For the next several months, I will travel around the world to deliver my recital program “Piano Waterscapes,” featuring piano pieces with water imagery.
Below are the chronological list of pieces I have for this program. When played in its entirety with my talks, it’s a bit longer than a normal two-hour recital program with an intermission. For a casual music salon, probably an hour is a good duration. Consider the list a menu to choose from in any combination of your desire, like at a restaurant. I still have dates available for bookings. For a personal gift for a special occasion, a community concert at schools/hospitals/office lobbies, a home concert….If there is a space, a piano, and an audience, let’s make it happen! Please contact me to discuss the fee, the scheduling, and the rest.
There are so many piano music about water! Is it because two-third of our body is made up of water? Is it because life began in H2O? The sheer volume of music inspired by water makes me wonder… Below are my final list of choices!
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sonata Nov. 14, Op. 27-2 in C-sharp Minor (1801) 1st movement. (6 min 30 sec)
This piece does not directly have to do with water. However, its popular title comes from a critic’s comment, after Beethoven’s death, on the first movement: how it gave him the impression of a moonlight on Lake Lucerne.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
“Die Forelle (The Trout) (1817)” arranged for solo piano by Liszt (1844) (4 min)
Schubert’s tune became so popular that he was commissioned to write a piece of chamber music on its tune. The famous “Trout” Piano Quintet came about as a result, only two years later in 1819. The lyric to Schubert’s song can be found here both in the original German, and a translation in English.
“Auf dem Wasser zu singen (To be Sung on the Water) (1823) arr. by Liszt (1876) (4 min 30 sec)
The recurring rippling pattern in six and ornamental notes sparkling like light flickers on water surface, surround the heart wrenching melody with dotted rhythms. The reason for this dramatically different song from the Trout may be the syphillis diagnosis, a death sentence in his time, he’d received only several months before this composition. Lyric by Stolberg and its English translation can be found here.
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
“Raindrop” Prelude from 24 Preludes, Op. 28 (1839)
Which “Raindrop”? No. 4 in E min (2 min 30 sec) vs. No. 15 in D-flat Maj ( 6 min)
George Sand, Chopin’s lover at the time of this composition, recollected an anecdote which later came to designate the title “Raindrop” to Op. 28-15. According to her semi-fictional autobiography, one day, coming home from a treacherous rain, she found Chopin playing the prelude to the sound of the rain, distressed about his nightmare of drowning while water droplets kept pounding on his chest. People have generally interpreted this anecdote to point to No. 15, the most substantial of the 24 Preludes in the set. However, it could also have been No. 4 in E Minor, some scholars argue, with the steady repetition of the left-hand chords underneath the haunting melody.
“Barcarolle” Op. 60（1846）C-sharp Major（9 min）
Barcarolle is a musical genre, in style of folk song sung by Venetian gondolier. Chopin’s Barcarolle is one of the most famous. Let yourself lilt on the boat, and soon the wave of excitement will take you to a whole new musical adventure.
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este from Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage, 1867–77) (8 min)
Liszt’s unique pianism which captured the water, its movement, and its reflections largely influenced the way later generations of composers depicted water with piano. The score quotes (in Latin) a passage from the Gospel of St. John: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
June: Barcarolle from “Seasons” Op. 37 (1876) （5 min）
Tchaikovsky’s Barcarolle is like an elegy with its wistful melody. The legendary Richter often played it for an encore. It’s quite different from Chopin’s Barcarolle. It is accompanied by a quote from a poem by Pleshcheyev. “Let us go to the shore;there the waves will kiss our feet.With mysterious sadnessthe stars will shine down on us.”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Clair de Lune from Suite Bergamasque (1905) (6 min)
The widely accepted interpretation of the piece depicts the middle section as the reflection of the moon on a water surface. It was inspired by a poem by Varlaine by the same title.
Poissons d’or (Fish of Gold) from Image II (1907) (4 min)
Like many French artists at the time, Debussy was a Japanophile, and a collector of Japanese Ukiyoe paintings and other artifacts. This piece was inspired by a lacquered box, Debussy kept on top of his desk, on the surface of which were two gold koi fish under a weeping willow.
La Cathédrale engloutie (Sunken Cathedral) from Preludes Book I (1910) No. 10. (6 min)
Capturing the movement of water is easier in music. This piece captures a lake at its most still and mysterious, based on the legend of city “Ys” that has sunken underneath the ocean. It rises up on a clear morning only for a short while. Debussy depicts the church bells, the organ, and the cants being sung emerging out of the water, getting closer, and closer.
Feux d’artifice (Fireworks) from Preludes Book II (1913) (5 min)
This is the only piece on the program that has nothing to do with water. I would like to pair it up with Poissons d’or and see if the audience can guess as to which captures the fish splashing of water, and which the fireworks in the sky.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Jeux d’eau (1901) (6 min)
Compare and contrast this piece to Liszt’s Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este. In Ravel’s own hand writing, the manuscript bears a quote from a French symbolist poet Henri de Régnier; “A river god laughing at the water that tickles him.”
Une Barque sur l’ocean (A Boat on the Ocean) from Suite “Miroirs” (1905) (7 min)
This piece captures the largest body of water from the pieces I have selected for this menu. Accordingly, its use of the piano registers is the widest and arguably the most dynamic.
Federico Mompou（1893-1987)
Prelude No. 8 “On a Drop of Water” from Preludes (1943) (3 min)
A drop of water creates a ripple on a water surface, then evaporates up into the air only to rain down as a droplet again.
Special: Four-Hands: Bedřich Smetana （1824-1884）
Moldau from “Má vlast (My Home Country)” arranged for Four-Hands
The most famous from the set of six symphonic poems Smetana wrote about his homeland, Czech. It captures the different country scene as the stream grows to a river and then grows wider and wider. (This piece requires another pianist playing the bottom part.)