Medtner: Sonata Minacciosa, Op.53 No.2 (Tozer)

The Sonata Minacciosa is one of those pieces that you don’t listen to as much as it explodes in your face. For all its violence, either apparent or implicit, it’s a deeply enigmatic piece: its gnarled structure is so elusive and complex as to be impossible to precisely pin down; it is tonal, yet writhes with so much harmonic invention it is keyless for large sections of the development (especially the fugue); the opening bars bring through a cadential hall of mirrors; and sometimes it seems to blaze with life, energy, feeling – and then a day later it has retreated into its hard black shell.

It's not an easy thing to come to grips to: if you're at all like me then you'll be bewildered the first couple of times you listen to it, and then slowly the sheer genius of the thing becomes evident. (In general, if you're not willing to listen to a piece a couple of times, then coming to grips with Medtner is really out of the question. This is unfortunate, for he was [with Rachmaninoff, Godowsky et al] one of the greatest piano composers of his era.)

In any case, it’s clear that this sonata is seared from beginning to end with the mark of white-hot inspiration. It develops a small of material with frankly frightening aggressiveness; almost as soon as the themes are introduced (and sometimes before the next theme has quite entered) they are developed. The fugue, for all its chromatic bitterness, only once slouches hugely into truly untrammelled ferocity. The score asks that the entire recapitulation, up to the coda, be played in the manner of a great cadenza. A portion of (what arguably is) the development appears to latch itself to the exposition, for it is repeated in the recapitulation. The relentlessness of much of Medtner’s music might actually have burnt itself out in this sonata’s pages – the Sonata-Idyll which follows this, the last of Medtner’s sonatas, is a pool of nearly undisturbed calm.

Tozer’s playing is near-perfect in this. Often this sonata is rushed through, at the cost of its menace being reduced to bravura. There is none of that here: the looming pauses are all there, the threatening counterpoints all blackly illuminated, and the dark glittering heart – the fugue – is played with silken, quiet eeriness.

00:00 – Allegro sostenuto, concentrando
02:18 – L’istesso tempo (ma con entusiasmo)
08:36 – Fuga: Sempre al rigore di tempo
11:18 – Tempo I, concentrando
12:49 – A tempo (con entusiasmo)
15:43 – Coda: Sempre animato (al rigore di tempo)