PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

- rom Bach to Shostakovich, from Chopin to Rachmaninov, we are very familiar with sets
i Ê of pieces which traverse the 24 major and minor keys. But almost without exception they
j are composed for keyboard instruments, and it is specifically the piano literature which
takes the ability to read and play in any key for granted. Most string players recoil with
discomfiture at the very notion of anything complicated in the keys where the open
strings are not readily involved, and it is no accident that no-one seems to have composed a
fiddle concerto in G sharp minor. So Ferdinand David was pushing the boundaries of normal
practice, as well as his luck, by writing Bunte Reihe (literally ' Varied Sériés') through ali the
keys. Liszt spotted the work at once and was much taken with it, recommending it to the French
publisher Léon Escudier "both from the point of view of art, and of a profitable, and perhaps
even populär, success." (letter from Weimar, 4 February 1851). Although violinists have seldom
taken up the work, either as a source of encore pieces or for teaching purposes, several of the
movements enjoyed a brief period of popularity in Liszt's arrangement for piano, where the the
string players' key problem no longer applies.
Of the life and work of Ferdinand David (1810-1873) little survives outside the realms of
scholarship: his many original works are ail but forgotten; his didactic works are still known to
some violinists; his éditions of old masters are long gone; his éditions of classical sonatas may
turn up occasionally. His friendship with Mendelssohn, however, led to the things for which his
name cannot be forgotten: he assisted with the préparation of the violin part in Mendelssohn's E
minor Concerto, played the première and received the dedication of that work for his pains. He
secured, with Mendelssohn's recommendation, the leadership of the Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra and was appointed principal violin professor at the new Leipzig Conservatorium.
Among his many students Joachim and Svendsen stand out. He counted Schumann and Liszt
among his friends, and he and Liszt corresponded and collaborated musically for many years.
Heifetz eventually inherited, and recorded with, David's Guarneri del Gesù violin.
David's works may fall short of the level of that of the two famous contemporaries whom he
most resembles, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and the new directions of Berlioz, Liszt and
Wagner were not for him. But, if Bunte Reihe is typical of him then there is much to admire in a
quiet way. The language is neat and accomplished, and the characterisations are deftly limned.
The whole set lies somewhere in the same realm as Mendelssohn's Songs without Words and
Schumann's Kinderszenen, with the same degree of sentimentality and nostalgia of the former,
and the heartfelt simplicity of the latter. Most of the pieces speak for themselves, but the transfer
of violin technique to the piano produces a number of interesting, not to say hair-raising,
Problems: repeated notes are always easier with a bow, and, conversely, multiple-stopped
chords don't provide much of a challenge as far as intonation is conceraed at the keyboard,
temperament notwithstanding. Liszt has managed to put the original violin part and rather
rudimentary piano accompaniment together in such a way as to obscure even a fleeting
impression that the works were conceived for any medium other than solo piano. Liszt remains
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