The cultural symbolism of the harp has long overshadowed the nuances and idiosyncrasies of its repertoire. A historical stigmatization of the harp as a ‘feminine’ instrument – overabundantly frivolous and lacking in gravitas – shifted attention away from a critical assessment of its unique sonic qualities.Footnote 1 Swiss harpist Sarah O'Brien's Impromptu seeks to remind listeners that the harp, whose history spans thousands of years, has continued to fascinate composers and performers alike because of its beguiling resonance and timbral intimacy.Footnote 2
An ideal genre for exploring an instrument's idiomatic sound, the impromptu suggests that spontaneity feels most organic when it is rooted in the familiar. In Impromptu, the familiar is the harp's naturally rich sonority that occurs when the strings are simply allowed to do what they do best, which is to reverberate. In the album's liner notes, which comprise an interview conducted in German between Swiss music journalist Florian Hauser and O'Brien (an English translation by Aaron Epstein follows), O'Brien says recording a compendium of harp impromptus was inspired by her fascination with ‘the improvisational, that is, what arises directly in the moment. This suits the harp very well. After all, on our instrument we have no breath and no bow, we can only pluck and try to integrate and incorporate the tone color that arises afterwards into the musical content that we want to express’ (p. 14). In other words, the performer's spontaneous gesture – the immediate contact between finger and string – is entirely responsible for creating a resonating sound. It is this philosophy of sonic production, illuminated spectacularly in the impromptu, that coheres O'Brien's choices of both original repertoire and transcriptions for the harp.
Of the seven titled impromptus in the track listing, three fall within the period of the ‘long nineteenth century’ (1789–1914); the remaining four are twentieth-century works. O'Brien pointedly begins and ends the album with two of the most widely performed impromptus in the classical harp repertory: Gabriel Pierné's Impromptu-caprice, Op. 9 (1900) and Gabriel Fauré's Impromptu, Op. 86 (1904). Both composed at the turn of the century, the Impromptu-caprice and Impromptu demonstrate key characteristics of late French Romantic writing for the harp: brilliant chordal and arpeggiated passages, wide dynamic contrasts, and incessant tempo fluctuations. The Impromptu-caprice begins with an ad libitum introduction that explores the registral range of the harp by building arpeggios from low to high strings that blends into idyllic trills. Following a declamation of the theme, this opening arpeggio motive returns – this time, as a preface to a lively middle section, after which the theme returns and subsequently extends into a brilliant coda. Throughout the work, Pierné connects each section with sequences of arpeggios and glissandi. O'Brien's approach to these flourishes demonstrates what she does so well as an interpreter: phrasing from the natural colour and shape of the harp's sound rather than emoting artificially or in excess. That organicism permits the improvisatory feel of the impromptu.
Fauré's Impromptu was composed only a few years after Impromptu-caprice, and its precise compositional origin is the subject of ongoing debate, owing to marked stylistic discrepancies in the style and form of the piece. Fauré had been commissioned by the Paris Conservatory to write his Impromptu as a solo harp piece for the end-of-year exams; while the first half of the piece is consistent with his compositional style – especially in reference to his other solo harp work, Une chatelaine en sa tour … – harpists continue to discuss whether the second half was either written or heavily edited by Alphonse Hasselmans (1845–1912), the Paris Conservatory's harp professor and personal friend of Fauré.Footnote 3 Hasselmans was himself a composer, mainly of the types of miniatures and florid character pieces common during the nineteenth century. Thus, the first six pages of the Impromptu are written quite non-idiomatically for the harp, requiring wide, awkward leaps between registers of the harp and attention to intricate voicing between hands.
O'Brien navigates these technical challenges with ease, so the differences between non-idiomatic and idiomatic harp writing may not be evident to the listener. However, it is helpful to know that contemporary harpists’ understanding of idiomatic technique comes from compositions by nineteenth-century virtuosic harpists such as Elias Parish Alvars, Félix Godefroid, and Hasselmans. Fundamental to this repertoire is a right-hand dominant idiom, evident in pieces that use either a simple left-handed harmonic accompaniment with virtuosic right-hand material (cf., Parish Alvars’ Sérénade (1846) and Godefroid's Carnaval de Venise (1875) or two-handed arpeggios with melody, usually played by the right-hand thumb (cf. Hasselmans's La Source (1898)). In the Fauré a dramatic shift occurs after a marked section break (around 4′20″ in the recording) from the non-idiomatic writing previously mentioned to many pages of highly idiomatic cascading arpeggios. Despite O'Brien's masterful execution of both halves of Fauré's Impromptu – most noteworthy is the warmth of her tone that brings richness and depth to the recording – the piece does come off as bifurcated. Compared to his other known solo harp work, Une chatelaine en sa tour … (1918), which is thematically and stylistically cohesive, the first half of his Impromptu ends indecisively, as though it still has somewhere to go. Instead, the listener encounters entirely new material in the second half; rather than merely interjecting, the latter section takes over, transforming the work into a dramatic showpiece that feels distant from its beginning. Nevertheless, one could view that incompleteness as offering a spontaneous sense of possibility; perhaps that quality makes this piece quite truly, an impromptu.
Much like the impromptus by Pierné and Fauré, Reinhold Glière's Impromptu (1908) relies on sweeping chordal and arpeggiated writing, albeit with a much different character that reflects Glière's background as a composer who studied and worked in Moscow for most of his career. Glière's writing in the middle section of this piece evokes not only the style of nineteenth-century Russian composer Mikhail Glinka (cf., his Nocturne (1828) for harp/piano), but also The Lark (1864), a Liszt-inspired piano arrangement by Mily Balakirev of Glinka's ‘A Farewell to St Petersburg’. One feature of note that appears in the impromptus by Fauré and Glière is the series of full, rolled chords at the beginning of each piece, which speaks to the harp strings’ unique ability to resound long after the initial plucking motion (unlike keyboard instruments, which sound when the key is depressed). As previously mentioned, O'Brien's most compelling quality in this album is her sound – namely, the beautiful suppleness that suits the effortless execution of an impromptu so well – and it is that sound that allows the listener to be carried through the soaring lines of Glière's Impromptu.
The remaining four impromptus are squarely twentieth-century works, increasingly departing from the nineteenth-century stylistic influences audible in the previously discussed pieces. French composer Albert Roussel's Impromptu (1919) chronologically follows Glière's Impromptu; while it bears formal similarities – for example, a declamatory introduction followed by rhapsodic melodic sections, with dramatic glissandi in between – it is clearly a modernist work. O'Brien, taking this aesthetic change into consideration, modifies her ‘spontaneous gesture’ appropriately, such as blocking (not rolling) chords and using a more direct attack on the strings. The result is a clean, open sound that she contrasts with the suppleness in more sensitive moments of the piece. Never a sentimental interpreter, O'Brien shines in works that demand evenness and clarity of tone and honest expression; one should be impressed by her ability to present the music as it is, without the distraction of too much artistic ego (e.g., excessive rubato, extreme fluctuations of tempi).Footnote 4
Some of the standout selections on this album are pieces that allow O'Brien to explore subtleties in tone and articulation, in contrast with the late Romantic impromptus that emphasize a more homogenously rich, supple sound. These pieces comprise twentieth-century harp repertoire by Paul Hindemith, Virgilio Mortari, and Nino Rota, as well as transcriptions of works by well-known Baroque composers François Couperin (Le Tic-Toc-Choc), Jean-Philippe Rameau (Le rappel des oiseaux and La poule), and Domenico Scarlatti (Sonata in E Major, K. 380). The common thread of these pieces lies in their background in pre-Romantic styles. Hindemith's Sonata for Harp (1939) follows the kind of neo-classical writing popular during the mid-twentieth century; composed in the same year, the Sonatina Prodigio by the Italian Mortari is also neo-classical, drawing from older musical forms such as the gagliarda, canzone and toccata. Similarly, the Sarabanda e toccata by Rota, an Italian composer famous for collaborations with the film director Federico Fellini, is a two-movement work that contrasts the style of the slow sixteenth-century French sarabande with a Baroque-style toccata. Although O'Brien does not mention this connection in the album notes, the toccata was, like the impromptu, meant to be virtuosic and improvisational in feeling.
O'Brien writes that her rationale for selecting these works is again rooted in advocacy for the harp's sound. The three twentieth-century pieces were all written in consultation with Italian harpist Clelia Gatti Aldrovandi, who ‘was able to acquaint the composers with the harp in such a way the instrument became not only comprehensible, but also natural to them’ (p. 16). In the case of the four transcriptions, her goal is to demonstrate reverberance as fundamental to creating lyricism on the harp, contrary to the common misunderstanding that Baroque music ought to be played as secco as possible on the harp.
If O'Brien's intention is for her listener to better appreciate the natural sound of the harp, it helps to know that sound has evolved over centuries, typically due to the changes in the construction of harps and techniques developed to accommodate those changes. She alludes to this phenomenon in the album notes: ‘The harps in Couperin's time, the double harp and the baroque harps, for which Handel also wrote, were totally different instruments from those of today: completely strung, without pedals’ (p. 18). Another crucial difference in these period harps – the seventeenth-century arpa doppia (double harp) but also eighteenth- and nineteenth-century single-action pedal harps – is lower tension that they would have been strung compared to modern pedal harps. As a result, the strings would be plucked with much less force, relying instead on a more delicate and nuanced approach that was meant to coax the qualities of sound natural to the harp: a timbral richness from the abundance of overtones produced by the low strings and a bright, shimmering quality from the high strings.
With modern pedal harps,Footnote 5 such as the one used in the recording, the string tension is much higher and the instrument body larger, permitting a heavier attack on the strings that then elicits more volume. Whether due to the harp itself or her technique, O'Brien's sound, especially in the lower register, tends to be quite robust; in the opening of Hindemith's Sonata, for example, that heaviness leads to a sense of gravitas (whether or not that was her interpretive choice). In contrast, she maintains the historical sonic integrity of the upper register of the harp extremely well – particularly evident in the sparkling ‘Toccata’ from Sonatina Prodigio, which she executes with elan and enviable technical fluidity.
O'Brien rounds out this feast of sound with three lesser-known impromptus by French composers Jean Cras and Guy Ropartz and Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo. Cras's Deux impromptus (1925) is a set of contrasting movements, much like the Sarabande e toccata by Rota also present in this album. Cras presents the first movement as a languorous display of the harp at its most sonorous and the second movement, a technical whirlwind inspired the capricious movement of water. Ropartz's luscious Impromptu (1927) invokes the compositional style of Claude Debussy, and, like fellow Breton Cras, he was influenced by the folk music of Brittany. Finally, the Impromptu (1959) by Rodrigo, another composer heavily inspired by folk traditions (for him, of Spain), is the most ruminative and delicately textured of the seven impromptus. Set between the intellectualism of Hindemith's Sonata and the grandiosity of Glière's Impromptu, Rodrigo's Impromptu is a delightful palate cleanser, like a spring rainfall ending with a burst of sunlight.Footnote 6
For listeners unfamiliar with original harp repertoire, O'Brien's Impromptu offers the opportunity to hear the harp played masterfully, with the range and depth that comes from years of a harpist familiarizing herself with the sound world of this instrument. Through an eclectic collection of standard and uncommon repertoire, she seeks to present the harp in its natural, impromptu state – absent of contrived techniques or mechanical interventions. As a result, during the last ascent in Fauré's Impromptu that mark the final moments of the album, it no longer matters that the harp is a fussy, unwieldy gilded thing; all that one hears is its glorious, clarion sound.
