Piano Miniatures

SKU: BT.ESZ-01494800

With his Venti pezzi per pianoforte (1938), the Hungarian composer Sándor Veress (1907-92) wanted to create a collection of piano miniatures on folk melodies destined for use in the concert hall as well as for teaching purposes. Each piece is based on one or more songs and dances from different Hungarian speaking areas, which are re-elaborated and presented in a carefully conceived alternation of character, musical writing and technical difficulty. The result is a multi-colored overview of Hungarian folk music: songs of a pathetic or even dramatic nature are contrasted with lighter and high-spirited pieces, interspersed with dances of varying types, among which a homogeneousblock stands out formed by the group of Csárdás, a typical tavern dance also used by Liszt. The Venti pezzi per pianoforte represent the culmination of the extensive ethnomusicological research made by Veress in the ’30s and ‘40s, while working as assistant to László Lajtha and to Béla Bartók, and at the same time carrying out field work in Hungary and neighboring countries. The composer intended that this collection should play a fundamental role of mediation between folklore and western “art” music, by revitalizing the language from within, without resorting to the abstractions of the experimentation being developed in Europe at the time. During his lifetime Veress never succeeded in publishing the complete version of the Venti pezzi per pianoforte, but issued various selections of the pieces, two of which remained totally unpublished. The present critical edition prepared by Giada Viviani reconstructs the complete text of the Venti pezzi per pianoforte on the basis of manuscript sources kept at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel: the musical scores, with fingering by Jakub Tchorzewski, are accompanied by an introductory essay on the context in which the collection was created, including a description of the state of the sources and a detailed apparatus criticus of the textual variants.

Con i suoi Venti pezzi per pianoforte (1938), il compositore ungherese Sándor Veress (1907-92) ha voluto creare una raccolta di miniature pianistiche su melodie popolari destinate sia a un uso concertistico, sia all’attivit didattica. In ogni branovengono rielaborati uno o più canti e danze provenienti da diverse aree geografiche di lingua ungherese, che si susseguono in base a una sapiente alternanza di carattere, scrittura musicale, difficolt esecutiva. Viene così offerta una variegatapanoramica della musica popolare di questa nazionalit : a canti di contenuto patetico o addirittura drammatico se ne affiancano di più leggeri e giocosi, avvicendandosi a danze di natura differente, tra cui spicca come un blocco omogeneo il gruppodelle Csárdás, tipica danza da locanda utilizzata anche da Liszt.I Venti pezzi per pianoforte rappresentano il coronamento della ricca attivit etnomusicologica condotta da Veress tra gli anni ’30 e ‘40, sia lavorando come assistente di László Lajtha e di Béla Bartók, sia svolgendo ricerca sul campo in Ungheria enei paesi limitrofi. Per il compositore, questa raccolta doveva svolgere un fondamentale ruolo di mediazione tra il folklore e la musica “colta” occidentale, in maniera da rivitalizzarne il linguaggio dall’interno, senza gli astrattismi dellesperimentazioni allora condotte in Europa.Nel corso della sua vita Veress non riuscì mai a pubblicare la versione integrale dei Venti pezzi per pianoforte, mentre ne fece uscire sul mercato alcune selezioni, lasciando del tutto inediti due brani. La presente edizione critica a cura di GiadaViviani ricostruisce il testo completo dei Venti pezzi per pianoforte in base alle fonti manoscritte conservate presso la Fondazione Paul Sacher di Basilea: gli spartiti musicali, corredati dalla diteggiatura di Jakub Tchorzewski, sono accompagnatida un saggio introduttivo sul contesto di creazione della raccolta, dalla descrizione dello stato delle fonti e da un dettagliato apparato critico delle varianti testuali.

SKU: BR.EB-9355

ISBN 9790004188194. 9 x 12 inches.

Little Cadenzas, Canons and Preludes for Pianoforte, an album of 36 piano miniatures in all keys of the circle of fifths and in church modes, as well as two preludes by Eusebius Mandyczewski (1857-1929) that modulate through all keys, are presented here for the first time in print. Mandyczewski, who went down in music history as a Brahms friend, editor and archivist of the Vienna Musikverein, composed numerous vocal and piano works, including twelve Orthodox liturgies and two cycles of variations on themes by George Frideric Handel. The album, a birthday present from the composer to his twelve-year-old daughter Virginia, was written in the middle of the First World War and was not premiered publicly until a century later - after the manuscript was found in a Ukrainian library - at the Mandyczewski Festival in Chernivtsi (Ukraine) in 2017. Mandyczewski shows himself here as a master of the small form and counterpoint, but also as a demanding teacher - and so the pieces, once reserved for his daughter, will now be made accessible to a wider circle of young musicians to enjoy.