The thirty-two piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) remain one of the greatest treasures in music. These sonatas span his earliest to his latest published music, providing an unparalleled window into his artistic development. Several of the most famous carry descriptive epithets, usually applied by market-savvy publishers: Pathétique, Appassionata, The Tempest. Today we hear the popular “Moonlight” Piano Sonata in C-Sharp Minor, so-called because the rippling arpeggios of the opening movement suggested moonlight on water to German critic Ludwig Rellstab, writing in 1832.

Beyond its title, the work is remarkable for the hypnotic rhythm and slow tempo of its first movement. This Adagio was such a hit in Beethoven’s own day that he was heard to comment, “Surely I’ve written better things.” Because classical era sonatas typically open with a fast movement, Beethoven’s departure helps explain the work’s official designation: Sonata quasi una fantasia. Moreover, the first movement is not in sonata form per se. Rather, it unfolds like a through-composed song without words. And for sheer sonic effect, Beethoven’s indication to perform the whole Adagio without dampers creates an ethereal halo of chords waxing and waning; that effect is better realized on a period fortepiano (as heard today), whose natural sustain is far shorter than a modern grand piano. Following the Adagio, the Allegretto in D-flat major steps out into a very different world. Here, all is graceful and buoyant. The C-sharp/D-flat tonal connection ensures the transition will not feel too abrupt. The Allegretto’s spirit feels gentle and at times coy, pausing after broken phrases that then receive short, pat replies.

Bristling with demonic energy, the Finale seems to be lit by an inner spark that burns through both first and second themes. The former explodes as rising arpeggios over tremolo left hand. That thunderous accompaniment persists into the second theme, which is more vocal in tone. Later, Beethoven ramps up the rhetorical impact through a substantial coda including a cadenza of diminished-7ths, cascades of arpeggios, and a rising chromatic scale. By now the Sonata’s initial reverie clearly has been swept aside by the maelstrom.


André Caplet (1878-1925) started his formal music study at the Paris Conservatory, where he took the coveted Prix de Rome in 1901, beating out classmate Maurice Ravel in the process. Caplet made his conducting debut with performances in Paris and Boston, and eventually helped to orchestrate and direct performances of several of Claude Debussy’s compositions. Sadly, his professional career fell victim to the Great War: volunteering for service at the initial call-to-arms in 1914, Caplet was gassed while fighting in the trenches and subsequently gave up conducting and teaching. Only composition remained possible for him.

Conte Fantastique, inspired by Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” was completed between 1908 and 1919. Though strongly influenced by Debussy, Caplet’s musical style as evinced in Conte edges closer to atonality. It is perhaps more important to note his experiences behind the podium conducting avant-garde music. Some of the primary material for Conte Fantastique dates back to the heady days of 1909 when Arnold Schoenberg’s revolutionary twelve-tone art was still new. By the time Caplet returned to the piece after the war, his style had grown more somber and mystical. Novel timbres and performance techniques come more to fore and greatly enhance his ability to set an author like Poe. Poe had a powerful effect on generations of French artists: Baudelaire had made translations and Debussy himself worked for years on an opera, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Something in Poe’s celebration of the grotesque and horrid took root in the late 19th-century aesthetic of decadence.

An aura of fantasy enters Caplet’s Conte from the prominent use of harp and his penchant for pentatonic and modal melodies. Agitated string tremolos and bass pedals frequently underscore the narration, which is interrupted at intervals for violent musical gestures that clue into the mounting dramatic tension. Caplet’s depiction of the “gay and magnificent revel” near the piece’s midpoint certainly echoes Debussy and Ravel: the former’s 1905 opera Pelléas et Mélisande and the latter’s 1903 String Quartet. The music reaches its most anguished when the revelers note the presence of a new masked figure who “stalked to and fro among the waltzers.”At the end, harp motives from the beginning return to mark the omnipresence of the “red death,” the disembodied evil that has been an unseen/unheard force since the start of the work.


Dedicated to the memory of the Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges and prefaced by a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, Roberto Sierra’s Piano Sonata No. 14 … It is directly based on another famous Piano Sonata No. 14: the so-called “Moonlight” Sonata by Beethoven heard at the beginning of today’s concert. Sierra adds the following notes about the imaginative concept behind this sonata. The story reads like real life, and there may be a thread that links Dranem Erreip (an outsider to western classical music) to a young Sierra. But the final line destroys all connection to reality and elevates Sierra’s program to the realm of fantasy:

During a visit to Constantinople in late May 1915, Dranem Erreip attends a concert with his cousin, now living in Turkey, at the stately home of a wealthy French merchant. Dranem has never attended a piano recital; in Uqbar, where he was born, the classical western music tradition was unknown to most people. He was fascinated by the guests’ silence and solemnity when the pianist started to play. He was indifferent to the works he heard, except for Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” The work transported him to a magical place beyond the orange dunes under the moon.

Before returning home the following day, he told his cousin how Beethoven’s work captivated his imagination. In Uqbar, he desperately tries to remember the sonata; as he hums, the Sonata is deformed, reformed, and finally transformed. Motivated by his attraction to the work, Dranem gets hold of a translated German text on music composition, where he learns music theory. Using a dröuip (a 14 strings instrument from Uqbar that covers the range of a fortepiano), he started to notate what he remembered, and in 1922 completed his transcription of the “Moonlight Sonata.” In 2053 Dranem’s transcription was found in Ankara.

Sierra’s sonata lasts less than ten minutes and is cast in three movements, each directly inspired by thematic material from Beethoven’s model. As described by Sierra, passages maintain tenuous links to what Erreip heard in that momentous performance, though they are now altered – as if heard through a fog of time – by irregular rhythmic groupings, truncated scales, and full measures of silence. The first movement feels particularly eerie, with fragments of Beethoven’s music atomized by expanses of silence. The second movement replaces empty measures with cascades of dissonant arpeggios that scramble the sound of anything familiar. Similarly, the finale captures the explosive power of Beethoven’s original but it offers drama of an entirely different kind: occasionally motoric but also fitful, brilliantly grotesque and haunting.


Born Enrico Mancini in Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood, Henry Mancini (1924-1974) was a composer of numerous film and TV scores, won multiple Academy Awards, 20 Grammy Awards, and penned several of the most iconic songs of the 20th century. His earliest experience came as an arranger working for Big Band leaders including Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. Following two years active duty in World War II, Mancini returned home to work with Miller again and was soon hired by Universal Pictures. Though he left the studio in 1958, he immediately struck up an important and fruitful relationship with director Blake Edwards. The pair would team up on Days of Wine and Roses, The Pink Panther and its sequels, 10, and, of course, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).

The signature number from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “Moon River” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and is currently rated #4 Best Song of All Time according to the American Film Institute. The song’s lyrics were authored by Johnny Mercer. They nostalgically reminisce to Mercer’s own childhood in the American South and the call of distant horizons, adventures, and amorous longing. Mercer and Mancini wrote the song specifically for Audrey Hepburn, the lead in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, though in later years dozens of other singers would capitalize upon its charms (none better than Andy Williams, for whom “Moon River” became a signature anthem).

Today we hear Zachary Wadsworth’s own arrangement of “Moon River.” According to Wadsworth, the song’s beauty comes from its simplicity:

My main aim in arranging it was to preserve this and to honor the mid-century light jazz world that it evokes. I’ve used the harp as the main accompaniment for the first verse in homage to Audrey Hepburn strumming her guitar on the fire escape in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In lieu of Mancini’s original harmonica solo, I’ve substituted a high double bass solo. After that, the string quintet takes it away, first with a rich modulation, and then as a serene backdrop for the singer’s final verse.

© Jason Stell, 2024