The Night Has Many Voices

Frédéric Chopin

Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48, No. 1

It makes sense to open a program about the night with a nocturne, which literally means “of the night.” The C minor Nocturne is one of my favorite Chopin nocturnes, and probably one of his most tragic and dramatic.

Published in 1841 and dedicated to a Parisian socialite, Mademoiselle Laure Duperré, the piece opens with a haunting, almost fragmented melody. It’s followed by a church hymn-like middle section that starts quietly and gradually builds in intensity. When the opening melody returns, it’s no longer the same. What began as a quiet lament has turned into something much more agitated and dramatic, with thick chords that make the piano sound almost like an entire orchestra.

What I love about this piece is how much drama Chopin manages to create in just a few minutes. It starts with what feels like a private moment of grief and builds into something almost overwhelming before finally fading away.

Frédéric Chopin

Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35, “Funeral March”

I would say this sonata is most famous for its third movement, the “Funeral March.” Even if you’ve never heard the entire sonata, chances are you’ve heard that melody somewhere.

Chopin was only 29 when he completed this piece in 1839. Robert Schumann, the composer and music critic who once famously introduced Chopin to the musical world with the words “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”, wasn’t particularly impressed with this sonata. He thought the four movements were so different from one another that Chopin had taken “four of his most reckless children” and smuggled them into a sonata. I actually think that’s part of what makes this piece so interesting.

The first movement opens with four measures of solemn, descending Beethovenian octaves. Then suddenly, we’re off to the races. The galloping main theme reminds me of Schubert’s Erlkönig, a song about a father desperately riding on horseback to save his dying son. The contrasting second theme is this gorgeous, hymn-like melody that gradually develops into something that sounds almost like a Puccini opera. It’s dramatic, passionate, and unapologetically Romantic.

The second movement is a scherzo, which means “joke” in Italian. Well, if this is a joke, it’s dark comedy. The movement is full of biting octaves, leaping chords, and chromatic fourths. There’s a beautiful, lyrical middle section that gives us a little break from all the chaos, but eventually the opening music comes back.

The third movement is the reason I’ve wanted to play this sonata since I was in middle school. Of course, I was drawn to the famous funeral march, but what really fascinated me was the middle section. In the middle of all this grave and sorrowful music, Chopin introduces a beautiful, almost cold descending melody. To me, it’s like that moment when someone is so overwhelmed by grief that they temporarily feel numb or absorbed in the memories of deceased loved ones. There’s something haunting about how simple and detached the music sounds.

If the third movement is why I wanted to play this sonata, the fourth movement is why I avoided it for so many years. It’s such a weird piece. There’s no obvious melody, no traditional accompaniment, and both hands are playing these rapid notes in unison almost the entire time. The harmonies don’t behave the way you’d expect in a Romantic piano piece. When I was younger, I didn’t know what to make of it.

Pianist Arthur Rubinstein famously described this movement as “the wind howling around gravestones.” Chopin himself reportedly described it as “just two hands gossiping in unison.”

Now that I’m older, I’ve come to appreciate this movement much more. In fact, it’s become my favorite movement of the entire sonata. It reminds me of a monologue from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, when Claudio, terrified of his impending execution, imagines what it might be like to die:

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world.

Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene 1

That’s exactly what this music feels like to me. After the funeral march, there’s no grand ending, no beautiful melody to comfort us. Just this restless, unsettling music that seems to disappear into thin air.

Jeremy Rafal

Sao ti Biag (Words of Life): Five Piano Pieces Inspired by Ilocano Proverbs

1. I.Napudno a Gayyem (True Friend)Ti napudpudno a gayyémmo, am-ammontó no addáka ití pelígro.“A true friend is known in time of need.”
2. II.Sino ti Nag-itlog? (Who Laid an Egg?)Ti agkuták, isú’t nagitlóg.“The one who cackles laid the egg.”
3. III.Tudo (Rain)No agtúdo, matuduán ámin a táo.“When it rains, everyone gets wet.”
4. IV.Trabaho ken Kanen (Work and Food)No trabáho, gulpién, no kanén, in-inúten.“If it’s work, do it fast. If it’s food, eat it little by little.”
5. V.Sabsabong ken Kulibangbang (Flowers and Butterflies)No addá sabsábong, agaarák dagití kulibangbáng.“Where there are flowers, there are butterflies.”

Growing up in the Philippines, I never really thought much about the old sayings our elders would tell us. They were just things grown-ups said to kids, usually to teach us a lesson or remind us how to behave.

It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I started thinking about these sayings again. I happened to get my hands on an Ilocano-English dictionary, and to my surprise, it included many of the proverbs I remembered hearing as a child. I was so excited.

I grew up speaking Ilocano, but we never studied it in school. In the Philippines, Ilocano is often referred to as a “dialect,” even though it’s a language in its own right. We were taught to read and write in Filipino and English, but not in Ilocano. So seeing my own language documented in a dictionary, complete with all these familiar proverbs, was a big deal for me.

These five miniatures are my way of bringing together two parts of my life: my Ilocano roots and my classical piano training. Each piece began as an improvisation after I recited one of the proverbs to myself. As I worked on them, I found myself remembering the farmlands where I grew up. There were chickens everywhere. Flowers and butterflies. Farmers working hard in the rice fields. My friends and I playing outside in the rain.

I’ve also incorporated folk songs I grew up hearing into each of the pieces. So as you listen, see if you can recognize any of the melodies.

Béla Bartók

Out of Doors, Sz. 81

When my undergraduate piano teacher assigned me my first Bartók piece during my freshman year, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I didn’t understand the dissonances, the weird rhythms, or why the piano had to sound so percussive all the time. I was much more interested in Chopin, Liszt, and the other Romantic composers. Bartók just sounded strange to me. Then I discovered Out of Doors, and it completely changed my mind.

Bartók was Hungarian, and like many young Hungarian musicians, he grew up admiring Liszt, particularly his Hungarian Rhapsodies. But when Bartók began researching traditional Hungarian folk music, he discovered something interesting: the music people were actually singing and playing in the countryside sounded very different from Liszt’s rhapsodies.

Bartók and his colleague Zoltán Kodály traveled to rural villages, recording folk songs and studying the music of ordinary people. They found scales, rhythms, and harmonies that didn’t necessarily follow the conventions of Western classical music. These discoveries eventually became an important part of Bartók’s own musical language. He also became one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology. Suddenly, all those strange sounds I had struggled with as a freshman started to make sense.

Out of Doors, composed in 1926, consists of five pieces that evoke different scenes and sounds from the outdoors.

The first piece, With Drums and Pipes, sounds exactly like its title. We hear pounding, percussive notes in the lower register of the piano, while the upper voices imitate wind instruments. Bartók also incorporates a Hungarian children’s song called Gólya, gólya, gilice.

The second piece, Barcarolla, is a boat song. Traditionally, barcarolles imitate the gentle rocking motion of a boat on water. Bartók gives us exactly that: his own version of a boat moving on water.

The third piece, Musettes, refers to a type of small bagpipe. The repeated notes, drones, and tremolos imitate the sound of the Hungarian duda, or bagpipe. Some of the intervals sound almost out of tune, but that’s part of the character of the music.

The fourth piece, The Night’s Music, is probably the most famous movement of the suite, and one of the reasons I wanted to build this recital around the theme of night. Unlike Chopin, who gives us the emotional and dramatic side of the night, Bartók takes a much more literal approach. He recreates the actual sounds we might hear outdoors at night: birds calling, insects chirping, frogs croaking, and all sorts of mysterious noises coming from the darkness. What I love about this movement is that nothing particularly dramatic needs to happen. The night itself is the music. And if you’ve ever spent time in the countryside at night, you know it’s never really quiet.

Finally, there’s The Chase. This is the movement that first caught my attention when I heard it at a piano festival in college. I remember being fascinated by how relentless it was. The left hand starts this repeating pattern, and once it gets going, there’s practically no stopping it. The music becomes faster, louder, and more intense, with both hands racing across the keyboard. It’s exhausting to play, but also incredibly exciting.

Franz Liszt

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp Minor, S. 244/2

Liszt was basically the rock star of the nineteenth century. He was famous not only for his extraordinary piano technique but also for the frenzy he created among audiences. People were so obsessed with him that the phenomenon even had a name: Lisztomania.

He composed nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, but the second is by far the most famous. And we have Bugs Bunny and Tom from Tom and Jerry to thank for that. Growing up, I watched a lot of cartoons, and some of my earliest encounters with classical music came from Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. I didn’t necessarily know who Liszt was, but I knew that piece with all the crazy piano playing. So naturally, it ended up on my bucket list.

Liszt based his Hungarian Rhapsodies on the style of Hungarian dance music, particularly the csárdás, which typically moves from a slow section to a fast one. The piece opens with the lassan, a slow, dramatic, and improvisatory introduction. It’s moody, sometimes mysterious, and full of those grand gestures that Liszt does so well.

Then comes the friska, the fast section, and this is where things start to get a little ridiculous in the best possible way. There are fast octaves, scales, arpeggios, repeated notes, hand crossings, enormous leaps, and just about every other technical challenge you can throw at a pianist. Liszt also makes the piano imitate all sorts of instruments, including the cimbalom, violin, and accordion.