From Sandra
On noticing “wrong” notes
The director of the St. Petersburg Music School, where Kashperova had taught, once warned the composer Balakirev not to include Kashperova in an upcoming concert because “she does not recognise any leadership and …..will do such mischief...that you will not be able to manage her.”
(Leokadiya Kashperova: Biography, ‘Memoirs’ and ‘Recollections of Anton Rubinstein’ by Graham Griffiths, p. 23)
This independent spirit shines in her music and may even include some ‘wrong’ notes. Here is what I noticed.
The Scherzo (2nd movement) opens with a hushed but energetic and rhythmic theme in the piano. It (as well as the final passages of the Rondo) also reminds me of birds...this time chirping and pecking rather than singing...but I digress.
What I want to talk about are the ‘wrong’ notes.
The initial statement of the theme unfolds from bar 1 to bar 14 and then repeats itself exactly again from bar 15 to bar 28, and then again from bar 159 to bar 172. Except that it doesn’t repeat exactly.
I first noticed that, while the second last bar of this 14 bar theme has an octave leap from c to c in the left hand, (in the first two iterations) when the theme is repeated from bar 159 to bar 172, that octave leap is from e to e instead. My first impulse was to ‘correct’ this. I assumed it was a mistake in the type-setting that simply missed a ledger line and bumped the octave up by a third. Thankfully, I didn’t correct it, though, and now listening for that minor alteration gives me an oddly pleasurable sense of satisfaction.
The reason I didn’t correct this, is because I began to notice more ‘wrong’ notes.
Unfortunately, one of them, I missed until after we finished recording….but in the second statement of the theme (bar 15 to bar 28) one note is different from the first and third iterations. The last 16th note at the end of bar 24 is moved up a third, from f# to a. Again, was this just a type-setting mistake? I’ve started playing this ‘mistake’ and again, it is oddly satisfying.
I also noticed that a 16th note “trill” handed back and forth between the hands in bar 47 has each hand ending the pattern on a quarter note as the other hand takes over….but when that passage is repeated at bar 205, the first part in the left hand is missing the quarter note….is this another typo?
At first these tiny alterations in repeated passages seemed like they were just “wrong notes”, because who would do that? But when I found a couple similar slight alterations in repeated passages in the final movement (the Rondo), the pattern emerging became too compelling to me to be dismissed. I began to suspect these slight alterations were deliberate.
Both the Scherzo and the Rondo are playful movements and these tiny tweaks began to pop out at me as humourous, almost “gotcha!” moments, only to be overtly noticed by those who knew the piece really well. And the better we’ve gotten to know this piece, the more Alyssa and I are convinced that everything Kashperova wrote was intentional.
We do know, from her biography, that she refused to let her former composition teacher “correct” this first independent work. Was she poking a little bit of subversive fun at decorum and restraint and “following the rules” with her unruly notes? I don’t know. But I’ve come to enjoy them.