A Question of Virtuosity: Michel Dalberto’s Virtus

 by Maureen Buja

Pianist Michel Dalberto’s latest album, Virtus, poses the question of the meaning of the word ‘virtuosity’. The word seems to have changed its meaning between the end of classicism and the height of romanticism. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Dictionnaire Littré (Dictionnaire de la langue française) defined virtuosos as skilled individuals in any field whatsoever, and it goes on to indicate that virtus, from strong man, now meant a man of talent. So, the man of virtue was gradually changed to the man of skill. And so we have today’s virtuosos.

Michel Dalberto

In his new album, Dalberto shows us the differing possibilities of virtuosity through the 19th century. He opens with what has become the basic definition of virtuoso: Franz Liszt’s concert paraphrase of a waltz from Gounod’s Faust (S. 407). Starting with the basic theme, Liszt then adds the emphasis and techniques that only he is capable of to create a virtuoso performance.

As a complete change of pace, this is followed by Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 15 in C major, K. 545, which carries the name of the Simple Sonata or Sonata facile. This demonstrates virtuosity in another way: Mozart’s ability to create transparent and seemingly simple work, but which, by its very simplicity, speaks of his virtuosity as a composer.

The next work, Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35 returns us to the idea of the virtuoso performer, but now matched with a virtuoso composer. Written by Brahms for the virtuoso pianist Carl Tausig, it’s a triple hit, since the original theme was by the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini. Described variously as ‘fiendish’ and ‘one of the most difficult works in the literature’, and ‘diabolical’. Even Clara Schumann nicknamed them the ‘Witch’s Variations’.

Dalberto plays both books 1 and 2, but joins them in a unique manner. Each book, as written, starts with a statement of Paganini’s theme and then goes into a complete set of 14 variations. Dalberto chooses to play Book 1 through Variation 12, then goes directly to Book 2, Variation 1, skipping the restatement of the theme. This is not unusual, and when the Books are being played back-to-back as they are here, the omission of the restatement of the theme is not unique.

At the end of Book 2, he plays Variation 13, then Variation 13 of Book 1, and closes with Variation 14 from Book 1. He omits Book 2, Variation 14, entirely. He doesn’t explain this decision, but perhaps considers the final Variation of Book 1 a more definitive ending.

Franz Liszt’s Réminiscences de Norma (after Bellini’s opera), S.394, follows, bringing us yet another example of virtuosos creating their own versions of music that everyone knew.

Franz Liszt: Réminiscences de Norma (after Bellini’s opera), S.394

The last virtuoso piece was somewhat of a surprise. We’re familiar with all of Liszt’s versions of Schubert songs, but this is one by Sergei Rachmaninoff. His piano transcription of Wohin? from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin is a curious amalgam of Schubert’s original song with extra colouration. Rachmaninoff did some 14 transcriptions, ranging from Fritz Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Liebesfreud to Bach’s Violin Partita in E major, but this Schubert work is unique.

The playing is top-notch, if some of the decisions, particularly about the Brahms, are inexplicable. Virtuoso music in the hands of a virtuoso performer is always impressive.

Michel Dalberto: Virtus

La dolce volta LDV148
Release date: 14 March 2025

Official Website

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Reading Too Much Into the Story: Lim’s The Seasons

by Maureen Buja  September 15th, 2025

In his new recording of the 12-part piano cycle, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), The Seasons, pianist Yunchan Lim sees it as a look back on a life.

Émile Reutling: Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, ca. 1888

The Seasons was commissioned by Nikolay Bernard, the editor of the St Petersburg music magazine Nuvellist. Each month in 1876 (starting in November 1895), Tchaikovsky had to contribute ‘a season’, and a source of ready and steady music, as an assignment like this was easy. It was so easy, in fact, that Tchaikovsky reminded his staff to tell him when the next one was due, and he would sit down and write something quickly.

Yunchan Lim

The work has a simplicity and charm that speaks to both the lightness of the assignment and to Tchaikovsky’s ability to write for an amateur audience. There are a few technical challenges for his readers to achieve, and the work forms a satisfactory whole. Tchaikovsky referred to them as ‘musical pancakes’, i.e., something to be tossed off and easily consumed.

In his notes for the recording, Lim reads an element of melancholy that was never in the original conception of the work. He sees the first movement (January: By the Fireside) as relatively despairing: the fire is dying out, the old man’s cigarette smoke curls in the remaining light. He’s overwhelmed with memories and sobs about his lost past.

When you contrast this reading with the notes added by the journal editor to each piece, written as a little poetic epigraph, we’ll see that this is far from the original concept for the works:

January: At the Fireside

A little corner of peaceful bliss, the night dressed in twilight; the little fire is dying in the fireplace, and the candle has burned out (quoting Pushkin).

No looks back in regrets, but rather a quiet close of day, sitting in peace as everything around prepares for sleep.

For Lim, the happy movements are happy memories, and the mournful movements are times of anticipated death, rejection, and dejection. Everyone seems to be weeping, or sobbing, or just standing there with tears running down their faces. It’s a rather incomprehensible take on Russian melancholia.

When you consider the commercial nature of the commission, it’s not really possible that Tchaikovsky, in writing for a widespread amateur audience, would deliberately write something that was so fatalistic.

Lim ties the story to yet another of Tchaikovsky’s habits of falling in love with the wrong woman at the wrong time. I think, however, that this highly personal reading is looking at the wrong music. The Seasons does exactly what the label says: it celebrates the life around Tchaikovsky: he goes to the fairs, he sees the flowers come up in the spring, hears the songs of the first, and provides his readers with lovely miniatures of the work of St Petersburg.

This work more often appears in orchestral versions or in single movement, but there have been a number of recordings of the piano version.

Lim’s playing is exquisite, but the overlaying of melancholy goes beyond the composer’s intention to a reading that isn’t really justified by the content.

Tchaikovsky: The Seasons
Yunchan Lim, piano
Decca 0028948710218
Release date: 22 August 2025

Official Website

Musicians and Artists: Stravinsky and Matisse

 by Maureen Buja  

The Nightingale Collaboration

Even though they were contemporaries, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and Henri Matisse (1869–1954) are rarely regarded together. In 1925, however, the two collaborated on a project for the Ballets Russes on a ballet version of Stravinsky’s first opera, The Nightingale, which was given its premiere in Paris on 26 May 1914. The discrepancy between the first act, written in 1908 and still very much by a student of Rimsky-Korsakov, and the second and third acts, written in 1913 and 1914, was a problem.

Pablo Picasso: Igor Stravinsky, 1920 (Paris: Picasso Museum)

Sabine Devieilhe as The Nightingale, 2023 (Paris: Théâtre des Champs-Elysées)

The story comes from Hans Christian Andersen, where a Chinese Emperor is given a live nightingale, which has a song so sweet that hearers weep with its beauty. Emissaries from Japan give the Emperor a mechanical nightingale that delights him. The real nightingale returns to the forest, insulted. Death comes for the Emperor, and the nightingale returns and charms Death. In return for singing for Death, he must return to the Emperor his crown, sword, and standard. Death agrees, and the Emperor comes back to life. The Emperor discards his mechanical bird, and the live bird agrees to sing nightly for the Emperor.

The poème symphonique called Chant du Rossignol also dates from 1914 as a way for Stravinsky to respond to some of Diaghilev’s criticism of the opera. Stravinsky dumped the 1908 first act material and only used the music from Acts II and III for a piece in four movements.

Without the context of opera, the Chinese elements in the work, including pentatonic scales and other exoticisms, would be difficult for the audience to understand. When the poème symphonique received its premiere on 6 December 1919, with Ernst Ansermet leading the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. It was heavily criticised for its dissonance.

Still attempting to rescue the work, Stravinsky turned it into a ballet, written in the early months of 1917 but not staged until after WWI.

The ballet received its premiere on 2 February 1920 with choreography by Leonid Massine and designed by Henri Matisse.

Henri Matisse (seated) and Léonide Massine shown with the mechanical nightingale, 1920

Matisse’s drawings for the production put the Chinese elements to the fore.

Matisse: Costumes for the dancers

Matisse: Costumes for the dancers and the Emperor (Gallica: btv1b7002923m)

Warrior’s costume (Gallica: btv1b7002916g)

Serge Leonovich Grigoriev (1883–1968) was the regisseur of the Ballets Russes from 1909 through the 1920s, and then, after the disbanding of the company with Diaghilev’s death in 1929, joined Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe in 1932, remaining with that company until 1948. The position of regisseur is critical to any company – functions as not only the director and the stage manager but also the choreographic reference point, and company memory. His phenomenal memory is what made Diaghilev’s ballets live on through the decades.

The Library of Congress holds Serge Leonovich Grigoriev’s photo album with examples of sets and costumes for Pulcinella, Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur, Petrouchka, Zéphire et Flore, Mavra, Le Renard, Les Biches, Les Fâcheux, and Barabau and photographs of Pulcinella, Le Chant du Rossignol, and Les Matelots.

Although they are in black and white, we can get a feeling for Matisse’s designs. Dancing the role of the Nightingale was Tamara Platonovna Karsavina, one of the leading ballerinas in the Russian Imperial Ballet, who was frequently invited to dance with Diaghilev’s company. Her most famous role was that of The Firebird in Stravinsky’s ballet for Diaghilev.

Image 7 (Library of Congress, Serge Grigoriev’s photo album/scrapbook, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/ihas.200156317)

Image 8 (Library of Congress, Serge Grigoriev’s photo album/scrapbook, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/ihas.200156317)

Image 9 (Library of Congress, Serge Grigoriev’s photo album/scrapbook, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/ihas.200156317)

Image 10 with Tamara Karsavina as The Nightingale (Library of Congress, Serge Grigoriev’s photo album/scrapbook, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/ihas.200156317)

Image 11 with Tamara Karsavina (Library of Congress, Serge Grigoriev’s photo album/scrapbook, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/ihas.200156317)

Image 12 (Library of Congress, Serge Grigoriev’s photo album/scrapbook, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/ihas.200156317)

There is one photograph of the stage with Matisse’s decorations and costumes.

Henri Manuel: Photograph of the stage, designs by Matisse, 1920 (Gallica: btv1b7002909b)

The dilemma for Stravinsky was that he thought the music was best heard in the concert hall, where it receives a focused hearing, rather than on the ballet stage, where the dancers also compete for attention.

Time for Love: Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony

by Maureen Buja 

by Maureen Buja  

In his exuberant post-WWII work, the Turangalîla Symphony, French composer Olivier Messiaen took the commission proposed by Serge Koussevitsky to heart: ‘compose the work as you like, in any style and length, with the instrumentation you would like, and I impose no time limit for you to deliver the work.’ Commissioned in 1945, the work started on 17 July 1946 and was completed and orchestrated by 29 November 1948. It was given its premiere on 2 December 1949 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.

Olivier Messiaen

The work, some 75 minutes in length over 10 movements, was considered by Messiaen as ‘one of my richest works in terms of findings, it is also the most melodic, the warmest, the most dynamic and the most coloured’.

The title of the work combines two Sanskrit words, as explained by Messiaen: ‘Lîla literally means play, but play in the sense of divine action on the cosmos, the play of creation, of destruction and reconstruction, the play of life and death. Lîla is also Love. Turanga is Time, the time which runs like a galloping horse, time which slips like sand through the hourglass. Turanga is movement and rhythm. Turangalîla then signifies at one and the same time, a love song, a hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death.’

Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance that brings together Yuja Wang as piano soloist and Cécile Lartigau as ondes Martenot soloist. Each soloist has their work cut out for them. Wang tackles the part with verve, and Lartigau, as one of the rare ondes Martenot soloists, brings her skills to a tremendous high.

Yuja Wang (photo by Kirk Edwards)

Yuja Wang with Andris Nelsons and BSO, 2024

Cécile Lartigau, 2022 (Photo by Martin Kubik)

The ondes Martenot was a French electro-acoustic instrument that consists of a keyboard and a speaker (palme). The keyboard can be played in two ways: either as a regular keyboard or via a metal ring worn on the finger that moves on a wire. A drawer on the instrument permits control of dynamics and timbre.

The ring method of playing the ondes Martenot, with the left hand controlling dynamics and timbre (photo by 30rKs56MaE)

The piano solo part calls for a virtuoso pianist, and in Yuja Wang’s playing, this performance comes to life. At times, simply adding colour to massive movements in the brass and, at other times, carrying her own melodies and ideas, Wang takes control of the work in a way that unifies this large rambling work.

Messiaen organises the work around 4 musical themes that return: the Statue Theme (heard in the trombones in the first movement), the Flower Theme (played by the clarinets pianissimo, also in the first movement). The Love Theme doesn’t appear until the 6th movement, first in hushed strings. The last theme is chord-based and abstract and appears in the background as a unifying sound.

In the sixth movement, both present and future Messiaen seem to be present: we have the Love Theme presented and then expanded by the strings and ondes Martenot, and then the piano presents a stylised bird song. Bird song will become important to Messiaen’s later works, although later he tries to present it as it sounds, rather than stylising it as he does here. In Messiaen’s vision of this movement, ‘The two lovers are enclosed in love’s sleep. A landscape comes out from them…’.

Olivier Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie – VI. Jardin du sommeil d’amour. Très modéré, très tendre

In later movements, the lovers take a love potion and become trapped in a passion that seems to drive them to the infinite. By the end of the work, in a glorious drive to the end, a massive F sharp major chord signals that ‘glory and joy are without end’.

Yuja Wang’s technical brilliance, in view for so many years, comes to the fore here, even in a work where the stage has to be shared with another keyboardist. It’s not a work that many have attempted, given both the demands of Messiaen’s writing and the lack of primary position for the pianist, but Wang brings something more to the proceedings. She matches the electro-acoustic sounds of the ondes Martenot with a degree of virtuosity that brings the piano part into greater prominence than in many other performances. The joy of Messiaen’s paean to love, celebrating its joy and passion, and even in those times when love sweeps all before it, comes to full fruition in this recording.

Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony

Yuja Wang, piano;
Cécile Lartigau, ondes Martenot;
Boston Symphony Orchestra;
Andris Nelsons, cond.

Deutsche Grammophon 515785000
Release date: 18 July 2025 (previous digital-only release, December 2024)

Official Website

Pure Imagination and Happiness: Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse

by Maureen Buja  

Where is your happy place? Debussy’s 1904 work L’isle Joyeuse seems to kidnap us, fly us through the air, and deposit us in a world of warm breezes, blue skies, perhaps a fluffy cloud or two, and, of course, surrounded by all our friends.

Although those giving only a cursory look at Debussy’s biography pin this work to his elopement with Emma Bardac to the isle of Jersey (after sending his wife back to her parents in Normandy), but the work was written over a year earlier. Debussy, in writing to a performer who sought help on how to approach his music, suggested that he think of the world of the imagined faraway land, such as Watteau’s L’embarquement pour Cythère.

Watteau: L’embarquement pour Cythère, 1717 (Louvre Museum)

The picture is a blend of happiness and sadness: the three pairs of lovers shown in the right foreground, or rather the same couple in three aspects of love: New Love, Familiar Love, and the look back with regret at how it all started. This same mix of joy and regret is in Debussy’s work as well. There’s a ‘smiling ambiguity’ that besets both the painting and the music.

Debussy opens with trills and a cadenza, but it is not that which sets the key: the use of the whole-tone scale has an earlier precedent from its use in the ‘darker moments in Pelléas et Mélisande’.

The work progresses from a small, localised trill to a final gesture, much in the manner of Liszt, that encompasses the whole keyboard. It’s pure imagination and happiness, yet with a bit of a twinge.

Claude Debussy: L’Isle Joyeuse

Odette Gartenlaub

This recording was made in 1961 by the French pianist Odette Gartenlaub. She had studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the leading composers of her time, including Olivier Messiaen, Henri Busser, Noël Gallon and Darius Milhaud. She won the Prix de Rome in 1948 after having to leave the conservatoire in 1941 when the German occupiers banned all Jews from the institution. In 1959, she was a professor of piano at the Conservatoire. Her work at the Conservatoire embraced the new ideas of music practice over music theory.

Performed by

Odette Gartenlaub

Recorded in 1961

Official Website

Iberomania: Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole

by Maureen Buja

We’ve noted many times the fascination the northern Europeans had with southern Europe: musical trips to Greece, Italy, and Spain seemed to be de rigeur in the 19th century if you were Scandinavian, German, or French.

French composer Édouard Lalo (1823-1892) was born in Lille; his father had been a member of Napoleon’s army. His fascination with Spain culminated in his Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21, which really isn’t a symphony, but is now considered a violin concerto. The use of Spanish motifs set the tone for the northern fascination with Spain, with Bizet’s Carmen, which had its premiere at the Opéra-Comique in Paris only a month after Lalo’s work.

Pierre Petit: Édouard Lalo, 1965 (Gallica: btv1b8421663h)

The work was written for the Spanish virtuoso violinist Pablo Sarasate and received its premiere in Paris on 7 December 1875.

Its five-movement structure and its symphony name caused many early 20th-century performers to drop the middle-movement Intermezzo and convert the work to a more standard 4-movement symphonic form. We’ll ignore the fact that most concertos only have 3 movements!

The fascination with Spain was part of a general fascination in Europe (northern Europe in particular) with exoticism – the sounds of India and the Middle East sparked composers’ imagination just as much as the wild Gypsy sound coming from Naples and Madrid. The Moorish occupation of Spain gave it a unique architecture, unique gardens, and access to an outdoor life unknown in the frozen north. Iberomania freed the more conservative northerners to write music full of life and sound, mysterious evening assignations, and to imagine beautiful women hidden behind their veils and mantillas, remaining visible but always inaccessible.

The first movement opens passionately, with strong statements in the orchestra followed by the violin. The singing first theme gives way to a ‘sultrier’ second theme. Sharp changes in dynamics emphasize the emotions of the movement. The violin skitters through unusual melodic passagework, but always with an emphasis on the excessive, be it of scalar movements or of emotion.

Édouard Lalo: Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21 – I. Allegro non troppo

This recording, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under George Szell, was made in 1945 with Ruth Posselt as violin soloist.

Ruth Posselt

American violinist Ruth Posselt (1911–2007) was a frequent performer with the Boston Symphony and performed the premieres of several American violin concertos, including those by Vernon Duke (as Vladimir Dukelsky), Edward Burlingame Hill, Samuel Barber, and Aaron Copland. In 1941, she gave the New York premiere of Paul Hindemith’s Violin Concerto. She appeared with all the major symphony orchestras in the US and, from her debut at Carnegie Hall at age 11 to her last concert in the 1970s, she was a leading violinist of her time. Her career wasn’t just in the US; she also had a substantial European following, first with her recitals in the 1930s and then with her appearances as a concert artist. Her 1934–1935 tour of the Soviet Union was the first by an American woman violinist. The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s long-time conductor Serge Koussevitzky declared her to be one of the ‘greatest violinists of our time’.

Performed by

Ruth Posselt
George Szell
Orchestre Symphonique de Boston

Recorded in 1945

Official Website