D’Albert’s late piano pieces are all small genre pieces, the
Capriolen, Op 32, appearing in 1924. The fourth of them, ‘Missie-Massa’, written several years earlier, rather succinctly shows his feelings about the black people. The lamenting Lento opening nostalgically leads to a dazzling Vivacissimo rendering of ‘In Dixieland I take my stand to live and die in Dixie’. The ‘five simple pieces’ of this set are delightfully contrasted—the touching depiction of the burned butterfly in No 1 about as near to Schoenberg as d’Albert was ever likely to get, the ‘cosiness’ of the waltz, No 2, slightly upset by its occasional false relations, the delicately impassioned plight of the ‘Rosebud beneath the snow’ setting a Victorian scene in No 3, and No 5 predating and very much setting the scene for Turina’s 1932 Suite
Le Cirque.
from notes by Piers Lane © 1997
