Le festin d'Ésope
However, at the feast all the guests were served with tongue, which, Aesop explained, encompassed every variety of human knowledge and emotion.
Marked "Allegretto senza licenza quantunque" ("Rather fast, without any licence"), the piece is to be played without rubato.
Marked piano, the eight-bar theme is stated in the treble by three-note chords, played staccato.
The harmonisation is unusual – every chord in the melody is 'held back' by a B♭ and C, while the bass (playing in the treble) jumps about almost arbitrarily, increasing the harmonic tension.
The bass takes on the melody with wide, rolled chords, while the treble engages itself with undulating sextuplet thirty-second scale runs.
A quiet trill in the bass, starting on C2 and B1, provides background tension while the melody, syncopated by a sixteenth beat, hops about the treble uncertainly.
A single 'cough' in the deep bass ends the previous variation, followed by sprightly bounces in the upper registers.
This variation is marked forte, trombata ("trumpets"), with staccato sixteenth triplets and mordents, combined with frequent overlapping of the hands.
After a chromatic descent, the sixty-fourth note runs continue, now in the key of C major (mirroring the dichotomy in V and VI).
Left and right hands share a chromatic descent of octaves following the melody note every half bar, each starting rinforzando and ending piano.
The variation is formed by accenting diminished chords between both hands whilst juxtaposing a descending chromatic figure.
Labelled Impavidè ("fearless"), this variation consists of thirty-second notes stamps of thick chords marked fortississimo (fff) each.
A return to the tonic major (Maggiore), this variation is marked by a triplet sixteenth rendering of the melody to be played staccato.
Marked tempestoso ("tempestuous"), it consists of one long thirty-second note dodecuplet tremolo in both hands, with brief chromatic pauses, making only sparse references to the theme.
A development of the tempestoso theme, the tremolo figure is similar to that in the middle section of the L'enfer movement in Alkan's Grand Duo Concertante.
The next eight bars consist of a different melodic treatment of the theme, with elements of a canon as both hands take turns stating the melody.
A crescendo leads to a final eight-bar Maggiore statement of the initial trionfalmente variation, featuring the same rhythmic scheme.
This culminates in a sequence of arpeggiated sixteenth note chords in both hands, to be played fortissimo and staccatissimo.
After this sequence, another eight-bar interlude in the bass, irregularly grouped, follows, making only oblique references to the theme in the manner of Alkan's Mort.
Full of astonishing harmonic quirks and twists, supremely masterly and ingenious treatment and a pianistic lay-out worthy of the composer himself – all informed with that verve and vitality, that delightful, eerie, bizarre, and somewhat eldritch quality that make this master’s work so irresistible and fascinating to the sympathetic student.
[1]The piece has been recorded, among others, by Raymond Lewenthal, Stephanie McCallum, Ronald Smith, Bernard Ringeissen, Alan Weiss, Vincenzo Maltempo, Igor Roma, Léda Massoura, Satu Paavola, Yui Morishita, Michael Ponti, Joseph Bloch, Fred Dokan, Jack Gibbons, Marc-André Hamelin, Bruce Liu, and Yeol Eum Son.
