Ferdinand Hiller - Operetta without Text for piano four hands, Op. 106

Bradley Berg, piano four hands (1852 Streicher piano modeled by Pianoteq) Ferdinand Hiller - Operetta without Text for piano four hands, Op. 106 (1864) 00:00 I. Ouverture 07:57 II. Romanze des Mädchens 10:50 III. Polterarie 13:35 IV. Jägerchor und Ensemble 17:19 V. Romanze des Jünglings 20:01 VI. Duettino 23:53 VII. Trinklied mit Chor 29:09 VIII. Marsch 33:57 IX. Terzett 36:47 X. Frauenchor 39:29 XI. Tanz 43:12 XII. Schlussgesang Background: The German composer, pianist, conductor, writer, and music director Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885) is one of those historical figures whose life and career entangled with so many legendary personalities that his near total anonymity today remains inexplicable. His first strong musical friendship was with Felix Mendelssohn, whom he succeeded as director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1843. Hiller briefly studied with the pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel in the late 1820s, when he famously acquired a supposed lock of the dying Beethoven’s hair that was eventually sold at auction in 1994. In Paris during the 1830s, Hiller knew Liszt, Berlioz, and Chopin, the last of whom dedicated his Op. 15 Nocturnes to Hiller. Robert Schumann did likewise by dedicating to Hiller his still-popular A-minor Piano Concerto. Hiller was not only respected as a fellow musician by these composers, but also a great friend. His personality must have been exceptionally gracious, as he even befriended the notoriously misanthropic Charles-Valentin Alkan, whose correspondence with Hiller forms one of the rare veins of biographical information about Alkan’s life. While Hiller was evidently a capable pianist and music director, his six attempts to mount a hit opera between 1839 and 1865 never quite succeeded. Meanwhile, Jacques Offenbach’s satirical operettas had taken Europe by storm throughout the 1850s and 60s. Shorter and more humorous than its more ambitious sibling, the operetta genre featured lighter music, spoken dialogue, and popular forms of dance and song. Offenbach’s most successful examples mixed memorable tunes (such as the “Can-can” from Orpheus in the Underworld) with witty social commentary. As a precursor to modern musical theater, operettas sold well and entertained the masses in exchange for lesser musical weight and seriousness. Hiller’s “Operette ohne Text”: Ferdinand Hiller’s Operetta without Text for piano four hands, Op. 106, published in 1864, emerged as the latest in a long line of genre-defying keyboard works. J.S. Bach’s Italian Concerto and French Overture (1735), in which the lone harpsichordist takes on the roles of both soloist(s) and orchestra, became standard-setting examples of how to accomplish such an illusion. The title page of Robert Schumann’s Third Piano Sonata (1836) includes the subtitle “Concerto sans orchestre,” indicating a similar aim and reflecting the nineteenth-century fascination with orchestral pianism. Alkan took the task even more literally in his minor-key etudes (1857), which include an original four-movement Symphony, three-movement Concerto, and full-scale operatic Overture, all for solo piano. With the prevalence of such original works that “transcribed” orchestral genres through the medium of the piano, it was only natural for the phenomenon to extend to vocal genres. Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, a popular series of solo piano works in the form of textless lieder, affirmed the legitimacy of piano transcriptions as original music. Alkan followed suit with his series of thirty “Chants” for solo piano. As a friend of and regular correspondent with both of these composers, Hiller’s 1864 “operetta” for piano might have been seen as the latest in a series of musical one-upmanships. A glance at the table of contents for Hiller’s twelve-movement Operetta for piano duet reveals a vaguely comical plot with all of the most common theatrical tropes: a bustling overture whose coda refuses to end, sweetly fawning romances for young girls and boys respectively, a hunting chorus, women’s chorus, and drinking song (with recurring hangovers!), an obligatory duet, trio, march, and waltz, and a closing reprise of the opening song. No. 3, “Polterarie,” refers to the German Polterabend, a prenuptial tradition of breaking porcelain for the bridal couples’ good luck in marriage, indicating that our imaginary plot involves a wedding at some point. Otherwise, it seems Hiller’s intention is to give us nothing in the form of a coherent story. This is an operetta that is meant to sound like every other operetta in 1860s Germany, and therefore anything can be imagined while enjoying its succession of frivolous tunes and dances. The marketability of such a publication must have been high since its novelty recreated a trip to the theater in the comfort of the home. A private salon performance would have made for charming entertainment during a gathering of friends and family. #pianoteq #classicalpiano