Last Dance

Michael Tsalka (piano, harpsichord, primo)

Diana Weston (piano, harpsichord, secondo)

Introduction

This is the second in a two-part series focussing on the musical properties of the ‘square’ piano, an instrument largely unknown today, yet of great significance to a large sector of society, especially in Australia during its colonial days. To this end, the program includes works from the late eighteenth century as well as contemporary pieces that explore its particular sound qualities in different contexts. In use is an original square piano labelled Robertson of Liverpool c. 1835 by James Smith, semi-restored. Further instrumentation is provided by a Flemish reproduction harpsichord by Marc du Cornet.

Notes in italics by the composers, commentary by Diana Weston

The least known of Bach’s sons, his fifth, and (much) older brother to the better-known Johann Christian, is Johann Christoff Friedrich. He produced a large amount of music including choral works, symphonies, cantatas, chamber works and some pieces for keyboard in the employ of Count Wilhelm at Bückeburg. Although considerably older than his brother Johann Christian who had embraced the piano forte so whole-heartedly, Christoff Friedrich also seems to have taken naturally to the piano. His compositional style has been likened to Haydn’s and while not considered an innovator, as an ‘early adopter’ he recognized the potential of the piano, offering, in this duet, opportunities for both players to shine, some interplay between them, and dynamic variation.

His Sonata in A major for Clavier 4 hands is in two movements. The first (Allegro) is bright and breezy, each player coming and going one with the other making it companionable to play. The second movement, a rondo, (Allegretto) follows in the tradition of folk style seen in many works for piano forte, and which were adaptable as dance numbers, able to be repeated many times.

A prolific composer, well-known to the public, admired by Mozart and Haydn, Czech composer Johann Baptist Vanhal is today all but forgotten by the general public and concert go-er. Vanhal’s extensive output included church music, symphonies, and importantly for keyboard players, a large amount of piano music. Vanhal in the latter part of his life realised that the expanding middle classes who were acquiring their own piano fortes, were in need of piano music to suit. His’ Two Sonatas for four hands’ seems designed for this purpose.

The first of Two Sonatas, Sonata in F major, is structurally different from its companion. It is in the developing ‘sonata’ form, (whereas the second, in A major, is a set of variations with rondo, which can be heard in the first of this series). Sonata in F major is in three movements, the first (Allegro moderato) starts with a martial air before dissolving into a series of questioning steps and turns. The second (Adagio o Andante), is a rather serious minuet, the third (Allegro) a cheerful rondo. Together they form a satisfying whole, nicely balanced as a duo.

The Sonatas by Vanhal have been particularly revealing when looked at from the perspective of the square piano. As a duet they are ideally suited to being ‘music at home’. But within this humble model are pieces of great subtlety, one which the performer can find (and in fact is essential) within the confines and capabilities of the square. One can highlight the difference in registers, notice the many micro-articulations, observe the frequent dynamic changes – much of it in the score, but much to be found in the personality of the square.

As a young emerging composer, Beethoven was lucky enough to attract the patronage of Count von Waldstein, to whom he later dedicated in gratitude one of the greatest works of his oevre – his Piano Sonata Op. 53. These eight variations on a theme by Count Waldstein are more modest in scope, nevertheless endowed with an obvious Beethoven stamp – each varied in style and mood from the playful to the serious, the intimate nature of the variations effectively expressed with the equally personal square piano.

 Nicholas Smith (England)

Brushstrokes, an application of ink or paint to paper or canvas, many fibres acting both in and out of communion: a solid mass dipped in liquid to create marks both fluid and fixed, bigger and smaller marks, piled up with skill and difference into something so much larger; an image, a word, sometimes both once completed, fixed in time, space and essence while free and floating in interpretations and emotional response; a balance of solid and liquid, of small parts in a greater design.

Joan Josep Gutiérrez

PRELUDE AND FUGUE IN C MINOR Why a fugue in the 21th century? Since my adolescence, I have always been interested in the counterpoint. I did not know why, but it was something that fascinated me. Later, I realized that the counterpoint is one of the culminations of European musical culture, derived from the invention of musical writing. Musical writing brings musical creation to an intellectual level in which emotion and reason are found to achieve a discourse that questions the mind. Simplifying, counterpoint is intellect, harmony is emotion. In the tonal system, the mixture of these dimensions comes to perfection in the fugues of J. S. Bach, which connect the past with the future. Quoting Glenn Gould: So, do you want to write a fugue? The fugue we are going to hear is not scholastic. It is a free three-voices fugue, with one subject, without countersubject, and in a 12/8 time that suggest the swing of the jazz. Actually, it is based in a Blues scale. The harmonic process is clearly tonal but full of dissonances. No more than Bach, I think! In counterpoint, dissonances are accepted and very understandable. This fugue is good for piano, but yet for harpsichord, instrument that I had in my mind when I compose it. The prelude is quite different. It is like a toccata or a perpetuum mobile. I was inspired on Mendelssohn piano music. The style is very pianistic and expressive, with a melody floating over a fast and broken harmonic accompaniment, arpeggios and a talking melodic bass. Around the middle appears the theme of the fugue. This work is dedicated to my friend Michael Tsalka.

Aspasia Nasopoulou (Greece/Netherlands, commissioned, 2019)

The piece is inspired by the myth of Io.

Io (Jupiter I) is the innermost of the four Galilean moons of the planet Jupiter. It is the fourth-largest moon, has the highest density of all the moons, and has the least amount of water of any known astronomical object in the Solar System. It was discovered in 1610 and was named after the mythological character Io, a priestess of Hera who became one of Zeus‘ lovers. 

The parts, I could say that they portray some personages and situations of the story, not always chronologically eg. the running of Io from country to country can be seen in different ways in parts D,E, F, Part B: can be seen as the meeting of Zeus and Io, Part C: as the dance of the innocent tragic girl “in love”, Part D: there is the presence of the annoying insect that hunts Io, Part E: Io is imprisoned and transformed as a cow. She is trying to run, after Argos was killed by Hermes, Part F: can be seen as the running from country to country, but also the cathartic ending of her “travel” towards liberation and being human again. Also this ending is connected with the sky and her relation to the Moon.

The eight parts of the piece are inspired also by the eight phases of the moon.

Moonacres Farm by Ann Carr-Boyd was composed for solo piano with a version for duo piano in 2018.  Its title is derived from a farm in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales with which Ann was familiar, and the theme from the opening of “Skyworks” by Helen Morris. Ann asks the piece to be played in a dreamy fashion ‘suggestive of the moon hovering over paddocks and trees’. This ‘mooniness’ is particularly successful played on a square piano.

Aspasia Nasopoulou

The 3*1 suite is inspired by three Rubaiyats poem of the Persian mathematician and

philosopher Omar Khayyám (1048-1131). Related to my compositional intention to research the miniature form, the Rubaiyats, a 4-line form poetry equally to Greek and Roman epigrams and to Japanese Haikus, immediately captured my interest; bringing the theme in the first line, developing it in the second, making a climax in the third and concluding dramatically in the fourth, or finishing alternatively with something as surprise, gave me great handles for my compositional choices.Those subtle in form and language poems fitted very well with the character of a historical keyboard such as the clavichord.

“Utopia”

Rumbajat Nr 28

Graves (72)

This vault, underneath which we live bemused

Is, so to speak, God’s magic shadow-show:

With sun for lamp, the world as a wide screen

For countless lie-rehearsing silhouettes

“Rubini”

Rumbajat Nr 34

Avery (164)

Wine is liquid ruby the flask the mine,

The cup is the body, its wine the soul:

That crystal goblet laughing with wine,

Is a tear the heart’s blood hidden inside it

“Ochto”

Rumbajat Nr 8

Heron-Allen (O.20, C. 23 and C.55)

Like water in a great river and like wind in the desert,

Another day passes out of the period of my existence;

Grief has never lingered in my mind –concerning two days,

The day that has not yet come and the day that is past

Ann Carr-Boyd

Outback River is a Suite in three movements about the Darling River in New South Wales, which is home to a number of aboriginal nations and commonly known as ‘ Barka ‘ by the Barkindji people.

At the Source

At the river’s source in northern New South Wales the Darling is fed by rivers further north to become one of Australia’s greatest and longest rivers.

Finale

The Darling joins the Murray River on the Victorian border and eventually these combined mighty rivers flow out to sea at the Coorong in South Australia.

 Outback River was commissioned by Diana Weston for her husband’s birthday and completed in June 2022.

The original commission for harpsichord and two cellos was engendered by a trip to Menindee on the Darling River in the far West of NSW (the Outback), which had recently received flood-waters from Western Queensland thousands of kilometres away. It was fascinating to observe two fast-moving bodies of water of different colours – one green, one brown – not merging but running parallel. River Red-gums were up to their waists in water (normally their roots are visible), catching branches and debris in eddies that indicated the dangers beneath the surface calm. Outback River was arranged by the composer for harpsichord and piano in 2023, resulting in the long lines of the cellos becoming broken up and elaborated. We have adapted this score further to accommodate the character of our square piano, thinning textures and slowing tempi. A strangely murky under-water effect is thereby created.

First Dance, by Elena Kats-Chernin, was composed ‘For Nick and Svetlana’s wedding on 24 May 2015 in celebration and love from Mum’. I am so pleased Elena has sent me this very personal tribute to her son and partner, a piece that does indeed speak of her love and the joy of the day. But also of hidden uncertainties and some nostalgia, all of which can be expressed so convincingly with the delicate and variable (almost broken) sounds of Robertson.

Violeta Dinescu (Romania/Germany)

I composed Variazioni alla Vanhal for square piano and harpsichord for the wonderful musicians Diana Weston and Michael Tsalka. When I was asked to write a new piece, to be played together with the music of the composer of Czech origin Johann Baptist Vanhal, I was very happy to discover the characteristic sonorities of this composer. I decided to take the first four-hand Sonata, Op. 32 of Vanhal as a musical texture reference for my new composition, also the idea of ​​variation. An important aspect is who I am composing for. I was impressed when I heard Michael Tsalka play and I discovered the natural way he switches from one instrument to another. He uses techniques characteristic of the harpsichord instrument, when he interprets music on the piano and thus creates a spectral world of unheard-of colors playing the piano…I have woven elements from Vanhal’s Sonata I into a way in which they appear either like in a dream, in which you get closer and closer and recognize what at first barely appeared, or continuously transformed. The transformation is done in different degrees of contrasts, in such a way that a hierarchy of surprises is created, which make you imagine the dream again, more precisely you are in a new state of dreaming. We can imagine a system of mirrors, which reflects, multiplies, transforms the material into a continuous change process. The musicians are invited to discover for themselves ways of creating sound spaces, as in an imaginary choreography, where dream states intertwine and overlap. The musicians have the freedom to choose their parts that correspond either with characteristics of character, or with contrasts in technique or expression. It can be created in this way every time along a new narrative or musical thread.’

As we sleep, or more probably, lie ‘awake’, aware of external sounds yet the clock is moving quickly, we are in a semi-conscious zone. Thoughts flit through our minds, varied, unrelated and unable to be held, our minds are space, thoughts are what fill it – thoughts that may be of the day – mundane, or of the past, but fragmented, distorted, even grotesque, and strangely devoid of emotion.

Or so I picture ‘Variations alla Vanhal’, variations like none other. Bits of the original float in and out of existence, caught up in another dream-thought like fish in a net, and released as another takes its place. Violeta offers us dream-thoughts in each of the segments. She asks the performer to create (improvise) the world around it. Each time the ‘thought’ is played it will therefore be different, perhaps with Vanhal peeping through, perhaps not. Of the 9 sections or ‘variations’ that make up this semi-improvised work, 35 separate segments can be identified – some miniscule, others considerably longer, some ordered, some unimaginably free. As we feel our way into the strangely beguiling world that Violeta hints at, new sounds and sensations open up. We have selected a handful of these, recognizing that this work, largely improvised, will change each time it is played. What is recorded is merely a sampling of what might be done.

BIOGRAPHY: Michael Tsalka 2024

Michael Tsalka is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the School of Music, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He is also a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Salzburg, Austria; and the Chairman of the Board and Faculty of the European Fortepiano Museum and Academy in Germany.

As a pianist and Early Keyboard performer, he has won numerous prizes in Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America. He is a versatile musician, who performs repertoire from the early Baroque era to our days. He was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel. After studies in Israel, Germany and Italy, he graduated in 2008 from Temple University (U.S.A) with a D.M.A. in Piano Performance and an M.M. in Early Keyboard Performance and Chamber Music. His mentors included Lambert Orkis, Joyce Lindorff, Harvey Wedeen, as well as Dario di Rosa, Klaus Schilde, Malcolm Bilson, David Shemer, Sandra Mangsen, and Charles Rosen.

Prof. Tsalka maintains a busy concert schedule, performing circa 110 concerts a year worldwide. Recent engagements included Hall of Central Harmony in Beijing Forbidden City, Bellas Artes Theater in Mexico City, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, St. Denis Festival in Paris, Beethoven House in Bonn, Tokyo’s City Opera, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Volksbühne in Berlin, the Jerusalem Music Centre, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg, plus live performances for radio/television stations around the globe (Sydney, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Munich, Helsinki, Brussels, Geneva, and London.

Together with musicologist Dr. Angélica Minero Escobar, he has prepared a critical edition of Daniel Gottlob Türk’s 30 keyboard sonatas for Artaria Editions in New Zealand.

He has recorded 32 critically acclaimed CDs for NAXOS, Grand Piano, Paladino, Brilliant Classics, IMI, Sheva Collection, Wirripang, and Ljud & Bild. Circa 75 contemporary compositions (which he premiered) were dedicated to him by composers from all over the world.

Dr. Tsalka has directed multiple festivals in China, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Finland. From 2002-2008, he taught at the Esther Boyer College of Music in Philadelphia. From 2009-2014, he taught at the Escuela Superior de Música, National Center for the Arts in Mexico City, and at Lilla Akademien, Stockholm. He has been an artist in residence at the NCMA in New Zealand (2018, 2020, 2024) and has presented over 160 master classes in academic institutions in all continents.

 Biography: Diana Weston 2024

Harpsichordist Diana Weston is the founder of the ensemble Thoroughbass. From its inception in 2009, as director of the ensemble Diana has been singularly interested in the promotion of music that is not generally heard for one reason or another – initially women composers from the baroque, later, works that have been forgotten or fallen out of fashion. Into this category falls her resurrection of music from the archives of the National Library’s Stewart Simonds collection of colonial sheet music, some of which has been recorded and distributed to museums and historic homes devoted to this period.  Through her commissions, many new works for harpsichord and period instruments have been created, and many have been dedicated to her.

Diana is a recording artist for the Australian recording label Wirripang which has published nearly all her recorded music. These works are regularly aired on radio. Diana has contributed to the Australian music scene through her commissions and arrangements, as producer of her concert series, in radio interviews, in her regional appearances, and in her research and promotion of early keyboards such as the ‘square’ piano forte. She appears as the featured artist in Radio Fine Music’s 100% Australian Made in October 2024.

Diana is particularly interested in the interconnections of music and other artforms and has designed projects where painting, poetry, children’s stories and scent have been integral with the music.  She is adept at making arrangements that shed new light on the familiar.

Diana is a graduate of Medicine from Sydney University and from University of New England (Armidale) in Music with Honours and Masters in Performance Research. Mentors in piano have included Winifred Burston (concert pianist), Igor Hmelnitsky (Conservatorium of Music, Sydney), Tessa Burnie (concert pianist), and in harpsichord Monika Kornel.

In her past life, Diana practised medicine.

Cover image of bower birds: Kymba Burrows (Soulful Branding)

Sound Engineer: Ross A’Hern (Sounds on Safari)

Piano forte restoration and maintenance: Jennifer Roberts and Marcelo Costi (Narrow Fifth)

Harpsichord maintenance: Carey Beebe (Carey Beebe Harpsichords)

Audio Editor: Mary Sambell

Recording editor: Diana Weston

Sponsored by The Johann Baptist Wanhal Association (France)

Dr Tsalka is courtesy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.