Concerto pour piano et orchestre de chambre

Programme notes

The full title of this first endeavour in piano concerto writing is as following: Concerto pour piano et orchestre de chambre en mi bémol un tant soit peu majeur, opus 108, d'après de vieux cahiers. Composed in three days, this short but intense piano concerto is based on a solo piano piece opus 2 entitled Suite composed by R Casteels in 1982. Parts of the four movements of the Suite (Intrada, Notturno, Giga, Finale) found their way in the concerto opus 108 but in a different order and with unexpected resolutions into e flat triads. 

The Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, opus 108 (2017), constitutes Casyteels's first effort in the field of composing a piano concerto, which may seem astonishing given that the piano was his instrument of training. His only other incursions into the concerto genre are Holler across the Holler opus 68 (2010), Semisopochnoi opus 97 (2014), and Cụ Rùa opus 106 (2016), which are, respectively, concertos for percussion, electric guitar, and Đàn Bầu. Opus 108 was commissioned by the Belgian-American pianist Tedd Joselson for his Golden Jubilee concert, which celebrated fifty years as a concert pianist. Composed in three days, opus 108 is short, dense, and entirely based on the Suite for Piano, opus 2, hence the subtitle: after old notebooks. The irony of the somewhat major key of E-flat refers to the fact that on seven occasions, the themes find a tonal resolution on the perfect chord of E-flat major, and this occurs within an atonal context. No other tonal chord appears, not even a single dominant or subdominant chord. The unison on the note E-flat punctuates the work three times: at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. No symbolic value is attached to the key of E-flat major. All themes in the concerto come from the the Suite for Piano, opus 2 (1982 but are presented in a different order. Although the concerto is in a single, uninterrupted movement, it is clearly structured into ten sections: a restless introduction (=A), a gentle evening atmosphere that progressively becomes anxious (=B), a melodic theme (=C), a sarcastic dance with the scent of Stravinsky and Prokofiev (two heroes who inhabited Casteels's adolescent musical world) (=D), a sequence that flits with speed and lightness (E). Starting from the central E-flat unison, the themes reappear in reverse sequence: D, then C, B, and A. A hammered toccata serves as a coda. The instrumentation for chamber orchestra, consisting of four winds and about ten strings, remains light.

Thirty-five years separate the composition of opus 108 from that of a youthful work, the Suite for Piano, opus 2 (1982). Reproduced here in full is a text written in 1982 and appended to the end of the manuscript score of Suite opus 2 under the title "Personal Notes": "I experienced a lot of joy writing these pages: erasing, returning to the idea, improvising at the keyboard, searching for adequate notation, receiving critical advice from Q., reworking, and then copying. I feel a kind of jubilation in presenting a work that is clearly laid out, written, like a craftsman facing his work. Perhaps with the years, I will call this 'suite' a youthful little work, carefully rushing to forget it. This scribble (sic) will be considered either as already revealing of talent and style, containing in germ the future development of this composer.... (etc. = the usual pedantic gloss of musicologists), or as a vague and fleeting memory in the mind of some friend or listener. These people perhaps consider me a would-be academy director, a future nuisance making imposed competition pieces, a young whippersnapper who dares to commit himself to writing after the great masters, from Pérotin to Stravinsky. (end of quote)." Q. refers to the Belgian composer and pedagogue Marcel Quinet (1915 – 1986) who was Casteels's private teacher in analysis, orchestration, and then composition. Frustrated by the Siberian straitjacket of the writing courses offered at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Casteels had indeed slammed the massive door of the Conservatory and found refuge with Quinet, in Tervueren. The term academy refers to the network of free music schools that existed in most municipalities of the Kingdom and were subsidized by the Ministry of Culture. Casteels became neither an academy director nor a composer of competition pieces. 

Full score

see page 30

Handwritten sketches and drafts

to be found in chapter XII of the white cover, A3 size, 600 pages sketchbook

Review 

"Outstanding Piano Concerto Playing for some 15 minutes, both piano and orchestra (strings and winds) probed and ruminated over a plethora of thematic ideas, with the ostensible aim of finding its home key of E flat major. Eventful, inventive and quasi-improvisatory, there were alternating moments of serenity and violence, several false dawns and vocalisations of that elusive E flat by orchestral members. The end finally came with an emphatic and abrupt succession of E flat major chords, closing with the pianist plucking an E flat string in the innards of the piano. A worthy addition to the small canon of Singaporean piano concertos"

Chang Tou Liang, Singapore