Piano Concerto Research Articles

Creativity, Performance and Problems of Authorship: Clara Schumann's Cadenzas for Mozart's D minor Concerto, K466

In memoriam Manfred Hermann Schmid (1947–2021), Mozartian extraordinaire The cadenzas to the Piano concerto in D minor, K466 that Clara Schumann published for the Mozart centenary year raise intriguing questions about authorship: Upon correcting the proofs, she identified an uncanny overlap with a cadenza by Brahms. Following an ambivalent response from the latter, she went on publishing the work under her name regardless, and even left a note on her papers claiming that Brahms had made use of a cadenza by her. Rather than answering the author attribution either way, the article unpicks the conflicting evidence of the sources in light of the broader contexts within which they are situated. It demonstrates that conventional tools of music philology alone are inadequate for solving this issue (as they had been for Schumann in 1891). Notated sources are but one manifestation of a rich and complex creative process that operate within a multi-sensory, multi-modal and co-creative framework. As such, a close reading of the cadenzas to K466 by Schumann and Brahms interrogate false ontologies of the ‘work concept’ that may have mired our understanding of nineteenth-century music in general.

Creative interaction of the Eespere brothers and its reflection in the René Eespere’s Piano Concerto

Statement of the problem. The piano heritage of René Eespere, despite its uniqueness, has been neglected by researchers. Nowadays, there is no evidence that the Estonian master’s works have ever been mentioned in the national musicological literature. The Piano Concerto was composed on the initiative of the Estonian pianist Tarmo Eespere, the composer’s brother. In its first version, the work was performed only once. Thus, the composer’s piano music, in particular the Piano Concerto, as well as Tarmo Eespere’s interpretations, require detail research and comprehensive coverage by musicologists. The context of creative communication between the two Estonian musicians is of particular interest. Recent research and publications. The article relies on the works of foreign authors who highlight the piano work of Estonian composers in the context of general trends in the development of Estonian musical culture – H. Olt (Olt, 1980), J. Tall (1983); press materials – E.Arujärv (2013), interview– E.Colucci (2012), as well as private correspondence of the author of the article with the composer and the first performer of the concert. The theoretical basis of the article includes the works of Ukrainian musicologists dedicated to the genre of the concerto – V. Rakochy (2021), the analysis of interpretations of musical works – V. Moskalenko (2013); the compositional techniques of the second half of the 20th century – D. Malyi (2021), K. Onyshchenko (2019), and also the articles by Ukrainian scholars – T. Verkina and others (2020), I. Ivanova and others (2020), L. Serhaniuk and others (2021), which are aimed at highlighting the performance issues and typology of composer styles. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to establish the role of the creative interaction of the Eespere brothers through the identification of the basic semantic features of René Eespere’s Piano Concerto and their representation in the performance version by Tarmo Eespere. The genre-stylistic, functional-structural, and interpretative methods of analysis are used in the study. The article discusses aspects that contribute to the understanding and implementation of the content of the Piano Concerto. The author’s and performer’s concepts of the work are revealed. For the first time, not only in Ukrainian musicology, but also in the world one, René Eespere’s Piano Concerto became the focus of attention. Research results and conclusion. The article analyses the principles of the Piano Concerto dramaturgy, the complex of its expressive means, and the interpretative peculiarities of the concerto genre. Brief description of the content and musicological analysis of the work is given. The interpretation of this Concerto by Tarmo Eespere is characterized. The conclusions emphasize that René Eespere created an original, in terms of content and intonation, work based on European classical canons, where the national is embodied primarily through the world perception, intonation, and rhythm. In the second version of the Concerto, the composer achieved a classical balance between the solo and orchestra parts. The prospect of further study of the topic is identification of the composer and performance concepts of other René Eespere’s piano works.

Edward MacDowell's First piano concerto: at the origins of American genre history

The relevance of the study. It consists in considering the concerto in A minor op. 15 by Edward MacDowell not only in the context of the author's artistic evolution, but also as the beginning of the history of the American branch of the genre. Written in 1882, it became the composer's first large-scale work and, at the same time, the first piano concerto composed by an American.
 The main objective of the study is to identify the genre models by which MacDowell created his First Concerto, and to mark the composer's intended prospects for the further development of the American piano concerto.
 The methodology includes biographical (to find out the circumstances of MacDowell's life and education in the European period), comparative (to reveal the continuity of the concert in question in relation to previous samples of the genre), as well as structural-functional, genrestylistic and intonational-dramatic methods (for a comprehensive analysis of the work).
 Results and conclusions. It is emphasized that MacDowell's First piano concert was influenced by the European traditions learned by the young composer during his years in France and Germany. The vicissitudes of MacDowell's education are traced in detail, the names of his teachers and musicians with whom he communicated directly and whose work he admired are indicated, and his repertoire as a pianist is given. The compositional and thematic organization of the First piano concert is analyzed, attention is focused on the figurative and stylistic origins of this music, on the genre models that served as a reference point in MacDowell's work. The ratio of instrumental parts and methods of soloing are highlighted separately. It is concluded that when writing the concert, the novice composer strongly relied on the developed European tradition of interpretation of the genre. In particular, the investigation noted the parallels in the structure of the cycle with the Schumann’s and Grieg’s concertos, revealed the influence of Liszt's pianism on the features of the solo part, and emphasized the striving to balance the sound of the piano and the orchestra, mainly through their alternate juxtaposition. A certain eclecticism of the figurative and stylistic coloring of MacDowell's concerto is indicated (SaintSaëns’s scherzo traits, Mendelssohn’s peacefulness, Liszt’s imposingness, Beethoven’s effectiveness), the similarity of some harmonic turns with Liszt’s and Wagner’s writing styles is noted, the continuity of MacDowell’s motivic and contrapuntal work in relation to the instructions from his teacher Raff is substantiated. These findings highlight that, despite the well-perceived influences and the borrowing of quite specific compositional and dramaturgical techniques, the music of MacDowell's First piano concerto already clearly shows an individual authorial principle, which manifests itself in a number of pianistic techniques, in a masterful combination of contrasting images, in the balancing between simplicity and sophistication, pathos and poetics. The considered work testifies to the unconditional composer’s talent and independent thinking of the future founder of American music.

Chinese and French traditions in Chen Qigang's Piano Concerto

The subject of the research is the concerto for piano and orchestra "Erhuang" by the contemporary Chinese-French composer Chen Qigang (1951). The work, written in the mature period of the master's work, clearly demonstrates an artistically convincing synthesis of national and European musical traditions. Chinese influences are associated primarily with the reliance on the characteristic features of the Peking Opera jingju, French influences are due to the influence of the Impressionist style of Claude Debussy and the principles of musical writing by Olivier Messiaen, whose student was Chen Qigang. The main purpose of the study is to characterize the original features of the Erhuang concerto, due to the combination of influences from the Peking Opera and French music of the 20th century. The concert "Erhuang", one of the most repertoire works in the composer's heritage and a representative example of his style, is considered for the first time in Russian musicology. The main conclusions of the study: the national traditions of the Peking Opera are presented in the concert "Erhuang" on the modal modes (pentatonic scale of zhi), metro-rhythmic (patterns of luo gu dian zi), forma (traditional variations of banqiang ti) and timbre (imitation of the instruments of the Peking Opera ensemble and their tuning system) levels; French influences manifest themselves in a colorful harmonic palette (the influence of Debussy's musical language), as well as in the reception of Messiaen's technique (the theory of additional duration, the method of irregular increase and decrease in rhythm, the principle of motivic combinatorics, the sequential change of modes of limited transposition).

Franz Liszt’s Early Formal Excursions

Franz Liszt reformulated the Classical sonata form by coalescing the structures of a single movement and a multimovement cycle into a two-dimensional sonata form. Most of his mature sonatas are constructed following this structure’s principles (e.g., the Piano Concertos in E-flat, S. 124, and in A, S. 125; the Piano Sonata in b, S. 178; and the symphonic poems Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, S. 95, Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo, S. 96, Les preludes, S. 97, and Die Ideale, S. 106). As the first two-dimensional sonata, De Profundis: Psaume Instrumental marks Liszt’s early maturity, when he established the combination of formal paradigms necessary for the creation of this form. By conceptualizing and framing the required two-dimensional strategies (i.e., thematic transformation, frequent shifts in the musical discourse, progressive formal loosening, and formal incompleteness) in Liszt’s earliest Classical sonata forms (Duo, S. 127 and Malediction, S. 121), this study traces the compositional advent of the two-dimensional sonata produced in the 1830s. These analyses link the works of Liszt’s youth with his mature repertoire, a task so far neglected by the scholarly literature.

Каков язык французской музыкальной комедии? Стилевые эксперименты тандема Легран — Деми

The article is devoted to analysing the stylistic dialogue in the music of Michel Legrand to three films by Jacques Demy: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and Donkeyskin (1971) created in the genre of “comédie musicale” (musical comedy, musical). In the first part of the article the author examines the French sources of the American musical (from the comedy-ballet Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Moliere and Lully to the operettas by Jacques Offenbach), which allow us to comprehend the deep connection of the genre with the European art of the past and to understand the naturalness of the appeal to the idea of the musical by Demy and Legrand. The second part is an introduction to Jacques Demy’s creative method which is characterized by ambivalence, constant balancing between the auteur and mass cinema, between a realistic approach and theatricality. The third part is devoted to studying the origins of Michel Legrand’s stylistic experiments (on the one hand — serious academic education, training with Nadia Boulanger; on the other— work with world-class jazz musicians), as well as to analysing three layers: jazz (improvisation, the nature of arrangements and harmonies on the example of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), romantic (the application of the features of the genre of piano concerto in The Young Girls of Rochefort) and baroque (the use of the principles of orchestration, polyphonic forms, rhetorical figures in the Donkeyskin). The author concludes that Legrand and Demy, along with Bernstein and Sondheim, Webber and Rice, marked with their creativity the overcoming of the musical genre crisis of 1940–1950s associated with a shortage of meaningful librettos, lower quality of vocal-symphonic material, and a shift to entertainment and visual appeal to the detriment of musical dramaturgy. Despite the immutability of the basis of a musical, the director and composer expanded understanding of the genre and gave it an elegant French accent.

ФОРТЕПИАННЫЙ КОНЦЕРТ В ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ КИТАЙСКИХ КОМПОЗИТОРОВ: К ИСТОРИИ СТАНОВЛЕНИЯ ЖАНРА

The article is devoted to the history of the formation of the piano concerto genre in the musical art of China. Due to the late development of the piano, an instrument alien to the culture of the Celestial Empire, all the stages of mastering the piano and comprehending its specifics by Chinese musicians have been completed in just over a hundred years. Despite the fact that the piano concerto came to the attention of Chinese authors much later than other European genres, it turned out to be very consonant with their mentality. The work chronologises the gradual development of the piano concerto in Chinese musical culture — through the “introduction” of classical examples of European composers into the repertoire in the early XXth century, to its development first by the Russian-born composer A. Avshalomov, and then by Chinese composers Jiang Wenye and Zhang Xiaohu. Based on the research of musicologists Guo Hao and Wu Jiajun, the article defines the periodization of the formation of the piano concerto in China and notes the characteristic trends in the work of Chinese composers in their approach to the interpretation of this genre and their special attitude to the programme. The paper reveals the constant features of the classical piano concerto mastered by Chinese composers and the new things they brought to this genre in the process of adaptating it based on the national musical tradition.

Chopin in the writings and music of 20th-century Polish composers

Many volumes have already been written about the Polishness of Chopin’s music and about his influence on composers of various nationalities active in the Romantic and later periods. In this text the author looks at how Chopin was viewed by 20th-century Polish composers regarding two aspects: 1) how they interpreted his music in the context of its links to Polishness and 2) whether and how they took on his musical concepts in their own oeuvres. This will allow to shed some light on the reception and resonance (to use the terminology of Mieczysław Tomaszewski, a distinguished expert on Chopin and 20th-century Polish music) of the figure and music of Chopin in Polish music of the previous century. There will be examined an extremely patriotic public speech given by Paderewski in 1910, as well as Szymanowski’s opinions from the 1920s. Moreover, the politically driven celebrations of Chopin Year in 1949 will be recalled. The special attention will be put on the musical genres associated with Chopin: preludes, mazurkas, etudes, and piano concerto. The author will look for their reinterpretations in the output of 20th-century Polish composers: Szymanowski, Panufnik, Lutosławski, Serocki, Knittel, Mykietyn, or Baculewski. At the end, the question about the legacy of Chopin will try to be answered by recalling opinions of composers active in the 21st-century (Knapik, Zielińska, Wielecki). All the presented views draw the picture which perhaps might be best explained by Stefan Kisielewski’s expression: “Chopin is like a magic object with a different reflection in each mirror.”

Музыкальное искусство России начала ХХ века: INFANTE

The essay considers the phenomenon designated by the notion “youthful themes”, which flourished in Russian musical art in the early XX century. This phenomenon is revealed as a depiction of various age gradations (infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, early adulthood), which has gone beyond the limits of the material focused on the needs of a specific age audience and has a generally significant character. The work traces the evolution of youthful themes starting with the turn of the XIX-XX centuries (the opera “Iolanta” (1891), the ballet “The Nutcracker” (1982) by P. Tchaikovsky, “The Music Box” (1893) by A. Lyadov, the opera “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (1900) by N. Rimsky-Korsakov, Piano Concerto No. 1 by S. Rachmaninov (1890-1891), Piano Sonata No. 5 by A. Scriabin (1907)) and up to the 1920s. Special attention is paid to the main line of development of youthful themes in the 1910s (10 Pieces for Piano Op. 12 (1913) and the cycle “Visions Fugitives” (1915-1917) by S. Prokofiev, the orchestral piece “Fireworks” (1908), the symphonic poem “The Song of the Nightingale” (1917) by I. Stravinsky). As a result, the author highlights the nuances of content and meaning inherent in the youthful themes (birth and affirmation of new forces, enjoyment of life, carelessness, playful attitude to the world; fervor, seething energy, thirst for youthful self-affirmation; integrity, clarity, simplicity, infantilism with its inherent fragility and purity) and also notes the presence of a wide range of aesthetic and stylistic facets in this area. The appearance of youthful themes marked the advancement of new forces into the arena of life, as well as the freshness and spontaneity of world perception, freedom from canons and stereotypes.

Symphonic Principles of Development in Chinese Piano Concertos of the 1980s - Early 2000s

In the 1980s and early 2000s, Chinese composers wrote the largest number of piano concertos in the entire century-long history of this genre in the musical history of this state. Among them, the most recognized in different countries were the works of Huang Anlun and Du Mingxin. Along with the fame of the pianists who performed them and the importance of the composers themselves in the music of China, a considerable merit in this is seen in the enrichment of their concerts with symphonic principles that influenced the depth of dramatic tension in these works. The article examines the techniques of musical development in two concerts by Huang Anlun and the First and Third Concerts by Du Minxin in line with the ideas of symphonism laid down by B. Asafyev and developed in the works of Soviet and Russian musicologists. The role of Russian music in the appeal of Chinese composers to symphonic drama in piano concerts is also noted. The main means of symphonization in the concerts under consideration mostly coincide. They are characterized by the orchestrality of the piano part and the developed dialogicity of the soloist and orchestra, moreover, there is a high degree of their cohesion in the works of Huang Anlun. The figurative transformation of themes is of key importance. Meanwhile, there are differences. Du Mingxin tends to a more concise form of the concert. With regard to thematic work, he confines himself to creating arched connections and tends to bring contrasts closer together. Huang Anlun builds monumental musical canvases. He permeates his compositions with leittems and pays great attention to development. So, if Du Mingxin acts within the framework of a symphonized concert, then Huang Anlun has made an exit to the concert-symphony genre.

Anton Rubinstein and Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich. Concerning the History of Their Interactions

The topicality of the research and the academic novelty of the work are stipulated by the fact that for the first time on the basis of unpublished archival documents it presents an overview of the interactions between the august director of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich (1827–1892) and the founder of this largest concert and educational organization, the outstanding Russian musician Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894). Various methods of analysis are made use of in the article, including comparative analysis of source materials and the biographical method. The main material of the research is formed by the Grand Duke’s personal diaries. They reflect all of Rubinstein’s artistic roles — a prodigy musician, the unsurpassed chamber music player, the prolific composer, the pianist, the conductor, the promoter of Russian music abroad, the director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and the educator. The peculiarity of the interrelationship between Konstantin Nikolayevich and Anton Rubinstein is conditioned by several factors — on the one hand, their belonging to the same generation, and on the other hand, the lengthy time-span of their communication. The article is written in a four-part structure. The first section deals with the phenomenon of composer’s protection as a child and the history of the dedication of two of his compositions — the early Piano Concerto in D minor (1849) and the Piano Octet орus 9 (1856). The second section is associated with the musical life and ensemble performance at the imperial court. It demonstrates how from the diary entries it becomes possible for us to restore the chronology of Rubinstein’s performances at the imperial and grand-ducal residences, to acquire the perception of his instrumental ensemble partners, his musical repertoire and his audience. The central place of the article is taken up by the section The Composer and the Pianist. It contains critical comments made by Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich about various musical works pertaining to different genres (chamber music, operas and symphonies), as well as about visiting seven Historical Concerts held in St. Petersburg in January and February 1886. In the final part, an attempt is made to look at Rubinstein, the director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory through the eyes of the august patron of this educational institution.

Study on the Nationalization Characteristics of the Yellow River Piano Concerto

Study on the Nationalization Characteristics of the Yellow River Piano Concerto

СЕРГЕЙ РАХМАНИНОВ И НИКОЛАЙ МЕТНЕР: ЖИЗНЕННЫЕ И ТВОРЧЕСКИЕ ПАРАЛЛЕЛИ

Today the whole world celebrates a jubilee date — the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff. The Moscow Conservatory conducts monographic programs in all of its four halls, where all genres of the composer's legacy are presented: three operas are staged, all symphonic works are played, all romances are sung. This article is devoted to the creative interrelations and great friendship between S. V. Rachmaninoff and N. K. Medtner from the conservatory years. It focuses on the later work of the two composers, whose main genres are marked by stylistic parallels. This is about Russianness in their work, about the abiding longing for their beloved homeland, which nourished their inspiration until the last years of their lives. The stylistic comparisons are based on Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances" and Medtner's Piano Quintet, Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto and Medtner's Third Piano Ballade Concerto.

«Scenarity» as the Basis for the Formation of the Drama Genre in K. Tsepkolenko First Piano Concerto

The article reveals the peculiarities of creating the dramatic form of the Concerto-Drama for Piano and Orchestra. The paper substantiates the principles of dramatization of the composer’s piano concerto from the position of her creative method — her own genre concept, namely “scenario development” of musical material and general stylistic foundations of her creative work. The internal dramatic effect of the concerto is achieved thanks to the through development of musical images in the concerto-drama thanks to thematic bridges that unite all three parts into a single performance, in which the relief and convex script-fabula layers of the work are literally perceptible, revealing to the listener a world of emotions and vivid feelings. The article shows that the composer, developing the concerto genre in a dramatic turn, uses playful methods of form-making to enhance the dramatization of his works. In the orchestra part she widely uses the competitiveness of the individual instruments and orchestra groups, in the climactic moments the texture is saturated by poly-linear multi-layered semantic structures. The composer makes innovative use of piano cadenzas that appear on the crest of the hero’s emotions, appearing in various structural sections of the concerto and serving as unifying material that binds together the dramatic plot of the concerto. The individual project of the work based on the script featured development of the drama is decisive in the composer’s concerto-symphonic works. Here the composer acts as another function that emerged in connection with the application of the script development method, namely that of the director of the musical process, who shapes the musical material taking into account its texture, temporal and spatial forms.

Evolution of the Genre of the Piano Concerto

The paper outlines the features of emergence and development of the piano concerto on its way towards drama from a historical perspective, analyses specific features of its genre nature, and reveals the types of the concerto’s dramaturgy differing from one another in form and style of the interaction between the soloist and the orchestra. The paper demonstrates that the piano concerto followed the path of development of an individual performer principle, and afterward that of a dialogical balance between the orchestra and the piano part, which was determined by the degree of composers’ innovative achievements and the dominant aesthetic paradigm. In terms of highlighting the genre of the piano concerto and genre specificity of piano and orchestral music, the compositional-analytical approach proved to be productive. The analysis revealed that the movement towards drama in the historical perspective of the piano concerto was uneven with occasional drifts towards the so-called “style brilliant.” Depending on the type of drama, the correlation between the solo and the orchestra changed. In the 20th century, due to the radical transformation of the cultural paradigm, the genre of the concerto was restructured; composers abandoned traditional forms and tried to create an individual project form for each work. The study indicates the parameters of change in the genre, form, and style of the piano concerto under the influence of the newest paradigm of the time: repudiation of the traditional genre forms, creation of hybrid forms such as“anti-genre,” “hypergenre,” or a complete negation of the genre and creation of an individual genre project.

Romantic interpretative model of F. Chopin’s Piano Concertos in A. Rubinstein’s (First Concerto) and H. Czerny-Stefańska’s (Second Concerto) versions

The Romantic model of interpretation is characterized by significant influence of an interpreter on the composer’s text in those part, which is the field of performer’s responsibility, and it is an alternative to the Classical as well as the Impressionistic models proposed by some scholars. The purpose of the present research is to reveal the features of Romantic interpretational model of F. Chopin’s Piano Concertos based on examples of various performers’ versions. The article analyses the performances of F. Chopin’s Piano Concertos by two outstanding pianists of the XX century, A. Rubinstein and H. Czerny-Stefańska; it is revealed how the Romantic mode of interpretation is embodied in their sound versions of these pieces. The individual approachs of the performers to the choice of temps are studied; it is revealed how the pianists emphasise the genre genesis of the certain themes of the Concertos. The performance stiyle of H. CzernyStefańska’s is briefly outlined, since she is much lesser-known in Ukrainian musicologyic space than A. Rubinstein. At the first time the idea of three interpretative models (Romantic, Classical, Impressionistic) is applied to the musical material of F. Chopin’s piano Concertos regarded in the article. Based on analysis, the conclusion is made that the both version of Piano Concertos by F. Chopin considered in the study lean to the Romantic model of interpretation. At the same time, it is quite natural that they are not the same in their essence that can be explained both, by obvious reasons (the choice of different Concertos or gender-determined performing differences), and by individual artistic preferences of the pianists, by their unique performance styles. For instance, A. Rubinstein chooses somewhat slowed down temps in multiple passages of the Concerto, including its first movement, he emphases the song features of many themes in the cases where it is appropriate and does not contradict what was written by the composer. H. Czerny-Stefańska tends to accentuate emotionallyplayful essence of the Concerto, as she focuses her attention on different types of intonation, articulation, dynamics etc. Obviously, she does not neglect lyrical nature of the work, in several themes stressing it as a predominant genre genesis. Nevertheless, H. Czerny-Stefańska aims to break the stereotypes of “feminine performance” of F. Chopin’s music, which can be seen in tendency to “wide strokes” and creation of through line of musical development.

Analysis of the Similarities between the Third Movement of Beethoven: Piano Sonata "Passion"(OP.57) and the Third Movement of the Piano Concerto NO 5 "Emperors" (OP.73)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a representative composer in the European classical period. His Piano Sonata "Passion" (OP.57) and Piano Concerto NO.5 "Emperor" (OP.73) are masterpieces in Beethoven's piano music literature. This article will explore the commonness of these two works, which were created in Beethoven's mature period, in terms of creative techniques, musical style, historical status, etc., and strive to deepen the understanding of Beethoven's piano works in his mature period.

Beethoven's Rhetoric of Embellishment

This article examines the communicative and interpretive significance of melodic embellishment in Beethoven's oeuvre, with a particular focus on multi-movement instrumental works from the period 1795–1824. Embellishment has received comparatively little attention in Beethoven studies; yet it formed a crucial part of his musicianship as both a performer and a composer. The article begins with a broad overview of Beethoven's embellishment practices, drawing examples primarily from his early piano trios and piano sonatas. It then goes on to examine a series of issues in more detail: first, the role of embellishments in the composition and performance of concertos (with a focus on the Piano Concertos Nos. 3–5); second, the role of embellishments in evoking musical character and expressive personae (with a focus on the Piano Sonata op. 31, no. 3, the Violin Sonata op. 30, no. 1, and the Cello Sonata op. 5, no. 1); and finally, the possibility of understanding embellishment as a musical topic in symphonic writing (with a focus on the slow movements of the Symphonies Nos. 4, 8, and 9). The article closes with reflections on the expressive function of embellishments in Beethoven's late style, arguing that melodic decorations, along with other rhetorical devices, provided a vehicle for the evocation of nostalgia and memory.

Musical Style of Composer Chu Wanghua: the Role of Traditional Compositional Components of Chinese Folk Music in ‘Yellow River’ Piano Concerto

The paper addresses the characteristic features of the musical style of Chu Wanghua, the Chinese composer, using his ‘Yellow River’ piano concerto as an example. The comparison revealed that the focus on the scope of Western European music, the imitation of the structure of ethnic musical instruments through piano playing, the combination of ancient folk music and contemporary compositional techniques, the use of traditional transcriptions, symbolism are typical elements of the ‘Yellow River’ performance. Further research might address comparative analysis between traditional Chinese elements and Western European elements, which are peculiar to the composition under study.

FAGOT İÇİN SEÇİLMİŞ ORKESTRA SOLOLARININ TEKNİK AÇIDAN İNCELENMESİ VE ÇALIŞMA ÖNERİLERİ

During their education, an artist receives soloist training on many concertos and sonatas. However, people whose goal is to become an orchestra artist should be prepared for a possible exam by studying orchestral materials. In this study, four selections that are most likely to be encountered in orchestra auditions and that consist of works from different periods were determined and examined in terms of playing techniques. These works are Scheherazade by Rimsky Korsakov, Ludwig van Beethoven's 4th Symphony, The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major.