Recorded on August 22nd, 2024.
So, as the story goes, Glenn Gould's first impression of this composer was through this work by Fartein Valen (Norwegian), his Piano Sonata No.2, and Gould remarked that "he felt like he just met a major figure of the 20th century". And, in truth, when I tried out this piece myself, just 5 bars from the opening, I could tell the same; I was already thoroughly convinced. Valen independently developed an atonal polyphonic and contrapuntal style that mimicked the style of Bach and Schoenberg (and arguably Scriabin and Roslavets) except it is based off of motivic workings. The fact that this particular piece is clearly not twelve-tone or serialist actually appeals to me much more and reminds me of Roslavets' Piano Sonatas 1 and 2, likely because the vertical alignments of notes can still be attributed to very complex harmonies and thus still contains a tonal element to them. Oh ya, allegedly, Valen also wrote over 25,000 piano etudes in his lifetime.
I created the analysis for this movement to highlight the recurrency of themes and motifs, which there are quite a number. Without it, my rendition would have been less insightful and the music not arbitrary, but shrouded in exhausting and seemingly unending intricacy and complexity to an audience. I believe it's similar to one of Schoenberg's works, but a very long extension of it. And, exactly, that was part of the challenge of this movement: it's long and homogeneous, so there had to be some artistic ingenuity involved in creating interest in keeping the music going and creating long phrasing. But, I really enjoyed this so far, I probably going to record the rest of this sonata which is much more straightforward but equally compelling.
One thing that recurs throughout this sonata is "voice rotation" (I don't recall what the technical term is called, let me know in the comments), which is where the voices repeat a previous passage except in a different vertical order. There's also brief inversions of themes, which is reminiscent of fugal counterpoint. Really really cool piece.
Lastly, just a bit of light humour: every photo of Valen looks like he was just woken up from the grave and asked for a picture, quoted from a friend. He looks half-dead lol.
[DISCLAIMER] If you're unfamiliar with this style of music, it is suggested that you go through the description of this previous video for the necessary background: • Kaikhosru Sorabji: Gul...
My background: • Post
All movements from Opus Clavicembalisticum I've recorded: • Kaikhosru Sorabji: Opu...
All works by Sorabji I've recorded: • Sorabji Piano Recordin...
All works in general I've recorded: • All Full Recordings
A recording of Ravel of mine if you're too normie and inexperienced: • Ravel: "Une Barque sur...
At time of recording, Eric is a full-time software engineer working in Big Tech and AI, graduated from the University of Waterloo, Computer Science major.
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