpeggio flourish from the bottom to the top of the keyboard ushers in the second theme, in the relative major. As suggested by its marking, 'con entusiasmo', its optimistic mood implies hope that the threat evoked by the Sonata's opening will eventually be overcome, but the return of the first theme, soon seething with fury, for the first time being banishes that hope. In the turbulent development, in which the music moves freely through a range of tonalities, Medtner dispenses all together with the key signature. Gradually the tension winds down through a mysterioso interlude to usher in a massively elaborate fugue on the Sonata's first theme, the subject in F sharp minor, the answer in G minor. The fugue culminates in a colossal chordal climax, succeeded by the cries of alarm that began the Sonata, heralding the recapitulation and the return of a key signature of four flats. A note by the composer amplifies an indication and the text at this point: 'The whole of the recapitulation up to the coda is performed in the spirit of a cadenza, like a free improvisation.' After a condensed reprise of the themes, a quietly pensive episode, andante, meditamente, rubato, is brusquely interrupted by another version of the second theme, before one of Medtner's most impressive codas sums up the total musical experience of the work and reasserts the dominance of the original threatening mood. In an anguished climax the second theme seems vanquished and despairing, but at the end it manages to rise up again, as if reassured, and in a 13-bar tailpiece to the coda, in which the key changes to an affirmative F major, further threats and cries of alarm are finally dismissed out of hand by a confidence sweep over the keyboard and a closing group of decisive chords, defiantly optimistic. 0:00 Sonata Minacciosa 0:04 I. Allegro sostenuto, concentrando 2:31 II. L'istesso tempo 8:20 III. Fuga. Sempre al rigore di tempo 11:23 IV. Tempo I 12:46 V. A tempo. con entusiasme 15:30 VI. Coda. Sempre animato