|
Sonata
for Piano (1958)
This
webpage provides information about the André Tchaikowsky Sonata
for Piano (1958). Since there are no known recordings, there are no
music files available. The text is from the book, The Other Tchaikowsky
- A Biographical Sketch of André Tchaikowsky.
Known
Details:
The
following text is from the book, The Other Tchaikowsky - A Biographical
Sketch of André Tchaikowsky, and describes what is known
about the Sonata for Piano (1958).
Sonata
for Piano (1958)
In 1958,
while vacationing in Madrid with his cousin Charles Fortier, André
began to compose a piano sonata. Charles remembers the event:
"We
were in a Madrid hotel, where I was having a vacation with my family
and André. I decided that we should all go to a bull fight
together, but André hated that idea. So everyone else went
to the bull fight and André stayed behind at the hotel. Well,
he was composing a piano sonata and had finished the first movement,
or something. He decided that Rubinstein should hear it. The hotel
had a piano, so André could play it over the telephone for
him. André telephoned Australia, and tracked down Rubinstein
who was there on tour. Then André played the piano over the
telephone so Rubinstein could make comments. The cost was enormous,
which André put on my hotel bill!"
André
told friends that while he was practicing on the hotel piano, located
in the ballroom, people started to come in and listen. Then he switched
from Bach to his newly composed Sonata for Piano, and everyone filed
out until the ballroom was once again empty.
André
was reluctant to play his own works in concert, yet wanted to test the
reactions to his compositions on an audience and the music critics.
His ingenious solution was to include the sonata on a recital program,
but attribute it to an unknown composer, Uyu Dal. The recital was in
Chicago on April 19, 1959, and the program included:
Prelude
and fugue in C sharp minor, No.1 - Bach
Sonata (1958) World Premiere - Uyu Dal
Sonata, Opus 109 - Beethoven
Ballade, No. 3, Opus 47 - Chopin
Mephisto Waltz - Liszt
Prelude and fugue if F sharp major - Bach
The reviewers
had this to say about the Dal:
Chicago
American (Roger Dettmer) - [André Tchaikowsky gave] the
world premiere of a sonata (1958) by Uyu Dal. The latter carpenter
would seem to be a countryman of Mr. Tchaikowsky whose name, for want
of a glossary or further program identification, could be pronounced
"Oooooh-you-doll." Or it could not. No matter, since it's
altogether likely -- on the basis of Sunday's musical evidence --
that Mr. Dal will never again be heard in Chicago. That's the kind
of piece Sonata (1958) is.
The first
movement (Non troppo presto) opens in a diatonic-dissonant vocabulary,
like any of 200 other contemporary piano works you've heard in this
idiom. There is a glint of lyricism in the second movement (Largo)
but Mr. Dal has overdecorated his basic materials to such a degree
that expressivity died aborning. The finale (piano e veloce, which
was, as played Sunday, veloce but not piano) is a latter-day relative
of Chopin's finale to the B-flat minor Sonata.
There
are semi- (or should I say pseudo-) atonal passages of needless difficulty,
and pages of busy, busy writing that are not, however, very actionful
musically and only at moments moving.
Musical
Courier (R.L.) - A new Sonata by Uyu Dal was performed with enthusiasm
and understanding: it deserves another hearing by Chicago audiences.
Chicago
Daily News (Don Henahan) - An intriguing oddity of the program
was a Sonata (1958) by Uyu Dal, identified only as a contemporary
Polish composer. Rumor has it that Uyu Dal and Tchaikowsky are the
same, and since the pianist will say only that he "found the
score" somewhere, rumor may be right. The sonata, in support
of this, was youthful in sound, with occasional "shocking"
explosions but hardly a fully developed idea throughout.
Chicago
Daily Tribune (Seymore Raven) - A modem work on the program was
a just completed Sonata (world premiere) by Uyu Dal. The feeling persisted
that Dal is Mr. Tchaikowsky's pseudonym. A companion feeling was that
in composing this music, Dal was very much inspired by Prokofiev but
much more gentle in temperament despite the very brilliant pianistic
idiom that darted in and out of the terse, quicksilver scoring.
André
never played the Sonata again. The score is dated, "May/June 1958.
Madrid - London." The original manuscript is in the Josef Weinberger
Archives.
|
