Samuil Feinberg - Suite No. 2, Op. 25

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Samuil Feinberg - Suite No. 2, Op. 25

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Samuil Feinberg composed his second piano suite in 1936. The suite is in 5 movements which explores a number of different textures and timbres.
Feinberg's compositional style drastically around the early 1930s as his complex and difficult music didn't fit nicely into the "social realism" movement of Soviet Russia. He compositions from the 1930s show a shift toward neoclassicism and away from the more Scriabinesque style of his early period. Other pieces which best represent this shift in style are Ninth and Tenth Piano Sonatas and the Second Piano Concerto, Op. 36. In all of these pieces (this suite included) there is an increased emphasis on melody and less attention on harmony and rhythm. Feinberg uses much thinner textures and his harmonic language is much more conservative.
The five movements of this suite are all marked attacca, and Feinberg seems to have made a conscious effort to unify the piece with reoccurring motives and textures. The brief first movement introduces essentially only a texture, with very little melodic content. The second movement (1:06) introduces a repeated note figure, which is passed around the piano and between the hands. Here Feinberg makes very specific hand crossing requests, at one points asking the pianist to cross hands with just over 3 octaves between them. The central movement (2:00) is a folk-song like allegretto in C Major with hardly any accidentals in sight. The fourth movement (4:13) is a whirlwind presto in 5/8 meter, featuring the left hand playing continuous 8th notes throughout. The coda features a return of the previous third movement in the upper register of the piano. The final movement (5:16) is the longest of the set, and ties the whole piece together. The lullaby-like allegretto is joined by the texture introduced in the first movement (5:53). As the piece progresses Feinberg begins to introduce more and more hand crossings, perhaps reminiscent of the second movement. The piece concludes with the texture eventually dominating, as the music drifts into a chromatic haze.
Sean Cavanaugh, piano